The trouble with vacations

The trouble with vacations is that you spend all your time at the beach or on your bike or dining out at fine seafood restaurants or playing mini-golf or visiting local places of historical and natural interest or sitting on the front porch reading books that you often get to the end of a day too tired and content and serene to watch television.

Once upon a time this didn't matter.  You could go away for weeks and weeks at a time and miss nothing but re-runs and summer replacement series---a euphemism for shows the networks decided to scratch from their regular schedules after five or six episodes had already been shot.  Not any more.

Now summers are full of new stuff.  Original stuff.  But not necessarily good stuff.  Stuff like AMC's series Mad Men, which is new stuff about old stuff, life in the fast lane at a Madison Avenue advertising agency circa 1960, a time when men were men---yes men, organization men, men in gray flannel suits---and women were secretaries and housewives and that rigid division of the sexes is perfectly recreated in the show and is the reason Mrs Peel, having watched the first episode, isn't all that keen on watching the second:

As television, it’s a powerful re-creation/evocation of a time and place by Matt Weiner, a writer and producer from The Sopranos. It’s clear that this era holds a fascination for Mr. Weiner, perhaps fueled by the celluloid slickness of The Sweet Smell of Success, See Sammy Run, maybe even Bewitched. There are nice flourishes, like the Bass opening and the myth of the napkin doodle, that show a true fan’s warmth toward his subject. Still, Mr. Weiner’s ad men are in a clearly defined Members Only club of their own...

Mrs Peel admires the historical accuracy but doesn't find it charming.

James Wolcott was disappointed by another aspect of the show, its strangely enervated mood.

When you think of advertising movies from the postwar boom period, from The Hucksters to Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? to Lover Come Back, you think of ulcers, tense presentations trying to appease tyrant clients (the scene in The Hucksters where Sydney Greenstreet pounds the name of his company's soap on the conference table with his angry, bullying, puffy fists is unforgettable), racing to meet deadlines, taking clients to night clubs, hangovers, cynical campaigns with cornball sentiments, elevator rides where everyone's too wary to speak. Mad Men had some of this, but there was little pulsation or fidgety anxiety at the constant pressure to perform; the pace of the opening hour was oddly subdued and unurgent, infected with a strange malaise and languor that made even the agency's get-ahead types seem marooned in their own retrograde attitudes, even the bachelor party at a strip club tolling with a Cheeverish sense of mortality and dissatisfaction.

Wolcott plans give Mad Men a chance to develop and will tune in Thursday for the second episode.  Mrs Peel's still on the fence.

Meanwhile, also at newcritics, Claire Helene's frustrated by the Emmy nominations which are as far as she's concerned more of the same, safe, predictable, and dedicated to rewarding popularity no matter how mediocre the show getting the nod. 

Claire wants to know what shows and actors and writing you think got overlooked.  Go tell her here.

Me, I'm starting with Deadwood and Battlestar Galactica.

Also, anyone watch the premiere of Saving Grace last night?  How naked did Holly Hunter get?  Oh, and was the show any good?

Comments

[Greg]

IMHO, the five best dramas last year were The Wire, Deadwood, Battlestar Galactica, Friday Night Lights, and Lost. Coincidentally, all five got snubbed.

On the other hand, I think the writing and directing categories were solid (if a little Sopranos-heavy). Those are always my favorite Emmy categories because they reward individual episodes, not the whole series, and all the best episodes I saw last season --the FNL pilot, Lost's finale, the BSG opener--were nominated for one or the other.

[Claire]

I saw part of Saving Grace and Holly was naked in the first scene. I don't know how I feel about the show, I switched channels midway through during a commercial break and forgot to switch back, which may say something. It was a little heavy handed in its set-up of backstory, but I guess it's the first ep and I should give it another chance.

[Sluggo]

I thought Mad Men was better than my expectations for it.

I am old enough (just) to remember this era. My father was most definitely a product of that time, 34 yrs old in 1960, living in Stamford, CT and selling helicopter engines to the Army Air Corps. I will forgive quite a few plot or characterization failings (for a while, at least) to enjoy the pitch-perfect portrayal of the period, and the memories of Dad at that age it produced last week.

Scotch in the desk drawer still sometimes seems like a good idea.

[Karen]

While I understand where both Mrs Peel and Wolcott are coming from on "Mad Men," I, too, enjoyed it (apart from being a little confused by who exactly Peggy Olsen is supposed to be). My father was only a tangential part of that world, and he was definitely not the typical ad-/salesman (colleagues would say he was too much of a gentleman for his business), but I grew up reading "Advertising Age," and watching "Bewitched," and I just goddamn love the ad game. So, I'll keep watching it.

I missed the first part of "Saving Grace," then tuned in for maybe the second 10 minutes and was just bored stiff. Which is unusual for a Holly Hunter performance.

This summer, I'm watching "Mad Men," "Eureka," and the very silly "Psych." Oh, and I'll be checking out "Damages" this evening. But mostly I'm wading through my 496-title Netflix queue. (Did you know they max you out at 500?)

[Ken Houghton]

Doesn't your television provider offer On Demand? It's how I'm watching Meadowlands.

I tried Broadcast News again, having remembered it fondly, but have now switched to When Stand Up Stood Out. Choosing Stephen Wright over Holly Hunter and Dennis Leary over Albert Brooks (or is it the other way around) probably says something, but I'm not sure what.

[M.A.Peel]

I wrote a review for Newcritics, but had trouble posting you. You can pop over to my place to see it. It's pretty unusual. Sorry Lance, I barely noticed the naked Holly.

[M.A.Peel]

"It." Posting it. When will typepad allow commenters to correct?

[TCinLA]

I don't even know why I come here anymore. Your overrated bullshit is a very faded shade of brown, Mr.Mannion.

Mad Men: a very good friend of mine who started as an assistant art director at J. Walter Thompson Chicago in May 1960 and put 30 years into the business e-mailed me after watching the first episode: "it's real." I suspect he has a bit more knowledge of his subject than "Mrs. Peel" and the often-overrated James Wolcott (who is at least interesting even when he is steaming full speed ahead into his most overrated New York halfwit b.s.er territory).

SWMBO - who started as "the new girl" in an office in 1964 - has great difficulty after two episodes not throwing a shoe through the TV screen as memories she thought she had forgotten resurge to the forefront. As she said after Episode 2 "and people wonder where the hell Betty Friedan came from and why we feminists were shrill back then." As someone who was also old enough to be aware of reality back then, I agree with the reviewer at Salon who said "all the post-feminists who think feminism is too shrill need to see this show."

As to whether "Saving Grace" was any good, that depends. The show managed to prove (once again) that it takes a prefrontal lobotomy to become a fundamentalist Christian, and that "Christian Art" is an oxymoron, since celebrating moron stupidity is not what art does. As to Earl the Angel, he's he perfect "step Nazi" to every white-knuckle AA drunken junkie who needs to keep the hollow junkie from admitting they're the hollow piece of shit they are since they can only trade one addiction for another (alcohol for fundamentalism). And Holly Hunter reminds me of why the last thing she ever did that was the slightest bit interesting was "Broadcast News." What dreck!!

"Damages" on the other hand is really good and I hope you have someone with an actual pair of balls (the balls to tell the truth) review it.

You mincing East Coast over-educated Ivy League halfwits would be funny if it wasn't for the fact you have the rest of the world believing you are something worthwhile.

And "Mrs. Peel" is about as close to that reality as George Bush is close to the reality of being a member of the human race.