It finally came. The moment we’ve been waiting for, and speculating about all season (honestly, all series) arrived this week as President Kennedy was assassinated and the show came almost grinding to a halt in the wake. I have often pointed out that the show lacked a real Kennedy die-hard who would be crushed by the news, but this is Mad Men after all, and the show barely falters in pointing out that when the President is killed, its earth shattering for everyone involved.
Roger’s poor daughter, whose ceremony was doomed by fate from the moment the date was set, got married tonight, after throwing a bitch fit over whether Jane would be allowed at the wedding. Roger is still publicly willing to go to the bat for his wife, yet her growing backbone and her relative immaturity are privately starting to get to him, resulting in a cordial relationship with his ex wife and more frequent telephone conversations with Joan, his ex-mistress. I hoped tonight would provide a Roger-Don confrontation that might set them on the road to reconciliation, but it seems we shall have to wait at least one more week for that.
The confrontation we witnessed last week between Don and Betty, on the other hand, is still having repercussions, and may permanently affect their lives. Betty meets with Henry Francis again and he asks her to marry him. Betty was already contemplating leaving Don (as she very well should be) but was discouraged by her attorney due to the financial and personal implications of divorce. With another suitor ready to take care of her, those are a lot less daunting, and Betty now has a very real chance to get out of her long lifeless marriage. As to whether or not she will take the chance, I tend to think no, but the fact that I’m far from positive reminds me I’m watching great television. Betty could walk out, take the kids and leave Don alone, and that would be a very interesting way to end Season 3 (a more permanent version of Season 1’s ending, but still a powerful possibility). I don’t think that will happen, but the possibility is intriguing.
On another front, Pete has lost out to Cosgrove once and for all, and the lack of promotion leaves him alienated from Sterling-Cooper. He doesn’t want to go in, and he starts thinking about collecting his clients and placing a call to Duck. Trudy, always his moral guidance counselor, first advises him to stay loyal, but eventually comes to agree that leaving Sterling Cooper might be the best move. While Pete contemplates calling Duck, Duck is busy calling Peggy, with whom he’s been having an affair for the last several months. Things are boiling up, just as they tend to on Mad Men, in preparation for what will surely be an excellent season finale.
But before we get there, “The Grown-ups” lets us linger for a moment in one of the biggest shocks in American history. At times it seems the entire world has stopped, and the characters will spend the whole episode watching archival footage and forgetting about their plotlines. It would almost feel too trite to allow the history to overwhelm the storytelling if that wasn’t the exact effect the Kennedy Assassination had on the world. Instead, we see how these people react when the world around them is falling apart. Betty screams, cries, and goes running to the one man who really cares about her—and it isn’t her husband. Pete pouts and schemes to gain an upper hand in business. And Don, in a telling scene at the episode’s close, refuses to watch Kennedy’s funeral and instead goes into his office alone. The President may have died, and that may have deeply affected him (to the point where he pops one of Betty’s pills), but the specter of divorce haunts him much more deeply and personally than Kennedy’s demise. Don does love Betty, even if it is in a condescending, distant, none too fruitful way and he doesn’t want to lose her. She is the mother of his children, and she completes the perfect life he has been building for himself. Without Betty, Don may have to actually learn what kind of a man he truly wants to be, and may have to pursue something that approximates actual happiness rather than just appearing similar.
Grade: B
Notes:
-“I heard the church was packed.” “Those weren’t our guests.” It really sucks to have a wedding on the same day as a national tragedy.
-Betty’s favorite movie is Singin’ in the Rain. The woman clearly deserves to be loved.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Friday, October 30, 2009
Jordan's Review: 30 Rock, Season 4, Episode 3: Stone Mountain
This week’s 30 Rock had a lot of the problems that people often accredit to the show. It had a plotline about smug superior liberals, a large dash of Jenna, and an overabundance of celebrity cameos. However, “Stone Mountain” also had a fine heap of hilarious lines to counteract the somewhat heavy handed plotting tonight.
The A-plot is easily the worst offender. Liz’s ongoing quest to recruit a new cast member that is representative of “the real America” has lead her to San Francisco (in what Jack decries as “The People’s Gaypublic of Drugafornia”) and next she’s heading to Toronto, far from where Jack thinks the new recruit should be found. So, in a gamut that has rarely paid off for the show, Jack and Liz go off the reservation and to Stone Mountain, Georgia, near where Kenneth grew up (after his descendents left their original home in “Sexcriminalboat. Do you think that’s Cherokee?”).
There they find Fatty Fat’s Sandwich Ranch, a polite desk clerk, and a new comic played by guest star Jeff Dunham. The idea that Dunham’s style of “comedy” is even worth recognition by the show that remains the funniest thing on network television irks me, and his appearance on the show falls incredibly flat only partially because it was designed to. Liz’s repeated insistence that there is no “real America” and that everyone in the country is the same is the stuff liberals have been complaining about for over a year now, and her speeches come off as heavy handed and more than a little unnecessary. No one watches 30 Rock to be proselytized at, and when Fey goes off on a monologue about how liberals are Americans too, she should know she’s preaching to the choir. The only saving grace to the scene in which Liz tries to heckle Dunham out of becoming a cast member is that it ends with Jack literally decapitating his puppet, an act I’ve dreamed of often in recent weeks.
The B-plot centers around Jenna’s overly complicated relationship with the writers. It begins as an attempt to butter them up so they’ll give her better material (oh yeah, they still do a show!), then devolves into the writer’s quest to prank Jenna into leaving them alone, then further devolves into the writer’s attempt to butter her up so she’ll invite them to Gay Halloween. The quick turns of the plot are pretty weak, but the idea of Gay Halloween as a Mecca of sorts, and the return of Sacha from Jenna’s entourage provide laughs to sustain the story.
In the C-Plot, Tracy fears the “Rule of Three” after the man who inspired Pac-Man and a popular clogger/Huffington Post contributor both die (Tracy vows that, “I will eat a bowl of cherries and some ghost meat in his honor.”). This leads to the most consistently amusing storyline of the night as Tracy plots to ensure another celebrity dies first. He tries to kill Betty White (by calling her and yelling “Boo!”) and when that fails, he hopes to bludgeon Queen Latifah’s friend (Jimmy Fallon, in a pretty rote cameo that becomes wryly clever when he acknowledges the crappy guests he often has on his own show, vowing to kill his first guest, which will be a dog that plays soccer, if someone hasn’t died by then).
Looking at the episode objectively it is filled with three pretty unfunny plotlines and has a few overly long scenes that don’t deliver nearly enough laughs to warrant their length. This may be the weakest episode the show has done yet this season, but “Stone Mountain” still had enough hilarious moments to keep me generally happy throughout.
Grade: B-
Notes:
-“Stop trying to amuse yourself and start thinking about what makes actual human beings laugh!” Followed immediately by a pratfall from Lutz. This is a recurrent theme this season, that the show is out of touch with America. I’m not sure if its Tina Fey worrying this is the case or network tampering, but it tends to come off as smug and condescending, even when its as funny as that joke.
-“Orange and black decorations? Is this Halloween or Princeton Parents Weekend? I don’t know whether to be scared or proud of my cousin!” “Its Halloween sir.” “Proud it is!”
-The gag of everyone in Georgia looking like Kenneth also fell flat. Less of Jack McBrayer continues to be more.
-“This is going to be the scariest Princeton Parents Weekend Ever!”
-“I’m not going to be pushed aside and forgotten like that time at my sister’s funeral.”
-Lady airline pilots make Kenneth laugh.
-“At night The Chuckle Hut becomes The Laugh Factory, and that’s a comedy club!”
-“I gotta go somewhere where nothing will happen to me. Can you get me on Charlie Rose?”
“It’s a myth. Like going bald with dignity.”
-“Keep refreshing. Maybe Andy Dick has died in the last 20 seconds.”
-“Any arm pain? Shortness of breath? Plans to investigate corruption in Russia?” I love that all celebrities know, and fear, the “Rule of Three.”
-“Choir member, desert storm veteran, father of three. I made all that up, but you get my point.”
-“And some of them are skeevy dirtbags like the Dukes of Hazard, driving around like madmen. Children use those roads!”
-“All of god’s children are terrible.” A lovely moral, 30 Rock style.
-“What’s wrong Ken? That hatchet isn’t real, is it?”
The A-plot is easily the worst offender. Liz’s ongoing quest to recruit a new cast member that is representative of “the real America” has lead her to San Francisco (in what Jack decries as “The People’s Gaypublic of Drugafornia”) and next she’s heading to Toronto, far from where Jack thinks the new recruit should be found. So, in a gamut that has rarely paid off for the show, Jack and Liz go off the reservation and to Stone Mountain, Georgia, near where Kenneth grew up (after his descendents left their original home in “Sexcriminalboat. Do you think that’s Cherokee?”).
There they find Fatty Fat’s Sandwich Ranch, a polite desk clerk, and a new comic played by guest star Jeff Dunham. The idea that Dunham’s style of “comedy” is even worth recognition by the show that remains the funniest thing on network television irks me, and his appearance on the show falls incredibly flat only partially because it was designed to. Liz’s repeated insistence that there is no “real America” and that everyone in the country is the same is the stuff liberals have been complaining about for over a year now, and her speeches come off as heavy handed and more than a little unnecessary. No one watches 30 Rock to be proselytized at, and when Fey goes off on a monologue about how liberals are Americans too, she should know she’s preaching to the choir. The only saving grace to the scene in which Liz tries to heckle Dunham out of becoming a cast member is that it ends with Jack literally decapitating his puppet, an act I’ve dreamed of often in recent weeks.
The B-plot centers around Jenna’s overly complicated relationship with the writers. It begins as an attempt to butter them up so they’ll give her better material (oh yeah, they still do a show!), then devolves into the writer’s quest to prank Jenna into leaving them alone, then further devolves into the writer’s attempt to butter her up so she’ll invite them to Gay Halloween. The quick turns of the plot are pretty weak, but the idea of Gay Halloween as a Mecca of sorts, and the return of Sacha from Jenna’s entourage provide laughs to sustain the story.
In the C-Plot, Tracy fears the “Rule of Three” after the man who inspired Pac-Man and a popular clogger/Huffington Post contributor both die (Tracy vows that, “I will eat a bowl of cherries and some ghost meat in his honor.”). This leads to the most consistently amusing storyline of the night as Tracy plots to ensure another celebrity dies first. He tries to kill Betty White (by calling her and yelling “Boo!”) and when that fails, he hopes to bludgeon Queen Latifah’s friend (Jimmy Fallon, in a pretty rote cameo that becomes wryly clever when he acknowledges the crappy guests he often has on his own show, vowing to kill his first guest, which will be a dog that plays soccer, if someone hasn’t died by then).
Looking at the episode objectively it is filled with three pretty unfunny plotlines and has a few overly long scenes that don’t deliver nearly enough laughs to warrant their length. This may be the weakest episode the show has done yet this season, but “Stone Mountain” still had enough hilarious moments to keep me generally happy throughout.
Grade: B-
Notes:
-“Stop trying to amuse yourself and start thinking about what makes actual human beings laugh!” Followed immediately by a pratfall from Lutz. This is a recurrent theme this season, that the show is out of touch with America. I’m not sure if its Tina Fey worrying this is the case or network tampering, but it tends to come off as smug and condescending, even when its as funny as that joke.
-“Orange and black decorations? Is this Halloween or Princeton Parents Weekend? I don’t know whether to be scared or proud of my cousin!” “Its Halloween sir.” “Proud it is!”
-The gag of everyone in Georgia looking like Kenneth also fell flat. Less of Jack McBrayer continues to be more.
-“This is going to be the scariest Princeton Parents Weekend Ever!”
-“I’m not going to be pushed aside and forgotten like that time at my sister’s funeral.”
-Lady airline pilots make Kenneth laugh.
-“At night The Chuckle Hut becomes The Laugh Factory, and that’s a comedy club!”
-“I gotta go somewhere where nothing will happen to me. Can you get me on Charlie Rose?”
“It’s a myth. Like going bald with dignity.”
-“Keep refreshing. Maybe Andy Dick has died in the last 20 seconds.”
-“Any arm pain? Shortness of breath? Plans to investigate corruption in Russia?” I love that all celebrities know, and fear, the “Rule of Three.”
-“Choir member, desert storm veteran, father of three. I made all that up, but you get my point.”
-“And some of them are skeevy dirtbags like the Dukes of Hazard, driving around like madmen. Children use those roads!”
-“All of god’s children are terrible.” A lovely moral, 30 Rock style.
-“What’s wrong Ken? That hatchet isn’t real, is it?”
Jordan's Review: Community, Season 1, Episode 7: Introduction to Statistics
It was Halloween this week on Community, which satisfied my need for some holiday themed chicanery to help me pass my Thursday night. There’s something magical (if all to overdone) about the Halloween episode of a show. It gives you insight into the characters as you watch them dress up, and it generally allows shows to have a little fun with their own premise. “Introduction to Statistics” was more the former than the latter, but the laugh quotient in the episode hasn’t been this high in several weeks.
The main storyline tonight gives us a welcome break in the Jeff-Britta saga as Jeff courts his statistics teacher who notoriously doesn’t date students. Jeff tries to argue that he is older than her, and has no friends on campus, but unfortunately, the rest of the cast tend to show up at the worst moments, begging for Jeff’s help, and giving his teacher the chance to ask, “Are you like a court appointed guardian for these people?” Indeed, the inspired lunacy Jeff’s “friends” get into this week reminds me just how wacky this show can get, and how good it can be at it.
Annie, ever the over-achiever, is throwing a Dia De Los Muertos party for extra credit, and wants Jeff to show up because he’s popular, and her parties are prone to failure. While he tries to resist her tears (“This won’t work. Last time you tried this I saved a vile of your tears and I’ve been slowly building up an immunity”) he ends up agreeing to go to her party. There he encounters Britta, dressed as a squirrel to counteract the stereotype that women dress slutty for Halloween, Troy as Eddie Murphy, Abed as Batman, Shirley as harry Potter (whom everyone hilariously keeps mistaking for Urkel) and Peirce as The Beastmaster. The party leads to a sitcom cliché that always manages to make me laugh—an unlikely character gets a very powerful dose of drugs and bad trip antics ensue. Pierce’s trip leads to him cowering in a fort he created out of desks and chairs, and leads to the return of the always welcome Star Burns, so its pretty hysterical on the whole.
Shirley is busy plotting how to take vengeance on Jeff’s teacher for Britta, who is mostly ambivalent about the whole thing. This leads to another of the show’s now patented heartfelt moments as Shirley confesses her anger at the other woman stems from her ex-husband’s request that she give him her ring back. We also get a nice moment in which Pierce confronts his fear of death, only to be confronted by it and then saved by Abed’s Batman. On the whole, “Introduction to Statistics” is one of the weirder, and more hilarious, episodes the show has done yet.
Grade: A-
Notes:
-“Are you trying to be formidable with me?” “It worked on Pierce…” “Infomercials work on Pierce.”
-“Which is actually quite offensive to people familiar with Mexican Halloween as a sexual position.”
-“I was so unpopular during high school the crossing guard used to lure me into traffic.”
-I loved Pierce’s visions of Annie taunting him about his age. “Tell me about the Beatles, Pierce. Tell me about Woodstock. Tell me about Sputnik.”
-“Jeff, get over here! Pierce is going to kill himself and you’re the only one who can help!” “How do you know that?” “Is Jeff out there? He’s the only one who can help!”
-Abed’s Batman monologue at the end was the perfect amount of ridiculous.
-“It's like Grumpy Old Men, only not hilarious!”
The main storyline tonight gives us a welcome break in the Jeff-Britta saga as Jeff courts his statistics teacher who notoriously doesn’t date students. Jeff tries to argue that he is older than her, and has no friends on campus, but unfortunately, the rest of the cast tend to show up at the worst moments, begging for Jeff’s help, and giving his teacher the chance to ask, “Are you like a court appointed guardian for these people?” Indeed, the inspired lunacy Jeff’s “friends” get into this week reminds me just how wacky this show can get, and how good it can be at it.
Annie, ever the over-achiever, is throwing a Dia De Los Muertos party for extra credit, and wants Jeff to show up because he’s popular, and her parties are prone to failure. While he tries to resist her tears (“This won’t work. Last time you tried this I saved a vile of your tears and I’ve been slowly building up an immunity”) he ends up agreeing to go to her party. There he encounters Britta, dressed as a squirrel to counteract the stereotype that women dress slutty for Halloween, Troy as Eddie Murphy, Abed as Batman, Shirley as harry Potter (whom everyone hilariously keeps mistaking for Urkel) and Peirce as The Beastmaster. The party leads to a sitcom cliché that always manages to make me laugh—an unlikely character gets a very powerful dose of drugs and bad trip antics ensue. Pierce’s trip leads to him cowering in a fort he created out of desks and chairs, and leads to the return of the always welcome Star Burns, so its pretty hysterical on the whole.
Shirley is busy plotting how to take vengeance on Jeff’s teacher for Britta, who is mostly ambivalent about the whole thing. This leads to another of the show’s now patented heartfelt moments as Shirley confesses her anger at the other woman stems from her ex-husband’s request that she give him her ring back. We also get a nice moment in which Pierce confronts his fear of death, only to be confronted by it and then saved by Abed’s Batman. On the whole, “Introduction to Statistics” is one of the weirder, and more hilarious, episodes the show has done yet.
Grade: A-
Notes:
-“Are you trying to be formidable with me?” “It worked on Pierce…” “Infomercials work on Pierce.”
-“Which is actually quite offensive to people familiar with Mexican Halloween as a sexual position.”
-“I was so unpopular during high school the crossing guard used to lure me into traffic.”
-I loved Pierce’s visions of Annie taunting him about his age. “Tell me about the Beatles, Pierce. Tell me about Woodstock. Tell me about Sputnik.”
-“Jeff, get over here! Pierce is going to kill himself and you’re the only one who can help!” “How do you know that?” “Is Jeff out there? He’s the only one who can help!”
-Abed’s Batman monologue at the end was the perfect amount of ridiculous.
-“It's like Grumpy Old Men, only not hilarious!”
Monday, October 26, 2009
Jordan's Review: Dexter, Season 4, Episode 5: Dirty Harry
This week’s Dexter had exactly one plot point to parcel out, and wasted most of its 48 minute runtime avoiding it. The show always tends to tread water in the early episodes of the season (as I find myself saying on a weekly basis in these reviews), but few episodes have felt so burden with useless plotting as this one. To be fair, we did see the end to the pointless Vacation Murderers plotline tonight, but every other plot just seemed to recycle information we already knew, leading up to a conclusion that is supposedly shocking, but mostly just par for the course.
In the Angel and LaGuerta storyline, we’re reminded that there’s tension because they’re both cops, and the show reiterates that Maria went behind Angel’s back and reported their relationship. This is a huge “who cares” storyline, and is even more boring for how easily it will be resolved. La Guerta is ordered to transfer Angel, but he’s a cast member and something tells me he won’t be leaving the show. Even deeper down something tells me that I don’t care how this storyline progresses in the least. On another pretty rote note, Quinn is banging that reporter whose name I don’t care about again, leading to the most paltry exchange of the night, when reporter says, “I thought you said this was too complicated, you being a cop and me a reporter.” She might as well have said, “we’re star-crossed lovers! This tension caused by us being together should cause some pretty run of the mill drama!” To which he so boringly replied, “I like complicated.” Both of those characters are so flat and personality-lite I almost wish I could just fast forward through all of their scenes together. The writers, ostensibly realizing how boring those two are, throw in a nude scene for her every episode, as if that will spice things up again, but really, their conversation cuts any of the edge off the scene.
As I suspected last week, the show is determined to destroy an interesting plotline as it did tonight by killing off Lundy. His interactions with Deb were the one non-Dexter area of this show to be consistently entertaining, so of course he was killed off right when things started getting good. This show could really use Carradine’s wry wit these days, but instead they put his character in the ground and left Deb crying and alone. Watching Deb sob and say “I’m broken” is certainly a lot heavier handed, and a lot less compelling than the scenes we would have had if Lundy had lived (or at least been in life-threatening surgery as a result of the shooting). Alas, Frank Lundy has left us, and with his departure, I can say goodbye to the other Dexter character I really like.
Watching Dexter trail Trinity tonight should have been pulse-poundingly exciting, except that we know the show’s formula by now, and so knew that Dexter would not confront his new prey tonight. So Dexter tracked him, witnessed his most recent crime, and followed him home to discover that Trinity is a family man, just like Dexter only more successful in every way. This is a potentially interesting storyline, but it will likely end up going exactly how season three did, except in reverse: Dexter will try to learn how to be a family man from Trinity, only to realize that it doesn’t really work and have to kill Trinity. If I had faith in this show to plumb the depths of its dark potential, this episode would excite me as it set dexter up as the true lone wolf, standing outside Trinity’s house, watching him interact with his family in much more realistic fashion than Dexter can pull off. If the show had the edge I hope for, it would lead Dexter down a very dark path, either to his eventual capture, death, or to the breaking point at which he is forced to kill a member of his family.
Instead, I worry that the show moves inexorably toward a happy ending for all, which might not fit realistically into the pattern the show has created, but which will allow everyone to leave happy. This is not to say I have lost my faith in Dexter, nor that I doubt this season can become incredible in its latter half, but that I worry the show is too afraid to go darker. Regardless of its long term plans, it looks like we’re almost past the killing time phase of season four and on to what I hope will be the suspenseful, thematically rich portion that will redeem the weaker aspects of the season and remind us all why we watch Dexter and why we plan to continue watching it for a while yet.
Grade: B-
-There is no reason for this episode to be called “Dirty Harry” save for the fact that the show has yet to use that pun. And here I was hoping we would find out some dark secret from Harry’s past.
-Which reminds me, his character is still as useless as ever tonight, simply pointing out details that would have been better off being left unsaid. Showing us a picture of the security guard and his two kids is enough, we don’t need Harry there saying “he has two kids, just like the last victim.” Let us figure things out for ourselves and realize that Harry outlived his usefulness when there stopped being more backstory to fill in.
In the Angel and LaGuerta storyline, we’re reminded that there’s tension because they’re both cops, and the show reiterates that Maria went behind Angel’s back and reported their relationship. This is a huge “who cares” storyline, and is even more boring for how easily it will be resolved. La Guerta is ordered to transfer Angel, but he’s a cast member and something tells me he won’t be leaving the show. Even deeper down something tells me that I don’t care how this storyline progresses in the least. On another pretty rote note, Quinn is banging that reporter whose name I don’t care about again, leading to the most paltry exchange of the night, when reporter says, “I thought you said this was too complicated, you being a cop and me a reporter.” She might as well have said, “we’re star-crossed lovers! This tension caused by us being together should cause some pretty run of the mill drama!” To which he so boringly replied, “I like complicated.” Both of those characters are so flat and personality-lite I almost wish I could just fast forward through all of their scenes together. The writers, ostensibly realizing how boring those two are, throw in a nude scene for her every episode, as if that will spice things up again, but really, their conversation cuts any of the edge off the scene.
As I suspected last week, the show is determined to destroy an interesting plotline as it did tonight by killing off Lundy. His interactions with Deb were the one non-Dexter area of this show to be consistently entertaining, so of course he was killed off right when things started getting good. This show could really use Carradine’s wry wit these days, but instead they put his character in the ground and left Deb crying and alone. Watching Deb sob and say “I’m broken” is certainly a lot heavier handed, and a lot less compelling than the scenes we would have had if Lundy had lived (or at least been in life-threatening surgery as a result of the shooting). Alas, Frank Lundy has left us, and with his departure, I can say goodbye to the other Dexter character I really like.
Watching Dexter trail Trinity tonight should have been pulse-poundingly exciting, except that we know the show’s formula by now, and so knew that Dexter would not confront his new prey tonight. So Dexter tracked him, witnessed his most recent crime, and followed him home to discover that Trinity is a family man, just like Dexter only more successful in every way. This is a potentially interesting storyline, but it will likely end up going exactly how season three did, except in reverse: Dexter will try to learn how to be a family man from Trinity, only to realize that it doesn’t really work and have to kill Trinity. If I had faith in this show to plumb the depths of its dark potential, this episode would excite me as it set dexter up as the true lone wolf, standing outside Trinity’s house, watching him interact with his family in much more realistic fashion than Dexter can pull off. If the show had the edge I hope for, it would lead Dexter down a very dark path, either to his eventual capture, death, or to the breaking point at which he is forced to kill a member of his family.
Instead, I worry that the show moves inexorably toward a happy ending for all, which might not fit realistically into the pattern the show has created, but which will allow everyone to leave happy. This is not to say I have lost my faith in Dexter, nor that I doubt this season can become incredible in its latter half, but that I worry the show is too afraid to go darker. Regardless of its long term plans, it looks like we’re almost past the killing time phase of season four and on to what I hope will be the suspenseful, thematically rich portion that will redeem the weaker aspects of the season and remind us all why we watch Dexter and why we plan to continue watching it for a while yet.
Grade: B-
-There is no reason for this episode to be called “Dirty Harry” save for the fact that the show has yet to use that pun. And here I was hoping we would find out some dark secret from Harry’s past.
-Which reminds me, his character is still as useless as ever tonight, simply pointing out details that would have been better off being left unsaid. Showing us a picture of the security guard and his two kids is enough, we don’t need Harry there saying “he has two kids, just like the last victim.” Let us figure things out for ourselves and realize that Harry outlived his usefulness when there stopped being more backstory to fill in.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Jordan's Review: Mad Men, Season 3, Episode 11: The Gypsy and The Hobo
For the past few weeks, I have been lamenting the lack of Roger this season, and more specifically, the lack of development that left me wondering where his newfound hatred of Don and his matrimonial bliss left him as a character. “The Gypsy and The Hobo” goes a long way toward answering the latter part of that question, even if it does so only as a tangent to the episode’s central plot.
This tangent is born when Annabel Mathis sweeps into Sterling-Cooper offering the firm the business of dog food company Caldecott Farms if they can help her ditch the rep she has from making the food out of horse meat. She doesn’t want to change the company name, and she doesn’t want to change the product, but somehow she expects to convince people that using horse meat is perfectly fine. She suggests labeling the meat, as we do when we call pig meat pork or cow meat beef, but people refuse to forget that Caldecott Farms peddles in horse meat. Her plight mirrors that of the erstwhile Dick Whitman, yet he was willing to make sacrifices Annabel will not. In order to become something more societally acceptable, Dick Whitman did change his name and became Donald Draper; He also changed the product, from a son of a whore raised in abject poverty to an ex-football hero who hated his father. Yet, at the end of the day, Don Draper is still the same horse meat he’s always been in many ways.
That is all tangent to the real drama Annabel brings in her wake. It seems she and Roger were engaged in an epic romance in pre-war Paris, when he was an expatriate boxer and she his paramour. She recalls it like Casablanca, he, ever the cynic, points out that “That woman got on a plane with a man who was going to end World War II, not run her father’s dog food company.” Annabel left Roger for another man, and has regretted the decision ever since. As she tells him, heart-wrenchingly, “When I was burying this man, all I thought was that I would have rather had my heart broken by you every day. You were the one.” To which Roger coldly responds, “You weren’t.” He may have loved her once, but his heart now belongs to Jane. It seems he has truly fallen for her carefree, youthful ways (which I find as inexplicable as Don does, though a bit more believable after tonight). Roger initially came off as a philanderer, plain and simple. He seemed even more rampant and carefree in his infidelities than Don at the series’ opening, but I wonder now if that wasn’t a misconception. Sure, Roger cheated on Mona with Joan, but he loved her dearly (and clearly still does). And when he began cheating with Jane, he quickly left Mona to be with her outright. Given the opportunity to cheat on Jane, even considering how unlikely it was that she would find out, Roger refused tonight because, after all, he is a married man.
It seems that for all his world weary cynicism, Roger Sterling is still a hopeless romantic at heart. He has more of Bogie’s Rick in him than he would like, and he may have been spurned before, but he has found a woman he thinks he can truly love, and he plans to stick with her. Whether or not Jane is the dream he now believes her to be remains to be seen, but for the moment, he is content with what he thinks he has.
In a little apartment elsewhere in the city, his former dream girl (and, I would argue, still his perfect match) Joan is definitely not content with what she has. Greg has failed as a surgeon, and now it appears is failing at becoming a psychiatrist. As he whines to Joan, “You don’t know what it’s like to want something your whole life, to plan on it, to count on it and not get it.” The wrongness of Greg’s statement strikes the audience as fiercely as Joan strikes Greg with a vase in response to his tantrum. Joan knows exactly what it’s like to dream of becoming a comfortable house wife, to plan through years of work at Sterling Cooper to land the man of her dreams, to count on a marriage to remove her from working life, and then to get none of what she was looking for, waiting for, hoping for in return. Instead, she is trapped in a marriage with a man unfit for her brilliance, unmatched for her wit, and unable to provide the life she so desires. It is fortunate then (if morbidly so) that Greg has signed up to be a surgeon in the army. He’ll probably (not) just have a desk job, likely (not) in New York City, and if he ever gets deployed, it’ll only be to West Germany, or Vietnam if that’s still going on (spoiler alert: it will be).
This week’s main event, however, comes back at camp Draper. With Betty and the kids gone for the week, Don gets to put in some quality time with the new mistress. Suzanne is sad throughout their encounters, knowing that as much as she wants Don, she will never have him. And Don puts on his much practiced “doomed romantic” face and tells her that her tragedy is his as well. It’s an act we’ve seen before with Midge (as imdb tells me Rosmarie DeWitt’s character was called) with Rachel, and with Bobby. Don Draper likes his conquests to be a challenge, and to be challenging. Where Betty exists as the trophy wife, who does his chores, cooks his dinner, raises his children and generally makes his life go smoother, his mistresses make his life more complicated, add that sense of romantic mystery that he so desperately needs. But perhaps that is not all he needs. It seems Don might also thrive on the “doomed” aspect of his conquests—each of them wants him, as he wants them, but all parties involved know there is an expiration date (except Rachel, who came closest to winning his heart and was willing to accept no less). Don may want these women, but he may also want the freedom that comes along with a fleeting affair.
Don’s mystery, and a bit more of his freedom are chipped away when he returns home (about to whisk Suzanne away for a few days) to find Betty waiting, and armed with all of her new information. She knows he was Dick Whitman, she knows he was previously married to Anna Draper, and she knows that he has a brother named Adam. Don has never been quite so craven as in the moment that he discovers his past has been laid bare for his wife whom has always been a creature he sought to protect from the evils of the world. He cultivated Betty’s naivety even as he hated it about her, but the walls built around the man who calls himself Don Draper shattered as soon as Betty asked him to open that drawer. “I can explain” he meekly, repeatedly protests, but Betty knows of his facility at deception, his ability to sell what needs to be sold and round off the sharp edges and she will have none of it. What she gets instead, is the truth. Don looks longingly out the window of the kitchen, to where Suzanne and his freedom lie, but Betty sees this, and understands Don better than ever before, asking, “Are you thinking of what to say or are you just looking at that door?” Don knows that what freedom he had is gone, at least for now, and instead tells Betty of his past. He explains that he assumed the identity of a dead soldier, stole his reputation, divorced his wife (but only three months before marrying Betty) and became the man he wanted by shaping his personality himself. After he explains it, Betty pointedly asks him, “What would you do if you were me? Would you love you?” She asks this, at least partially because she has been taking her guidance from Don for most of her adult life, but more painful is the realization that no, Don would not love himself. He has never loved himself, and that is what has made it so easy for him to pretend to be what he so desired.
So his affair with Suzanne comes to a halt (At least for now, but something tells me permanently). She takes their separation as par for the course, heartbroken but prepared, and asks him, as only she would, if he is ok. Of course, he is far from ok, but the knowledge that she cares provides some cold comfort to Don, while simultaneously driving deeper the knife of their separation. Suzanne cared about him, and he cared about her, and that is over now. Perhaps that’s what Don always wanted, but he was not ready yet, and their separation stings him as well. The episode ends with Sally and Bobby (fuck New bobby) trick or treating as the titular gypsy and hobo. At the first house they reach, the man who answers recognizes each of their costumes instantly and rewards them. Then he looks at Don and asks “who are you supposed to be?” That is the question at the center of Mad Men. Don Draper does not know who he is, or who he is supposed to be, and nor do any of the people around them, and so they struggle, day in and day out, to fit into the time and place they are forced to, and to fit more comfortably in their own skin.
Grade: A-
Notes:
-Mr. Hooker has arranged the secretaries alphabetically.” “By cup size?” “well I know where you’d be sitting…” Ah, Roger and Joan. So perfect together.
-“Look at you figuring things out for yourself.” Both are too proper to directly engage each other while they are married (though Roger less so in Joan’s case), yet their feelings for each other are clearly still present, as is their aptitude for banter.
-“When people are protesting, I am on board!”
This tangent is born when Annabel Mathis sweeps into Sterling-Cooper offering the firm the business of dog food company Caldecott Farms if they can help her ditch the rep she has from making the food out of horse meat. She doesn’t want to change the company name, and she doesn’t want to change the product, but somehow she expects to convince people that using horse meat is perfectly fine. She suggests labeling the meat, as we do when we call pig meat pork or cow meat beef, but people refuse to forget that Caldecott Farms peddles in horse meat. Her plight mirrors that of the erstwhile Dick Whitman, yet he was willing to make sacrifices Annabel will not. In order to become something more societally acceptable, Dick Whitman did change his name and became Donald Draper; He also changed the product, from a son of a whore raised in abject poverty to an ex-football hero who hated his father. Yet, at the end of the day, Don Draper is still the same horse meat he’s always been in many ways.
That is all tangent to the real drama Annabel brings in her wake. It seems she and Roger were engaged in an epic romance in pre-war Paris, when he was an expatriate boxer and she his paramour. She recalls it like Casablanca, he, ever the cynic, points out that “That woman got on a plane with a man who was going to end World War II, not run her father’s dog food company.” Annabel left Roger for another man, and has regretted the decision ever since. As she tells him, heart-wrenchingly, “When I was burying this man, all I thought was that I would have rather had my heart broken by you every day. You were the one.” To which Roger coldly responds, “You weren’t.” He may have loved her once, but his heart now belongs to Jane. It seems he has truly fallen for her carefree, youthful ways (which I find as inexplicable as Don does, though a bit more believable after tonight). Roger initially came off as a philanderer, plain and simple. He seemed even more rampant and carefree in his infidelities than Don at the series’ opening, but I wonder now if that wasn’t a misconception. Sure, Roger cheated on Mona with Joan, but he loved her dearly (and clearly still does). And when he began cheating with Jane, he quickly left Mona to be with her outright. Given the opportunity to cheat on Jane, even considering how unlikely it was that she would find out, Roger refused tonight because, after all, he is a married man.
It seems that for all his world weary cynicism, Roger Sterling is still a hopeless romantic at heart. He has more of Bogie’s Rick in him than he would like, and he may have been spurned before, but he has found a woman he thinks he can truly love, and he plans to stick with her. Whether or not Jane is the dream he now believes her to be remains to be seen, but for the moment, he is content with what he thinks he has.
In a little apartment elsewhere in the city, his former dream girl (and, I would argue, still his perfect match) Joan is definitely not content with what she has. Greg has failed as a surgeon, and now it appears is failing at becoming a psychiatrist. As he whines to Joan, “You don’t know what it’s like to want something your whole life, to plan on it, to count on it and not get it.” The wrongness of Greg’s statement strikes the audience as fiercely as Joan strikes Greg with a vase in response to his tantrum. Joan knows exactly what it’s like to dream of becoming a comfortable house wife, to plan through years of work at Sterling Cooper to land the man of her dreams, to count on a marriage to remove her from working life, and then to get none of what she was looking for, waiting for, hoping for in return. Instead, she is trapped in a marriage with a man unfit for her brilliance, unmatched for her wit, and unable to provide the life she so desires. It is fortunate then (if morbidly so) that Greg has signed up to be a surgeon in the army. He’ll probably (not) just have a desk job, likely (not) in New York City, and if he ever gets deployed, it’ll only be to West Germany, or Vietnam if that’s still going on (spoiler alert: it will be).
This week’s main event, however, comes back at camp Draper. With Betty and the kids gone for the week, Don gets to put in some quality time with the new mistress. Suzanne is sad throughout their encounters, knowing that as much as she wants Don, she will never have him. And Don puts on his much practiced “doomed romantic” face and tells her that her tragedy is his as well. It’s an act we’ve seen before with Midge (as imdb tells me Rosmarie DeWitt’s character was called) with Rachel, and with Bobby. Don Draper likes his conquests to be a challenge, and to be challenging. Where Betty exists as the trophy wife, who does his chores, cooks his dinner, raises his children and generally makes his life go smoother, his mistresses make his life more complicated, add that sense of romantic mystery that he so desperately needs. But perhaps that is not all he needs. It seems Don might also thrive on the “doomed” aspect of his conquests—each of them wants him, as he wants them, but all parties involved know there is an expiration date (except Rachel, who came closest to winning his heart and was willing to accept no less). Don may want these women, but he may also want the freedom that comes along with a fleeting affair.
Don’s mystery, and a bit more of his freedom are chipped away when he returns home (about to whisk Suzanne away for a few days) to find Betty waiting, and armed with all of her new information. She knows he was Dick Whitman, she knows he was previously married to Anna Draper, and she knows that he has a brother named Adam. Don has never been quite so craven as in the moment that he discovers his past has been laid bare for his wife whom has always been a creature he sought to protect from the evils of the world. He cultivated Betty’s naivety even as he hated it about her, but the walls built around the man who calls himself Don Draper shattered as soon as Betty asked him to open that drawer. “I can explain” he meekly, repeatedly protests, but Betty knows of his facility at deception, his ability to sell what needs to be sold and round off the sharp edges and she will have none of it. What she gets instead, is the truth. Don looks longingly out the window of the kitchen, to where Suzanne and his freedom lie, but Betty sees this, and understands Don better than ever before, asking, “Are you thinking of what to say or are you just looking at that door?” Don knows that what freedom he had is gone, at least for now, and instead tells Betty of his past. He explains that he assumed the identity of a dead soldier, stole his reputation, divorced his wife (but only three months before marrying Betty) and became the man he wanted by shaping his personality himself. After he explains it, Betty pointedly asks him, “What would you do if you were me? Would you love you?” She asks this, at least partially because she has been taking her guidance from Don for most of her adult life, but more painful is the realization that no, Don would not love himself. He has never loved himself, and that is what has made it so easy for him to pretend to be what he so desired.
So his affair with Suzanne comes to a halt (At least for now, but something tells me permanently). She takes their separation as par for the course, heartbroken but prepared, and asks him, as only she would, if he is ok. Of course, he is far from ok, but the knowledge that she cares provides some cold comfort to Don, while simultaneously driving deeper the knife of their separation. Suzanne cared about him, and he cared about her, and that is over now. Perhaps that’s what Don always wanted, but he was not ready yet, and their separation stings him as well. The episode ends with Sally and Bobby (fuck New bobby) trick or treating as the titular gypsy and hobo. At the first house they reach, the man who answers recognizes each of their costumes instantly and rewards them. Then he looks at Don and asks “who are you supposed to be?” That is the question at the center of Mad Men. Don Draper does not know who he is, or who he is supposed to be, and nor do any of the people around them, and so they struggle, day in and day out, to fit into the time and place they are forced to, and to fit more comfortably in their own skin.
Grade: A-
Notes:
-Mr. Hooker has arranged the secretaries alphabetically.” “By cup size?” “well I know where you’d be sitting…” Ah, Roger and Joan. So perfect together.
-“Look at you figuring things out for yourself.” Both are too proper to directly engage each other while they are married (though Roger less so in Joan’s case), yet their feelings for each other are clearly still present, as is their aptitude for banter.
-“When people are protesting, I am on board!”
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Jordan's Review: Dollhouse, Season 2, Episode 4: Belonging
This week Fox announced that it will not be airing Dollhouse during the November sweeps, as it tries to woo advertising dollars its way. Instead, those of you who are home Friday nights and looking for some challenging, dark, complex, and excellent television will see reruns of House and Bones (neither of which I watch, and frankly, neither of which have this show’s potential for layered greatness). This is a tragedy, as it makes the show’s cancellation all the more inevitable. Fox currently plans to burn off the next six episodes in two hour blocks over the month of December. The final three of the order will air, but it has not yet been announced when. All of this is prologue to an analysis (which I warn may get a bit long) of what may be the finest episode the show has done yet. “Belonging” gives us important insights into almost all of the major characters and pushes them to places most never thought they would go. Because of this, I would like to break the review down by character, starting, of course, with the episode’s center.
Sierra: Last season’s “Needs” told us that Sierra (formerly Priya) had been forced into the Dollhouse against her will by the nefarious and wealthy Nolan, whom she apparently rejected. Tonight’s episode shows us how something that is so antithetical to the Dollhouse’s alleged mission was allowed to take place. We see Priya as an earthy craftswoman, peddling her wears on Venice Beach and being wooed (none too smoothly) by the shady Nolan, who constantly buys and praises her paintings. He even throws her a show, where he has hired Echo and Victor to be random art critics who can praise Priya and talk him up. This is all by way of seducing her, which he mangles, becoming increasingly desperate and violent as she tells him she’ll never love him. Which leads to the phenomenal cut of Sierra locked in a passionate embrace with Nolan, heartbroken to have to leave him. As she does, he takes a picture to remember her by, and throws it in a drawer that is full of them. Nolan has been using Sierra for over a year now, after drugging her to make her appear insane and tricking the Dollhouse into “helping” her. This episode also allows the real Priya to be put up against Nolan, where she kills him, just as the bastard deserves. She also learns tonight, consciously for the first time, that she is in love with Victor, a pure, trusting, caring love that shakes her to her core. As she tortures Nolan, she explains, “I love him so much more than I hate you.” At episode’s end, Priya still has to be wiped and returned to a life of slavery and prostitution she never asked for, but at least when she walks down the stairs, she has Victor waiting for her, and when they sleep at night, it is in the same pod.
Adelle: DeWitt has always been one of the most compelling characters the show has to offer—cold, hard, and seemingly amoral she runs the Dollhouse with an iron fist, if only so she can exert her own strong ethical code over her surroundings. Adelle has never been as unfeeling as she wants people to believe; she is a woman with a strong ethical code who has been, as she says, morally compromised. She attempts to do the right thing in this episode, confronting Nolan and depriving him of contact with Sierra, yet her attempt at righteousness is quickly undermined by Keith Carradine’s Rossum higher-up Mr. Harding, who assures her that she will run the Dollhouse as they tell her because, “you won’t like the early retirement plan.” Pushed up against a line she has promised never to cross, Adelle breaks and gives in to her superiors wishes. She has pledged to protect the people under her care, and has made many a self-righteous speech about how she is doing the right thing, yet when push comes to shove, Adelle abandons her ethics entirely and agrees to give off a human being to appease her client and her superiors.
Topher: In arguably the most interesting character arc the series has offered yet, Topher began as a glib, amoral wunderkind who saw the Dolls under his care as little more than science experiments. As DeWitt coldly points out when Topher resists imprinting Sierra for the last time, “You’ll do it because you must. The cold reality is that everyone was chosen here because their morality has been compromised. Except you. You were chosen because you have no morality.” She dispassionately reminds him that he has always seen the Dolls as “new toys” a fact that is displayed when we see, in flashback, his excitement over Sierra’s schizophrenia. What an experiment she will be. Yet Topher has grown over the course of the series, and “Belonging” gives him his first real ethical quandary. When faced with giving off a woman to a disgusting, murderous, violent rapist, Topher reaches his limits and takes a stand. He imprints Priya as her original self and tells her what has been done to her. He arms her with the knowledge to destroy Nolan and looses her on the monster himself. He of course did not think that his actions could lead to Nolan’s death, and as Boyd points out to him, his first brush with having a conscience did not go well, but we have now seen that Topher is developing a system of morality, and unlike Adelle, he will not be so quick to compromise it in the face of authority. As Adelle tells him, “If you are starting to develop pangs of conscience, you may comfort yourself that you had no choice.” In Topher’s mind, for the first time, he didn’t have a choice. He knew what the right thing was and he did it, in spite of potential consequences. And, at the episode's end, as Topher put Sierra back to sleep, he found himself truly awake for the first time.
Boyd: We have known since the series began that Boyd was an ex-cop with moral quandaries about working at the Dollhouse. He has seemed like the good guy in a den of evil, a more cynical Ballard, perhaps, but with his heart and his ethics in a similar place. Tonight gives us several inclinations we may have been wrong. For one thing, Adelle reminds us that everyone in her employ has been morally compromised in some way. Then there’s the exchange after Nolan’s death when Boyd tells Topher, “You’re a Doctor, you know how to dissect a body.” Topher, a little terrified, responds, “That was in school. And why do you?” More important than even that is Boyd’s call to an old friend The Goose. We don’t know what his history is yet, but I hope we get a chance to find out (while admittedly, fearing that he may become another Shepherd Book, a mysterious character from Firefly whose past was never explored due to cancellation).
Victor: His love for Sierra has been a known quantity for a long time, though its development tonight takes some adorable turns. When he sees Sierra painting dark pictures with black paint, he tries to wash the paint down the drain in the showers, so she can’t be sad anymore. This leads to an adorable moment between the two as they paint their faces and play around. Yet when Sierra playfully calls Victor an Indian Chief, he glitches, again to his past in the military, and collapses, begging “I don’t want to be in charge.” We knew before he had a dark past in the military, but now it seems he was a failed leader and that is what led him to the Dollhouse. He was so scarred by what he had done while in charge that he was willing to give up control of even his own body to escape the horror of what he had done.
Echo: “Belonging” is an Echo-lite episode, which (not always purposefully) often means its one of the stronger ones. Yet Echo’s developments tonight are important. She points out Sierra’s paintings to Topher (he humorously refuses to hang it on his nearly empty fridge) and puts him on the track of Nolan. But more importantly, Boyd finds a journal she has been keeping, and writing on her pod to remind her who she is and what she’s doing. Echo plays dumb when he confronts her, but he knowingly ,almost fearfully asks, “Echo…when did you learn how to lie?” She has become self possessed and is determined to awaken all of the Actives before a cataclysmic event occurs. She has even saved an access card, wrapped in a piece of paper that reads “For the storm.” Echo reads and writes of her life in secret, much like many slaves in the antebellum period, and has seemingly formed a secret community with Victor and Sierra. While she plots and remembers in her journal, they illicitly bunk together in the same pod. She wants everyone to have gained consciousness before the “bad things” come, but as Boyd reminds her, “Some people are not ready to wake up.”
Dollhouse at its best is an often squirm inducing look at the dark side of humanity, populated with compromised characters who are committing morally repugnant acts on a daily basis “because they must.” Adelle has yet to awaken to the choice she has in the matter, to her ability to fight the seemingly insurmountable odds, but Topher has. Echo has. And even Ballard (absent tonight) knows that in the face of an enemy that cannot be defeated, you can still choose to stand and fight. As each character grows toward this realization, and toward the very difficult road ahead, paved by their previous indiscretions and outright acts of evil, they develop into some of the most compelling, layered, and imminently watchable television characters in recent memory.
Grade: A
Notes:
-Keith Carradine was excellent and quietly menacing as Mr. Harding. I hope he returns.
-“You’re taking matters into your own hands.” “They’re in my shirt.”
-Sierra tries to take Victor to the treatment with her. Their love is so pure!
“Thanks for the treatment, shaggy.” “No problem, can’t remember your name today.” My how Topher has grown, and also, the look of disbelief Adelle shoots him here is hilarious.
-“Do you know where you are?” “I’m in hell.” “You’re in Los Angeles. I understand the mix up.”
-“I woke up from a nightmare, only to live in one. Are we happy here?” “I…you…most of you…I have no idea.” This is the first time Topher has ever even thought of that, and the realization pains him.
-Sierra asks Topher to permanently delete this day from her when she reawakens, and asks him “This secret we have. Can you keep it?” Topher, now wiser from his experience responds, “I can keep it, but I don’t know if I can live with it.”
Sierra: Last season’s “Needs” told us that Sierra (formerly Priya) had been forced into the Dollhouse against her will by the nefarious and wealthy Nolan, whom she apparently rejected. Tonight’s episode shows us how something that is so antithetical to the Dollhouse’s alleged mission was allowed to take place. We see Priya as an earthy craftswoman, peddling her wears on Venice Beach and being wooed (none too smoothly) by the shady Nolan, who constantly buys and praises her paintings. He even throws her a show, where he has hired Echo and Victor to be random art critics who can praise Priya and talk him up. This is all by way of seducing her, which he mangles, becoming increasingly desperate and violent as she tells him she’ll never love him. Which leads to the phenomenal cut of Sierra locked in a passionate embrace with Nolan, heartbroken to have to leave him. As she does, he takes a picture to remember her by, and throws it in a drawer that is full of them. Nolan has been using Sierra for over a year now, after drugging her to make her appear insane and tricking the Dollhouse into “helping” her. This episode also allows the real Priya to be put up against Nolan, where she kills him, just as the bastard deserves. She also learns tonight, consciously for the first time, that she is in love with Victor, a pure, trusting, caring love that shakes her to her core. As she tortures Nolan, she explains, “I love him so much more than I hate you.” At episode’s end, Priya still has to be wiped and returned to a life of slavery and prostitution she never asked for, but at least when she walks down the stairs, she has Victor waiting for her, and when they sleep at night, it is in the same pod.
Adelle: DeWitt has always been one of the most compelling characters the show has to offer—cold, hard, and seemingly amoral she runs the Dollhouse with an iron fist, if only so she can exert her own strong ethical code over her surroundings. Adelle has never been as unfeeling as she wants people to believe; she is a woman with a strong ethical code who has been, as she says, morally compromised. She attempts to do the right thing in this episode, confronting Nolan and depriving him of contact with Sierra, yet her attempt at righteousness is quickly undermined by Keith Carradine’s Rossum higher-up Mr. Harding, who assures her that she will run the Dollhouse as they tell her because, “you won’t like the early retirement plan.” Pushed up against a line she has promised never to cross, Adelle breaks and gives in to her superiors wishes. She has pledged to protect the people under her care, and has made many a self-righteous speech about how she is doing the right thing, yet when push comes to shove, Adelle abandons her ethics entirely and agrees to give off a human being to appease her client and her superiors.
Topher: In arguably the most interesting character arc the series has offered yet, Topher began as a glib, amoral wunderkind who saw the Dolls under his care as little more than science experiments. As DeWitt coldly points out when Topher resists imprinting Sierra for the last time, “You’ll do it because you must. The cold reality is that everyone was chosen here because their morality has been compromised. Except you. You were chosen because you have no morality.” She dispassionately reminds him that he has always seen the Dolls as “new toys” a fact that is displayed when we see, in flashback, his excitement over Sierra’s schizophrenia. What an experiment she will be. Yet Topher has grown over the course of the series, and “Belonging” gives him his first real ethical quandary. When faced with giving off a woman to a disgusting, murderous, violent rapist, Topher reaches his limits and takes a stand. He imprints Priya as her original self and tells her what has been done to her. He arms her with the knowledge to destroy Nolan and looses her on the monster himself. He of course did not think that his actions could lead to Nolan’s death, and as Boyd points out to him, his first brush with having a conscience did not go well, but we have now seen that Topher is developing a system of morality, and unlike Adelle, he will not be so quick to compromise it in the face of authority. As Adelle tells him, “If you are starting to develop pangs of conscience, you may comfort yourself that you had no choice.” In Topher’s mind, for the first time, he didn’t have a choice. He knew what the right thing was and he did it, in spite of potential consequences. And, at the episode's end, as Topher put Sierra back to sleep, he found himself truly awake for the first time.
Boyd: We have known since the series began that Boyd was an ex-cop with moral quandaries about working at the Dollhouse. He has seemed like the good guy in a den of evil, a more cynical Ballard, perhaps, but with his heart and his ethics in a similar place. Tonight gives us several inclinations we may have been wrong. For one thing, Adelle reminds us that everyone in her employ has been morally compromised in some way. Then there’s the exchange after Nolan’s death when Boyd tells Topher, “You’re a Doctor, you know how to dissect a body.” Topher, a little terrified, responds, “That was in school. And why do you?” More important than even that is Boyd’s call to an old friend The Goose. We don’t know what his history is yet, but I hope we get a chance to find out (while admittedly, fearing that he may become another Shepherd Book, a mysterious character from Firefly whose past was never explored due to cancellation).
Victor: His love for Sierra has been a known quantity for a long time, though its development tonight takes some adorable turns. When he sees Sierra painting dark pictures with black paint, he tries to wash the paint down the drain in the showers, so she can’t be sad anymore. This leads to an adorable moment between the two as they paint their faces and play around. Yet when Sierra playfully calls Victor an Indian Chief, he glitches, again to his past in the military, and collapses, begging “I don’t want to be in charge.” We knew before he had a dark past in the military, but now it seems he was a failed leader and that is what led him to the Dollhouse. He was so scarred by what he had done while in charge that he was willing to give up control of even his own body to escape the horror of what he had done.
Echo: “Belonging” is an Echo-lite episode, which (not always purposefully) often means its one of the stronger ones. Yet Echo’s developments tonight are important. She points out Sierra’s paintings to Topher (he humorously refuses to hang it on his nearly empty fridge) and puts him on the track of Nolan. But more importantly, Boyd finds a journal she has been keeping, and writing on her pod to remind her who she is and what she’s doing. Echo plays dumb when he confronts her, but he knowingly ,almost fearfully asks, “Echo…when did you learn how to lie?” She has become self possessed and is determined to awaken all of the Actives before a cataclysmic event occurs. She has even saved an access card, wrapped in a piece of paper that reads “For the storm.” Echo reads and writes of her life in secret, much like many slaves in the antebellum period, and has seemingly formed a secret community with Victor and Sierra. While she plots and remembers in her journal, they illicitly bunk together in the same pod. She wants everyone to have gained consciousness before the “bad things” come, but as Boyd reminds her, “Some people are not ready to wake up.”
Dollhouse at its best is an often squirm inducing look at the dark side of humanity, populated with compromised characters who are committing morally repugnant acts on a daily basis “because they must.” Adelle has yet to awaken to the choice she has in the matter, to her ability to fight the seemingly insurmountable odds, but Topher has. Echo has. And even Ballard (absent tonight) knows that in the face of an enemy that cannot be defeated, you can still choose to stand and fight. As each character grows toward this realization, and toward the very difficult road ahead, paved by their previous indiscretions and outright acts of evil, they develop into some of the most compelling, layered, and imminently watchable television characters in recent memory.
Grade: A
Notes:
-Keith Carradine was excellent and quietly menacing as Mr. Harding. I hope he returns.
-“You’re taking matters into your own hands.” “They’re in my shirt.”
-Sierra tries to take Victor to the treatment with her. Their love is so pure!
“Thanks for the treatment, shaggy.” “No problem, can’t remember your name today.” My how Topher has grown, and also, the look of disbelief Adelle shoots him here is hilarious.
-“Do you know where you are?” “I’m in hell.” “You’re in Los Angeles. I understand the mix up.”
-“I woke up from a nightmare, only to live in one. Are we happy here?” “I…you…most of you…I have no idea.” This is the first time Topher has ever even thought of that, and the realization pains him.
-Sierra asks Topher to permanently delete this day from her when she reawakens, and asks him “This secret we have. Can you keep it?” Topher, now wiser from his experience responds, “I can keep it, but I don’t know if I can live with it.”
Friday, October 23, 2009
Jordan's Review: 30 Rock, Season 4, Episode 2: Into the Crevasse
It was inevitable that Liz’s suddenly popular “that’s a deal breaker, ladies!” catchphrase from last year would pop up at some point during season four. What was surprising is that it was placed on bookshelves between “The Cigarette Diet” by Dr. Spaceman, and “From Peanut to President,” the biography Jack’s father promised to finish if he got that kidney he needed. It was also imminently enjoyable to watch all of the men in Liz’s life have their own love lives breakdown due to her (often ridiculous) romantic advice.
Its slightly unfortunate that this plotline got sidetracked in the land of sitcom clichés when Tracy decided to move in with Liz (commenting along the way that, “A book hasn’t caused me this much trouble since Where’s Waldo? got lost in that barber shop pole factory!”), but in true 30 Rock fashion, the joke became funny again when no one blinked at Tracy answering Liz’s phone.
More focus tonight is dedicated to the return of the always welcome Will Arnett as Devon Banks, Jack’s corporate rival. It seems Devon has ingratiated himself with the Obama Administration (by gossiping with Sasha and Malia) and is now chairing a hearing looking at GE’s misuse of corporate money (including a big gay Cabaret themed Halloween party on Fire Island, thrown by Banks himself). Banks forces GE into financial ruin, which leads Jack to the writers of TGS for a brainstorming session. Jack isn’t asking much, as he say, “All I need from you is one idea as good as the lightbulb.” The brainstorming session quickly devolves, from an idea for a giant microwave on wheels to the accidental recreation of a Pontiac Aztek, and Jack is forced to do what he has sworn he would never do—take a bailout, which he sees as corporate welfare.
In largely unnecessary B and C-plots, Jenna goes to Iceland for a role as a “moonologist” in a werewolf movie, and in one of the most predictable jokes in recent memory squanders the one minute of nightfall the crew has by forgetting which hand to hold a flashlight in, while Kenneth adopts a bunch of puppies and offloads them on Tracy. As usual Jenna is useless, and Kenneth is misplaced as a character who can head up his own story. Jack McBrayer is hysterical, and Kenneth is a great character, but he was always meant to be a bit player, a side character who supported the leads in zany ways, and he continues to be best served in a smaller role. I did however like his cameo in the microwave ad from the 50s, perpetuating the subtle joke that Kenneth is exceedingly old (he had that parrot for 60 years, after all) and ending with Liz asking, “wait, is that a thing that happened?” Only 30 Rock could pull off a joke about the microwave craze of the late 50s.
The episode has an odd, but amusing resolution in which Liz allows Tracy, who has procured her life rights, to make a porno out of her life. Ridiculous? Yes. But also very funny. Looking at the episode objectively, it had more weak storylines than strong ones, but any time Will Arnett and Alec Baldwin can engage in a “talking like this” contest that gets a little too gay while Tracy brings a reef shark along to Liz’s, I’ll be more than willing to let the lamer storylines roll off of me and revel in the hilarity that takes place between them.
Grade: B
Notes:
-Jack’s blurb for Liz’s book: “Lemon numbers among my employees.”
-Before going to the hearing, Jack places a JC Penny sticker on his tie to make it look like he’s making sacrifices. Awesome.
-In Kenneth-land, Big Brother isn’t a charity, but a group of people that monitors others to ensure they’re behaving properly.
-“Let’s behave like adults here.” “Liz Lemon, you booger face! I’m going to kill you with a bazooka!”
-Banks brought his own gavel from home.
-“As my mom would say, ‘You can’t eat love.’ And as my mom’s friend Ron would say, ‘The donkey died. You’re the donkey now Kenneth.’”
-Tracy thinks its “too soon” to mention “Thriller.”
-“I could’ve had any ambassadorship I wanted. Even to the world’s gayest country: Ireland!”
-“Now that we’re all up, do you want to talk about the elephant in the room?” “No! I don’t even know why you brought that.”
Its slightly unfortunate that this plotline got sidetracked in the land of sitcom clichés when Tracy decided to move in with Liz (commenting along the way that, “A book hasn’t caused me this much trouble since Where’s Waldo? got lost in that barber shop pole factory!”), but in true 30 Rock fashion, the joke became funny again when no one blinked at Tracy answering Liz’s phone.
More focus tonight is dedicated to the return of the always welcome Will Arnett as Devon Banks, Jack’s corporate rival. It seems Devon has ingratiated himself with the Obama Administration (by gossiping with Sasha and Malia) and is now chairing a hearing looking at GE’s misuse of corporate money (including a big gay Cabaret themed Halloween party on Fire Island, thrown by Banks himself). Banks forces GE into financial ruin, which leads Jack to the writers of TGS for a brainstorming session. Jack isn’t asking much, as he say, “All I need from you is one idea as good as the lightbulb.” The brainstorming session quickly devolves, from an idea for a giant microwave on wheels to the accidental recreation of a Pontiac Aztek, and Jack is forced to do what he has sworn he would never do—take a bailout, which he sees as corporate welfare.
In largely unnecessary B and C-plots, Jenna goes to Iceland for a role as a “moonologist” in a werewolf movie, and in one of the most predictable jokes in recent memory squanders the one minute of nightfall the crew has by forgetting which hand to hold a flashlight in, while Kenneth adopts a bunch of puppies and offloads them on Tracy. As usual Jenna is useless, and Kenneth is misplaced as a character who can head up his own story. Jack McBrayer is hysterical, and Kenneth is a great character, but he was always meant to be a bit player, a side character who supported the leads in zany ways, and he continues to be best served in a smaller role. I did however like his cameo in the microwave ad from the 50s, perpetuating the subtle joke that Kenneth is exceedingly old (he had that parrot for 60 years, after all) and ending with Liz asking, “wait, is that a thing that happened?” Only 30 Rock could pull off a joke about the microwave craze of the late 50s.
The episode has an odd, but amusing resolution in which Liz allows Tracy, who has procured her life rights, to make a porno out of her life. Ridiculous? Yes. But also very funny. Looking at the episode objectively, it had more weak storylines than strong ones, but any time Will Arnett and Alec Baldwin can engage in a “talking like this” contest that gets a little too gay while Tracy brings a reef shark along to Liz’s, I’ll be more than willing to let the lamer storylines roll off of me and revel in the hilarity that takes place between them.
Grade: B
Notes:
-Jack’s blurb for Liz’s book: “Lemon numbers among my employees.”
-Before going to the hearing, Jack places a JC Penny sticker on his tie to make it look like he’s making sacrifices. Awesome.
-In Kenneth-land, Big Brother isn’t a charity, but a group of people that monitors others to ensure they’re behaving properly.
-“Let’s behave like adults here.” “Liz Lemon, you booger face! I’m going to kill you with a bazooka!”
-Banks brought his own gavel from home.
-“As my mom would say, ‘You can’t eat love.’ And as my mom’s friend Ron would say, ‘The donkey died. You’re the donkey now Kenneth.’”
-Tracy thinks its “too soon” to mention “Thriller.”
-“I could’ve had any ambassadorship I wanted. Even to the world’s gayest country: Ireland!”
-“Now that we’re all up, do you want to talk about the elephant in the room?” “No! I don’t even know why you brought that.”
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