Where Have I Been? Well Let Me Tell You . . .

I have missed you, my blog-reading peeps, missed writing and musing about all the latest doings in politics and pop culture.

During my blogging absence, we've seen the beginning of the stellar second season of Homeland in all of its outstandingly taut dramatic glory. The Good Wife has been continuing to kick some serious behind with a fierce Alicia Florrick. Kelsey Grammer scared the heck out of me with his lethally volcanic depiction of a win-at-any-cost Chicago mayor on the second season of Boss. And the sinister writers for NBC's Parenthood have been conspiring with the folks at Kleenex to make me cry every week, whether it was with tear-drenched scenes of a kid leaving her parents to attend college across the country, or giving cancer to a women who has a baby, an autistic middle schooler and that college kid on the other coast.

On the silver screen, I've been jonesing to see Argo, The Master and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but, alas, I have been about as successful getting to the movie theaters as I have been at blogging here in the last few weeks.

Meanwhile, all the presidential debates have passed us by including the one where a dour President Obama looked like someone had just spoiled the next episode of Homeland for him, the one with Governor Romney agreeing with nearly everything the president said on foreign policy and CNN's Candy Crowley having to argue semantics with the candidates when the candidates weren't busy giving off a weird, Fight Club vibe. During the second banana debate, Vice President Biden looked like the wise yet pompous uncle at Thanksgiving dinner telling the upstart nephew what's what. And then there were those binders full of women. Oy.

On the home front, the U.S. Senate race between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren feels like a dismal snarl-fest. And, as much as I'm a politics nerd who DVRs debates, this is particular race has completely worn me out. No mas, por favor.

So where, pray tell, have I been, other than Tweeting up a storm on Twitter?

I've become a full-time assistant professor teaching writing and journalism at a local institution of higher learning. In short order, I needed to craft not just a syllabus for a writing course (I teach three sections of this course for roughly 60 students), but am creating a new course about online and social media. In addition to teaching/grading and researching/designing a course, I've been helping to advise the staff of the student newspaper two nights a week.

The other big thing that has left me with raccoon-like circles under my eyes (plus a six-week-long cold) is a non-fiction book project I've been researching for months. I'm in the process of conducting dozens of interviews as well as observing an educational process (more details on this later) three mornings a week. We're talking EARLY in the morning. In the 6 o'clock hour early. The give me coffee, STAT, kinda early.

Now that we're several weeks into the semester, I'm getting a handle on the teaching and the non-fiction project and am hoping to start blogging more about pop culture and politics, particularly about stuff like this:

Have you seen the new stills from the next season of Mad Men? Don and Megan vacationing in Hawaii. The sixth season can't get here fast enough . . . and neither can the resumption of my blogging!

Image credit: AMC via TVLine.

Mad Men: Season 5 Finale Filled with 'Phantoms'

 

* Warning: Spoilers ahead from the season finale of Mad Men.*

Lane Pryce.

Adam Whitman.

Beth Dawes.

Megan Draper's acting career.

Roger Sterling's quest for enlightenment.

Pete Campbell's vision of what he was supposed to want out of life versus what he has.

Mad Men show runner Matthew Weiner explicitly says that the season five finale was all about phantoms, naming it, cleverly enough, "The Phantom." Everyone was struggling with something and/or someone in the finale which capped a strong, controversial and creatively daring season. By the time the credits rolled, some of those phantoms were addressed, some ignored and some were chased, like the elusive Moby Dick.

Chief among the phantoms were the ones nagging away at Don Draper. Unfortunately, that rotten tooth with its accompanying ache, was a ham-fisted, klieg light of an analogy for the persistent pang of guilt that hit Don in his gut as he thought he saw his dead brother Adam -- who he sent away with an envelope full of cash and orders never to speak to Don again -- everywhere, the burn of the rope with which he hanged himself forming a permanent tattoo of desperation on his skin. The ghost of Lane clung to every cover of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce from his empty chair at the partners' meeting to the check the agency received from its insurance policy on Lane, forcing Don to suppress even further his compounded guilt about sending Lane packing, after agreeing to cover the amount of money he embezzled, instead of offering him something more. And it ended the same way as his interaction with his brother, only this time Don came face-to-face with Lane after he'd passed.

Don's constant refrain, that the tooth ache would just go away, was about as effective a plan as his decision not to talk about how he felt about Lane or Adam with anybody. His guilt will not go away, the episode told us, unless it's extracted and some blood is spilled. "It's not your tooth that's rotten," the ghost of Adam told Don when he was under anesthesia and Don pleaded, "Don't leave me."

Don's attempts to try to extract the guilt like a bad tooth: He gave Lane's wife a check for $50,000 -- which did nothing to alleviate her emotional tumult -- and, under duress, finally arranged for Megan to get a part in a national commercial. Coming home to a drunk Megan, who'd taken to drinking to dull the pain the way Betty did after she'd been beaten down emotionally and spiritually by rejection, combined with having to listen to his mother-in-law admonish him to tell Megan to give up the fantasy of an acting career, made Don realize that even his wife was in danger of plunging into a downward spiral, like Lane and Adam before her.

In his commentary about the episode, Weiner said that for Don to see Megan, in costume, on the set, followed by that long shot of Don walking away as Megan faded in the background, was analogous to Don giving Megan her wings, her freedom, which very well may mean that the freedom takes her away from him. Wrapping the episode on Don being asked if he was "alone" was intriguing.

Despite my initial skepticism about Don asking his twentysomething secretary to marry him when he was in Disneyland, I must say that throughout the season, it's been fascinating to watch Megan evolve and mature. Also thought-provoking, Don's response to Megan's evolution, often manifested itself in one of two ways: Simply taking actions in direct response to her or reverting back to his default husband setting, to the guy who doesn't communicate with his wife, who takes her for granted and makes her feel like garbage.

The other major storylines were watered down because there was an attempt to stuff so many of them into the final episode. Pete had one last fling with Rory Beth in a hotel and learned that she was going to have electro-shock therapy which was likely to render him not even a pleasant memory. Women experiencing depression -- Beth, Betty, Megan -- seems to be a mini-Mad Men trend, as the women suffer, while the men who have given up on life drink like Don and get into fights, or hang themselves, unless they're Roger Sterling, who's most likely to be the first drug death on Mad Men. Seeing Roger standing stark naked in front of a window is just inches away from Roger leaping out of the window while high on LSD, becoming the eponymous "falling man" in the Mad Men intro. That's terrifying because he's fun to watch. However seeing Pete, bruised and battered after mixing it up on the train with Beth's husband and telling Don-esque lies to Trudy didn't move me in the slightest, nor did his idiotic suggestion that if Beth ran away with him to California, her depression would be cured. If anything, more time with Pete would drive anybody to shock therapy.

Meanwhile, I was thrilled to see Peggy get treated the way in which she deserved by her new boss, who even sent her on a business trip. But seriously, what was up with the dogs having sex outside of her motel room window? Was somebody dropping acid when they wrote up that scene?

All in all, it wasn't my favorite finale, but it did a decent job of setting up the sixth season, launching the characters into new territory without doing something wildly impulsive like proposing to one's secretary. I think the episode suffered in comparison to the 12th episode which was extraordinarily complex and riveting.

What say you Mad Men fans?

Image credits: Michael Yarish/AMC.

Mad Men: A Woman's Worth

*Warning -- Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*

What. In. The. World. Was. That?

Dollar bills balled up and angrily hurled at a woman's face.

A married woman with a baby at home asked to put out in order to land an account for her firm.

Another married woman at an audition asked to turn around slowly so men could examine her figure, not her acting abilities.

Two ad campaigns which used women's bodies to sell products: One with a nude Lady Godiva image, the other by comparing a woman and her body to a car and its mechanical parts.

Women were but mere commodities in this episode. Things to be bought and sold. Possessed. Controlled. Consumed. Enjoyed by men. Discarded when they became too old, too used, too familiar. We always knew that the men on Mad Men viewed women this way, but never had their views been so nakedly laid bare.

Don -- himself the product of a commercial exchange of sex -- gave lame lip-service to his objection to prostituting Joan out to a client in order to get the Jaguar account. (I tried to imagine his reaction if someone had ever suggested that he lend Betty or Megan out for a night in order to win an account, and all I came up with were violent images in my head, Don's fists in a ball.) But for all his protestations, Don seemed more upset that he didn't win Jaguar on purely the merits of his own pitch, his own charm and brilliance, without Joan muddying the waters, detracting from his golden boy image.

Yet with Peggy, Don has always been Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. On the one hand, he treasures Peggy's insight, talent and loyalty. But on the other hand, he takes her for granted, like she's a pesky little sister whom he can berate and embarrass without consequence because, at day's end, they're family.

You'd think that the son of a prostitute would know better than to throw crumpled up wads of cash into a woman's face in an attempt to belittle her and her accomplishments, as though whatever value she offers him is somehow contemptible and not worthy of respect. He should know that's not going to go over well.

Don has always acted as though he was Peggy's knight in shining armor, that he singled her out in order to give her a chance but in reality, she made the name for herself. Her talent was initially recognized in season one by Freddy Rumsen, who called it to Don's attention. And when Pete, with whom Don was feuding at the time, objected to the involvement of a secretary on an ad campaign, Don christened her a copywriter. The move was more about Don one-upping Pete than him championing a talented young woman. When the partners fled the sinking Sterling Cooper ship at the end of season three, Don treated Peggy shabbily, diminished her again like his kid sister. Although Don encouraged Peggy to return to the workplace after she had a baby, Peggy bailed him out with that whole Bobbie Barrett mess. She was at Don's side when he hit rock bottom. Neither of them can hold a moral high ground over the other. But they're not brother and sister. There's nothing tying them together except for good will, which Don torpedoed with the straw that broke the camel's back, with those crumpled dollar bills. How ironic in an episode about women's worth.

While he was screwing up his relatinship with Peggy, Don has no idea what to make of his wife Megan's declaration that she has a career that's just as important as his own and that if it leads her to Boston, he has no right to tell her she can't take it. He can't control her like he did with Betty, or Peggy for that matter. Megan's a mystery to him. Don just can't stop himself from stepping in it. Megan, meanwhile, like Joan and Peggy before her, was also treated like a piece of meat on her audition, asked to spin around in front of men who was casting for a play, her figure more important than whether she knew her lines.
Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

Mad Men -- What in the Hare Krishna is Goin' on Here?

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the latest episode of Mad Men.*

Joan and Don flirted in a bar after taking a bright red Jaguar for a spin. And they didn't wind up sleeping together.

Paul Kinsey joined the Hare Krishnas and shaved his head.

Harry Crane had sex in the office with a Hare Krishna leader Lakshmi, a woman for whom Paul not only has feelings but wants to build a life with her. Guilty Harry handed Paul money and urged him to flee to Hollywood to follow his dreams.

Megan channeled Betty Draper as she raged about Don blowing off dinner and not telling her where he was all night.

Lane embezzled thousands of dollars from Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and forged Don's signature. (Oh the delicious irony of Don -- who stole his identity from a dead man -- having his signature forged.)

Roger, who sported some hideous attire in this episode, actually told Joan he wanted to be responsible -- Roger Sterling, responsible! -- and pay child support for Kevin.

To quote Liz Lemon . . . What the what? For yet another week in this very different fifth season from the previous four, events seemed out of whack. (At least there were no semi-naked shots of Rory Gilmore.) Characters behaved, well, out of character so much so that I have no idea what to expect from anyone next week. Will Joan burn her bra? Will Roger join the priesthood? Pete join the anti-war movement?

For example, we already knew that there was more to Lane than his all-business, musty British demeanor. He wanted to leave his wife last season. He had an affair with an African-American Playboy bunny. He drunkenly shouted at a movie screen and later a fine restaurant -- remember the slab of steak he held up as his belt buckle? -- with Don before the two of them busied themselves with women of the evening.

Lane isn't a shrinking violet by any means, the man who "sacked" Don, Roger and Burt in order to afford them a head start to launch their new firm with which he'd be a partner. But I never pegged Lane as an embezzler or someone who'd mess with the books for his own personal gain. He's the guy who chastised Joan last year for wanting to spend "too much" on a Christmas party, then had to turn around and throw a pricey shindig because Lee Garner Jr. announced he'd be making an appearance. A commenter on a TV blog posed an interesting query: On what is Lane spending all his money? Why is he suddenly skint?

As for Joan, I'd completely understand if she wants to wash her hands of Roger's immaturity and is fed up with men in general, especially after Greg's self-serving stunt with the divorce papers. But it doesn't seem to make sense for Kevin's future financial well being, that she'd spurn Roger's offer of monetary support. It's short-sighted and Joan's not usually short-sighted. But hey, at least she didn't melt into Don's arms when he asked her to dance. Now THEY would've made an intriguing couple. If Joan had danced with Don and made it clear that she was open to more, I wonder if Don would've slept with her or said, "Thanks but no thanks."

While the light in Don's eyes from having Megan work on his creative team has been extinguished -- severely disappointing Don who'd sloughed his work to the side in favor of doting on his new wife -- Megan is now wading into Betty territory (although when she chucked the dinner plate against the wall it reminded me of when Don hurled Bobby's toy against the wall after Betty urged him to "do something" when Bobby was misbehaving during dinner). However I don't think Don's a fan of this side of Megan, not when she's yelling at him or openly criticizing Don's profession. Was it her rejection of advertising that set the fire under Don's behind again and prompted him to make that rousing speech about the Jaguar account, recommitting himself to his work?

Last, but not least, the Hare Krishna thing. Paul in that get-up. Harry falling for Lakshmi's line that she was "burning" for him. Harry, not known for being generous with anyone, giving his now floundering colleague a whole lot of money and a load of encouraging words. This I did not see coming. At. All. I was glad to see old Paul though, I'd been wondering what had become of him, just like I wonder whether we'll see Sal Romano again, or his wife Kitty who's busy wrecking her medical career over on Grey's Anatomy.

Image credit: Jordin Althaus/AMC.

Mad Men -- Everybody's Lookin' Out for Number One

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the latest episode of Mad Men.*

"You are not loyal. You only think about yourself." -- Peggy Olson to Roger Sterling after Roger gave a new copywriter extra work (and cash) instead of asking Peggy.

Everybody's got an agenda, and it's all about benefiting the person they see in the mirror every day.

Betty, who doesn't seem to want what she has but wants what she can't have (food, Don's affection/respect/confidences), wants to make Don and Megan miserable so she'll feel better about herself, particularly after getting a glimpse of the slender Megan when she was getting dressed.

Don, who hasn't been exercising his creative muscles lately, wants to best an up-and-coming copywriter so he'll feel better about himself and doesn't play fair when he uses his seniority to trump the guy.

Pete -- who, like Betty, doesn't want his life or his spouse -- daydreams about sexy dalliances with a woman who's married to the guy with whom he commutes to work every morning. That's when he wasn't off trying to promote himself and only himself, excluding other members of his firm . . . only to fail miserably in his public relations efforts. (Have I mentioned how much I hate Pete Campbell? Snake.)

Roger, who ditched the loyal mother of his first child for a younger wife who he also dumped after he grew bored with her too, wants to sully Jane's new digs so he'd be the first man to have her in her apartment even though Jane expressly said she wanted a fresh break from him, after she extracted a bribe from him in exchange for accompanying him to work dinner.

Everybody's a selfish git in this episode, scheming and maneuvering about how to handle situations in ways which are beneficial to themselves. Even characters who have always been selfish -- Don, Roger, Pete -- demonstrated a little extra self-absorption at the expense of others in their workplace with Don smacking down an employee whose efforts could help Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce's bottom line, Roger blowing off Peggy who'd helped him in a pinch and Pete who was only looking out for himself and not his ad agency when he made his bid for New York Times publicity.

The cruelty we saw that was personal in nature was rooted in each character's insecurities. Betty, unhappily overweight, wanted to hurt Don and his thin trophy wife by not only trying to wreck Megan's warm relationship with Sally, but by telling Sally about Anna Draper, hoping to damage Sally's relationship with her father. Roger, who didn't like the notion of being replaced in Jane's bed by the twentysomething son of a client, wanted to wreck Jane's fresh start. Megan's friend Julia, who was trying out for a role that Megan said was fairly lousy, lashed out at Megan for being freed from having to audition for crappy scripts because she sits on an affluent "throne" courtesy of her husband's money.

Nobody seems happy with anybody. Nobody seems nice to anyone else, except for Henry, who chose not to tell his weight watching wife that he was starving after all the low-calorie dinners and fried up his own steak in the middle of the night, hoping she wouldn't notice. (Henry already demonstrated his insecurities earlier this season when he didn't tell Betty that Don had called to inquire about her health after she feared she had cancer.)

By the way, what is up with Megan being barefoot all the time? Is this supposed to represent a new, freer, youthful, late 1960s kinda vibe? It certainly contrasted with Betty who showed up in Don's apartment looking like the 1960s housewife she is.

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

Mad Men -- 'At the Codfish Ball' Episode = What the Heck?

*Warning -- Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*

Things are seriously twisted in the world of Mad Men. More so than usual. More so than when Roger Sterling dropped acid.

You've got Sally Draper -- the girl who was humiliated last season after she was caught pleasuring herself at a friend's house, the kid who adores her father -- walking in on Roger, with whom she was palling around, being given oral sex by the married mother of her father's new wife.

Don, who was feted in grand style by the American Cancer Society for blasting Lucky Strike and all of tobacco in the New York Times, learned that the titans of business don't trust him because of his celebrated correspondence.

Peggy, who seemed truly disappointed that her boyfriend Abe suggested that they move in together instead of marry, unconvincingly tried to sell the arrangement as something edgy. (I don't buy that she's into this.)

Megan put a new twist on Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce's flailing Heinz campaign and, after getting Don to blurt her idea out before the Heinz guy could fire Don over dinner, saved the day. For those of you keeping track at home, that makes twice that Don struck out in the business realm, given that the Heinz success was all Megan's doing.

The world seems upside-down.

Seeing Megan's parents openly fight the way they did, seeing Marie go after the willing Roger and seeing Megan rescue Don made Megan seem like a more substantive character than she's been portrayed thus far. She is now more than a young, pretty secretary who's good with kids and caught Don's eye. Plus she's been bringing out these vulnerabilities in Don that we haven't seen before, weaknesses that he hid from Betty and for which he overcompensated by being sternly authoritative. As we saw in the previous episode, being authoritative doesn't work with Megan who isn't in the grasp of the massive insecurities that plague Betty.

Then there's poor Sally, the kid who gets slapped by her mom in front of people, who is fearful of eating as she witnesses her mother pile on pounds of misery. She's maturing and starting to dress like a teenager under Megan's youthful, hip influence. She's forced to mother her officious step-grandmother when Mother Francis got hurt, weeks after Mother Francis gave her a prescription sleeping pill when the child was anxious. Sally's making clandestine phone calls to Creepy Glen who's at a residential school. I don't see happiness ahead for Sally, or for her father Don who, despite proclaiming his contentment, seems unmoored.

Image credit: Ron Jaffe/AMC.

Mad Men -- A Triad of Weirdness

*Warning -- Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*

Last week's Mad Men episode featured an unexpected fistfight between, of all people, Lane Pryce and Pete Campbell. This week Roger Sterling dropped acid. What'll happen next week, Joan Harris will burn her bra? If the parade of ugly late 60s clothing didn't already clue you in, we are deep into the cliched 60s now and I suspect that things will get uglier with each passing installment.

This "Far Away Places" episode unfolded in a different format for Mad Men: Three different stories began at one point in time at the office then took off to follow Peggy's day (including her midday, pot-fueled interlude with a stranger), Roger indulging in LSD and coming to the conclusion that he and Jane are finished and Don's day, specifically his intense fight with Megan. It's been a few days since I first saw this episode and I'm still processing what it all means.

First, Peggy. She went all Don Draper-during-the-Jantzen pitch on the Heinz people. She told the naysayers that the two pitches she'd worked up for them, based on their explicit wishes, were brilliant and that if they didn't like them, they were knuckleheads. And she wasn't wrong. Don did essentially the same thing when he ordered the bathing suit guys out of his office after they responded poorly to his advertising campaign last season.

Seeing that Don has taken off in the middle of the work day on too many occasions to count, Peggy followed his lead after her failed pitch and went to the movies. But she did it 60s style, by smoking pot with a stranger and putting her hands down his pants during the film. Is Peggy trying to literally follow Don by screwing around with strangers? Couple the way in which Peggy's boyfriend Abe complained that all she did was work and Peggy panicking because she couldn't find those violet candies (the ones Don once told Bobby that Don's dad used to carry) and her emotional connection to Don couldn't be clearer.

Don, meanwhile, flipped out when Megan, in the heat of an argument about him not taking her career seriously, invoked his mother. (Has he not been totally honest about his background with her?) Don was thoroughly unhinged, unable to listen to her explain that she loves work and felt guilty about not helping her creative team (which, as her boss, he should applaud). In a blind, orange sherbet-induced rage, Don abandoned Megan at Howard Johnson's, which she didn't find quite as charming as he did, another thing that set him off.

However, unlike Betty, who suffered through Don's baloney for so many years, Megan wasn't having it and found her own way back home without leaving any word for Don that she was safe, his punishment for selfishly ditching her in a strange place. Megan, despite her youth, seems quite capable of going toe-to-toe with Don even when he chases her down in their living room and tackles her like she was a running back and he a burly center on the losing football team. His emotional declaration that he thought he'd "lost" her seemed to melt her defenses, but if he keeps acting like a caveman toward his modern wife, this "I'm in charge" attitude is going to get old. Roger and Jane serve as a cautionary tale.

Acid helped Roger and Jane take down their miserable marriage which began much like Don and Megan's, with the older, affluent ad man sleeping with a young, nubile secretary. The days of Jane in bed writing poetry about her affection for Roger while her long, wavy hair cascades around her shoulders and she clings to crisp white sheets, have been replaced by hostility and hideous clothing. Roger, under LSD's influenced, tuned in to his inner voice telling him that he and Jane should part ways. (Now will he become a proper baby daddy to Kevin, even though he doesn't yet know that Joan's ditched her louse of a spouse?)

After this buffet of oddities, I can't wait to see what happens next. What did you think of this strange Mad Men trip?

Image credit: Jordin Althaus/AMC.

Mad Men -- A Parade of Ugly

*Warning -- Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*

Okay, first we've got to talk about the fashion. Normally, I don't comment on fashion. But come on, those clothes in the "Signal 30" episode were hideous. Don's jacket?! Ken and Pete's jackets? And that heavy swath of blue eye shadow over Megan's eyes ... we are so entering the ugly part of the latr 1960s where the fashion evolved from the crisp and proper duds of 1960 into Technicolor horrors like the ones on display on this episode.

The other shocker: Pete and Lane (Lane?!) going mano-a-mano in the conference room while Don & Co. closed the shades, pulled out the smokes and gawked at the skinny, nerdy and perverted dudes, wondering who'd prevail.

The pathetic and creepy quotient was extremely high in this episode as Lane pummeled Pete's face after Pete attempted to show Lane up in the workplace, as Pete ogled a teenage girl (and actually thought he had a shot with her) and as Lane plastered a big smooch on Joan, whose recent separation from her husband wasn't mentioned.

Everything, from the buttoned-down fashion that was featured in season one (remember that scene where Don chastised guys for talking coarsely and not removing their hats in the presence of a woman in the elevator?) to the fabric of society was being deconstructed and the stories of the Mad Men characters seem to be reflecting that.

In season one, Don and Betty's home was a symbol of making it in America. The enviable home in the 'burbs, complete with two kids and a dog, the gorgeous wife nurturing the home and hearth and trying to make her husband happy. The suits, the dresses, the meals Betty put on for Don's higher-ups to make a good impression for Don, who craved all of this when he was raised in poverty by an abusive, alcoholic father who'd knocked up his mother, the prostitute, who died while giving birth to him. But, inevitably, getting all of this didn't make Don happy.

In season five, the home in the 'burbs, with the baby and the pretty wife wasn't looking so good. It's being called a veritable hell by Don -- who twice made references to suicide, as a New York Magazine observer noted -- while he's living in a swanky Manhattan apartment with his twentysomething trendy career gal trophy wife.

Pete, who's now at the point in his life where Don was when the series began, is more openly opining about how he thinks his life sucks even as he welcomes his work colleagues into his home (and saves the biggest steak for the big alpha dog Don). He doesn't seem to want Trudy any more. Doesn't seem to care about his child. The look that Pete gave Don in the elevator after all of this, as he practically trembled with anger, outrage and frustration ("I have nothing, Don.") as Don, the remarried former (or simply dormant) womanizer, not only didn't find it necessary to patronize a prostitute like Pete and the others, but has found himself a younger, hipper wife and still lived in the cool city: Total envy.

Is anyone ever happy?

What does all of this mean for Don, who, despite his violent feverish dreams of murdering his former lover, is still exuding a complacent, life's okay attitude? Is it all an act? Is he still suffering from what he complained about to Anna with regard to Betty, that he's scratching around the edges of his life but can't get inside of it?

Image credit: Ron Jaffe/AMC.

Mad Men -- Don's Violent, Fever-Fueled Dream Freaked Me Out

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the latest episode of Mad Men ahead.*

If the most harrowing scene from the latest episode of Mad Men, "Mystery Date," had not turned out to have been a dream, I would've been tempted to write off the show because it was so wildly over the line. (I've been in a writing-shows-off kind of mood lately, having given warning that my days of regularly reading and reviewing Grey's Anatomy and The Killing may be coming to an end due to my deep dissatisfaction with insipid storytelling.)

If Don had actually murdered his former lover and shoved her lifeless body under his bed (which, as one viewer pointed out, paralleled Sally hiding under a sofa from a mass killer who wasn't there later in the episode) I would've been insanely angry. It was bad enough that during the entire scene I was shouting at the television, "This'd better be a dream!" Luckily, it was a manifestation of Don's fears as interpreted by a fever-plagued nightmare that his marriage to Megan would collapse under the weight of his prior sexual liaisons. (I still believe that his fidelity to the part of the wedding vows about forsaking all others will be short-lived.)

Fear in general seemed to be the overall theme of the evening as Peggy, who appears open-minded and all into gal-power, gave a worried glance at her purse (loaded with cash she scammed from a desperately stupid Roger) wondering if she should leave it there while Dawn was sleeping on her sofa, unattended.

Henry's pill- and Bugle-happy mother Pauline feared that a mass murderer who killed women in Chicago would come to New York and attack her so she kept a giant kitchen knife at her side while she was babysitting Betty's kids.

Sally was so worried about the Chicago murders that she couldn't sleep, so Grandma Pauline slipped her a sleeping pill. (That makes twice during this show's run that Sally had been rendered unconscious, the other time being when Don had taken her to work on a Sunday and she illictly sucked down some alcohol a Sterling Cooper employee had left behind.)

Joan, meanwhile, was initially fearful that Greg would get hurt when he returned to Vietnam for a second tour of duty, angry with the military for sending him back, particularly when he has a new family. But Joan's fear morphed into fury when she learned that not only had Greg volunteered to go back, but he didn't even care enough about her and their baby Kevin to even consult her about the decision. (Kind of like how he never asked her opinion on whether he should enlist. He just did it.)

While it was stunning to see Joan -- who tolerated grevious mistreatment by Greg in the past as the price for landing a husband (she told him he wasn't a good man adding "I know you know what I'm talking about") -- jettisoning her marriage, it shall prove fascinating to see her evolve into a strong, independent, single mother who's no longer simply after getting a ring on her finger.

My favorite part of the episode: Peggy shaking down Roger, shamelessly so, getting him to part ways with $400 in exchange for Peggy saving his sorry behind. Peggy is coming into her own, despite the unfortunate purse incident which came on the heels of her attempts to bond with Dawn and knowing what it's like to be "the only one" of her kind in the workplace.

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

Mad Men -- The Episode About Betty Getting Fat

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

Last week, it was Megan's foxy little "Zou Bisou Bisou" song and dance, where she flashed ample thigh to Don while his colleagues looked on in astonishment, that caught everyone's attention. This week, Betty made her first season five appearance and viewers were, um, gobsmacked to see the transformation she'd undergone, eating her unhappy self into oblivion. (That was a genius way to deal with January Jones' real life pregnancy. Much better than a laundry basket propped up in front of her belly.)

Remember back in season one, when Peggy began to put on weight everywhere, including on her face and neck? Before it was revealed that she was pregnant (and unwilling to admit to herself that she was with child), people suggested that perhaps Peggy was purposefully getting bigger in an attempt to ward off sexual overtures from the Sterling Cooper neanderthals. She wanted them to see her as a copywriter, not an object of affection, or so the argument went.

Well Betty now seems to be doing exactly what folks thought Peggy was doing, putting pounds of flesh between herself and sex, specifically her husband Henry, to keep him away from her. Now I've always had a soft spot for Betty, her feelings about being confined in a gilded cage with a duplicitous, cheating husband and her struggles with the fears her mother instilled in her about becoming "stout." Even though she was depicted as cold and cruel last season, I still had sympathy for her.

But there was something a bit creepy about the way Betty's weight gain was handled. It was treated in a fetish-y fashion, from the scene of Betty's kids trying to unsuccessfully zip her into her dress, to the unnecessarily exploitative shot from behind when she was getting out of the tub. It's one thing to explore Betty's emotional issues, how she's dissatisfied with her life, so unhappy that she became overweight, that what she feared the most when she was younger -- gaining weight -- had occurred, with making a spectacle out of her body, the way in which Megan did by design with her performance. We can all see that she put on weight. We get it. The show's writers didn't need to make the point over and over and over again with visuals that don't seem to elucidate as much as they do exploit, as the internet is doing in the aftermath of the "Tea Leaves" episode.

The wrinkle in all of this was the specter of cancer, the possibility that the growth that was found on her thyroid was malignant. This brought to the surface Don and Betty's emotional connections, which still exist despite the extreme acrimony they've experienced as Don fretted over his potentially motherless children, admitting that Megan was no substitute. (There are mommy issues galore in this show.) It was particularly interesting that when Betty was afraid for her life, she sought out Don for comfort -- and his hollow "Everything's going to be okay" motto -- and Henry, who remains threatened by Don, didn't like it one bit.

Meanwhile, Megan was parading around in a bikini top and trying to get Don to come to a gathering with her twentysomething pals, with whom and from whom Don feels a generational disconnect. Seeing Don look "so square" that he "had corners," as Megan said, at the Rolling Stones concert amid all those teen fans, Don seemed even more out of place in his own skin, realizing that he wasn't "it," upstart young man any more. (Ironically, in season two, Don chastised Betty as "desperate" for wearing a bikini.) How times have changed.

What did you think of this episode?

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.

Mad Men -- A Little Kiss (Zou Bisou Bisou)

*Warning: Spoilers from the latest episode of Mad Men ahead.*

Finally . . . a new Mad Men episode to digest and dissect. Let's dive right into the fifth season premiere shall we?

Megan: Megan's little "burlesque" dance, as Lane called it, at Don's surprise 40th birthday party where she sang a sassy little French ditty to Don reminded me of Joan's sad French song C'est Magnifique, with accordion accompaniment, that Greg made her sing to his bosses. Megan was sexy, showed ample leg (in her later 60s-style short, short dress), shook her fanny then deposited herself into Don's lap in full view of all of his colleagues, in his very own living room. And when it was over, Megan was proud. (The shindig was quite a contrast to Betty's infamous dinner around the world featuring chilled Heineken.) In Joan's case, she was coerced into performing -- in the midst of her perfect, Emily Post housewife efforts -- to entertain her husband's colleagues. Joan was not proud, just sad.

But Megan was sad too, in a way. The performance wasn't sad, exactly, but Don's reaction to it was because it clearly demonstrated that they are in wildly different places in their lives and there's a huge gap of understanding between them which Don is going to have to work at bridging if he wants this marriage to survive. Even though Don has told Megan all about his Dick Whitman past, he still appears to be clinging to vestiges of his Don Draper-esque guardedness, the king of the brusque brushoff (like blowing off Megan's overtures to him after the party ended). He doesn't seem quite willing to emotionally bare all yet.

  

Megan, however, doesn't seem like she's going to take a lot of Don's garbage. She doesn't seem likely to be drunk in the middle of the day, still wearing last night's party dress, searching Don's suit coats and pants' pockets for evidence that he cheated on her like Betty did. Megan isn't afraid of her sexuality and power in a way Betty seemed to be (with the exception of her revenge sex before reuniting with Don when she was pregnant with Gene). Megan's unabashed, confident sensuality has got to terrify and thrill Don but, in this episode, he didn't quite know what to make of her birthday party stunt, followed by the really odd scene of Megan stripping down to her black underwear (definitely not the girdles Betty wore when she was hanging around the house) and angrily cleaning up from the party on her hands and knees, demanding that Don not touch her, commanding him to watch instead.

However if you ask series creator Matthew Weiner, he'd say that Don has indeed completely opened himself up to Megan and is, for the first time in the series, so happy in his relationship that he doesn't even care about work. True, Don doesn't seem to care much about work but I wouldn't go so far as to call Don an open book with Megan just yet. I don't know if he's quite capable of that with anyone.

Joan: Joan's story fascinated me. Her hostile interactions with her mother -- who was like the devil whispering in her ear that she was going to be replaced at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, that she should give up her notion of working and should get her figure back ASAP -- explained a lot about Joan. Seeing Joan with her little boy, and papa Roger declaring "There's my baby" in the office, were delicious. It was a whole new side of Joan. (It was a nice, comical touch to watch everybody play pass-the-baby with Joan's son at the office.)

Pete: I'm taking bets, how long until Pete continues to morph into a Don Jr. and steps out on Trudy (again)? Pete is openly complaining to guys on the commuter train to and from his new suburban house (which looks a whole lot like Don and Betty's Ossining digs) about his life and marriage, about how Trudy has lost her Trudy-ness since the baby. He's even fighting with Roger because he doesn't feel as though he's receiving the proper respect and appropriate-sized office for his role in the company. He's competing against Roger for clients' favor and took measures to fight back but at least he didn't trick Roger into sucking down a half dozen martinis and oysters at lunch before scaling a dozen-plus flights of stairs and puking on clients' nice shoes.

What did you think of the two-hour season five premiere? Thoughts? Comments?

Loads of 'Mad Men' Season 5 Goodness

Entertainment Weekly has devoted its new issue to the long-awaited return of the quadruple Emmy award winning AMC drama Mad Men which, given all this hype and longing after a 17-month absence, I'm afraid won't be able to live up to fans' expectations (mine included). Nonetheless, as I cross my fingers, knock on wood and hope that Matthew Weiner & Co. have created another insightful, surprising and smart set of 13 episodes, I'm eagerly gobbling up all things Mad Men.

Like that new issue of Entertainment Weekly which devoted nine pages to the returning series that premieres on March 25. What did I learn from the magazine, amid artsy photos of Jon Hamm in his role as the troubled Don Draper?

• There will be some time jump from the end of season four to the premiere of season five but there's no word on how far forward they will leap. Says Weiner, the series creator and head honcho: "I want people to feel like they're going to visit their best friend, and they open the door and everything's been going on without them. The story is on page 30 when they open the door, so they'll have to catch up.
• Elisabeth Moss (Peggy) said she's "completely, completely surprised by season five. For a few of the characters that have big things happen to them this year -- big surprises and changes -- the audience is going to go back and go 'He said that in episode one!'" 
• Talking about the sudden and stunning marriage proposal Don gave to his young secretary Megan in the closing moments of season four, Weiner said: "A lot of the decisions that Don makes may seem strange to the audience, but they're going to seem strange to people around him, too. He is coming into middle age, which is closer to old age back then. Existentialism is a young man's game, and you can say what you want about how death nullifies things. But when you get closer to death, it starts to become more serious, and it's harder to laugh it off and say, 'I'm living for the moment.'" 
• Betty will be back but won't be seen as often as Betty fans (like me) might like because January Jones gave birth to a baby while Mad Men was in production. "It was interesting to work around that [the pregnancy] but [Matt] works best with a challenge," Jones told EW. "That turned into an amazing storyline for me and for Betty. You'll definitely see a different side of her."

Meanwhile, New York Magazine published seven pages worth of Mad Men material, from summarizing each of the show's 39 episodes in pithy fashion and delving into Don and Peggy's "special relationship" (it drives Moss nuts when people constantly ask her whether Peggy and Don will hook up) to a creepy editorial feature where the magazine asked an actuary to estimate when Don, who was born in 1926, will die and aged a photo of Hamm/Draper (see above). The actuary estimated that Draper will pass away in 1985 at age 59.

One last thing I found today while marinating in Mad Men pre-season excitement: Draping is apparently the new Tebow-ing. You take a photo from the back of someone and that person is draping his or her arm over a person or object like the silhouette of Don Draper does in the show's opening credits. Then post the image on Tumblr and/or Twitter. Fun for Mad Men fans of all ages.

Image credits: Entertainment Weekly, New York Magazine and Tumblr.

'Mad Men's' Fools in Love, Or Just Plain Fools?

In episode 11 of the third season of Mad Men -- entitled, “The Gypsy and the Hobo” -- Betty confronted Don about that secret box that he kept in his locked drawer in his office. She demanded to know who was this man who called himself her husband, really? Why were there all these photos inside of his mystery box which included ones picturing Don, only they had a different name on the back of them? Who was Don’s first wife? Why did he buy her a house? Why were there multiple sets of dog tags inside? Why had he kept all this -- his secret identity, his lies about his family – from her after being married to her for more than a decade?

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Betty asked. “Why couldn’t you tell me any of this?”

“When?” Don pushed back defensively. “The day we met? On our first date? On our wedding night? Why did you need to know?”

When Betty said she didn’t really feel like she knew him even after all that time together, she said, “You lied to me every day. I can’t trust you. I don’t know who you are.”

“Yes,” he said in a small voice, “you do.”

When Betty finally decided to end her marriage, in the wake of the JFK assassination at the end of episode 12, “The Grown-Ups,” she did so on the grounds that Don had started their marriage atop of a stack of lies, therefore rendering its foundation unstable from the beginning. “I don’t know where to begin . . . I want to scream at you for ruining all of this, but then you tried to fix it and there’s no point.”

At what point along the way will something like this conversation happen with Don’s wife-to-be Megan? Don certainly had an opening to tell her about his secrets when he tepidly told her, “I’ve done a lot of things,” and adding that Megan doesn’t really know him. To which she replied, “I know who you are now.”

Don may see Megan as his own, personal “fresh start” after a really crappy year which he spent punishing himself (including paying a prostitute to literally abuse him) for his failed marriage, but she’s not a fresh start, she can't be, not with Dick Whitman out there, lurking like a wet blanket. Eventually she’ll find out about it and he’ll have to endure this same conversation all over again about why he never told Megan that his real name isn’t Don Draper. Why he didn’t tell her when they met, or on their first date, etc.? Faye knew all about Don's stolen identity and was willing to stay with him anyway, but he made fast work in dumping her. Stupid man.

Does Don think the trick of telling his wife the truth again will actually work the second time around? Shouldn't she know about these vital pieces of information before marrying him? From this perspective, he’s not moving forward, he’s moving in circles, repeating his mistakes, only with a younger, improved model, one who’s good with children and doesn’t tend to explode in anger. Oh, and this new one speaks French, whereas the Bryn Mawr educated Betty spoke Italian.

Image credit: AMC

Don’s crazy marriage proposal to Megan also reminded me of Roger’s similarly impetuous move in season two which also occurred in the eleventh episode, “The Jet Set.” Roger had recently told Mona he was leaving her after three decades of matrimony to marry his young secretary Jane. After a romantic interlude in a hotel room, Jane was wrapped up in stark white sheets, her dark, wavy hair loosely hanging around her shoulders as she read aloud poetry she’d just written. (By contrast, Megan "Maria von Trapp" got Sally and Bobby to serenade Don in French in a hotel room.) Roger, who’d just emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a bright white bathrobe, sat down next to Jane and caressed her face and hair.

“Oh God, you’re getting to me,” Roger said. When Jane said she was afraid he was going to send her packing he said he’d never do that because, “I love you Jane.”

While she thought about that, he pressed forward, “I’m not being impulsive because I’ve been thinking about this all the time. I want you to be my wife.”

“What?” she asked, shocked.

“Marry me,” Roger said.

“What, Roger are you serious?” (Maybe she questioned his sincerity because he didn’t present an engagement ring like Don did to Megan.)

“Will you do that for me?” When Jane nodded yes, Roger donned the same kind of stupid grin on his face that Don wore when he sat down on the edge of the bed and asked Megan, who was wearing a nightgown, to marry him.

In the very next season two episode, “The Mountain King,” we saw that same kind of smile again, in flashbacks, when Don was confiding in Anna on Christmas Eve that he’d met someone, Betty. “I met a girl,” his face positively beaming in a boyish, naive way that you didn't see in the present day Don. “She’s so beautiful and happy. She’s a model and she’s from a good family and she’s educated . . . I just like the way she laughs and the way she looks at me. I want to ask her to marry me.”

Yes, that was Don talking about Betty. As laughing, as happy, as giving him adoring looks which he loved. And yet somehow, all of that went away and she blamed Don's cheating and lying for it.
“This is a chance at a whole new life,” Anna told him at the time. And that's what Don's counting on now, and what Roger was counting on when he proposed to his secretary in season two, yet in season four he impregnated the office manager in an alley and Faye said Don's fiance should know that he only likes the "new" parts of a relationship.

Roger and Don: Fools in love or just plain fools?

Image credit: Carin Baer/AMC.

'Mad Men's' Weiner: Finale Looks at Life You Want to Live

"Tomorrowland is about who you want to be," that's what Mad Men creator/writer Matthew Weiner said about the season four finale. The episode, Weiner said, was about "what are you going to make of your life."

In the case of Don, that would be the same mistake Roger Sterling made, at least in my opinion.

Jon Hamm offered some insightful commentary in the AMC video above, about the fact that Don is starting a relationship with someone who doesn't really know much about him smacks of Don and Betty 2.0.

Of all the interviews in the video, I agree with Elisabeth Moss (Peggy Olson) the most.

What did you think of Weiner's assertion that the finale was about what you want to make of your life?

'Mad Men' Finale -- Tomorrowland

Image credit: AMC

*Warning: Spoilers ahead from the season finale of Mad Men.*

I’m very annoyed with Matthew Weiner right about now. And after the jump I'll tell you why. (I'm putting the jump in to avoid spoiling the episode for the late-watchers.)

At Least Don Draper Never Slept with Peggy Olson

Has Don Draper come down with amnesia or something? Seriously, because, early on in the season, he did this:



Then this happened:



Then, after he finally got his life in order -- settled down by dating one woman who was his contemporary, cut back on drinking and starting evaluating his life by keeping a journal -- he reverted back to this:



That last scene really annoyed me, particularly because Don slept with his secretaries after they "mothered" him by telling him he'd had too much to drink, by bringing him his keys and trying to tend to his needs, like asking him if he wanted some food and insisting that he have an aspirin. All of Don's other secretaries -- Jane, Joan, Peggy and even Ida "queen of perversions" Blankenship -- had slept with someone from the office, but Don, as far as viewers saw, hadn't. At least until this season where he's slept with two secretaries and a woman who's doing consulting work for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.

Anyone else hate that Don seems to be taking a giant leap backward?

Mad Men -- Chinese Wall (Or, the Ad Agency's in Trouble)

Image credit: AMC

*Warning – Spoilers ahead from the recent episode of Mad Men.*

These are some dark days for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. After spending the bulk of this season focused on the downward-spiraling Don (who seems on the precipice of a relapse to his bad boy tendencies with the drinking and Alison 2.0), the darkness descended upon the brightly decorated home of the ad upstarts at SCDP.

We knew that Roger losing Lucky Strike was going to rear its head and upend the entire, cozy, complacency at SCDP. (You don’t blow off a multi-million-dollar account like North American Aviation without trying to desperately find another way to save it.) However I didn’t expect the fall-out to hit the fan so soon, thought that maybe Matt Weiner & Co. would hold off on SCDP’s near-end of days until the season finale.

And, while viewers knew that, despite all the hard work Don put into reshaping his life (cutting back on the drinking, dating an appropriate woman for him, journaling and going to the gym), he wasn’t going to be perfect and would likely slip up. I expected Don to mess up a bit in the form of drinking, maybe slack off on going to the gym as he worked longer hours, but I did NOT expect for him to sleep with another secretary, particularly given that he’s in a serious relationship with Faye, even ‘fessed up about his alias. Even though Don did give Megan the once-over at the end of the previous episode, I was surprised that he went there. (It was the same surprise I experienced when he started sleeping with Miss Farrell in season three.)

Has Don learned nothing? Don needs to start journaling again so he can see, in his own handwriting, how history is repeating itself and he’s doing himself no favors. I’m just waiting for the Dick Whitman situation to crop up once more to give Don a swift kick in the pants.

Aside from Don’s shaky foothold on leading a healthy life (emotionally and physically), Roger -- he of the stark white hair and the stark white office featuring a print with a blinding white background populated by little black dots -- found himself in danger of being swallowed up by darkness. He sunk to pathetic depths when he didn't tell his colleagues about Lucky Strike in time for them to do anything about it, and when he stood three feet away from them and lied about speaking on the phone with Lee Garner Jr., dovetailed by his cowardly flight to a Manhattan hotel when he was supposed to be in Raleigh having a face-to-face visit with Lee. After coasting by on his father’s coattails for his entire life -- with the exception of his stint in World War II – Roger now seems to be flailing professionally as well as personally.

He tried, once again, to use Joan as salve to make himself feel better, forgetting (or perhaps completely unaware) that he’d torpedoed any shot at a serious relationship with her with his calloused response to her pregnancy, saying he loved her “maybe” and, the icing on the cake, saying that if she had the baby, it wouldn’t be his. Having destroyed his first marriage with drinking and philandering, Roger’s now destroying his second marriage with the same behavior as he miserably skulked back into his home where his bright as a penny young wife/former secretary was waiting to show him copies of his newly published memoir and to tell him how proud she was. Sullen, Roger chose to not fill her in on the cataclysmic events of the past 24 hours and acted as though everything was fine.

As for Pete, who’d really blame him, the man who covered Don’s rear end in the North American Aviation imbroglio, for fleeing the sinking ship that is SCDP, particularly when he and Trudy just had a child? Watching Don chastise Pete for not being “focused” on the Glo-Coat account while Trudy was in the hospital and then accusing Pete of freaking the clients out (when Don spent the whole day at the hospital when Betty was giving birth to Gene), might’ve been the last straw. Or the 47th.

Peggy, well, I don’t know what to make of her hippie-fueled afterglow being doused by news of Lucky Strike, coupled with her feelings that when something good happens to her, she’s going to be punished for it with something bad. I did love seeing her triumph with the Playtex account despite the fact that the spurned moron Stan failed to tell her that she had lipstick on her teeth . . . which kind of proved her point, she was happy she got the account but was embarrassed no one told her about the lipstick.

What’d you think of “Chinese Wall?”

Image credit: Michael Yarish/AMC.