It is that time of the year again where dreams get crushed, and the elite throw a party for themselves to give the obligatory ‘pat on the back’. The 2012 Emmy Nominations are in, and it’s time to fight for the snubbed and decry the undeserving. I have the list down there courtesy of EW, but let’s talk about what I think were great nominations and of course, the snubs.
Continue reading 2012 Emmy Nominations Are Out, Who Got Snubbed?
Breaking Bad is arguably the best show on television right now, and along with its stellar cast, directing, writing and acting, it’s one of the most engaging stories I’ve ever seen. So engaging, that it’s only a week and change away from debuting its new season, and that still feels like an incredibly long time. Unfortunately, the wait could be even longer for Dish Network subscribers, who are SOL when it comes to getting AMC this year. Dish is another satellite TV provider that has at one point or another, failed to make a deal with a popular cable network, and the drama spills out into the public, and fans of that channel have to get involved themselves.
“Dish has not discussed rates with us at all,” AMC said in today’s statement. Dish customers have lost some of their favorite shows because of an unrelated lawsuit which has nothing at all to do with our programming.” [Ad Age]
Basically, Dish says that AMC is charging too much for its channel with its shows with low ratings, (Walking Dead, Mad Men, ) and AMC says that Dish is dropping them because of an unspecified 2008 lawsuit that would lose Dish money, to the amount of $ 2.5 billion. A similar thing happened with FX/DirecTV a year or so ago, and years before that DirecTV and G4, only G4 is such a terrible channel DirecTV decided to not accept their deal and now DirecTV is G4-less. That’s ok though, because G4 has never had anything close in quality to the worst show on FX or AMC combined, and that includes reruns of Two & A Half Men. How this keeps happening, I don’t understand. Perhaps there’s just a constant cycle of lawsuits that are on hold indefinitely to stymie cable and satellite providers, and some great TV Pope declares who will get what network approval every 10 years.
So the Great TV Pope has declared that unless Dish and AMC can come to some agreement, AMC, IFC and We TV will be dropped from Dish. How will they get their dose of Zombies, Meth Drama, Men in Suits, Experimental Indie Cinema and Women’s Programming now?
On an interesting side note, FX was originally going to pick up Breaking Bad, until the president of FX thought that Walter White would make one male anti-hero too many for their channel.
“We had three dramas with male antiheroes and we looked at that script and said, ‘Okay, so here’s a fourth male antihero,’” Landgraf recalled. “The question was: ‘Are we defining FX as the male antihero network and is that a big enough tent?” [EW]
I suppose this means that no matter what, at some point every Satellite TV customer, would have to have worried about not getting their fix of Breaking Bad. What with FX’s fans’ main rallying cry being to save It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, in some alternate universe somewhere it very well may have been “Save Breaking Bad! Tell FX you love meth!” Mostly, I’m just glad I have DirecTV right now…
Considering that in the past two weeks the notoriously slow-paced Mad Men had one of its oldest and most popular characters leave the firm followed by one of the partners killing themselves I was expecting, as probably was the fan base at large, some sort of momentous season finale cliff hanger. That clearly was not in the cards. While the season finale, by regular episode standards, did have a couple of surprises, as a season-ender it fell a bit short as far as drama goes.
The episode was titled “The Phantom” and we are treated with phantoms both literally and figuratively. Don, feeling the stress and guilt of Lane’s suicide, is habitually visited throughout the episode by his brother, whom was also a suicide victim and receiver of Don’s tough love. We also get a Peggy Olson appearance this week, and hopefully this will quell the rumors that Elisabeth Moss is done with Mad Men, and she is more than a Phantom. Peggy has her own storyline in fact as she is handed a new account for women’s cigarettes that will, as we know, eventually become Virginia Slims and a major marketing success in its own time. We are witness to a nice conciliatory meeting between Don and Peggy at the movie theater, sans handy I would assume, and the puzzling image of dogs humping outside of Peggy’s Virginia hotel room. It looks like Peggy is here to stay and thank goodness for that.
The other major phantom of the episode comes in the form of Pete’s on-again off-again affair partner whom we learn is the frequent victim/consumer of electroshock therapy. After an uncomfortable encounter on the train, Pete gets a booty call from Beth Dawes and skips out on the Partners meeting for the liaison. Here he learns about her treatment and her desire to have one last fling before her memory is erased and all memories of Pete Campbell are gone. I’m sure there are some people out there who would jump at the chance to have all memories of Pete Campbell erased from their mind, but he does such a good job of being a dick you just shouldn’t do that to yourself. As an added bonus we also get to see Pete punched in the face two more times this episode! He really is a despicable character when as soon as you start to feel for the guy after he opens his heart to the post trauma Beth and confronts her scumbag husband, he acts like a total prick to the good-natured train cop and you are once again cheering as Pete takes another shot to the kisser. Whomever came up with this gem will have to update it with the new footage.
The cliff-hanger for the season finale hinges upon Don and Megan’s relationship. Megan’s acting career has continued to flounder and in this episode she gets desperate and stabs her friend in the back by asking Don to consider her for a commercial that SCDP will be producing instead of her considering her friend who had asked the favor. Megan’s mother is in town, rekindling her romance with Roger Sterling, and Megan’s depressive ways lead to a confrontation between her and Don which may have been the key to changing Don and Megan’s relationship as a whole. Megan’s mom describes her as someone with an artist’s sensibility without the artists talent. Don, after watching Megan’s test reel, acquiesces to her desires and gets her the commercial gig. The big question though, the one we are left with as the woman down the bar hits on Don asking “if he is alone”, is whether or not Don has lost respect for Megan.
Did he give in and get her the gig because he really thinks she deserves it and just hasn’t gotten her break, or is he secretly disgusted at her lack of gumption and willingness to work hard at her art and gave her the job because it’s proof to her callous need to be spoiled. Fortunately the wait for season 6 will be significantly shorter than the wait for season 5 was, but still is too long if you ask me.
Two other things from the finale. SCDP is apparently making money hand over fist and will be moving into a larger space and Roger Sterling is doing LSD again… see gratuitous man ass.
The other shoe finally dropped. That is the inevitable matter of Lane Pryce’s embezzlement came to the attention of one Donald Draper this week, and though the initial confrontation played out as one might expect, the conclusion was shocking. Bert Cooper, thinking Don was trying to assuage Lane’s constant griping about the bonus, brings the canceled check to his attention which leads Don to bring Lane in for proper questioning. The true tragedy of Lane’s transgression is that if pride didn’t get the better of him, and he simply went to Don to borrow the money that he didn’t even wind up stealing everything would have been fine. Through embezzlement and forgery however he has lost the trust of SCDP’s lead man and Don will have nothing other than his resignation and in fact thinks he is doing Lane a favor by giving him a clean new start, and the opportunity to resign without any black marks on his resume.
Unfortunately, as is often the case when you get embedded in a nest of deceit, Lane can’t come clean with his wife who has made matter even worse by purchasing a new Jaguar as a reward to her husband “who never treats himself”. Here is where the brilliance of Mad Men‘s writing comes in. The Jaguar is the perfect symbol for all of Lane’s problems. It is not only a literal symbol of the firm’s success with the client he failed with despite his best efforts, but is also symbolic of the nouveau riche who can afford an impractical luxury car like Jaguar, and the lie he is representing to his wife. If it wasn’t abundantly clear that AMC would never get Jaguar as one of their advertising clients, last night’s episode sealed the deal. In a moment of true black comedy we find Lane trying to kill himself by using the Jaguar to asphyxiate himself, but the car is such a lemon that he can’t even get it to start up and do the job.
It’s too early in the Mad Men era for a Nixon reference, but if Lane Pryce had an exit speech I think it might be somewhat similar to tricky Dick’s exit; “You won’t have {Lane Pryce} to kick around anymore gentlemen, because this is my last {episode}”. Lane’s suicide is the second Mad Men death when characters face off against Don’s tough love and you’ve got to imagine this is going to weigh heavily on Don’s conscience, and it will be interesting to see what happens when word eventually slips out about the true circumstances of Lane’s “resignation”. I’m not sure if this was the case of Jared Harris getting to big for the show or not, but either way it was an expertly crafted character arc, and despite it all you didn’t want to believe that Lane had killed himself until you literally saw the bloated corpse that Don and company cut down from the ceiling.
The other big developments of the week revolved around Don lighting a fire under his own ass and Sally Draper becoming a woman. Don isn’t happy with the direction that SCDP has taken on and wants bigger fish to fry. As he says, “I don’t want Jaguar I want Chevy!” which leads Roger to set up a meeting with Ken Cosgrove’s father-in-law, the Devil incarnate, aka Ray Wise aka the chairman of Dow Chemical. Ken has long been against SCDP getting involved in his family business, but he concedes on two main factors. That he has been “dragged” on board, and that in no way can Pete Campbell be involved in their business, chalking up Cosgrove as yet another of Pete’s inter-office enemies. We won’t find out until next week whether or not his tactics were sound but Don’s approach to winning Dow Chemical was to literally yell at them and berate them for being happy with 50% market success, and it’s as much of a speech for himself and SCDP as it is for the client.
Roger, for his part, is happy to see the feisty old Don Draper as his LSD induced free thinking has begun to fade. We also get to experience another typical Don and Megan squabble when Don forgets to inform her that Betty is dropping Sally off at the apartment:
That’s pretty much how Don and Megan interaction go these days as she feels defensive and marginalized, and he feels defensive and overly stressed. It’s always hard to tell what’s going to happen in the Mad Men teasers, but it seems like there might be some new wedge between Don and Megan coming and you wonder if the loss of Lane might push Don back into his self-destructive ways.
Meanwhile we get a fun little aside with Sally and her weirdzo boyfriend Glen this week as when she realizes she will have the apartment to herself Sally convinces Glen to come to the big city for a visit on the sly. These two characters both have been subject to creepy sexual undertones over seasons past so it was a relief that when Glen arrives at Sally’s apartment his greatest desire is to go to the Museum of Natural History.
There we are treated to the awkwardly sweet interactions of Glen’s dry jokes about the exhibits, and the exploration of what their relationship actually is. All of this is interrupted when Sally, feeling ill, makes a startling discovery in the bathroom and then freaks out and takes a cab back to the suburbs and her mom, leaving Glen in the lurch. This whole sequence is yet another fine example of the quality of writing in this show as the awkwardness of youth is naturally captured. Having Glen be as concerned over completing his book report as he is about finding Sally just feels so natural to their ages. Sally freaking out and providing her mother with another bitch chip to play against Megan also feels very natural as despite young Sally’s mistrust of Betty when important things happen it’s still her mother’s arms in which she seeks comfort.
Next week, regrettably is the season finale of Mad Men, and it should be a good one. In the past two weeks of what is normally a pretty even keeled show as far as dramatic changes are concerned they have had Peggy Olson leave SCDP and Lane Pryce kill himself. What kind of bombshell did they leave for the last week?
It’s 1967, a whole new year for the Mad Men crew, and nothing seems to be more important to the SCDP staff than landing their first big automotive contract in the form of that elusive beast; Jaguar. There are so many people working on the Jaguar pitch that characters we’ve never seen are coming out of the woodwork. Seriously, there are two extra guys in the room with Ginsberg, Stan, Cosgrove and Draper working on the pitch that I can’t ever remember seeing before. The elusive perfect pitch line is not coming easy for anybody but as we soon learn their sale may depend on an altogether different type of pitch. It’s not mentioned lightly that the “car people” are a bunch of sleazeballs, and it quickly comes to the forefront that the lynchpin of the Jaguar deal has a proposition that he says will seal the deal; Joan. If it had been anyone but Pete Campbell taking the meeting you might imagine that the deal would end right there. In fact if it was Don taking the meeting he might have hit the guy right in the face even in the middle of the restaurant. Pete however not only has the nerve to bring it up with Joan, but also to follow-up with a partners meeting to see how much they can raise to bribe her. Thus begins one of the elements of this weeks major theme: upward mobility of the 1960’s woman.
For Joan, who has an absentee husband who is divorcing her, a young child and nagging mother at home, and 13 years invested in the firm as a secretary, the opportunity of hitting a huge payday for a night of her services provides too much of a temptation. Lane, who is still freaking out about bonuses and the money he embezzled, has convinced Joan that her best bargaining chip is a 5% stake in the company, becoming a minor partner as opposed to a lump payoff. While certainly good advice for her long-term security, it is ultimately underhanded of Lane as he is also highly concerned that if he uses the $50,000 extension to bribe her, he won’t get his bonus and will be found out. It turns out that there “Will be no bonuses this year!” as Cooper booms so it seems like Lane’s fraudulence will be somehow linked to the season finale. Joan’s whole encounter with the sleazy salesman is handled with typical Mad Men brilliance, as we are treated to a bookended scene of Don’s efforts to keep Joan from prostituting herself. In the middle of the bookends we see Don making the sales pitch of the unattainable, which has become attainable (the Jaguar) crosscut with the unattainable (Joan) who has become attainable for a price and the metaphor is complete.
Two of the other women in Don’s life are also making their way forward as best they can. Don and Megan continue their domestic power struggle as Megan’s successful casting call gives her an opportunity to be in a play which is being staged in Boston. The thought of Megan being away for three months ignites the internal conflict of Don’s wish for his wife’s success coupled against his desire for her to be at home in the traditional sense. Megan, in her fiery way, recognizes this and accuses Don of not having thought of her leaving because he never believed she would succeed. Don, as he also proved with Joan, is at heart a good person who wants whats best for the people he cares about comes around to make peace with Megan and her dreams. Megan ultimately doesn’t get the part, and similarly to Joan is herself judged as a sexual pawn as she is ogled and asked simply “to step forward and turn around” in her second casting call.
Lastly we get to this week’s developments with Peggy Olson. It has been a long time coming that Peggy has been feeling more and more neglected, jaded and under appreciated at SCDP. Similarly to Pete Campbell copying Don’s lecherous past, Peggy is also following in the footsteps of her idol and doing what she thinks he would have done. The pact between Peggy and Ken Cosgrove to move on together has been mentioned frequently in the past weeks episodes, and Peggy has flirted with other advertising companies in the past, but the day that no one ever thought was really going to happen has come. After lunching with former Sterling Cooper salesman Freddy Rumsen, Peggy gets herself a meeting with Don’s arch-rival in ‘Cutler, Gleason, and Shaw’ who butters her bread and makes her an exceptionally attractive offer. 
As we learn from Peggy’s heart-wrenching dialogue with Don as she gives her notice, it’s not about the money. Don initially thinks she’s making a power play to get her much deserved raise, but quickly realizes that what Peggy really wants is to make a name for herself out from under the shadow of Don Draper and to further become the model of a self-made woman. Hopefully for Mad Men viewers Peggy doesn’t make herself a stranger as she promises to Don as she is one of the more enjoyable Mad Men characters.
Notably absent from this weeks stories of the burgeoning Women’s Lib movement is Betty Draper. This is because like her counterpart Trudy Campbell, an increasingly rare Alison Brie appearance, Betty is still a throwback to the 1950’s housewife who has built her life around being a debutant and keeping her efforts on the home front. Unlike Trudy however Betty doesn’t seem to relish in it, and will likely experience more conflict between being a housewife or a professional in the Mad Men future.
Overall this was another example of Mad Men at it’s best, interweaving multiple story lines with social commentary in a seamless and cinematically beautiful way. It’s sad to say that there are only two episode of Mad Men left this season so enjoy it while it lasts. Hopefully these last two weeks will be as amazing as this one.
This week’s episode was called “Christmas Waltz” but really could have been called “Hey remember me? I’m a character on Mad Men who hasn’t gotten much attention lately.” as the episode focused on Lane Pryce, the now seldom seen Harry Crane and the recently neglected Joan. There was even an appearance by the once regular character Paul Kinsey who has turned his devotions to Harikrishna.
I must admit I was a bit confused by some of this weeks elements and I’m not sure how much was my own failings, and how much was the complexities of Mad Men and their room of writers. First the episode starts with Lane talking to his British lawyer who informs him that he is in desperate straights financially and needs to come up with $8000, a hefty sum at the time. (More than a top-of-the-line Jaguar {$5600}) I couldn’t quite follow what the money was for (back taxes?), but it’s hardly important, and we see Lane’s desperation to make good on his debts while trying to avoid outright embezzlement. As the bonuses that he has concocted are delayed again and again, Lane finds himself trapped at episode’s end having already forged Don’s name for a check he now shouldn’t have had for another month. It will be interesting to see how this develops. Will Don ultimately be more upset that Pryce acted criminally desperate or that his British pride kept him from telling Don the truth of the matter and ask for help? I would expect the latter. 
This week’s next ultimately unimportant confusion for me was Don and Joan’s “Ali Khan” reference. Don has rescued Joan from the office after she has been officially “served” by her douchebag husband. After cutting a check for a brand new Jaguar to tool around in, Don and Joan find a bar in which to down a few drinks and wax nostalgic. The whole scene is oddly mixed with the music from the bar being realistically loud in the sense that it’s hard to hear Don and Joan’s conversation very well. What’s clear is their sexual tension but their flirtation is that of two people who know that their time has passed and they have reached a level of mutual respect and admiration for each other right down to Don attempting to set Joan up with the gentleman across the bar. Don, for his trouble, is greeted by an infuriated Megan at home who is just another in line trying to figure out where Don’s motivations are coming from these days. It seems she can handle his love for advertising, but can’t handle his new-found casual attitude towards work much better than Pete Campbell can.
The other major storyline of the week involved the aforementioned Season-Three-Era Crane/Kinsey centered drama. Kinsey’s only real talent apparently is recruiting for the Harikrishnas, something that doesn’t fulfill his soul. We learn that he has been in and out of every ad agency in town and his ultimate dream is settling in with his new love Lakshmi and writing for the up and coming TV serial Star Trek. He has turned to Harry for his television connections and hopes that he can get his script passed on. All of Kinsey’s heart-felt trust in Harry is misplaced as it is Crane who quickly double stabs him in the back. Lakshmi, played by an actress who will one day play the lead role in “The Juliette Lewis Story”, forces her way into Harry’s office in an attempt to sexually and physically blackmail Harry so that Kinsey will remain with the Harikrishnas. Unfortunately for poor Paul Kinsey he is getting played from all sides as Lakshmi only wants him for his recruiting talents and Harry shows his true cowardice by buying away his problems by sending Kinsey away to Los Angeles with false hopes, crushing both his dreams simultaneously.
Next week we should be getting more into the meat and potatoes of the season’s upcoming conclusion as we wait to see what lies in store for SCDP in 1967, and what goes better with steak and mashed than a stiff finger of Scotch?
3 out of 5 Grizzlies
Grizzly Bomb 