Noteworthy People/Things/Events of 2009

The Notes from the Asylum list of noteworthy people, things and events of 2009, in no particular order . . .

Barack Obama inaugurated. That moment of national pride upon seeing the first African-American president sworn into office seems like a very long time ago. Since that cold January day in Washington, D.C. we’ve seen the president highlighted in the news for:

• The First Family’s search for a dog
• The Professor Gates imbroglio
• The question of whether Obama and the French president actually checked out a teenager’s booty in full view of the media
• A congressman shouting, “You lie” at the president during his address to Congress about the health insurance reform legislation
• The swine flu vaccine debacle (not enough vaccines despite government promises) and nationwide H1N1 scare (aided and abetted by Vice President Joe Biden’s I-wouldn’t-put-my-family-on-an-airplane-right-now comment on the Today Show)
• The contentious debates and town hall meetings about the health care legislation
• A controversial stimulus bill, with federal money being spent on some, um, controversial items
• The likes of AIG honchos getting mega-bonuses while unemployment numbers climb into the double-digits
• The federal government’s attempts to help revive the ailing U.S. automotive industry inspiring the nickname “Government Motors”
• The massacre at Fort Hood
• Tens of thousands of US troops being sent to Afghanistan
• The president killing a fly on camera.

Yes, it’s been a very long, weird freshman year for President Obama.

Sarah Palin, the former VP nominee who resigned the Alaska governorship this year. Hey, who says books are dead? Palin’s autobiography and well attended book tour events says books aren’t quite dead yet. At least all the attention paid to her book and her Oprah interview took the immature daddy of her grandson off out of the news, for a little while.

The season finale of Mad Men. Coupled with “The Gypsy and the Hobo” episode -- where Don finally confessed almost all of his dirty little secrets to his wife Betty -- these two episodes set the bar impossibly high for what it means to deliver intelligent, riveting, quality television. Completely. Besotted.

Morning Joe. The MSNBC talk show, which is always on in the kitchen as I get the kids ready for school on weekday mornings, boasts a lively mix of liberal and conservative ideologies, smart discussion and bar room humor all in one. It has had a great year and has earned my viewer loyalty.

Jon Hamm on SNL. Take note other celeb would-be Saturday Night Live hosts: Jon Hamm may have made being funny in the unevenly written sketch show LOOK easy when he hosted, but it’s not. Just ask his Mad Men co-star, January Jones. Oh, and those two actors being photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair earlier this year . . . those images constituted my favorite photo shoot of the year.

The Gosselin saga. Eight is enough apparently . . . especially when you throw some girlfriends into the mix. This was a sad, sad chapter in American pop culture lore where parents put their eight cute children in front of TV cameras for TLC's Jon & Kate Plus 8 and were then dismayed when those cameras wound up capturing the disintegration of their marriage. One might’ve hoped that this private-moment-made-public would’ve caused other parents to reconsider putting their kids on reality show programs. Alas, it didn’t.
 

When a 'Spoiler's' Not REALLY a Spoiler

Whenever I do a review of a TV show the day after it has aired, I usually include a bolded, italicized warning at the very top, “Warning: Spoilers ahead from the latest episode of [NAME OF THE SHOW].” Likewise, when I Twitter about the show after it has aired, I try not to put reveals in them and instead write very generally. It’s a bit of courtesy I extend to my DVRing/TiVoing friends who’ve delayed watching a program for whatever reason. But I don’t keep quiet forever. If you’re really a fan of a show and a significant episode has aired, like a finale, the thinking goes that you’re going to watch it sooner rather than later. If you wait too long, then if you hear about what happened, it's your fault.

However in the days – yes DAYS, as in plural – following the Mad Men finale, some folks on Twitter were complaining that others were spoiling the finale with their tweets. In fact, some were threatening to “unfollow” anyone who “spoiled” the Mad Men finale for them.

Then the backlash started against the “don't spoil” backlash. One Twitterer mocked the complainers by posting this tweet: “I’ve watched the Mad Men season finale so feel free to talk about Betty Draper’s psychotic break and tri-state killing spree.” A TV writer/blogger started posting what he called “old school spoiler alerts,” including this Friends-oriented one: “Ross and Rachel get together in the end.”

The blogger behind Televisionary took on this issue in a long post on his blog:

“I firmly believe that, once an episode has aired across the country, all bets are off. It's a free-for-all, as far as I am concerned. Writers, critics, bloggers, whoever, should be free to discuss the episode's intricacies and plot developments with abandon. There's no need to label a post, an interview, or anything as a ‘spoiler’ because it's not spoiling anything.

The details about the latest episode's plots, reality series eliminations, character deaths, etc. are out there in the public consciousness. Consider them public domain, if you will. And the onus to avoid them isn't on the part of the writer but on the reader.”

He said, rightly so I think, that if you haven’t seen something yet, it’s YOUR responsibility to refrain from going to web sites and social media (like, say, Twitter or Facebook), where you might accidentally come across unwanted information about the show you haven’t decided to watch yet.

What do you say readers? Can information about an already-aired show be considered a spoiler? Is it in poor taste to Twitter or use your Facebook status update to reveal information about show information?

'Mad Men' Monday: Shut the Door. Have a Seat.

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the season three finale of Mad Men.*

This was everything I expected and nothing I expected. I spent the hour saying, “Oh my God” and being pleased that while I could anticipate some of the plot turns, the way in which they were executed were creatively interesting and loaded with unexpected twists.

First of all . . . is Betty actually going to marry Henry Francis, a man she barely even knows?! Can this be possible? How can she trust him? How can she not worry that she could be being duped a second time because she doesn’t know Henry that well? To see Betty, baby Gene and Henry on that plane headed to Reno while Carla was home in Ossining with Sally and Bobby (for what, six weeks?) and Don was in Manhattan toting suitcases into a furnished apartment . . . was surprising and yet somehow not.

Clearly Betty felt irreparably humiliated by the discovery of Don’s Dick Whitman information, more so than she did when she learned he was screwing Bobbie Barrett and countless other nameless women, and, when coupled with the emotional iciness Don displayed after the Kennedy assassination, that solidified for Betty that she and Don were history. She decided her best option was to run away with a man who was willing to upend his entire life and accept three children, including a baby, into his life in order to be with her. Betty did all of this coolly and effectively. She was uncowed by Don and his typical attempts to wear her down pin the blame for the collapse of their marriage on her. (“Come on Betts, what are you doing seeing a lawyer?” he said, trying to tell Betty that maybe she was just upset about Kennedy and perhaps should see a psychiatrist. “I want to be civilized about this, please don’t act surprised,” she replied.) Man, it was as if Betty had tapped some of that ice water from Don’s veins and injected it into hers.

Their angry confrontation after Don learned that Betty and Henry had some kind of a romantic relationship, simply allowed Don to verbalize his deepest fears: That someone like him, a poor farm boy with his sordid conception and screwed up family, couldn’t ever get an affluent, educated woman from an established society family like the Hofstadts to love him and be his wife. (“You got everything you ever wanted! Everything! And you loved it! What, now I’m not good enough for some spoiled, mainline brat?”) To watch Don hypocritically call Betty a “whore” -- after his well known, epic philandering, plus given the fact that his mother was an actual prostitute -- was devastatingly sad.

When it was clear that the Draper family would be no more, Don watched as everything else around him crumbled, and he couldn’t help recalling dreary moments of his hellishly bleak childhood, including witnessing his father kicked in the head by a horse. (How poignant was it for Don to come home late one night to find Sally -- who hated and feared “Grandpa Gene’s” room but braved the scariness in order to sleep in her dad’s bed – and to snuggle beside her?) Don lost his wife. He broke his children’s hearts by moving out of the house permanently. (Money says Sally’s going to go haywire next season. Imagine her response if Don openly started dating Miss Farrell?) He lost his major account who called him a “prized pig” when he learned that Sterling Cooper was going to be no more after it, as well as PPL, was being bought by McCann.
 
And from this we saw the birth of a new Don, one who had to be humble again, like the boy from the farm. Don had to admit that in order to form a new ad agency – in that wonderfully espionage-like story about stealing all the clients away from PPL before they knew what hit them – that he had weaknesses that he couldn’t paper over. He wasn’t good with numbers. He wasn’t good with accounts. He couldn’t always see the ways of the future coming at him (the way Pete did). He didn’t value relationships. (“You’re not good at relationships because you don’t value them.”) In order to get the freedom he wanted – to not be part of McCann’s “sausage factory” – Don, ironically, needed people and relationships and humility. And he needed to be plain about it all.

So while Don lost Betty, he had to make amends and appease people, like with Roger Sterling. Don had to go, hat in hand, to Peggy’s apartment and apologize for acting like a Neanderthal toward her, admit that he took her for granted, beg her to come with him to his new company, and say he didn’t think she’d just follow him around like a “nervous poodle,” as she put it. (“I will spend the rest of my life trying to hire you,” he said when Peggy asked if he’d never speak to her again if she turned him down.) He and Roger even set foot in Pete Campbell’s apartment – the domicile of the man who threatened to reveal Don’s secret identity to Bert Cooper as a bargaining ploy in order to secure a promotion – and plead with him to bring his portfolio of accounts to join them.

Joan – yay Joan! – was pulled out of the department store in order to prove how savvy and valuable she is. Trudy – hey, new partners at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, hire this lady – was a source of brightness and light as the new members of the just-born ad agency commenced work in cramped hotel quarters. It was a great scene, seeing the Sterling Cooper refuges – Roger, Bert, Don, Lane, Joan, Peggy, Pete and Harry Crane – in that hotel room, starting from scratch, a humble beginning, all together. Likewise, it was delicious to see not only Lane blithely allow the patronizing British snots of PPL to sack him (as he stabbed them in the back), but to see the rest of the folks not asked to join SCDP wonder if the Sterling Cooper offices had been robbed. When they figured out what was happening, the look on Paul Kinsey’s face when he realized Don had asked Peggy to join them and not him – once again, Paul was on the outside looking in – was priceless.

However, hands down, one of the best scenes was when the SCDP folks were pilfering company files and Roger said, “Peggy, can you get me some coffee?” Peggy -- who eloquently and fearlessly stood up to Don (who rightfully she said Don used her to kick whenever he failed and feeling badly about himself) earlier in the episode – quickly and flatly said, “No.” A new era was been born, for everyone, and now I’m unreasonably curious to find out how the new era of Mad Men will unfold next summer. (Bert Cooper jokingly threatening to lock Harry in the store room was a close second for comedic relief.)

What did you think of the Mad Men finale? Did it meet your expectations?

Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.

'Mad Men' Monday: The Grown-Ups

*Warning, spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*


The latest episode -- built around the assassination of President Kennedy and the destabilizing impact that violent act had on everyone in the Mad Men world -- was unexpected and outstanding.

I would’ve never imagined, for example, that the combination of losing the senior accounts post to Kenny-boy Cosgrove and watching the news coverage of the Kennedy assassination would've prompted Pete Campbell to retreat into his apartment with Trudy where they clung to one another, to opt not to attend Margaret Sterling’s wedding (a risky professional gamble) and to seriously consider Pete jumping ship to Grey with Duck Phillips.

Betty Draper became unmoored, especially after seeing Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV. Don Draper -- who has appeared distinctly uncomfortable with outward, expressions of deep emotion and sadness -- responded by glibly telling Betty to take a pill and go to bed the night Kennedy died, and continued repeating the line, “Everything’s going to be all right,” as though it was a mantra that would fix everything. But it didn’t. Kennedy was still dead, as was Don's marriage and Betty's trust in him. But, ever the ad man, Don seemed as though he was trying too hard to push the "Everything's going to be all right" pitch, thinking that if he said it enough times, it would be so.

I absolutely did not see coming that witnessing Oswald’s murder on TV would send Betty running to Henry Francis, particularly after the doting behavior Don displayed toward her at the Sterling wedding. I was likewise stunned to watch as Henry proposed marriage to a cash box-hurling woman he doesn’t even know.


The more I thought about the varied reactions to the Kennedy assassination, the only parallel I could make that resonated with me personally was 9/11. On Sept. 11, 2001 and in its aftermath, not only was I, along with millions of other Americans, riveted to news coverage for upon days and days as we sat there feeling stunned and shocked, but there was the lingering fear that we were no longer safe (something Trudy mentioned when she said that if they could get to the president, they could get to anyone). There was an instinct to draw closer to the things and people who were important to you. Thanksgiving 2001 was particularly poignant for Americans as we remembered and cherished what was dearest to us.

Perhaps Mad Men mastermind Matt Weiner was trying to convey that same powerlessness and fear created by Kennedy's and Oswald's public deaths as he had his characters do things that they otherwise might not have done, like ask a veritable stranger to marry you, tell the spouse who’s been lying to you since the day you met that you no longer love him and feel nothing when he kisses you, call your former lover on the phone – your voice brimming with longing -- when your shallow young thing of a second wife is passed out drunk on the bed beside you, and blow off opportunities to advance your career at work when you determine that there’s no longer any future in it.

While darkness and gloom swirled around each character – in particular around a broken Don who sat alone in his shadowy bedroom after learning that the thing he always feared would happen if the truth about his identity came out, had actually came true: that someone like Betty would never love someone like him – there was a bit of lightness in the person of Margaret Sterling in all her bratty, self-centeredness. As the scenes switched from location to location depicting people’s reactions to news that the president had been killed, mostly with tears and astonishment, there was Margaret, in a heap of rich, blindingly white fabric crying, “It’s all ruined!” Mourning her wedding, not the president.
 
Mourning . . . doesn’t that seem like a common thread throughout “The Grown-Ups?” Don was mourning the death of love. Betty was mourning the president and the death of her marriage. Pete was mourning his once promising career at Sterling Cooper and the fact that people at work cared more about business than what had transpired in Texas. Roger seemed to be mourning the fact that he no longer had Joan as a confidante. Margaret was mourning the disintegration of her parents' marriage. And there were Sally and Bobby, their childhood innocence shattering, bit by bit, as they sat in front of the TV and learned that the president’s young children had lost their father.

What did you think of “The Grown-Ups?” By the way, was anyone else miffed that the preview for the season finale contained no new footage? I'm unwilling to accept that next week is the last new Mad Men episode until next summer.

UPDATE: Just saw someone mention on Twitter that there was a similarity between the Aqua-Net storyboard in Peggy's office (four people in a convertible) and Kennedy's limo. I didn't catch that.
Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.