Drinking whiskey clear!
All about what’s on the boob tube!
“Hottie emeritus” Christina Applegate announced on Saturday that she has been diagnosed with an early form of breast cancer. According to her publicist, the cancer is not life threatening and “Christina is following the recommended treatment of her doctors and will have a full recovery”. Applegate is expected to continue working on her hit show Samantha Who while undergoing treatment.
God bless, Christina, and get well soon!
Read more about it here at E! Online.
Season 2 of Mad Men kicked off last night, and I finally figured out why I love this show so much: when I watch it, I am completely and totally sucked in to this world. When Mad Men is on, I’m not watching a bunch of actors reading lines – I’m watching a magical time machine that’s taken me back to the early 1960s. Mad Men isn’t a simple television show – it’s a portal to an earlier time.
Season 2 begins on February 14th, 1962 – 14 months ahead of where season 1 ended (yet another reason to love this show: it’s never explicitly stated that it’s 14 months later – the writers assume that you’ll be intelligent enough to figure it out as the show goes on). Some things are the same. Some have changed. Perhaps the most shocking change is in Peggy – who went from shy secretary to junior copy writer in season 1. Peggy now a serious Sterling Cooper employee. She feels like the only professional woman in the office, and needs to lord it over the secretaries so that they’ll remember that she’s not “one of them”. Her conversation with Don’s new secretary is priceless:
And then there are the Drapers. Don and Betty appear to be together again – not a peep from Don’s many mistresses – and superficially appear to be happy together. I personally think that Don is just happy to have a family and beautiful wife (love the intro in the hotel!), so he doesn’t want to mess it up. He feels like he dodged a bullet. He’s also worried about his health. I think Don feels like the world is closing in on him. His life has been one lie after another, and now his health is on the line. I think Don’s more worried about karma being right around the corner than the police. And something’s not right with Don and Betty’s sexual relationship. In this episode, they check into a hotel for a little “Valentine’s Day Lovin'”, but Don is unable to “close the deal” so to speak. Other web sites have speculated that Don “couldn’t perform” because of a health issue; I thought everything with Don and Betty was just awkward. You be the judge…
Don is also erratic at the office. He’s running the office from afar: he doesn’t return calls, he misses all kinds of office talk, and he misses meetings:
There are also changes on the way in the advertising world. A client has begged Roger Sterling into hiring a team of “young guns” to do their ad. Indeed, word on the street in the advertising world is that clients want younger and younger people working on their ads. Youth is “in” in a big way in advertising. What will this mean for Sterling Cooper’s staff?
There’s still a lot to be said for manners, though. Another reason I get sucked into Mad Men is that it portrays an era that, although inherently sexist, bigoted, and racist, was far better behaved than the people of today. There’s a great scene where Don walks in an elevator with these two guys that are explicitly describing a sexual exploit. At the second floor, an older lady gets on the elevator. The two guys continue with their story in front of the older lady… until Don the guy telling the story to take off his hat (hidden message: shut the hell up):
There is, of course, a lot more going on with the show. I won’t take up your time going through all those things… but I do want to end on “The Book”. Early in this episode, Don is in a bar eating some lunch (when he should have been at the meeting pictured above). A guy at the bar is reading a book of poems called Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O’Hara (Amazon). Don ends up with his own copy, which he mails to someone. Who? We don’t know:
Lastly… TV Squad (in this recap) said that “January Jones is one of the most beautiful women on the planet”. I can’t say that I could argue with them. Enjoy one last screen cap:
Folks, I’ve said it a dozen times on this site: Mad Men is the best show on TV right now. Full stop. Period dot.
Season 2 starts on July 27 at 10 p.m. ET on AMC. But the network is having a season 1 marathon this Sunday! Additionally, many cable providers (Time Warner for one) are offering season 1 in full OnDemand (in SD and HD in many markets). If you haven’t seen this show yet, you should really set your TiVo or check the OD channels, because really… as I’ve said it a dozen and one times already: it’s an awesome show.
Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it:
Mad Men has received highly positive critical response since its premiere…. A New York Times reviewer called the series groundbreaking for “luxuriating in the not-so-distant past.” The San Francisco Chronicle called Mad Men “stylized, visually arresting […] an adult drama of introspection and the inconvenience of modernity in a man’s world”. A Chicago Sun-Times reviewer described the series as an “unsentimental portrayal of complicated ‘whole people’ who act with the more decent 1960 manners America has lost, while also playing grab-ass and crassly defaming subordinates.” The reaction at Entertainment Weekly was similar, noting how in the period in which Mad Men takes place, “play is part of work, sexual banter isn’t yet harassment, and America is free of self-doubt, guilt, and countercultural confusion.” The Los Angeles Times said that the show had found “a strange and lovely space between nostalgia and political correctness”. The show also received critical praise for its historical accuracy – mainly its depictions of gender and racial bias, sexual harassment in the workplace, and the high prevalence of smoking and drinking. Mad Men has received a score of 77 (generally favorable reviews) on the media review website Metacritic.
The article also says:
The series made Emmy history in 2008 as the first basic-cable series to be nominated for best drama. Jon Hamm was also nominated as best actor in a drama for his performance as Don Draper.
The series won the Golden Globe Award for Best Drama Series and Jon Hamm won the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor In A Drama for his performance as Don Draper.
Additionally, the series won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best New Series. American Film Institute picked it as one of the ten best TV series of 2007.
The cast of Mad Men were nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, and Jon Hamm was nominated for Best Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series.
The episode “Shoot” won the Art Directors Guild Award for Excellence in Production Design for a Single Camera Television Series.
The Series was awarded a 2007 Peabody Award.
It’s good. Believe me, folks! Set those DVRs, people!
Is anyone else out there watching Swingtown?
The show is about Bruce Miller (played by Coupling’s Jack Davenport), a Chicago-based commodities trader. After a big score on the market, Bruce decides to buy a much larger home on the other side of their Chicago suburb.
Much of the show’s conflict comes via their neighbors. Bruce’s wife Susan (Molly Parker) just adores their old neighbors, Roger and Janet Thompson (Josh Hopkins and Miriam Shor), who are more “uptight” and “white bread” than Ward and June Cleaver. However, both Bruce and Susan are intrigued by their new neighbors, airline pilot Tom Decker (Grant Show from Melrose Place) and his wife Trina (Lana Parrilla). You see, Tom and Trina are swingers. They also drink, smoke weed, pop pills and, in general, follow the whole 1970s “whatever’s groovy” school of thought. As you might guess, all kinds of bad (and uncomfortable) things happen when Bruce and Susan try to keep Roger and Janet as friends, yet also explore Tom and Trina’s kinky new world. Janet might not be as uptight as you think, Trina might not be the decadent hussy everyone assumes her to be, and Susan might be a hardcore feminist trapped in a housewife’s body!
Swingtown comes on CBS at 10pm on Thursday nights.
So anyway, A couple of weeks ago, by sheer serendipity, I ate a hearty dinner of Swedish meatballs and egg noodles just a couple of hours before Swingtown came on. In fact, I didn’t even think about the coincidence – eating a classic 70s dish and watching a show about the 70s – until about halfway through that evening’s episode, when one of the charaters was making dinner. But then it just clicked:
Thursday is now “70s Food Night” at the jimcofer.com homestead!
Tonight I’m having a 70s classic: steak with blue cheese (Stilton, in this case) melted on top, with blue cheese macaroni and cheese. Next week, I think I’ll have Shake and Bake porkchops. Maybe I’ll even bust out the fondue set for the season finale!
So – what about you? What are your favorite 70s dishes?
Do you have any suggestions for my 70s Food Night?
Did you ever have “food night” for a TV show at your house? Maybe a slice of cheery pie and a cup of coffee before Twin Peaks?
Or maybe have “Dinner and a Movie Night” with cuisine to match the movie?
Or did you just have some tradition with TV and food, like how Lisa and I always used to get Chinese takeout for 24?
Talk to me, people!
FOR THE TRIVIA BUFFS: “Susan” is not only the name of Jack Davenport’s wife in Swingtown, it was also the name of Jack’s one true love in Coupling.
Hey – remember that really cool into that HBO used back in the early 80s? The one that flew over the city and eventually ran into the glowing “starburst” HBO logo?
Did you know that the intro video took over three months to film, and was done almost completely with models?
Check out this short “Making Of” documentary from YouTube’ it’s really worth the 10 minutes!
Mindy Kaling – the writer\producer of The Office who also appears as “Kelly Kapoor” on the show – is 29 years old today! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KELLY!
Enjoy this video in her honor:
The first episode of the American remake of Life On Mars has leaked to the Internet… and it sucks, but not for the reasons you might expect.
But first… a brief recap from Wikipedia: “Life On Mars tells the story of DCI Sam Tyler of the Greater Manchester Police, who, after being hit by a car in 2006, finds himself in the year 1973. There, he works for Manchester and Salford Police CID as a DI under DCI Gene Hunt. Over the course of the series, Tyler faces various culture clashes, most frequently regarding the differences between his modern approach to policing and the more traditional methods of his colleagues. Mixing the genres of science fiction and police procedural, the series centres around the ambiguity concerning Tyler’s predicament: it is unclear whether he is insane, in a coma, or if he really has travelled back in time”.
The original British series was incredible television, perhaps my favorite TV show of all time. My stomach turned when I heard that ABC was interested in an American remake of the show. I was conflicted: on the one hand, I didn’t want my favorite TV show “ruined” by a crappy American remake; on the other hand, I was happy that millions of people might be exposed to the awesomeness of the Life On Mars story.
So when the first episode leaked online a few days ago, I eagerly downloaded it… only to have major mixed feelings about the U.S. version of the show.
Have you ever been to Disney World? EPCOT? Disneyland? Disney does an incredible job at copying things, down to the seemingly last tiny detail. Many people have gone to the World Showcase at EPCOT and, in the heat of the Florida sun, almost convinced themselves that they’re really in England or Mexico or Japan. But yet, they’re something just “off” about the whole thing. Like Uncanny Valley, there’s just something that’s not quite right about the World Showcase. Even though most people could almost convince themselves that they’re in England… something isn’t quite right. It’s not the obvious stuff – the heat, the crowds of people speaking in American accents. There’s just an indefinable something that lets you know you’re looking at a forgery – a well made forgery, mind you – instead of the “real deal”.
And that’s exactly what the American Life On Mars is like. It’s a Disney-fied version of the original series. Although I have several specific complaints about the American version (which I’ll get to in a minute), there’s just something about the new version that simply doesn’t add up.
I guess my first specific complaint is about the CGI cityscapes. Look at the picture above… is it not 100% completely obvious that this person is standing in front of a green screen? The halination – the halo that appears around “real” people when they’re inserted into a digital landscape – is simply awful. It looks so bad, in fact, that it completely pulls you out of the story. There’s nothing worse than being completely immersed in a show, only to be jarred back into reality by awful CGI.
The Life of Wylie blog has this great post about the second season of Ashes to Ashes. The post is a summary of a “BBC Writersroom” talk held at the Soho Theatre in London on April 4th, 2008. The two main writers at the talk were Ashley Pharoah and Matthew Graham, creators of Ashes to Ashes.
There aren’t a lot of spoilers in the write-up, just a lot of talk about the “overall feel” of series 2 of the show (hint: it only gets darker). They also state that they envision three series for the show in total (and, given their slow production schedule, that means that the show might finish up in 2010).
There’s a lot of great stuff in the post – any Ashes fan should check it out!
Apparently no one has any idea what’s going on with the American remake of Life On Mars.
This post over at TV Squad and mentions that David E. Kelley has left the series, and that it’s moved production from LA to New York. Other than that… no one knows. Even the LA Times can’t get any information about the series.
It’s not looking good for old Sam Tyler… in the US anyway. Although ABC *did* run a promo for Mars during the season finale of Lost last week. I hated it, but at least it’s a sign that there’s life left in the series.
Also, I saw a promo for Pushing Daisies last week too… and that made me happy! I can’t wait to get back to Coeur d’Coeurs this fall!
Am I the only one that thinks Matt from this season’s Hell’s Kitchen looks a lot like Sam the Eagle from the Muppet Show?
