Notes on Politics & Pop Culture: Palin & Feminism, 'HawthoRNe' Premieres, Fallon Mocks 'Twilight's' R-Pat Again

Palin & Feminism

I donned my protective gear as soon as I hit “send” and e-mailed my latest Pop Culture and Politics column to my editor at Mommy Tracked. The piece is about the anger expressed by liberal feminists over the fact that conservative women have said they want to call themselves feminists and cultivate a conservative version of feminism, as embodied by Palin’s reference to “Mama Grizzlies.”

Feel free to weigh in over on the site as I assert that having powerful women on the left AND the right running for and holding elected office while embracing the term “feminism” is a good thing for women.

Speaking of “Mama Grizzlies” . . . Republican Nikki Haley, who faced allegations of infidelity and a slur against her Indian-American background, won the South Carolina GOP runoff for the governor’s seat. She will face Democratic state Sen. Vincent Sheheen in the fall. If she won, she'd be her state’s first female governor.

HawthoRNe Season 2 Premiere

I was disappointed with the season two premiere of the TNT drama HawthoRNe starring Jada Pinkett Smith and Alias’ Michael Vartan. The first season was okay – it certainly was no Nurse Jackie – but this season’s premiere does not bode well for the quality of the second season. Not at all.

I reviewed the premiere at CliqueClack TV and expressed hope that episode two of season two will improve.

Jimmy Fallon Mocks R-Pat Again

Yeah, they’re goofy and Jimmy Fallon’s way too old for the role, but his “Robert Pattinson is Bothered” spoof videos (where Fallon pretends to be Twilight heartthrob Pattinson and climbs into a tree to vent about things that bother him) amuse me. This week, Fallon/Pattinson addressed why the World Cup is neither a cup nor representative of the world.



Speaking of Twilight, Jimmy Kimmel is having a Twilight/Eclipse special tonight. The new film premieres next week.

Image credit: TNT.

Now About Those Finales . . . 'Rescue Me,' 'HawthoRNe,' 'Weeds' & 'Nurse Jackie'

*Warning, spoilers ahead from some recently-aired season finales.*

A lot of the shows which premiered in the spring are ending their runs right about now so we've had a run on season finales as of late, for shows like Rescue Me, HawthoRNe, Weeds and Nurse Jackie. And what finales they were.

First, with the most recent and most explosive finale . . . Rescue Me.

This season has seemed like a quasi-renaissance for Rescue Me, at least as far as I was concerned. The season saw Tommy vacillate between various women -- mostly between the nutty crazy control freak Janet and the nuttier pill-popper Sheila -- give up his year of sobriety while sitting at a bar overlooking Ground Zero and encourage his formerly AA-attending family members and friends to just enjoy the drinking life. It was his Uncle Teddy who planted the idea in Tommy's head that if he knocked back a few while watching old family videos, he'd work through his demons following the death of Tommy's father. Tommy had been worrying about whether he was losing his capacity to feel anything, so he gave Uncle Teddy's advice a shot.

Ironically, it was Teddy's grief over the death of his wife following a drunk driving accident that led to the shocking scene in the season finale. Was it really in character for Teddy -- the man who murdered the drunk driver who accidentally killed Tommy's son in season two -- to shoot Tommy and watch him bleed while using his gun to hold Tommy's friends and family at bay so they couldn't help Tommy? It seemed wrong to me, for Teddy. Sure, the Gavin family fights, oftentimes brutally, but they're not going to off one another, are they?

Otherwise, I loved the finale, particularly the wacko scene with Janet and Sheila confronting Kelly.

As for the nursing/hospital drama HawthoRNe -- to which TNT has given the go-ahead for a second season -- the series got better in the last half of the season, as it has dealt with more serious personal and work issues. The season finale found Jada Pinkett Smith's Christina Hawthorne walking arm in arm with Michael Vartan's Tom Wakefield, the obvious central, unconsummated love story. The finale also went full circle from the pilot episode, looping back to the subject of Christina's husband who died of cancer a year ago.

In the pilot, Christina was supposed to hand over her husband's ashes to her mother-in-law, who she despises (the feeling's mutual), but took some and conducted her own little ceremony by putting ashes in the bottom of a small hot air balloon and watching it float away. In the finale, Christina -- whom writers have started to make more fallible and therefore more real, which is a good thing -- and her mother-in-law came to an understanding and wound up peacefully disposing of the ashes in the ocean together, in the company of Christina's daughter. It was a quiet, but sweet ending to HawthoRNe's freshman season.

"Sweet" is not a word I'd apply to the season finale of Weeds which concluded with Nancy Botwin's teenage son Shane trying to take care of business for his dear old mom by offing her nemesis -- who was blackmailing his mom's new hubby into doing her bidding and viciously threatening Nancy's sons' lives -- with one swing of a croquet mallet. It was disorienting enough to have Nancy's on-again/off-again relationship with her Mexican drug lord/politician baby daddy morph into a marriage and watch Andy, jettisoned. But to have Shane commit murder: Whoa. This is definitely not the same wimpy kid from season one.

Nurse Jackie's finale was none to sweet either. Jackie's boyfriend Eddie, who was just laid off from All Saints Hospital, found out that his gal pal was cheating on him with . . . her husband Kevin, the tavern owner with whom Jackie has two daughters. While viewers were waiting to find out if Eddie would blow the lid off of Jackie's little, extra curricular arrangement and tell Kevin ("I met Kevin and that's a really nice boy you've got," he whispered into Jackie's ear), at least we got to enjoy a little bit of humor seeing hospital administrator Gloria Akalitis trapped in the elevator and Zoey donning "depressed" scrubs.

But, as with Greg House, Jackie's drug dependency is most likely going to spiral out of control, the only question is when will it start to affect her work, and overtly affect her marriage?

Any spring show season finales you liked? Hated? Which intrigued you?

Image credit: TNT.

Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week: Hamm on Talk Shows, Julie & Julia and Classic Kerouac

TV:

To be honest, I've been DVRing talk shows all week to catch Jon Hamm talk without saying anything of substance about the season three premiere of Mad Men on Conan, Fallon & Good Morning America, watching marathon Red Sox games (like last week's 15-inning losing battle against the sinister Yankees) and cringing as Kate Gosselin also visited the talk show circuit, including her terribly awkward chat with the clueless Regis Philbin who apparently is the only person on earth who thinks there's a chance in hell that Jon and Kate will reconcile. Other than those things and the latest episode of Entourage -- which'll be the subject of an upcoming stand-alone post -- I haven't caught much TV this past week.

Sitting in my DVR queue are two episodes apiece of HawthRNe (which just got renewed for a second season) and Rescue Me, plus I've got to catch up on Weeds and Nurse Jackie with my Showtime On Demand because I'm behind a couple episodes with those as well. (I blame my backlog of unwatched material on my new puppy Max who likes to howl in the middle of the night, for long stretches of time, who's got me feeling like a sleep deprived new mother. It's easy to blame the pup. He doesn't read my blog.)

Oh, I AM planning on watching a niche drama on Sunday night, LIVE. It's on AMC. Maybe you've heard of it . . . something about ad men in the 1960s . . .

DVDs:

Last week I was all wrapped up in season two DVDs of Mad Men for a column I was working on and am just about finished with watching the first season thirtysomething DVDs in preparation for another piece (have one episode left). Don't know what I'll watch on DVD when I'm done with these two shows. Maybe I'll finally watch the Milk Netflix DVD I have sitting, unloved, next to the TV.

Movies:

While I haven't seen any movies this week -- save for the tail-end of Message in a Bottle which I caught on cable and made me instantly tear up because I'm a sentimental fool -- I'm hoping to see Julie & Julia this weekend. Reviews have been stellar. I think my best plan of action will be to eat something halfway decent before walking into the theater, otherwise I'll be distractedly ravenous during the entire thing.

Books:

Finally finished re-reading The Time Traveler's Wife and sniffled my way through the end. Again. Even though I knew how it ended, it still made me cry and ponder Clare Abshire's life choices. Wonder if the movie -- which is, unfortunately, getting mixed reviews -- aptly translates the dense, long and somewhat complicated book. I hope that it does a decent job because that's on my "to see in the theater" list.

After completing Time Traveler, I was browsing through my bookcase at books I own but haven't yet read and pulled down a 1959 edition of Jack Kerouac's On the Road (a paperback that once belonged to my mom). I've never read any Kerouac. It's time I change that.

Image credit: From this web site.

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.

Introducing: Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week

I've always been interested in the weekly feature on Whitney Matheson's blog Pop Candy called "This Week in Pop," in which she tells her readers what things, pop culture-wise, she's reading/watching/listening to, etc. It tends to generate some discussion amongst her readers about their pop culture consumption.

So I've decided to do my own version of a weekly list here on this blog. I'm, cleverly enough, calling it, "Suburban Mom's Pop Culture Week." (I know. Title stinks. However if I come up with something with a little more pizazz, you'll be the first to know.) My list will include stuff I'm watching/reading for both business and pleasure.

TV:

-- Watched the latest two episodes On Demand of Edie Falco's Nurse Jackie on Showtime. Her storyline, particularly when it comes to her oldest, anxious daughter, is becoming insidiously nuanced. Three episodes in, I'm hooked.

-- I set the DVR to record TNT's second episode of HawthoRNe (with Jada Pinkett Smith and former Alias hottie Michael Vartan) but it didn't record the show for some reason. Maybe it's the 2,000 episodes of Sonny with a Chance, Jonas episodes and repeats of the Clone Wars cartoons that are clogging up the DVR queue. I'm going to have to watch the new episode online to see how the tone compares to the pilot.

-- Rescue Me. Man, this show is getting as dark and sticky as molasses . . . that's when it's not being interrupted by odd musical numbers starring Sean Garrity in top hat and tails. More on Rescue Me and Tommy Gavin's return to the bottle in a separate blog entry.

-- Da Sox. As in, the Boston Red Sox. You might as well consider this an omnipresent entry on the list. The Sox. On NESN.

Books:

-- I'm working on a column about Hollywood moms so I'm in the middle of reading Tori Spelling's Mommywood. (Seriously, it's for a column . . . to which I'll link in this space later.) I'll also be re-reading a book I read a few years ago, Motherhood and Hollywood by Patricia Heaton for comparison's sake.

-- Although I've got the Mad Man-inspired book of poetry, Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O'Hara on my nightstand waiting to be parsed, I went to the movies this weekend with the kiddos (see next item) and saw the trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I read the book last summer and am a bit fuzzy on the details as I zipped through it fairly quickly, so in preparation for the big movie release on July 15, I'm re-reading it.

Magazines:

-- Just read a piece about Jada Pinkett Smith in Redbook about how she and husband Will keep their sex lives spicy. (Key: A change of venue.)

-- Am waiting for a good time to thoroughly read the "Living by the Numbers" package of stories in Wired.

-- Perused Entertainment Weekly's "must list" for summer pop fare. Meryl Streep's new movie about Julia Child looks promising.

Movies:

-- Went to see Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian over the weekend with The Spouse, the kids and my parents. It was just okay, though the kids laughed, some belly laughs. We'd visited the Air & Space Museum in DC a few summers ago so they remembered some of the exhibits and monuments which were shown in the film. Afterward, they actually asked questions about General Custer and Teddy Roosevelt. If anything, at least the movie sparked a discussion about American history, albeit a minor discussion.

-- The Netflix DVDs sitting by the TV: The Bourne Ultimatum and Frost/Nixon.

-- The Spouse and I caught the last third of Little Miss Sunshine on cable TV over the weekend. I've forgotten how good that movie is. The ending was truly a surprise the first time I saw it.

What are you watching/reading/listening to this week?

Image credit: Scholastic.

Ball-Breakin' Nurses -- Falco & Pinkett Smith -- Takin' on Primetime

Two medical shows. Two distinctly different leading ladies playin' ball-breakin' nurses. Takin' on primetime. Move over McDreamy docs. These two would kick your overly-coiffed behinds.

On Showtime, Edie Falco from The Sopranos dissolves into her character on Nurse Jackie (Mondays), as Jackie Peyton, a morally flexible nurse addicted to Percocet who's cheating on her husband, the father of her two adorable little girls. Believe me, you won't think about Carmela after the first scene.

On TNT's drama Hawthorne (premieres Tuesday) Jada Pinkett Smith stars as Christina Hawthorne, a tough nurse in mourning, grieving the loss of her husband a year ago, and coping with her angry teenaged daughter who blames her for her father's death. Plus she's got an openly hostile mother-in-law who serves on the hospital's board (Joanna Cassidy) AND works alongside Dr. Tom Wakefield (Michael Vartan of Alias), the chief of surgery and Christina's late husband's oncologist.

I compare and contrast Falco and Pinkett Smith's shows in my Pop Culture column this week, and explain exactly how Falco's character is nothing at all like the Vicodin-addicted doc, Gregory House. With both new programs, I conclude, ". . . [Y]ou've got the makings for two smart, brave role models, the anti-Meredith Greys. No whining or indecisiveness allowed."

Image credit: TNT.