TiVo Lady

1960 Was Evil

Here's what I learned in the second episode of Mad Men, "Ladies Room."  In 1960, which was basically a leftover year more like the 1950's, this is how it was:

1. All men were unfaithful, screwing their way around the office.

2. All women tolerated this behavior, because they were so busy scheming and conniving to trap a man into marriage.

3. Everyone smoked, constantly.  Everyone drank, a lot.

4. Nobody really talked about anything.

Also, unacceptably weird things were considered completely normal, such as:

A. A little girl was playing by walking around with a plastic bag over her head.  Her mom scolded her, not for almost suffocating herself, but for leaving the mom's cleaning on the floor.

B. When a wife visited a shrink, the doctor called the husband later to tell him every single thing that the woman said.  So much for doctor-patient confidentiality.

Aren't you glad that there isn't, like, some giant, globe-sized time machine that can hurl the whole planet back into the year 1960?

If there were, we'd never, ever be watching a show like Big Love, that's for sure!  This week, "Kingdom Come," was very juicy, and it became clear that Margene is the sexual Bad Girl, Nicki is the Good Girl, and Barb, well, she's just no longer a girl.  Also becoming more and more reminiscent of The Sopranos, only with nutty, polygamous Mormons instead of corpulent, hypocritical Italians.

I don't know how the show can survive, dramatically, without Evil Roman to hate.  But he's been shot by the crazed-female duo from the even-more-insane polygamous sect headed by the Greens.  And it looked fatal to me, though maybe he'll just have a really long, really-TV-unrealistic recovery period. 

Then, there's Flight of the Conchords.  This week's episode, "Drive By," is all about prejudice.  The East Asian guy who sells fruit won't sell an apple and a banana to Germaine and Bret because he doesn't like their kind.  Meaning New Zealanders.  Their dense friend, Dave, explains the facts of American life to them.

"There's a lot of prejudism here.  Especially toward people like you, the English and whatnot, red coats, oppressors.  You're pretty much the most disliked race in this whole country."

"What about black people," Germaine asks.

"They don't like you either."

It turns out that the fruit guy was simply confusing the boys with Australians, the people he actually hates.  Meanwhile, the guys are watching a tape from home, with their favorite TV shows, including "The Dog Show," "What've You Done With My Hat?" and my favorite, "Albi, the Racist Dragon."  This is random;  also, hilarious.  Despite the absence of any Boomers whatsoever.

They sing, too.

My Theory of Beginnings

When a television show is in its infancy, the premiere episode and a few after that, there's tentative hopefulness in the writing that is often endearing.  It's almost as if the show is a child, with the same degree of wonder and insecurity and potential;  viewers are like that child's parents, willing to suspend judgment and harsh criticism as we wait to see if the tot is able to stand on his own.  Entourage had this sweet, naive hopefulness in its early episodes, as did Grey's Anatomy.  Both have outgrown that phase, however, and are now mostly just smug and self-satisfied, preening in their success but not getting better with age.

Flight of the Conchords is still in its early, glory days, and so is State of Mind.  And now, I've discovered another brand new show that has potential for greatness while young.  It's Mad Men, on AMC, and it's about ad executives on Madison Avenue in the early 1960's.  The show prevents you from looking back on those days with rose-colored glasses from the first minute:  it was a time when everybody wore suits, smoked, drank to excess, and routinely objectified women, discriminated against blacks and Jews and anybody different.  The times were not politically correct, nor were they pretty.  In fact, the hero of the show, Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm, is described as the most brilliant creative director alive, also a cigarette-puffing, drink-slogging, ladies man with a girlfriend, a young sexy secretary, a female client clearly bound for his bed, and a miffed, rejected former secretary.  The kicker at the end of the show depicts him returning home to Ossining, New York, where his blonde wife and two young children live.  Yikes!  The guy is a husband and dad, too!!

Other negatives:  women had to wear weird hairdos, like these, and dress in those funny long skirts.   Oh, and their main goal in working was to eventually find a husband who would support them so they'd never have to work again.  Actually, it's sort of like now, only they were proud to admit it then.  The woman with red hair, in the green dress, seemed familiar too.  And she is!!  She is Christina Hendricks, and she played the nutty stowaway, evil, lying manipulating pseudo-bride, Saffron, on the Best-Prematurely-Cancelled-Show-Ever, Firefly.

Finally, a note about this show's Reduced Boomer Count:  As far as I can tell, so far, there's only one Boomer in the cast, the vaguely-familiar John Slattery, who plays the Boss, Roger Sterling.  He was born in 1963, which means he's a barely-Boomer, even with all that white hair.  He's had supporting roles in television and movies, including Desperate Housewives, Ed, and Flags of Our Fathers, so he actually is familiar.  (Also, I saw him once in Washington, DC, while visiting my daughter at college;  he was staying at the same hotel while visiting his daughter.)