Dear Rep. Weiner: Don't Reenact Opening Scene from 'The Good Wife'

Now that news has broken that lewdly sexting wildman, New York Congressman Anthony Weiner is set this afternoon to announce that he’s resigning his seat (as he should’ve done well before this), I have one request: Please don’t have your pregnant wife, who’s been married to you for less than a year, stand beside you and endure more humiliation because of the stupid things that you’ve done.



It’s extraordinarily painful to watch these women -- Silda Spitzer, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Edwards immediately come to mind -- stand beside their skunk husbands who couldn’t keep it in their pants and not only shamed themselves, but their spouses and children. (The fallout from your politician husband and/or father's indiscretions is the entire premise of the fabulous drama The Good Wife.) These guys don’t deserve to have the innocence and agony etched in the faces and eyes of their wives take the edge off of their disingenuous apologies for their scandalous behavior.

If it’s the only noble thing you do this week, don’t use your wife as a sympathetic prop.

Notes on Pop Culture: Jon Hamm Cameo Rocked 'SNL,' Krasinski/Baldwin Battle Over Baseball & Shriver=Good Wife?

Jon Hamm Cameo Rocked SNL

The first half of the Saturday Night Live TV Funhouse segment, “The Ambiguously Gay Duo” was ridiculously puerile and, frankly, obnoxious. It was as if a group of bodily functions-obsessed middle schoolers had eaten too much sugar and wrote a highly inappropriate, sexually suggestive script. I nearly turned it off, as I couldn’t tolerate its stupid double entendres any longer. But then the cartoon characters were transformed into real live action characters and one of the “Ambiguously Gay” superheroes was Jon Hamm. The other was Jimmy Fallon. Being a shameless Jon Hamm fan, of course I had to watch the rest of it.

I like Hamm and Fallon and, although I found the whole segment annoying when it was in cartoon form, when it was in live action, I was amused.



Krasinski & Baldwin Battle Over Baseball

Die-hard Red Sox fan John Krasinski from The Office and passionate Yankees fan Alec Baldwin spoofed sports’ greatest rivalry in another edition of their New Era Cap ads.

Given that the Boston Red Sox – who are now playing .500 ball (*hallelujah*) – swept the Yankees this past week (*clicking heels*), I’m able to watch this ad and still smile.



Shriver = The Good Wife?

Tonight’s much-anticipated The Good Wife season finale comes out just as news has broken that former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger fathered a child 10 years ago with a woman who worked in the Schwarzenegger/Shriver household for decades. His wife Maria Shriver learned about the love child this year and has since left her husband, after she’d made a passionate case for folks to support Schwarzenegger’s campaign despite allegations that he sexually harassed dozens of women.

Over on CliqueClack TV I compared Shriver’s behavior to the fictional Alicia Florrick’s. Now I’m just waiting to learn that Peter Florrick also has a love child.

Notes on Pop Culture: 'Nurse Jackie' S3 Teaser, Tumultuous 'Parenthood' & 'Good Wife' + Family Politics

Nurse Jackie Season 3 Teaser

After last year’s sharp season, Edie Falco’s Nurse Jackie returns for a third on March 28 and I can not wait.

When last we left the acid-tongued Jackie, she'd been caught by her husband and best friend lying about her drug habit. The season three promo promises that she’ll have to deal not only with the fall-out from that confrontation, but from the fact that no one at the hospital knew she was married because she kept it secret, for whatever crazy reason.

Tumultuous Parenthood

While Adam and Kristina Braverman were finally able to put their angst to the side (for the time being) as their daughter returned home, two other families were having a pretty rough go of it during the latest Parenthood episode, which I reviewed here.

From Sarah Braverman (Lauren Graham) flipping out because her ex-husband is in town, to Crosby Braverman not at all liking the fact that his fiancé is bossing him around, there was plenty of angst in which the younger Braverman siblings could marinate.

Good Wife + Family Politics

The Good Wife has been doing a stupendous job depicting the impact of a political campaign on families, what with Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) having to stop the distribution of a flier asserting that her teenage son impregnated a girl and then the girl got an abortion (it wasn't true), to her teen daughter being stalked by a rival campaign and tricked into saying things to be used against her candidate dad in a YouTube video.

My pop culture column this week centers on how some of the things we see playing out for the Florrick family on The Good Wife aren’t that far-fetched when it comes to the children of real politicians.

Image credit: NBC.

Notes on Pop Culture: Showtime's Women-Centric Dramedies, Put-Upon Political Wives & 'Bright Star' Shines

Showtime’s Women-Centric Dramedies

In advance of the season two premieres of Showtime’s Nurse Jackie and the United States of Tara, the Wall Street Journal ran a feature story entitled, “Showtime’s Bad Girls Make Good: A crop of shows with dysfunctional leading women has given the cable network a burst of momentum.”

Writer Amy Chozick pointed out that, in addition to Jackie and Tara, this is the network that airs Weeds and has a new show slated for this summer called The Big C, about a cancer patient starring Laura Linney. Showtime, the article said, “is reinventing itself with original series largely driven by complicated women. Showtime’s strategy: attracting big-name actresses, of a certain age and experience, who are hard-pressed to find juicy, challenging, starring roles elsewhere.” That is something I can definitely applaud, and is another good reason to keep Showtime as one of my pay channels.

After watching the season premiere of Nurse Jackie I reviewed it for CliqueClack TV and found it very promising. As for the Tara premiere, well, let's just say that I’m going to reserve judgment until I see more episodes.

Put-Upon Political Wives on TV and Real Life

CBS’ The Good Wife has been knocking it out of the park recently. (Entertainment Weekly recently ran a cover urging people to watch it.) The tension has been amped up with Peter Florrick -- the disgraced Chicago state’s attorney who was jailed for corruption and who was found to have slept with escorts -- now under house arrest and living in the apartment with his wife Alicia and their two teens. Alicia’s not sure if she’s going to reconcile with him (he’s sleeping in a guest room) or if she even wants to, despite the fact that, in a recent episode, she slept with him for the first time since the scandal broke. I’m thrilled that the show’s writers aren’t rushing things, like having Alicia simply accept his apology or have her just boot him to the curb. It’s been intriguing the way it’s been playing out.

That being said, Peter still went ahead and hired some political consultants to explore the notion of running for office again, without really talking to his wife or thinking about what this would mean to her, to have his indiscretions brought up yet again if he re-enters politics.

TV husbands blowing off their wives’ concerns for their political ambitions – including with Big Love’s Bill Henrickson – are the focal point of my new Mommy Tracked column this week in a piece that asks how much bad behavior wives can and will take when their husbands run for office. Real-life political wife, Elizabeth Edwards, unfortunately, was included in the column because she's plastered on the cover of People after her husband’s mistress and baby mama, Rielle Hunter did a high profile interview with GQ.

Bright Star Shines

While researching a recent column about women’s power in Hollywood in light of Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar win for best director for The Hurt Locker, I read that a number of film critics had heaped praise upon an indie flick, Bright Star, written and directed by Oscar winning screenwriter Jane Campion. The critics said that the film -- set in 1818 and about the love affair between 23-year-old English poet John Keats and his next door neighbor Fanny Brawne -- was criminally overlooked during awards season yet it still made dozens of critics top 10 lists for best film of 2009.

I finally saw it. (It's out on DVD.) And I loved it. Not only was it beautiful and deeply moving on many levels, it was extremely thoughtful, witty and possessed a quality about it that will linger in your mind long after the film’s last frame. Plus, it’ll make you long for springtime. And butterflies.



Image credit: Entertainment Weekly.

'The Good Wife' Now Tilting More Toward Familial Fall-Out From Political Scandal

*Warning, spoilers ahead from recent episode of The Good Wife.*

The recent episode of The Good Wife was a game changer, bringing the sex scandal that sent Alicia Florrick's (Julianna Margulies) politician husband Peter (Chris Noth) to jail squarely back into the Florrick home.

For several weeks, Good Wife episodes have tilted too heavily for my taste toward becoming a legal procedural with only a little sprinkling of the drama that makes this show different from all the rest of the legal procedurals: A woman rebuilding her life with her children after her husband publically humiliated her with dalliances with hookers. I wanted to see the dramatization of how women (Silda Spitzer, Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Edwards) remain in their marriages in the wake of such devastating events.

This week my waiting paid off. The Good Wife prominently featured a hearing to determine whether Peter Florrick could remain at home under home confinement while awaiting trial. Alicia Florrick had to testify during the bail hearing about whether her lying, cheating husband would be welcomed back into their home. Under questioning by the prosecution, Alicia was asked, "So you and your husband would share a room? . . . [Y]ou're saying under oath that you intend to share a bed with a man?"

Alicia then responded that she wouldn't be cowed by the prosecutor's intrusive questions or humiliated and would answer only germane inquiries. In the end, Peter was denied bail and not allowed to go home to the new, smaller apartment his wife had rented in the days following his imprisonment, after selling their home in the 'burbs.



Previews for next week's episode -- in which one of the women with whom Peter had an affair gives TV interviews and depicts Alicia as "frigid" -- seem to indidicate that there's life in this betrayed political spouse/legal procedural yet.

Is 'The Good Wife' Turning Into Just Another Legal Procedural?

I like Julianna Margulies. And I’m fond of the premise of The Good Wife: A woman -- a wife and mother -- is trying to pick of the pieces of her shattered life after her corrupt politician/husband humiliated her by having affairs with hookers and is now in jail because he was found guilty of abusing his office.

The first few episodes of The Good Wife deftly balanced Margulies’ Alicia Florrick’s attempts to attend to the needs of her children and shield them from the tawdry nature of the allegations against her husband Peter (Chris Noth), with her own personal resurrection as she returned to the professional world as a lawyer after having been out of practice for more than a decade. Alicia was ostracized from her so-called friends and her social circle as a result of the scandal and continues to struggle with her mother-in-law, who moved in with Alicia and her two teenaged children in their new apartment, away from their leafy suburb. The mother-in-law, who frequently defends her son, took it upon herself to bring the two Florrick kids to visit their father in jail for the first time against Alicia’s wishes.

All of that was good material, I thought, as the first few episodes aired and garnered top 20 ratings.

But as more installments have aired, there’s been less and less about Alicia and her family members’ lives, about the impact of Peter’s imprisonment and more emphasis on the legal cases, for which Alicia usually comes up with the miraculous key to winning the case. Don’t get me wrong, her husband Peter’s imprisonment/sex scandal is mentioned in each episode, but it’s becoming a means to an end because Peter was a prosecutor and can assist his defense lawyer wife by providing valuable information.

This is exactly what I didn’t want to see. I was hoping this show would heavily focus on a dramatization of how political wives try to carry on – for themselves, for their children -- after their husbands behave atrociously and were publically chastised for doing so, like so many real life pols (*cough* Edwards, Spitzer, Sanford *cough*). I wasn’t looking for an updated version of The Practice, with a light sprinkling of the life-as-the-betrayed-wife-of-a-lying-cheating-pol tossed in like spice, as added seasoning.

While the latest Good Wife episode “Conjugal” featured, as you might expect from its title, a conjugal visit between Peter and Alicia, the contact between them was verbal and chiefly about a murder case. Alicia wanted information from Peter to be shared privately, away from the guards’ surveillance, and the only way to obtain privacy was via a conjugal visit. Peter did attempt to hold his wife’s hand while she slept on the bed and he on the floor, but she quickly released it.

Maybe things will change and become more focused on the personal once Peter is released from prison and tries to stage a political comeback – and I’m hopeful they will – but I’m disappointed that The Good Wife appears as though it’s in danger of turning into a garden variety legal procedural.

Image credit: CBS.

Talkin' Fall TV Premieres on Manic Mommies Podcast

I chatted up the Manic Mommies at the end of last week -- we recorded our discussion before I'd seen the Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives premieres -- and the subject was fall TV.

Shows discussed included: Mad Men, The Good Wife, Cougar Town, The New Adventures of Old Christine, House, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Parks & Recreation, Glee and FlashForward.

You can listen to the podcast by going to iTunes, then looking up the Manic Mommies page. The fall TV interview is their latest one, number 185.

Which Season Premieres Have Gotten Your Love (or Contempt) This Week?

There have been so many TV premieres this week that, despite the fact that I write about pop culture for a living, I haven't been able to see all of them. Sitting on DVR awaiting my attention are: FlashForward (pilot episode), Heroes and Curb Your Enthusiasm (actually I'll watch it On Demand). Medium, which will be dealing with the impact of Allison DuBois' brain surgery, premieres tonight on a new network, CBS.

I WAS, however able to watch a slew of other premieres, some of which entertained me, others which made me bored to tears.

Among the best:

The House season premiere was two hours long. And it used every minute, well, in a very un-House-like way. It wasn't your typical medical procedural episode (patient comes in with medical mystery, House & Co. argue over how to treat the person, they try a few things, they don't work, then something triggers a brainstorm in House's head and, five minutes before the episode ends, he figures it out). This was a purely character-building two hours, not simply seeing the dramatization of House's diagnostic capabilities, but of his internal emotional terrain as he spent weeks in a mental institution into which he voluntarily committed himself. We saw many different aspects of his personality: The scheming House, the wise-acre House, the good friend House, the rapping House, the besotted then heartbroken House, the scared House. Will this insightful trend continue or will the show return to a medical procedure next week?

Modern Family was kooky and fun in its pilot episode. (Favorite part was the dad shooting the kid with the BB gun, then accidentally shooting his daughter's boyfriend.) While some parts were over-the-top and a wee bit forced feeling, I think this has the makings of being a staple in my house. My fingers are crossed.

I hope that The Good Wife with Julianna Margulies as the cheated-on political spouse who gave up her job to support her husband's career and raise her family, which had a strong pilot, doesn't devolve into a legal procedural, a la a Law & Order. I'd really like to see a genuine peek-behind-the-curtains view of the lives of high profile women whose political husband have publically humiliated them. When I read in New York Magazine that Silda Spitzer recently threw her husband a birthday party, despite everything he's put her and their family through, I was intrigued about why she stayed with him. This show could provide a plausible explanation. Unless it becomes a ripped-from-the-headlines legal show, in which case, I'll be sorely disappointed.

The New Adventures of Old Christine premiere was silly and made me laugh out loud. All I could think of as I watched Julia Louis-Dreyfus' Christine attempt to fly to the Bahamas in an unsuccessful bid to help her friend Barb and, in the process, cause a series of scene on the airplane, was that Julia Louis-Dreyfus has become Lucille Ball.

Among the worst/mixed bags:

While I'm working on a column about Courteney Cox's Cougar Town, I have to say that, putting aside the odious, predatory "cougar" dating references, I found this show unfunny and painful to watch. If it weren't for the fact that I was going to write about it, I would've turned it off after 10 minutes.

Eastwick. Saw and liked the movie, The Witches of Eastwick. Never read the book. The pilot episode of the TV show only elicited a lukewarm response from me. However I'm willing to give it one (maybe two if I'm feeling generous) more episodes to establish whether it's going to be fun and light, or whether it's going to just be another mindless, crappy show.

What did you think of this week's premieres? Any favorites? Any ones you hated?

Image credit: Fox via this web site.

Suburban Mom's Political Fix: Obama's Shorts, Health Care Battle & Jenny Sanford Sounds Off

Obama's Shorts

I have a special request for the news media, plus every group or web site that now loosely qualifies as the "news" media: Please cease and desist with the Michelle Obama-wore-shorts-and-oh-boy-what-a-scandal stories. You aren't fooling anyone when you cover the "faux controversy" and try to convince us that you don't understand what all the uproar is all about, yet you're still reporting on it and then soliciting viewers'/readers' opinions on whether it's appropriate for a First Lady to wear shorts.

Michelle Obama is a healthy, active, youthful woman in her forties. It's summer time. She's got young kids. It's damned hot. Give her a break. Who cares that she wore shorts? This is so a non-issue.

Health Care Battle

On to REAL news stories . . . Now that White House sources have indicated that government-run health insurance option may hit the cutting room floor and (possibly) be replaced by subsidized, non-profit health care co-ops in an attempt to move a health care bill forward, President Obama (whose approval ratings have taken a precipitous fall amid the intense health care legislation debates) still has a fight on his hands . . . with fellow Democrats. Liberal Democrats want the government-run health insurance option to remain viable, while conservative "blue dog" Democrats, worried about costs and government "take over" of health care, seem to cotton to the co-op idea. If the Dems can't reach an agreement amongst themselves, there will be no health care reform at all and Obama will be handed a major defeat.

I'll be interested in reading the compromise legislation before it goes to a House-Senate conference committee, if it makes it that far. Then we'll get a better idea of what this'll really mean.

Jenny Sanford Sounds Off

It was serendipitous to discover this week that the new issue of Vogue includes an interview with Jenny Sanford, the wife of South Carolina's Governor Mark "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" Sanford, looking fabulous and sounding strong. My new pop culture and politics column is about political wives whose husbands have conducted illicit affairs that inevitably devolved into full-blown public scandals, while the spouses and their children proved to be collateral damage.

My essay points to CBS's new fall show, The Good Wife -- starring Julianna Margulies as a devoted political wife whose husband resigned from office and is in jail after he frequented prostitutes and was accused of abusing the power of his office -- which seeks to offer viewers a peek behind the curtains of the homes of these wives (Sanford, Edwards, Spitzer) and show what damage has truly been wrought. Seeing Jenny Sanford pictured in Vogue and spouting off lines that make it sound like she's so unbelievably together, was a step toward reclaiming her life, and the lives of other devastated wives of pols. More power to her.

Image credit: Jonathan Becker/Vogue.

Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: HawthoRNe, Two CBS Pilots, Mad Men, Time Traveler's Wife

News:

The dominant news story of the week -- Michael Jackson's memorial service -- was also dominant in my house as I had it playing on TV and am not ashamed to admit that I was moved by several aspects of it, from the displays of genuine emotion from usually polished performers, to the raw, heart-rending pain exhibited by Jackson's 11-year-old daughter. I downloaded some of Jackson's biggest hits to my three kids' iPods this week and have periodically found myself unconsciously humming either "Billie Jean" or "Wanna Be Startin' Something" as I feel as though I've been marinating in Jackson music.

Of course there was also the Sarah Palin bombshell dropped late Friday -- that not only was she not running for re-election, but that she was quitting the Alaska governor's post by the end of this month. I'll have more on that in my next Pop Culture & Politics column. Stay tuned.

In other pop culture/news for the week . . .

TV:

-- I caught up on TNT's HawthoRNe, starring Jada Pinkett Smith and Michael Vartan (Alias). I'm willing to give it a little latitude because I like both Vartan and Pinkett Smith. But other than laudably portraying a strong working mom role model, Nurse Christina Hawthorne seems too good to be a modern leading TV character.

I've grown way too accustomed to seeing leading characters who engage in anti-heroic behavior. Like Gregory House who's an excellent doctor -- someone you'd want to take care of you or someone you love in a medical crisis -- but he's got the social skills of a wasp, is horrifically inappropriate and is hooked on pain meds. (Plus he was sent to a mental institution at the end of the season.) Then there's Showtime's Nurse Jackie who's a dedicated nurse who'll do whatever it takes for a patient even if it means risking her job, but she's got a nasty Percocet habit and she's cheating on her husband. Her flaws make her seem more down-to-earth.

I'm not saying Pinkett Smith's Hawthorne has to start drinking (a la Rescue Me's Tommy Gavin), taking drugs or behaving in wildly inappropriate ways, but I tend to gravitate toward more realistic, flawed character. Let Hawthorne get a little more messy, and I'll be on board. Plus I like Vartan, did I say that already?

-- I watched screeners for two new CBS shows premiering in late September. Loved one of the pilots and need to see more before rendering a judgment on the second.

The Good Wife, starring the always-compelling Julianna Margulies (ER), Chris Noth (Sex and the City) and Josh Charles (Sports Night), is gonna be a regularly DVRed show in my house. I was really disappointed last year when Margulies' gritty Canterbury's Law was canceled after only a few episodes. That show -- set in Rhode Island about a troubled lawyer who was in the midst of divorcing her husband after the pain of their young son's disappearance became too much for them to bear -- was fantastic but the ratings, eh, not so much.

I'm hopeful that The Good Wife has better staying power. It seems to have a timely hook: Margulies plays a lawyer who gave up her practice as a defense attorney in order to raise her two children and to support her husband's -- Noth's -- political career . . . until his career as a state's prosecutor went down in flames following his affairs with prostitutes and criminal charges that he abused his office. After selling the family house to pay his legal fees, moving to an apartment and with her husband incarcerated, Margulies has to re-enter the workforce after having been out of a courtroom for more than a dozen years. She doesn't appear to be planning to divorce her lying and cheating spouse, but the sordid taint of his actions sticks to her professionally and personally. I have my fingers crossed for this one.



Accidentally on Purpose is a sitcom with an on-paper interesting premise: Jenna Elfman's Billie Chase is a thirtysomething newspaper movie critic who, after dating her newspaper's owner (Grant Show from Melrose Place) for three years, broke up with him when he said he wouldn't get married. In short order, she picked up a twentysomething boy toy at a bar and "accidentally" got pregnant. He moved into her tastefully decorated apartment because she didn't think she could, in good conscience, allow the father of her unborn kid to live in his beat-up van. Elfman's character is winningly fast-talking -- a la Lorelai Gilmore -- but the pilot seemed like was trying too hard and larded itself up with forced jokes about cougars and "young candy." The premise reminded me of the Uma Thurman movie Prime, only with too many bad puns. I'm going to wait to see more episodes to see if the forced artifice gets dialed back before I deciding whether this one will earn my regular viewing.

-- In preparation for the beginning of the third season of the exquisite Mad Men, I've been again watching season one episodes on DVD. I realized that I miss Rachel Menken and Midge Daniels. They had a lot more going for them than Bobbie Barrett, a character who I despised and who I think was an overt indication of the swirling despair into which Don Draper was sinking last season.

Books:

I'm almost to the end of my second reading of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and am kind of putting off finishing it. If you've read it, you know why I'm procrastinating. (I'm at the part in the cave, with the green liquid.) Once I've finished with the sixth Potter installment and feel prepared to compare and contrast the book with the film being released next week, I've pulled The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger from my bookshelf to re-read because the film's coming out next month. I haven't read it in years, so I'm wondering how much I'll remember.

What's been on your pop culture/news agenda this week?

Image credit: TNT.