Mad Men: Season 5, Episode 9–Dark Shadows

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Simon

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST NIGHT’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 9 YET.

“I’m thankful that I have everything I want. And that no one else has anything better.”

Less portentous and existential than last week, this week’s Mad Men still offered another slice of angst in the lives of a selected few characters. Don’s increasing insecurity (not to mention Peggy’s) in the face of new young competition came up, along with the repercussions of Roger’s recent decision to end his marriage. But the lion’s share of the episode belonged to the little-seen-recently Betty and the way her own unhappiness is blighting the lives of everyone around her, including Don and especially Sally.

January Jones was on formidable form this week as Betty, increasingly frustrated with her unsuccessful attempts to lose weight after ballooning between seasons. Having established that her chubbiness is a result of psychological unhappiness rather than illness, Betty’s taken to attending Weight Watchers, then in its infancy as a New York-based therapy group. It has to be said, none of the women in Betty’s group looked particularly fat by today’s standards; a knowing comment, perhaps, on the increasing levels of obesity since the 60s?

Either way, Weight Watchers doesn’t seem to be making Betty any happier. Despite her strict diet of burned toast and grapefruits (plus fish five days a week, to her husband’s annoyance), she’s still not losing much weight. And when Betty’s unhappy, she takes it out on those around her. As has so frequently been the case in the past, those first in the firing line are daughter Sally and ex-husband Don.

Despite occasional cordial relations with Don, it’s clear that Betty’s never really got over the breakup of their marriage. This was made abundantly clear as she stopped by Don’s swanky new penthouse apartment to pick up the kids. You’d think the palatial mansion she lives in with Henry would be enough to keep her happy, but no, she’s clearly salivating with jealousy at Don’s hip furnishings and view of the Manhattan skyline. As if that wasn’t enough, she catches a glimpse of his new model wife Megan getting dressed, with that perky figure Betty herself no longer has.

We kept returning to Betty’s increasing frustration throughout, and it finally boiled over when she found young Bobby’s drawing of what appeared to be a harpooned Moby Dick (a symbol for Betty’s fruitless quest for happiness perhaps?) Discovering the rather sweet note from Don to Megan on the other side of the drawing, Betty’s jealousy and annoyance led her to try and torpedo the perceived happiness her ex and his new wife lived in. In doing so, she once again found herself using poor old Sally as a weapon, ‘innocently’ asking why her daughter’s family tree didn’t include Don’s (ie Dick Whitman’s) first ‘wife’ Anna.

That’s a nasty tactic by any means. Sally was plainly unaware of her father’s tortuous history, and it would be pretty complicated to explain to an adult, never mind a twelve-year-old. So she immediately blew up at Megan (another effect Betty was aiming for, perhaps) for lying to her. Stuck in the middle of an obviously bitter row between Don and Betty, poor old Megan couldn’t really deal with this.

It was only when Sally overheard Don and Megan having a flaming row over the matter that she realised what so many children from ‘broken homes’ have before her – she was being used as a pawn between two bitterly estranged people trying to hurt each other, with no regard for her own feelings. Again, Kiernan Shipka’s performance was astoundingly mature as Sally played an absolute blinder; when ‘innocently’ asked by Betty how her questioning of Don had gone, she simply shrugged and made out that it had been no big deal at all. I couldn’t help laughing and exclaiming, “well played, Sally!” That’s how much Mad Men draws me in sometimes.

Back at the office, we had two big plots going on. Don found his alpha male status increasingly threatened by the talent of young Ginsberg, and Roger tried comically to adapt to acceptance of New York’s Jewish community in order to screw over Pete Campbell by nabbing another account.

Of these two, the Roger storyline was the more obviously funny; you can always rely on Roger for a few laughs. Witness his frustration at having to secretly bribe yet another copywriter in his attempts to damage Pete, and his awkward attempts at acceptance of Jews. Ginsberg handled it well though, and Roger’s enough of an old smoothie to still manage to charm his Jewish potential client.

This was in no small part thanks to the help of his now-estranged wife Jane. There was a comical moment when Bert Cooper (who we don’t see often enough), found out that Roger had separated; he looked at his watch and harrumphed, “what, already?” But Roger needed Jane (she’s Jewish, remember) to show the clients how accepting he is. She certainly charmed wine magnate Rosenberg’s handsome son Bernie – I wonder if that will go anywhere in later episodes?

Perhaps not, because she ended up back with Roger. It’s clear since their acid trip that she’s not as sanguine about the end of their marriage as he is; now we realised that he’s not entirely over it either. So he dragooned his way into the new apartment he’d bought Jane so she could be free of the memories in their old one, and took advantage of the presumably drunk Jane to have his way with her. The man’s incorrigible, and certainly doesn’t learn lessons.

It was a bitter conclusion to an otherwise amusing plotline, as a repentant Roger was told by the tearful Jane that he’d just made her new apartment as painful to be in as her old one. One of the things that makes Roger likeable despite the horrible things he does is the obvious fondness behind his thoughtlessness; we saw last week how fond he still is of former wife Mona, and it now seems Jane is another he bears no ill will towards. Whether she feels the same is uncertain. But she knows Roger. He does what he does because he has no thought for the consequences of his actions; and based on the last five seasons, he’s unlikely to change any time soon.

Don, as usual, had the slightly more serious storyline. Stumbling over Ginsberg’s copybook on his way out of the office, he realised how talented the younger man was – talented in a way that Don himself doubts he is any more. So he stayed in the office (missing Betty’s awkward visit to his apartment) running through some frankly hokey sounding proposals for something called ‘Sno Balls’ (these might be a real product, but as a non-American I’m completely unaware of them).

After figuratively sweating blood over it, Don came up with a half decent proposal, but in the pitch meeting, Peggy and Rizzo seemed to prefer Ginsberg’s. Ginsberg himself probably compounded the problem with his amusing surprise that Don still “had it”. And with that, the fight was on – not that Ginsberg even knew. Don was threatened, however much he denied it, and after being frustrated in his every attempt to gain the upper hand, resorted to the downright sneaky tactic of simply leaving Ginsberg’s proposal in the cab when he went to pitch to the clients.

I don’t think we’ve seen Don resorting to this kind of underhand strategy out of desperation very often before. It led to a marvellous two handed scene in the elevator (increasingly where characters in the show go to have frosty exchanges). Ginsberg, having realised he’d been screwed over, nettled Don with his own youth and potential: “I’ve got millions more ideas. Millions of them”, following that up with a zinger: “You know, I feel sorry for you.” To which Don coldly came back with, “I don’t think about you at all.” But that wasn’t an argument-winning line because Don – and the viewer – knows that it’s a lie.

So if there was a theme at all in this week’s angst-ridden drama, it was denial. Betty’s denial of her own obvious unhappiness; Don’s denial of his obsolescence; Roger’s denial that he still has feelings for his ex-wives. And even Pete’s denial that his affair with Howard’s wife is over – in one of the more comical scenes, he fantasises that she’s come to the office wearing a fur coat and little else. Lucky he’s got that couch in his office, he plainly needed a lie down.

A few historical notes anchored the show in 1966. Megan was clearly running lines from classic gothic horror soap opera Dark Shadows, which began in June of that year. Given that it ran for five years and is fondly remembered as a cult show, Megan’s assessment of it as “crap” is amusing. After all, it must be well-remembered to have inspired the title of this episode! Elsewhere, Henry’s obviously annoyed that New York City mayor John Lindsay isn’t running in the 1966 State Governor race; that went to Nelson Rockefeller for a second time. Rockefeller would later go on to be Vice President under Gerald Ford. As Henry crossly comments, he’s backed the wrong horse in sticking with Lindsay.

And finally, this week’s Hideous Checked Sports Coat count – low. It’s November, so everyone’s switched to Hideous Checked Overcoats:

But for a bit of variety, the head of Betty’s Weight Watchers class has a Hideous Checked Housecoat:

More eye-watering 60s fashions amid the existential angst next week…

Game of Thrones: Season 2, Episode 7–A Man Without Honor

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Simon

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST NIGHT’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 7 YET.

“Don’t look so grim. It’s all just a game.”

After the frantic, relentless action of the last few episodes, this week Game of Thrones seemed to pause for breath and allow those well-drawn characters to relax for a while, and take stock. Not that there weren’t some major plot developments, which I’ll come to soon, but it felt like a (necessary) lull in the action. This made for a thoughtful episode, again scripted by showrunners Benioff and Weiss, which was largely constructed of something the show does fantastically well – introspective, character-driven dialogue scenes, in which the cast are given a chance to truly shine.

Up at Winterfell, Theon was revealed to be even more of a wretch than we thought as he blamed everyone around him for the escape of Bran and Rickon, while somehow missing his own gullibility in letting Osha seduce him as a distraction. Of course, as soon as a nameless underling pointed this out, Theon gave him a good kicking. Nobody’s disputing that he knows how to fight, but he plainly doesn’t know how to lead – nothing was as revealing of his craven thoughtlessness as his furious comment, “it’s better to be cruel than weak.”

Unfortunately this has been the credo of far too many leaders in the real world, and just like them, Theon’s first thought was to lash out. Dragging Maester Luwin on a fruitless hunt for the boys, Alfie Allen made Theon convincingly loathsome while never – quite – losing the viewer’s sympathy as a fool who’s got in far over his head. It’s a good performance that shows Allen to be more than just a bloke fearlessly willing to display his (admittedly pleasant) naked body week after week.

Down in King’s Landing, we got scene after scene of revealing dialogue-driven interaction. This may have frustrated those who prefer the show’s propensity for masses of explicit violence and sex, but for me, this kind of drama is what puts Game of Thrones head and shoulders over almost every other fantasy-based extravaganza.

Thus, we got yet another glimpse at the odd, almost protective relationship between the increasingly less naive Sansa and the embittered, cynical Hound. Rory McCann invested Clegane with just the right amount of hardbitten cynicism, as he asserted that last week’s ‘gallant’ rescue of Sansa from her would-be rapists was nothing more than an opportunity to indulge in his love of killing. Sansa, trying gamely to thank him for what seemed a chivalrous gesture, seemed less than convinced; something I think we all shared as the Hound asserted that one day, he’d be the only one standing between her and her “beloved king”.

The cruel, capricious Joffrey was personally absent this week, but it was telling that most of the character scenes in King’s Landing revolved around discussion of him. Sansa, terrified that her first period meant she must immediately go to his bed, got a terrific scene with Cersei in which the scheming Queen once again reminded us that she’s also a human being – and a mother. Later, Cersei had one of those truce-like discussions with her brother – and bitter enemy – Tyrion, and in a moment of surprising frankness, all but confessed that she knew her son to be a monster, and wondered if she was being punished for her incest with brother Jaime.

These were brilliant scenes, allowing the talented cast to give their all. Lena Headey has truly mastered playing Cersei as a character who, like Theon, has ambitions that far outstrip her abilities. She’s done pretty well, conspiring to put her bastard son on the Iron Throne, but now she’s realised that she can’t control him. Not for the first time, we got a sense that she feels almost a solidarity with her hostage Sansa, another woman condemned to a forthcoming loveless royal marriage. For her part, Sophie Turner as Sansa – a less showy Stark role than Arya or Bran – got to show the increasing loss of her innocence in the Machiavellian world of the court. No wonder Shae too has appointed herself as Sansa’s protector.

Over at Harrenhal, there was another lengthy scene between Tywin Lannister and Arya, fast proving to be one of the best double acts in the show. Charles Dance and Maisie Williams continue to have a great chemistry together, and their scenes – greatly enlarged from any in the book – crackle with tension. This week, their protracted discussion of Westeros’ history revealed to Tywin that Arya was no lowborn daughter of a stonemason, and there was a breath stopping moment when he disclosed that. Fortunately for Arya, he still doesn’t know which highborn child he’s got his hands on, but you have to wonder if he’ll work it out…

Properly back in the drama this week was Jaime Lannister, still held captive in a muddy stockade at Robb Stark’s camp. In an episode full of memorable scenes, the Kingslayer arguably got the best of them, more than making up for his virtual absence this season until now. The lengthy scene with young Ser Alton Lannister – possibly the longest scene this week – was impeccably played both by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Karl Davies as Alton. It’s one of the things the show does very well, possibly better than the original books – giving the characters detailed, convincing backstories.

In this case, we learned of both characters’ past pugilistic achievements, filling in so much of why Jaime is the way he is. And then a further demonstration of the way he is, as he coldly murdered his loyal kinsman as a mere tool in an escape plan (and really, it’s one of the oldest plans in the book – so much for Jaime’s assertion that the Starks have well-trained guards).

Not that it even got him very far. Jaime was recaptured the next morning, leading to a nasty confrontation with Lord Karstark, whose son had been the inept guard Jaime strangled. This short circuits a much longer plotline from the book, but works just as well, if not better. Catelyn, aware of Jaime’s value as a hostage, is obliged to step in to protect him from her son’s vengeance-hungry bannermen, leading to another excellent scene between her and Jaime in which he bitterly explains that all the vows of a knight mean nothing when they start contradicting each other. How can he protect the King and the weak when the King is busy slaughtering the weak? Cat, though, seemed less than convinced, and the scene ended in a cliffhanger as she pointed Brienne’s sword at the treacherous Lannister.

But there were more cliffhangers to come, as the episode came to several “how will they get out of that?” climaxes. Up beyond the Wall, Jon was being mercilessly mocked by Ygritte for his virginity and vow of celibacy. You could cut the sexual tension with a knife – at least until Ygritte slipped her bonds and disappeared, only to re-emerge with a cadre of wildlings pointing bows at her former captor. How will Jon get out of that?

Over the sea in Qarth, Dany had been looking for her stolen dragons. After yet more none too subtle declarations of feeling from Jorah Mormont, she found herself addressing the assembled Council of Thirteen. Somewhat surprisingly, the culprit owned up almost immediately – it was cadaverous warlock Pyat Pree. It was one of the episode’s genuine shock moments as he revealed that he’d conspired with Xaro Xhoan Daxos to install Xaro as King of Qarth. Even more shocking was the moment multiple duplicates of Pree appeared, slashing the throats of the council and disappearing when stabbed by Jorah, only to mockingly reiterate that dubious sounding invite to Dany. I wouldn’t be so keen to visit anywhere described by a blue-lipped magical murderer as the “House of the Undying”. But that’s where Dany’s dragons are. How will she get them out of that?

The last cliffhanger was probably the most shocking, as Theon revealed to the defiant populace of Winterfell how he dealt with such defiance, hoisting what looked like the charred bodies of Rickon and Bran for them to gasp at. Maester Luwin was devastated. Even in a show in which pretty much anyone can die, the brutal murder of two children is pretty strong stuff. Still, the bodies were charred beyond recognition – will Bran and Rickon get out of that?

So, despite the episode’s brilliant character scenes and generally languid pace, there were one or two shocking plot developments. But taking time out from the increasingly complex interwoven plots to focus on the characters seems exactly right at this point in the series. It’s a breather before the final three episodes, and if it’s anything like last year, that’s the point where all hell will start breaking loose. This is probably the last opportunity this season has for some introspection, and it’s all the more welcome for that.

Coalition of the Daleks

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Simon

Could Barry Letts, Louis Marks and Terrance Dicks predict the future?

“It is agreed then. Join us and you can have a referendum on AV.”

Recently I was watching a rather excellent documentary on the DVD of Doctor Who story The Happiness Patrol, which examined the many, none too subtle references to contemporary politics in various Doctor Who stories. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the planet Peladon’s divisive attempt to join the Galactic Federation is actually a comment on the UK’s entry to the Common Market. Or that the environment-trashing, brainwashing global corporation imaginatively named ‘Global Chemicals’ is one in a long line of protests against profit-driven multinationals. And somehow, until a couple of years ago, it seemed that few people had realised that the villain of The Happiness Patrol itself, the tyrannical dictator Helen A was actually a thinly veiled caricature of then current Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Yes, Doctor Who has frequently ‘commented’ (usually from a fairly liberal, inclusive perspective) on contemporary politics. But it dawned on me recently, while watching the nifty ‘new’ version of 1972 story Day of the Daleks (now with added CG explosions) that this story achieves a rather peculiar feat in managing to satirise events that, for the writers, would be far in the future. For rewatching the story for the first time in years, it swiftly became abundantly clear that the nightmare future visited by the Doctor and Jo, while it purports to be Earth in the 22nd century, is actually the United Kingdom in 2012.

Before I elucidate on this unlikely assertion, here’s a brief summary of the plot for those unfamiliar with this classic. It’s your basic Terminator-style time paradox story, in which rebels from the dystopian, Dalek-dominated future are trying to change history so that the series of wars which allowed the Daleks to invade never occur. To do this, they must assassinate the man they believe to be responsible, a British diplomat called Reginald Styles who, they believe, started the wars by blowing up a global peace conference.

With World War 3 looming (as it did most weeks in early 70s Who), security arrangements for the conference have been put in the hands of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT. This is a rather baffling decision given what happened when they were in charge of security at a peace conference the year before; that didn’t go well, resulting in the deaths of US and Chinese delegates and the theft of a nerve gas missile. Still, somehow this has escaped parliamentary scrutiny, and their involvement means that when time-travelling ghosts from the future try to assassinate the bloke in charge, naturally the Doctor, currently in his frilly-shirted, gentleman’s club incarnation, is summoned to investigate.

The Doctor is sceptical of the guerillas’ assertion that Styles is about to blow up his own peace conference, and rightly so. After both he and Jo, by convoluted means, travel to the Dalek-occupied future Earth, he realises that it’s a bomb planted by the guerillas themselves that killed all the delegates – in typical time paradox fashion, they actually caused the whole mess by trying to stop it happening. Fortunately, the Doctor is a Time Lord, and he can sort out the mess – but not before clobbering and shooting a surprising amount of people for a character who’s supposed to be opposed to violence.

So far, so standard-Who, you may be thinking. And yet, looking at the social conditions and power structures in this nightmare future, I found myself rubbing my eyes in astonishment and wondering at the remarkable precognitive powers of writer Louis Marks, script editor Terrance Dicks and producer Barry Letts. For clearly, this little science fiction story from 1972 was intended to be a savage satire of British politics in 2012.

Let’s start with the Daleks. They are, quite obviously, meant to represent the Conservatives. “Ah, that’s too easy,” you may say, “you’re just assigning them that role because you see the Conservatives as villains!” But no, let’s look at what they’re actually doing in this story. For a start, the populace of Earth is only valuable to them as an expendable workforce to obtain commodities. All right, they’re concerned with minerals rather then hedge fund derivatives, but hey, maybe the writer’s crystal ball wasn’t perfect…

More telling is their attitude to workers’ rights in order to achieve the production of these resources. We see underpaid (well, not paid at all – they must have got rid of the minimum wage), rag-clad workers toiling away in factories (well, concrete car parks meant to look like factories) under the relentless whips of security forces who clearly aren’t going to put up with industrial action.

Later, in a meeting with human ‘superior slave’ the Controller, their comments clearly indicate their feelings not just on workers’ rights but on healthcare. Protesting that an increase in production targets is impossible, the Controller declares “But that’s impossible! If we push the workers any further, they will die!” To which the Daleks, with the kind of remorseless logic favoured by the CBI, respond, “Only the weak will die. Inefficient workers slow down production.” And I bet they’re not allowed industrial tribunals either.

As if their philosophy on productivity at the expense of workers’ wellbeing wasn’t enough to cement them in the viewers’ minds as Cameron, Osborne and co, there’s the little matter of their security arrangements. Clearly, Skaro’s public spending in this area is too high, so Dalek security requirements have been privatised and outsourced to what’s plainly the lowest bidder – the incoherent and frankly inept Ogrons, a race of gorilla-like thugs for whom the word “complications” is too complicated to pronounce.

So OK, the Daleks here do seem to be a kind of extreme satire of the Conservative ideology generally. But what makes the story specifically about 2012, and the Tory-LibDem coalition? That’s where it gets interesting, with the denial-prone, conscience-stricken character of the Controller, a man who bows to the Daleks yet somehow thinks he’s wringing concessions from them. It’s now quite clear that he’s meant to be Nick Clegg.

Just like Clegg, he does dare to argue with the Cons- um, Daleks, and just like Clegg he backs down when it’s clear they’re not listening to a word he’s saying. Yet he’s somehow convinced himself that he’s a moderating force, and that the Daleks’ portrayal of the rebels as “cruel and ruthless fanatics” is accurate – perhaps in an earlier draft, they were also considered to be “terrorist paedophiles”.

Still, again like Clegg, he does do some good. He convinces the Daleks not to kill the Doctor, after all, and tries to persuade the recalcitrant Time Lord that he should help the regime rather than die. But the Doctor’s quite unconvinced that any good the Controller is doing justifies his culpability in doing his masters’ bidding. After all, it looks a bit dubious that he’s quaffing wine with them while the masses toil in starvation.

Trying to justify his role in the state of affairs, the Controller parrots the usual Conservative homilies, with a look in his eye that suggests he’s not even convincing himself (just like Clegg at a press conference). “There will always be people who need discipline, Doctor,” he states hollowly, before asserting that, “this planet has never been more efficiently, more economically run. People have never been happier or more prosperous.” For a denial of what’s actually going on outside his little bubble, that’s right up there with Danny Alexander insisting that George Osborne’s austerity policies aren’t affecting people’s quality of life.

Later, in the face of the Doctor’s contempt for him (“They tolerate you as long as you’re useful to them.”), the Controller gets defensive. By the time he blurts, “We have helped make things better for the others. We have gained concessions!”, I was half expecting him to follow it up by telling the Doctor that he’d raised the income tax threshold as if that somehow made up for all that nuclear armageddon.

So that’s the Tories and the Lib Dems represented. But where in this incisive political satire are the Labour Party? The obvious candidates to represent them are the guerillas, yet at first glance, that seems a bit unconvincing. OK, butch female strike leader Anat could conceivably be an analogue for deputy leader Harriet Harman, but who’s meant to be the charisma-free school prefect that is Ed Miliband? Surely not the guerillas’ leader, the thrillingly virile Man With the Porn Star Moustache?

And yet, if you look closer, the guerillas do share one defining factor with the Labour Party – as an Opposition, they’re completely crap. Not only do they expend a great deal of effort to try and kill the wrong man, most tellingly of all, they’re actually responsible for the whole nightmare situation themselves. Next time Miliband/Man With the Porn Star Moustache lays into the injustice of the ‘oppressors’, he might want to concede the role he played in putting them there – at least in Labour’s case, with a series of unjustified wars similar to the ones that began after the destruction of Styles’ press conference.

The only loose end that leaves is the Doctor himself – where does he stand in all this? The Doctor’s personal political leanings have always seemed a bit fluid, albeit generally biased towards acceptance, tolerance and fairness. Troughton, Tom Baker and McCoy have more than a hint of the anarchist about them, while Hartnell and particularly Pertwee (who hangs out in posh clubs with the likes of Lord ‘Tubby’ Rowlands) seem very much to be Establishment figures.

There’s a lovely scene in an old Paul Cornell novel in which both the ever-conservative Brigadier and a young anarchist both firmly assert that the Doctor represents their own values. The implication is clear – there can be good in any political leaning, and the Doctor embodies that.

It follows that, in Day of the Daleks, he saves the day precisely because he’s actually apolitical. He’s able to rise above the petty tribal bickering of the factions in Earth’s devastated future and consequently he’s the only one who can see how to untangle the whole convoluted mess. We could do with some thinking like that in the UK right now, rather than the knee jerk tribalism that causes every party to attack the policies of every other simply because they are Other instead of rationally analysing how worthwhile the proposals are.

So, it’s clear from all this that not only were Marks, Dicks and Letts remarkably prescient, they were also masters of political satire with a very clear message to send in this story. Who would ever have thought that what seems like a simple, clunky BBC sci fi show from the early 70s would actually be such a biting, angry satire about the future of the United Kingdom? Unless of course I’m reading slightly too much into it…

Mad Men: Season 5, Episode 8–Lady Lazarus

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Simon

“It’s so simple when it’s someone else’s life, isn’t it?”

In a week when I’ve failed to get an interview for a job I’ve actually done before, Mad Men’s existential angst, and particularly Don Draper’s increasingly obvious obsolescence, seemed particularly redolent for me. This week’s was a somewhat lighter affair than the sturm und drang of recent episodes, with a less compressed timescale and focus; more , in fact, like the high quality soap opera it really is. But even a comparatively frothy episode like this one, written by series creator Matthew Weiner, had plenty of moments of acute and often painful character observation.

We got to see more of the Don/Megan dynamic this week, a recurring motif this season as Don looks increasingly antediluvian next to his young, with-it new wife. Trying to find some music for a Chevalier Blanc ad campaign that would satisfy the clients, Don was baffled by the trendy stylings of the Beatles: “When did music get so important?” He had, in fact, no grasp of contemporary music at all, and it’s telling that for anything ‘new’ he has a default plan – “I’ll ask Megan, she’ll know.”

But Megan, it turned out, was less than happy with her new role as cultural zeitgeist barometer for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. She may be a talented copywriter, but she doesn’t like the job. She thinks, in fact, that it’s pretty worthless in the overall scheme of things, and has been secretly going back to her original ambition – acting. This became clear after she spun two separate lies to first Peggy then Don, to cover her attendance at an audition.

The tenacious Peggy was the first to find out the truth, in a scene where Elisabeth Moss made her seem terribly fierce. Dragging the facts out of Megan in the women’s bathroom, Peggy was shocked that Mrs Draper would want to do anything else than copywriting. It’s an interesting insight into Peggy’s character, and one that came up previously in her late night chat with Dawn; having struggled so hard to get where she is, she makes the erroneous assumption that every woman wants the same thing. It’s almost a distillation of some of feminism’s more tyrannical directives, that a woman can’t be happy unless she’s struggling to be where a man is. Thankfully, I think feminism has more or less moved on from that kind of assumption these days, but then, Peggy’s in 1966.

So naturally, Peggy was furious that Megan would so carelessly toss away a career that she herself has struggled to achieve for years. It made for an uncharacteristically bitchy relationship between the two, though in truth that’s been brewing since Megan so effortlessly snagged the Heinz account. It seems, basically, to be jealousy of someone who got such an easy break into the business and then has the affront to be genuinely good at it. Can it be that Peggy too is beginning to feel the bite of younger people snapping at her heels?

If we once thought Peggy might be a bright future for the agency, Pete Campbell always looked like the promise of a dark dystopia. Thankfully, his general ineptitude made him seem less of a threat. So it proved again this week, as he embarked on what, for most characters, would be a torrid and scandalous romance with the wife of his philandering morning train buddy.

But this is Pete, and Don Draper-style affairs never work out for him unless he pays for them. Hence, after one night of torrid passion, his incessant badgering of the oddly philosophical Beth seemed to totally put her off. She didn’t want to talk to him on the phone, she was totally freaked out when he turned up at her house with her husband on a totally contrived pretext, and she failed to show up at the illicit tryst Pete organised, leaving him once again fuming at his lack of success. But as the episode ended, with the two of them leaving the station in separate cars, she drew a little heart at him in the window mist. Might he not have failed as utterly as usual? One crumb of comfort – at least he’s finally passed his driving test, though he appears not to know what a Stop sign means.

Don, meanwhile, spent the first half of the episode in blissful ignorance of his wife’s impending career crisis. When she finally told him, he spent the rest of the episode in denial about it, pretending everything was fine. And yet it clearly wasn’t; Don’s never seemed so ill at ease than when discussing Megan’s departure with Joan, who seems to be becoming the office Wise Woman (if she wasn’t already). As if his discomfiture wasn’t enough, he had the misfortune to almost stumble into a massive Existential Metaphor, as his call to the elevator resulted in the doors opening on the yawning chasm of the empty shaft. Even Don seemed to recognise the enormous significance of… whatever this represented, looking as disturbed as a character in a particularly traumatic Twilight Zone.

Don being Don, all this pent up emotion had to result in an explosion at a not entirely appropriate moment. And so it proved, as Peggy, substituting for the now-absent Megan in a pitch to Cool Whip, flubbed the crucial line that was meant to be the big ad hook, and Don blew up in her face in front of several General Foods employees. But Peggy’s going from strength to strength these days, and she gave as good as she got, telling him that it wasn’t her he was angry with (as was obvious to everyone but Don). Don, in return, told Peggy a few hard truths – Megan left not because she disliked the job but because she disliked the kind of people that did it. People like Peggy. It was a heavy scene masterfully topped off with a genuine belly laugh, as the GF employee sternly told a visibly astonished Don something I don’t think he’s ever hear before: “I’m sorry, you can’t smoke in here.”

Actually there were quite a few laughs this week, reflecting a script that was as frothy (and yet tellingly artificial) as Cool Whip. Roger, often the source of much of the show’s humour, wasn’t around much this week, but his old rivalry with Pete surfaced as he presented the younger man with a complimentary set of skis from a client. “Are they going to explode?” Pete enquired nervously, making me laugh so hard I almost spilled my tea. Still, beware Roger bearing gifts; who knows what his motive is there? Later, bugged by Don’s incessant calls to the office where she was working late, Peggy made the unfathomable decision to pretend to be a wrong number: “Pizza house!” (yelped in an unidentifiable accent).

And to top things off, after a couple of weeks’ absence, the eye-burningly hideous checked sports coats were back in evidence, courtesy of Stan and Ginsberg, who seem to have affirmed their acceptability as office wear at SCDP:

However, even they couldn’t compete with a new style of hideous sports coat, as worn by the flamingly gay member of the Chevalier Blanc group, which seemed to be made out of a deckchair:

I guess the Summer of Love is almost upon the denizens of SCDP – as was made abundantly clear by a final montage of the gang’s angst, soundtracked by the Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. As with the recent use of ‘Time is on My Side’, a perfectly apposite choice, and one flecked with irony; earlier, Don had been discussing how the Beatles never allowed ads (or TV shows) to use their work. Which used to be true. And this week’s episode of the TV show Mad Men ended with a Beatles song. For an episode so heavily freighted with philosophy and symbolism, that was so meta it was perfect.

Game of Thrones: Season 2, Episode 6–The Old Gods and the New

Posted on May 8, 2012 by Simon

“Don’t trust anybody. Life is safer that way.”

Things continue apace in Westeros, in this week’s workmanlike but exciting episode of Game of Thrones. The season’s momentum is really starting to build up as it enters the second half, as long-hatched plans come to fruition, and unforeseen events throw meticulous planning to the winds.

Directed by genre veteran David Nutter, this week’s episode threw us straight into the fray, opening amidst Theon’s hinted-at attack on the defenceless Winterfell. Donald Sumpter as the thoughtful Maester Luwin got to show that he could be a man of action too, frantically sending out a raven message even as the Ironmen battered down the door. But Theon’s troops were too strong, and poor little Bran was forced to yield the castle to him. Isaac Hempstead-Wright was again brilliant as Bran this week, veering from his usual solemnity (“Theon, did you hate us the whole time?”) to a profoundly realistic child’s sobbing as Theon beheaded Ned Stark’s faithful castellan Ser Rodrik.

In keeping with Theon’s general ineptitude, it was a wince-makingly incompetent beheading, similar to that of Thomas Cromwell in The Tudors (purportedly a true event). Even I could tell that Theon’s sword wasn’t the ideal choice for slicing a man’s head off, and so it proved as he hacked away at Rodrik’s neck, eventually having to kick the head off what remained of it. Even offscreen, it was brutal, and set the tone for an episode that didn’t stint on the violence throughout.

Similar violence dogged the Lannisters in King’s Landing, in a faithfully nasty recreation of the book’s memorable riot. Having sent Princess Myrcella off to Dorne as Tyrion planned, Cersei made a disturbingly convincing vow that she would take great pleasure in depriving Tyrion of someone he loved; plainly a nasty bit of foreshadowing regarding the still-hidden Shae. But all the family bitching took a back seat as the royal party tried to make their way back to the Red Kepp, and the populace of King’s Landing got a chance to show their new king quite how unhappy with him they are.

It was a well-done scene, though the number of rioting extras seemed to fall short of what was required to send half the city up in flames, as in the book. Nevertheless, it served its purpose dramatically in showing just how hated Joffrey is already. And he gave the crowd ample further proof as, after having been hit by a thrown cowpat, he demanded they all be executed.

The inevitable riot that followed had yet more truly nasty bits of business, particularly the visualisation of the High Septon being literally ripped to pieces. It’s mentioned in the book, but here we got to see it – well, some of it at least, as a baying crowd bore him down then held his severed arm aloft. It was enough to make you genuinely fear for Sansa as she was separated from the fleeing royals, but fortunately for her, the Hound turned up in the nick of time to prevent a nasty rape by disembowelling Sansa’s attackers. You don’t get that in Lord of the Rings.

The odd but touching relationship between the Hound and Sansa has been well-played by both, with Rory McCann playing the scarred mercenary’s hidden passions almost entirely through looks and Sophie Turner, a real damsel in distress, showing how her initial revulsion has softened into sympathy and an unwilling respect. The relationship between the two is one of the more interesting and understated in the books, and I’m glad it’s translated faithfully to the screen.

Jack Gleeson continues to be reliably loathsome as Joffrey, whose reaction to the riot was to order more slaughter until dissuaded by yet another slap from Uncle Tyrion. Joffrey’s an eminently slappable guy, but given his Caligula-style tendencies, you have to wonder how long Tyrion can get away with that kind of thing. Peter Dinklage made him believably furious, but I wonder how unwise he’s being in not keeping his usual level head when dealing with the capricious boy king: “We’ve had mad kings and idiot kings before, but this is the first time we’ve been cursed with a mad idiot king!”

A rather better monarch was in Qarth, over the sea, as Dany Targaryen continued her seemingly futile quest to win arms and ships from the slimy, double-dealing Qartheen merchant kings. Emilia Clarke got to give yet another fiery, impassioned speech as she begged the unconvinced Spice King (a suitably oleaginous Nicholas Blane) for ships, with little to trade.

Descendant of the Mad King though she may be, Dany’s looking to be by far the best candidate for the throne of Westeros – if she ever gets there. She suffered yet another setback this week as more of her Dothraki followers were slaughtered by a mysterious hooded figure who went on to steal the three baby dragons. Poor old Dany, you can’t help thinking she deserves better luck occasionally.

Somewhat luckier was Arya, still stuck pouring wine for Tywin Lannister at Harrenhal, and plotting her revenge on all who’ve done her wrong. Building on last week’s electric scene between them, Maisie Williams and Charles Dance look to be forming another of the show’s unlikely double acts. They play well off each other, as she manages to conceal her true identity even while they talk almost as master and protege.

That secret was almost broken this week, when Lord Baelish – who knows very well who Arya is – popped in for an unexpected visit. This led to another tense scene which combined that tension with exposition; as Baelish discussed alliance plans with Tywin, Arya was obliged to pour the wine for them, and Baelish kept giving her curious glances, as though she was somehow familiar but he couldn’t quite place her. Given what was at stake, the tension was heart-pounding, though I must admit to being a little unconvinced that the normally astute Littlefinger didn’t ultimately recognise her.

Still, the whole scene was another example of something the TV show does very well – inventing little dramatic set pieces that were nowhere present in the books. Indeed, this season in particular has been a little more liberal in its adaptation, omitting some quite lengthy subplots – such as Cat Stark’s return to her ancestral home on the way back to to Robb – and significant characters like Reek and the Reed children.

This probably annoys purists no end, but I’m glad that the TV writers have taken the opportunity of the different medium of storytelling to make their still-convoluted plot more economical. After all, one look at the movie adaptation of Alan Moore’s Watchmen shows the danger of sticking too faithfully to your source material at the expense of utilising the medium you’re working in.

Another departure from the books is the addition of Robb’s love interest, the pretty Volantene nurse Talisa. Or perhaps I should say ‘substitution’ – she plainly fulfils the same narrative function as his love interest Jeyne in the books. But whereas the books didn’t present Jeyne to the reader until long into her and Robb’s relationship, here we get to see that relationship developing from its first flowering. It’s arguably more appropriate to the story that Robb should fall for someone he met on the field of battle, and Oona Chaplin as Talisa has been given some suitably thoughtful, yet flirty dialogue. Still, as his mother reminds him, Robb is technically already betrothed, to one of Walder Frey’s daughters. Could be trouble on the way there…

Jon too was getting a love interest in the snowy but picturesque Frostfang mountains beyond the Wall. Finally encountering some actual wildlings to fight, he found himself tasked with executing the lone survivor of the fight, a defiant young lady with flaming red hair named Ygritte. Jon being the heroic type, he couldn’t actually go through with it, and consequently found himself chasing his escaping prisoner until they were well out of reach of the rest of the Night’s Watch party.

Another favourite of mine from the books, Ygritte is played by a suitably fierce young lady called Rose Leslie, who’s nevertheless also flirty in a rather suggestive way. Bedding down with Jon for the night, she couldn’t help, rubbing her posterior against the hunky Ranger’s groin, much to his frustration. It was another blackly comic scene, as Jon is of course sworn to celibacy, and just the type to follow his vows to the letter. But it doesn’t take a genius to predict that there’ll be something going on between the two afore long. After all, it’s the classic love/hate/love relationship, and if you’ve ever seen any soap opera you’ll know what comes next…

After last week’s rather scattershot episode (necessitated by the advancement of so many plots simultaneously) it was nice to have a return to a tighter focus this week as the pace of the story ramps up. It was a massively violent episode, perhaps even more so than usual, with blood and guts flying all over the place. Yet as ever, character drama wasn’t neglected amid the gore, with Arya and Tywin’s scenes being a particular highlight.

Not much in the way of sex this week – Theon got some, offscreen, with former wildling Osha, who at least did a full-frontal to keep the flag up (as it were). But with the pace of the war ever more hectic, I wouldn’t be surprised if the sex is kept to a minimum for the rest of the season. Whether you think that’s a good thing is probably entirely subjective; but as the sex goes down, I expect the violence will go up. After all, it looks like the war may be building to a series of ever more brutal confrontations – and that’s something this show does very well.

Mad Men: Season 5, Episode 7–At the Codfish Ball

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Simon

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST NIGHT’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 7 YET.

“It’s the future. That’s all I ever wanted.”

After all the detailed character studies and complex dramatic structures of the last few weeks, Mad Men was back to being a relatively straightforward (though still high class) drama this week. Probably just as well; last week’s twisty non-linear narrative was bold, but that sort of experimentation week after week would get in the way of the actual plot.

There was definitely a Big Theme this week though, as has been a trend with Mad Men episodes. This episode’s Big Theme was parents and children, or perhaps more accurately family generations, and was nicely evoked by the penultimate scene’s exquisitely framed shot of three generations of Don’s family sitting at a formal table and looking (typically for Mad Men) less than content. It was also at the core of Megan’s surprise hit idea for the new Heinz campaign – families eating beans through the ages.

Family was obviously much on Don’s mind this week. Not only did he have the dubious pleasure of hosting a visit from Megan’s fractious Quebecois parents, he was also lumbered with looking after his own children after Sally accidentally caused Henry’s dragon of a mother to break her ankle. Sally being Sally, she lied about the cause, claiming it to be one of baby Gene’s toys rather than the cord of the phone she’d sneaked into her room.

Kiernan Shipka, another child actor of amazing range and ability, is a joy to watch as the increasingly unhappy Sally. That’s presumably why she’s stayed the course since the show’s beginning, while her brother Bobby has been recast three times. Conversely, it’s also why Bobby never gets any actual storylines. It was notable that, after arriving with his sister at Don’s, he seemed to just vanish – where was he while all the grown ups and Sally were at the award dinner, just sitting in the apartment alone playing with matches? I do wonder whether Matthew Weiner regrets having given Don a son as well as a daughter, since he’s turned out to be a dramatic spare part.

Sally, though, does get the meaty storylines, usually geared around her precocious desire to prematurely grow up. Isn’t that what all kids want? But Sally is from a very dysfunctional background, with her cold, often absent mother, her philandering father and her empty existence in the affluent suburbs. Small wonder that she became close friends with fellow misfit Glen (played by Matthew Weiner’s real life son Marten), who she was on the phone to when Pauline tripped over the cord. Their relationship is rather sweet, despite their burgeoning puberty. They’re clearly very close friends, but not boyfriend and girlfriend; in fact, they can discuss those relationships with each other openly.

That kind of frankness is clearly lacking from other areas of Sally’s life; not to mention all the adults in the show, who continue to lie, cheat, and be generally evasive with each other. Megan’s father, a card-carrying Marxist, doesn’t much care for Don or his business, though what father ever truly approves of the man who steals away his little girl? And her mother doesn’t get on too well with her father either. Fortunately they have the advantage of being able to lapse into French whenever they want a screaming match, or when Emile Calvet wants to insult Don. No wonder Don’s shown poring over a Berlitz ‘Learn French’ book – he doesn’t have a clue what’s going on around him.

Megan, though, turns out to be far more clued up than we – and Don – thought she was, particularly on a professional level. She comes up with a far better idea than anyone else has had for the Heinz campaign (which conveniently echoes this week’s Big Theme), and Don’s surprise, while undoubtedly complimentary, is also incredibly patronising. He employed his wife as a copywriter, and now he’s genuinely surprised that she’s talented at it?

Not only that, but she‘s got Roger Sterling-style smarts on actually hooking the clients too. Getting early warning at one of the show’s frequent expensive dinners that bean supremo Raymond is about to dump the agency, she expertly prompts a clueless Don into doing the pitch for her idea right then and there – and passing it off as his own idea to give it more traction. The girl’s a natural. Unfortunately her father is utterly contemptuous about her choice of career.

Her mother is similarly contemptuous about her father, especially after discovering his affair with a young grad student. As a result, poor old Sally gets yet another unwelcome lesson in sexuality when she stumbles over her stepmother’s mother giving the ever-charming Roger Sterling a blowjob in a back room. And just when Roger had spent the previous scenes brandishing his newfound empathy to all and sundry in the wake of his consciousness-expanding acid trip! It looks like the old Roger is still there under all the empathy. No wonder Sally looks so shell-shocked when rejoining the dining table, and no wonder her expressed opinion of the city is simply, “dirty”.

Peggy was being “dirty” too – at least in the mind of her strictly Catholic mother. After a nervous dinner with boyfriend Abe, she discovered that he wanted to move in with her – not to get married, like nice 60s folks do, but to ‘live in sin’. This didn’t sit well with Peggy’s mother. Bad enough that her good Catholic daughter has had a child out of wedlock and is dating a Jew, now she wants to have regular pre-marital sex and live under the same roof as that Jew.

This came out at another of the supremely awkward dinners that Mad Men does so well. Abe was conspicuously bending over backwards to downplay his Jewishness, even asserting that he loved glazed ham. But it wasn’t enough for Mrs Olson, who frostily declared that she was leaving, and advised Peggy that if she was lonely, she should get a cat. Chalk up another inter-generational conflict for this week’s Big Theme.

At least Peggy got to have a good heart to heart with Joan, as always the office den mother. Worried that Abe was going to break up with her, she requested a stress-relieving cigarette while unburdening herself to Joan. In fact, though, she learned more from Joan than she bargained for. It seems like Joan’s breakup with her husband isn’t common knowledge yet, and she’s plenty bitter about it: “Men don’t take the time to end things. They ignore you – until you insist on a declaration of hate.”

Presumably Joan is still depending on her own mother to look after her baby, and she’s plainly not happy. We could hope for some happiness with Roger, with whom she shares genuine chemistry; but Roger’s hardly the dependable sort, and I doubt Matthew Weiner would let his creations off so lightly. It’s one of the things the show excels at – making you care about characters, then making them suffer as much as possible.

Overall, it was a good episode, albeit one of the more obvious and conventional ones. It was notable that this was the first script this season not to bear the name of Matthew Weiner as at least a co-writer, and I think it showed. Some of the usual attention to detail seemed a little lacking – the way Bobby was treated as an afterthought, or the way the irascible and perceptive Dr Calvet was so easily taken in by Pete’s faux flattery at the dinner. But the cast made it as compelling as ever. The only major criticism I have is that this is the second week in a row without a brain-cripplingly hideous checked sport coat on display…

Game of Thrones: Season 2, Episode 5–The Ghost of Harrenhal

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Simon

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST NIGHT’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 5 YET.

“Men win wars. Not magic tricks.”

It was another catch-all episode of Game of Thrones this week, as almost every one of the season’s multifarious subplots was advanced, bit by bit. With the characters already so well-drawn, there’s no real need to focus so tightly on any one, which is fortunate; there’s so much going on now that the show has a lot to pack in over the next five episodes.

Nevertheless, there did seem to be a bit of a theme in this week’s script by series creators David Benioff and DB Weiss – the increasing return of magic to the lands of Westeros and Essos. Aside from Melisandre’s murderous shadow wraith, we saw Dany’s dragons again for the first time in ages, and she met the mysterious Pyat Pree, head of Qarth’s warlocks. At King’s Landing, Tyrion and Bronn were dubious about the King’s (meaning the Queen’s) method to defend the city against the forces of Stannis Baratheon – a strange green substance called wildfire, capable of burning so hot it can melt flesh. Up at gloomy Harrenhal, Arya finds herself making a pact with the enigmatic Jaqen H’ghar to take three lives in return for the three she saved from the burning wagon. And at Winterfell, Bran’s seemingly prescient dreams are getting more foreboding, as he tells Osha of a vision of Winterfell swamped by the sea and full of floating dead men.

That’s a lot of magic, for a show that has, until now, very much sidelined this traditional aspect of fantasy stories. And yet it still doesn’t interfere with the sense of grimy medieval reality that the show has already established. We already knew that there had been magic in this world; but as Maester Luwin contended a couple of weeks ago, it had long since vanished. Its apparent return cannot bode well – and presumably is tied to the return of the unstoppable White Walkers, as this world’s deadliest winter approaches.

It wasn’t all magic, of course, as the struggle for the Iron Throne continued apace. No sign of the loathsome Joffrey this week, though a ranting street preacher made clear the people’s dislike for their sadistic new monarch. Poor old Tyrion found himself lumped in with the hatred as the King’s Hand; “I’m trying to save them,” he grumbled to Bronn. As ever, Bronn was a marvellously sardonic sidekick for Tyrion, and continues to inject notes of realism about what war is really like. The role is a real opportunity for Jerome Flynn to reinvent himself from the housewives’ favourite crooner that he was in the 90s, and he’s seizing it with both hands, playing the part with relish.

Tyrion extracted the truth about Cersei’s plan from the pathetic Lancel, who’s such a wimp he’s not even fun for Tyrion to wind up (though it’s plenty of fun for us to watch). In the latest cameo by a genre veteran, a nearly unrecognisable Roy Dotrice popped up as Pyromancer Hallyne, eager to show off ‘the substance’ that his Order makes. It’s not clear (and neither is it in the books) whether wildfire is magical or a straightforward chemical weapon – I tend to the latter idea, likening it to the Byzantine incendiary known as Greek Fire. Either way, Bronn’s misgivings about its use make clear that this is very much an Ultimate Weapon, and one that could easily backfire uncontrollably on its deployers. Lucky Tyrion’s taking charge of it…

The reason for such drastic measures is that Stannis has now gained the upper hand in numbers, after using Melisandre’s deadly shadow to assassinate his own brother. That scene was genuinely creepy, Catelyn and Brienne watching in horror as the well-realised wraith crept up behind Renly and impaled him on an insubstantial blade. It’s a shame to lose Renly, whose war was over before it really began. But it does simplify matters somewhat that there’s one less pretender to the throne to keep up with. As Renly, Gethin Anthony was genial and likeable, but these qualities are hardly useful in a savage civil war. If nothing else, though, I’ll miss his role as eye candy and his dalliances with the pretty Finn Jones as Ser Loras.

Loras and his sister Margery were spirited away before Stannis arrived to take charge, presumably by Littlefinger, who popped up to work his schemes on them. It’s clear that Margery is the one with ambition in that family; Natalie Dormer did well as she steelily declared, “I don’t want to be a queen. I want to be the Queen.” I wonder where that will take her?

Also on the run from Renly’s camp were Catelyn and Brienne, who look to be forming another of the show’s well-judged double acts. There’s quite a few of these already; Tyrion and Bronn, Stannis and Davos, Varys and Littlefinger… It’s a good dramatic device, and one wonders if the showrunners took a bit of a lesson from classic Doctor Who scribe Robert Holmes, whose scripts always included at least one good double act.

Brienne and Cat are the only ones who know the truth of what happened to Renly, but they’re also suspects. They’d obviously do well to stick together until they reach safety. Gwendoline Christie, given more to do as Brienne this week, is looking like an excellent casting choice for this fan favourite from the books, and I look forward to seeing her adventuring with Lady Stark.

Up beyond the Wall, the Night’s Watch has moved on from Craster’s House of Incest and into the mountains, where they’ve met up with Qhorin ‘Halfhand’, a legendary Ranger. The change of setting is profound; previously, all the scenes beyond the Wall had been in claustrophobic snowbound forests. The breathtaking vistas high in the mountains give a much greater sense of scope to the wilds beyond the Wall – and the snow looks rather more convincing too. I wonder how much of these vistas are real, and how much CG?

At this point, Sam got to remind us of the actual threat the Seven Kingdoms are facing, in a discussion of the First Men with Jon – “I think they were hiding. And it didn’t work.” Sam also reminded his fellow Watchmen that three blasts on a horn herald the arrival of White Walkers, a signal unused for so long that it’s little remembered outside of history books.

But there was little time to dwell on such forebodings, as Qhorin duly turned up and announced a commando raid on the HQ of former Watchman-turned-wildling-leader Mance Rayder. We’ve heard a lot about this guy so far, but have yet to actually see him. I presume that next week, that may change…

In the rather warmer environs of Qarth, Dany was teaching one of her dragons how to breathe fire – that’s surely not going to work out well when they grow bigger. As an honoured guest, Dany was rather surprised to find herself beset by ‘romantic’ proposals. Her host, Xaro Xhoan Daxos, made an offer of marriage, to be paid for by providing her with the means to take back the Iron Throne; meanwhile, Ser Jorah made a speech of adoration for her leadership that can only be a declaration of love. The ever-reliable Iain Glen played the speech well, his eyes welling up with obvious restrained passion.

Dany also met the disquieting Pyat Pree, a cadaverous blue-lipped warlock seemingly capable of appearing in two places at once, who offered a less than tempting invitation to the ‘House of the Undying’. It’s definitely getting a bit mystical over in Qarth. But the city’s vague, undefined exoticism makes it an interesting addition to the story’s universe, especially after that barren desert.

Barren in a colder way are the Iron Islands, where Theon yet again proved that he’s a bit rubbish at being a leader of men. Stung by the contempt of his sister and his prospective ship’s crew, it’s believable that he would hatch an over-ambitious plan to ‘show them all’. And so it proved, as on the advice of his conniving first mate, he abandoned the ‘plan’ to raid an inoffensive fishing village, and instead invade a prime piece of Stark real estate. Whereupon, as he obviously realised, the Stark forces would head out to stop him, leaving the unspoken realisation that Winterfell would be pretty lacking in defences as a result.

The script didn’t spell that out, but it was easy enough for anyone with a basic knowledge of military tactics to work out what Theon’s going to try. Having already betrayed Robb Stark’s trust, he’s going to go the whole hog in the treachery stakes and actually invade Robb’s ancestral seat. I can’t see that going well for anyone…

As Bran’s prophetic dreams have already foretold. Plainly all that imagery of the sea swamping Winterfell is a foretaste of the invasion by the seafaring Ironmen. After last season’s dream of Ned Stark’s death, it’s looking like Bran’s nightmares have a disturbing habit of coming true; yet another sign of magic returning to this world. I like Isaac Hempstead-Wright as the solemn, soulful Bran, but as yet he’s not had much to do this year, occasionally popping up as a placeholder to remind the audience that Winterfell is still there. Thankfully, it looks like he’s about to get a plot of his own, maybe as early as next week.

Also continuing to impress was Maisie Williams as Arya; unlike some shows, Game of Thrones has cast some truly amazing child actors. The scene in which she faced off with the suspicious Tywin Lannister was electric, her eyes burning into those of Charles Dance like two equals rather than a prisoner and captor. It’s impressive that such a young actor can more than hold her own in a scene with an old pro like Charles Dance. And the scene was freighted with threat – Tywin obviously doesn’t realise what a valuable captive he has right under his nose.

Jaqen H’ghar might, though. He seems awfully knowledgeable about everything, by presumably mystical means. German actor Tom Wlaschiha is another bit of impeccable casting as Jaqen, with the solitary streak of grey in his long hair. At the end of the episode, he’d clearly fulfilled the first part of his bargain, and Arya is yet again responsible for a death – the torturer from last week having plummeted from the battlements with his head turned somewhat farther than necks usually allow.

It was a busy episode plotwise, which surprisingly found no time for the usual excesses of sex and violence. You get the feeling that it’s all building up to a positive orgy of killing in the very near future, though. And while there was none of the show’s trademark ‘sexposition’, at least I got some titillation from the surprisingly buff Joe Dempsie all sweaty and shirtless as Gendry:

Next week, presumably many of the strands set up will begin coming to fruition, and I predict killing aplenty as Theon’s unwise plan starts to unfold and Jaqen continues to stalk victims at Harrenhal. Looking forward to it!

Mad Men: Season 5, Episode 6–Far Away Places

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Simon

“I have an announcement to make. It’s going to be a beautiful day.”

After the last couple of weeks tight focus, this week’s Mad Men continued the trend with yet another episode of detailed character study. It’s a Peggy episode… No wait, it’s a Roger and Jane episode… Hang on, it’s actually a Don and Megan episode… I can’t stand the confusion in my mind!

Actually, it was all three of these, cleverly interweaved in a Robert Altman/Quentin Tarantino non-linear narrative to take place over roughly the space of the same day. Mad Men has played with dramatic form before, but never, I think, so boldly. Series creator Matthew Weiner has said that the tricksy structure of this episode was inspired by French anthology films, but I suspect like most people of my generation, the first thing I thought when I realised what was going on was, “oh, it’s Pulp Fiction.”

And it did take me a little while to realise what was going on. Not until we were some way into the Don/Megan narrative and I saw the same moment of them telling Peggy they were off to Howard Johnson’s, in fact. In retrospect, I was being pretty dumb – though I did wonder why Roger turned up in Don’s office proposing a trip to Howard Johnson’s when I thought he and Megan had just been there. And I did expect that, when Peggy was called by an obviously flustered Don from a call box in the first story, there’d be some payoff to explain his consternation. So, dumb old me was being less than perceptive this week – ironic, in an episode so concerned with people’s perceptions that it featured at its centre Roger Sterling tripping on acid.

But I’m getting ahead of myself (much like the story structure of this episode). In many ways, we were in familiar Mad Men territory here; the script dealt yet again with the relationships between the male and female characters, with a dose of reminding us how difficult it could be to balance those relationships with a professional career. Especially for Peggy, who’s still struggling to be taken seriously in the man’s world of copywriting.

Peggy’s relationship was the first to be subjected to what I suppose would be appropriate to call an acid test. She started her narrative in bed with her on/off boyfriend Abe (and who would have thought he looked so good clad only in a pair of white briefs?). Bur she couldn’t concern herself with such niceties as going to the movies or having sex – she had her long-awaited Heinz pitch to think about.

In many ways, this scene was an amusing gender reversal of common Mad Men moments, particularly from when Don and Betty were still together. In this case, Peggy was, revealingly, basically a female Don – so preoccupied with work that her frustrated partner eventually angrily asked her if it was over between them. And just like Don, Peggy was too deep in thought about work to even give him a proper answer. No wonder he ended up storming out after saying that he wasn’t like most men in that regard.

The Heinz pitch didn’t go well, with bean supremo Raymond less than impressed with Peggy’s idea even though he’d asked for precisely what he got. The heavy implication, of course, was that he couldn’t take Peggy as seriously as he would Don; he even asked if Don had signed off on the proposal. All credit to Elisabeth Moss for this scene – you could actually see the moment when Peggy reached the end of her tether, and just let Raymond have it in a tirade that was either bold or suicidal – we’ve yet to see which.

And of course, Raymond responded not with the respect he’d have given Don, but by likening Peggy to his teenage daughter. I’m not surprised she was frustrated enough to go and get stoned and give a strange man a handjob in a movie theater. Odd choice of movie though; Born Free has certainly made me crave the former activity, but never the latter…

But the most significant aspect of the Peggy narrative was what she – and we – began to learn about eccentric newcomer Ginsberg. He’s fiercely protective of his privacy, and seems to want to keep his father hidden away, even though his father seems quite a likeable guy. Quizzing Ginsberg on this, Peggy was first told that he was actually a Martian – solemn but eccentric, we thought. Then he revealed that he’d actually been born in a concentration camp, never knew his mother, and was adopted from a Swedish orphanage.

Hard to know if that was trademark eccentricity too, but it had the ring of truth about it. It certainly unsettled Peggy; enough that she had to call Abe over in the middle of the night, like a resource she could summon at a moment’s notice. I wonder if her thing with Abe really is coming to an end – because it looks like there might be something brewing between her and the enigmatic, quirky Ginsberg. If so, good. He seems very interesting. And it shows that Peggy may have a recurring taste in Jewish intellectuals, something I can empathise with.

Roger too was dealing with intellectuals, in the most out-and-out funny section of the episode, which nevertheless was still fraught with significance for his increasingly moribund relationship with trophy wife Jane. In her previous (infrequent) appearances, Jane has shown urges to be taken seriously as an intellectual, much to Roger’s amusement. Now we saw him indulging her with a trip to a very pseudo, middle class dinner party, which took an unexpected turn when the host suggested they leave a discussion until after they “turned on.”

No surprise in retrospect – if I caught the host’s name correctly, he was Dr Timothy Leary. Certainly his obsession with the Tibetan Book of the Dead would fit with that being the case. When it became clear that Roger was grudgingly going to experiment with hallucinogenic drugs, I was – like last week – eagerly leaning forward murmuring, “I really want to see this!”

I also had a moment of dread that Mad Men would lose its usual subtle restraint, and we’d be presented with the usual audio-visual headfuck that most shows seem to think best represents an acid trip. But no – in typical Mad Men style, the trip (shown exclusively from Roger’s POV) was handled with intelligence and subtlety. No swirling colours and Grateful Dead soundtrack here. Instead, we got the Beach Boys and laugh-out-loud moments as the drug took hold.

First, Roger had a few weird auditory hallucinations – a vodka bottle played Russian classical music at him when he opened it, causing him to open and close it over and over again to repeat the effect. Just when I couldn’t stop laughing at that, he got fixated on a hair colour ad with half a man’s grey hair recoloured to black, then took the unfortunate step of glancing at himself in the mirror:

After I stopped laughing at his resemblance to Two-Face, the trip took a turn for the significant, as Leary, advising him not to look at his reflection, suddenly turned into a calm, authoritative Don Draper. Trip-Don advised Roger to go to his wife, which he duly did, and after a bit of dancing which Roger viewed as out of his body, he and Jane took a cab to continue their trip at home. The sight of the two of them utterly spaced in the back of a NYC taxi was funny enough to start me laughing all over again.

But back at home, the trip took a more serious turn and Roger and Jane ended up having one of those deeply profound conversations you only seem to have when you’re really out of it. And with almost Zen-like calm on both their parts, they came to an amicable agreement that their relationship was over – a firm decision, unlike Peggy’s prevarication on the same issue earlier. It’s just a shame that Jane didn’t remember any of it on waking! Still, she took it well, and it looks like Roger’s footloose and fancy free again (not that he ever let marriage restrain him anyway). Perhaps he’ll finally get together with Joan – she’s the only woman in five seasons he’s ever had any real chemistry with, presumably intentionally.

As the newly Zen Roger arrived at work and suggested a trip to Howard Johnson’s with Don, we were into the final thread of the script (and back to the scene that the Roger narrative had started with – I didn’t realise until then that the LSD party had been a flashback to the night before). Don, who seems to have finally grown up with regards to women this year, eschewed Roger’s suggestion of a weekend of debauchery in favour of a trip with Megan. In hindsight, Roger’s suggestion might have been better.

For yet again, the tempestuous Draper marriage flared up into a dramatic fight. Megan, not too happy at being peremptorily dragged out of work for a trip to a glorified diner, used the ultimate weapon on Don – reminding him that he has no mother. As far as Don’s psyche goes, this is the nuclear option, and he stormed out in his car, leaving Megan in the parking lot.

Of course he calmed down and came back, but by then Megan was long gone, possibly with some reprobates she’d met in the parking lot. Cue a long night of worry for an increasingly frantic Don as he tried to locate her to no avail, even calling her mother; and along the way, making that flustered call to Peggy we’d seen earlier during her section of the episode.

Finally returning to New York, Don was none too happy to find Megan already at home – and with the chain on the door. So he did what any red-blooded alpha male would do – kicked the door in, chased her round the apartment and finally caught her up in a kiss she couldn’t help but respond to. Yep, he’s still got it.

But it’s still not clear how their relationship stands. The frustrated Megan had earlier said that, as far as she was concerned, it was over. That kiss seems to have changed her mind; well, Don is a very attractive man! Still, it’s looking increasingly like he needs her far more than she needs him, yet another indication of the growing change in the formerly dominant Don. Earlier, Roger had wondered if Jane, twenty years his junior, had cheated on him with a younger man. I wonder if, where Megan is concerned, this might become an inevitability – in keeping with the theme that Don isn’t the young man he was, and is becoming more and more conscious of it.

As if to remind him, the all-too-infrequently seen Bert Cooper was waiting to give him a good bollocking at work: “You’ve been on love leave. It’s amazing things are going as well as they with as little as you’ve been doing.” In earlier years, Don could party hard, have a major existential crisis, stare moodily through a haze of cigarette smoke and still turn up at work on top of his game. No longer, it seems…

This was a brilliant episode, I thought, with the usual high class soap opera of Mad Men taken up a dramatic notch by the clever use of the interweaved non-linear narratives. As a former film student, I’m a sucker for that kind of thing, especially when welded to drama this good.

As always, the performances were impeccable, with as much told by facial expression and body language as by dialogue. There was also some excellent direction that brought home the similarities of each main character’s dilemmas – particularly notable was the fact that Don and Megan ended up collapsed on the floor discussing their relationship in exactly the same position as Roger and Jane had been earlier. And of course, as a diehard Roger fan, how could I not love an episode with the great man tripping his nuts off with Timothy Leary? ‘Sterling’ stuff, up there with the classic Suitcase episode, and it’s going to be hard to top this one this year.

Game of Thrones: Season 2, Episode 4–Garden of Bones

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Simon

SPOILER WARNING – THIS IS FROM LAST NIGHT’S US BROADCAST, AND MAJOR PLOT POINTS ARE DISCUSSED. DON’T READ AHEAD IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN EPISODE 4 YET.

“You’re fighting to overthrow a king, yet you have no plan for what happens afterwards?”

After last week’s tight focus on a handful of characters and plotlines, this week’s episode of Game of Thrones widened its scope to include almost every one of the series’ increasingly complex web of subplots. As a result, it moved like a rollercoaster; but the detailed character development explored in depth last week was necessarily absent. What we got instead was more like snapshots, brief but revealing sketches of characters as the action rattled along at lightning speed.

None of this is necessarily a bad thing. This second season has a hell of a lot to pack in in terms of plot; as the War of the Five Kings gathers pace, there’s a lot more to keep up with than there was in the relatively straightforward first season. It follows that you can’t have every episode scrutinising little details when there’s simply so much plot to move along. Still, while we didn’t really learn anything new about the people in the show this week (with a couple of notable exceptions), there were plenty of telling character points amidst the breathless action.

The episode opened with an almost Shakespearean scene of a couple of Lannister spear carriers gossiping about the best fighters in the realm, unaware that Robb Stark’s army is about to fall on them like wolves. It was a nice intake of breath before the action began in earnest, seeing these two lowly soldiers, the most ordinary of people, and getting to know them a bit before they ended up ripped to pieces by Robb’s direwolf. The ensuing battle, as previously, wasn’t actually shown – possibly an indication of budgetary restrictions even on a show this expensive. Equally probably though, it simply wasn’t considered important enough with so much plot to get through. We need to know that Robb won the battle; showing the spectacle is really incidental.

The aftermath was predictably bloody, with eviscerated bodies scattered hither and yon. It gave some real sense of how it must have been after a medieval battle, as the victors looted their fallen foes for their boots, coup de graces were delivered to the mortally wounded, and grisly impromptu amputations were carried out.

The amputation we saw was performed by a pretty young nurse called Talisa, with Robb’s stoic help. There was clearly a spark between them, and I’m guessing she’s going to take the place of another character from the books who served as Robb’s love interest. It’s a little uninspiring to see the cliched approach whereby she is a stern critic of what he’s up to but you could cut the romantic tension with a knife; but their little scene, as she poured scorn on his lack of an endgame plan to justify the slaughter, was still rather good. Her comment about him not knowing what he’ll do after overthrowing Joffrey felt pointed, but hopefully it wasn’t yet another example of a TV show trying to comment on current events in the Middle East. Mind you, there’ve been so many of those recently that I might be seeing such allusions where none are intended!

But there wasn’t time to linger on the theme of ordinary people caught up in a war of their rulers’ choosing. There was far too much to pack in. Aside from the continuing intrigue in King’s Landing, this episode caught us up with Dany Targaryen in the desert; Arya and Gendry at Harrenhal; both Renly Baratheon and his brother Stannis’ war efforts; and the machinations of Stannis’ sinister Red Priestess, Melisandre.

It was all well done, but we found ourselves racing from place to place with dizzying speed as the plot and events interweaved to affect each other. At King’s Landing, Joffrey was continuing his descent into full-on cruel tyrant mode, much to Tyrion’s consternation. With so much authority vested unquestioningly in the King, Tyrion showed quite some nerve remonstrating with him after he had Sansa beaten in retaliation for her brother’s actions. He got away with it though, with the ever-sardonic Bronn to back him up. It’s always good to see those two on screen as a double act; discussing whether a bit of sex would cure Joffrey of his sadistic tendencies, Bronn pithily opined, “there’s no cure for being a cunt.”

Perhaps Tyrion should have listened. This week’s only sex scene was a revealing glimpse of quite how twisted Joffrey was, as we saw how he planned to enjoy himself with the two whores Tyrion had sent him. It was a nice bit of continuity to see Ros again; but her involvement in every scene involving the local prostitutes does make it seem like King’s Landing has a rather limited supply.

Still, she might reconsider her profession after Joffrey had her first beat fellow whore Daisy then violate her with an eye-wateringly jagged and wide royal sceptre, Joffrey’s intent being to get his sadistic jollies then send the result to Tyrion as an object lesson. Whether this actually killed Daisy was unclear, as even this show wasn’t going to put sexual violence of that level on the screen. It was a genuinely nasty scene to watch; Esme Bianco as Ros conveying the terror of having to obey the hideous orders of the capricious king, and Jack Gleeson being every bit the salivating monster as the spoiled boy king.

With so much to pack in, the script didn’t follow up by showing Tyrion’s reaction to Joffrey’s ‘message’. Perhaps it’ll be followed up on next week; but then, I suppose both we and Tyrion already know what a monster Joffrey is, and reminders aren’t really needed. Besides, Tyrion was busy intimidating his cousin Lancel, who turned up with an order from Cersei to release the imprisoned Grand Maester Pycelle. Lancel was really no challenge for Tyrion, who’s dealt with far more sophisticated operators than this dim prettyboy. Once Tyrion revealed that he knew (and might tell) of Lancel’s dalliances with the Queen, Lancel was putty in his hands, easily malleable into a useful little informant.

It was another scene dominated by Peter Dinklage as Tyrion, who pretty much steals every scene he’s in. Eugene Simon is pretty enough as Lancel, but the boy is, basically, an idiot. He’s obviously a poor replacement for the Queen’s real lover, her brother Jaime.

And it was negotiating for Jaime’s release that brought Littlefinger to Renly’s camp this week, where Catelyn Stark is still hanging out trying to negotiate an alliance with Robb. We saw tow sides to Lord Baelish this week; his usual smooth political facade crumbling as he impulsively tried to grab Catelyn, confessing his long term love for her. It was just a moment, and he soon regained his composure, but it was a revealing glimpse into Littlefinger’s insecurity beneath that controlled veneer. It was another great little scene, well played by Aidan Gillen and Michelle Fairley; the latter’s warrior queen facade cracking too when presented with the bones of her dead husband.

Outside, Littlefinger was back to his usual smooth self in a heavily freighted discussion with Renly’s wife Margery Tyrell. His thinly veiled comments made it clear that Renly’s relationship with her brother Loras is very much an open secret about court; but Margery, as shown in the series, is a canny political operator herself, and was giving nothing away. As a fan of The Tudors, it’s hard to see Natalie Dormer in a bodice and not think of her turn on that show as Anne Boleyn, but Margery Tyrell is a far cleverer woman than Henry VIIII’s doomed lust object.

Over the Narrow Sea, we caught up with Dany Targaryen and her starving Dothraki followers as they finally reached civilisation in the form of the city of Qarth. This led to a brief vignette as Dany was faced with the ruling Thirteen of the city, who were less than keen to let her and her “Dothraki horde” in. But Dany showed some real fire (appropriate for the ‘”Mother of Dragons”) as she boldly stood up to them. Emilia Clarke was as impressive as ever, as was Nonso Anozie as her eventual guarantor Xara Xhoan Daxos, and the gates of Qarth eventually opened to display a breathtaking CG vista of a releif from the baking desert. Still, as CG vistas go, I’m not sure Qarth (either its interior or its high walls) is up there with the best the show’s done.

Rather better was the realisation of Harrenhal, where Arya and Gendry found themselves imprisoned this week. A grim, forbidding half-ruined giant castle, Harrenhal was a place of terror where prisoners were taken one by one to be sadistically tortured to no real purpose other than their captors’ sadistic satisfaction. The torture was imaginatively nasty; the prisoners had a rat in a bucket strapped to their chests, whereupon the bucket was heated and the maddened rat would have to chew its way out through the terrified torturees’ bodies.

It all looked bleakly nasty, with Arya and Gendry held ina cold, wet cage outdorrs, awaiting their turn for torture. But just as Gendry’s turn came, they were saved by the unexpected arrival of Tywin Lannister, making a welcome first appearance this year. Charles Dance is magnetic in the role of the Lannister patriarch, and I must admit I’ve missed him onscreen so far this season, so it was as much a relief for me to see him as it was for the prisoners.

Tywin may not be a very nice man, but he’s not wilfully cruel. To him, it makes far more sense to put the prisoners to work than sadistically torture them to death. He’s also not stupid; he spotted immediately that Arya wasn’t a boy, and she found herself appointed as his cupbearer – an ironic place for Ned Stark’s heir to be. Tywin might have recognised her to be a girl, but not which girl. That could be interesting…

Just when you thought the episode couldn’t pack in any more plotlines, up popped Stannis, having arrived at Renly’s camp in a futile attempt to get his little brother to abandon his claim to the throne. Renly, who’s got a nice big army, was having none of this, so it was time for Stannis’ back up plan – Melisandre and her tricks from the Red God.

After Liam Cunningham got to fill in Davos Seaworth’s back story in another revealing vignette aboard Stannis’ ship, he was sent off to row Melisandre into a handy nearby cave, and it was time for one of the show’s rare depictions of actual magic in its fantasy universe. It seems that the queasily uncomfortable coupling between her and Stannis has indeed borne fruit. Carice van Houten, a veteran of Paul Verhoeven movies, got to do yet another full frontal nude scene as she shed her robe to reveal that she was about as pregnant as you can get. But it wasn’t a baby she moaningly gave birth to; it was a scary looking smoke monster that kept taking and then losing human form. As Davos cowered against the wall, it was an excellent place for this week’s cliffhanger.

There was so much packed into this episode (admittedly of necessity) that, while it was breathtakingly exciting, it was actually a bit hard to keep up with. About the only plotlines not covered this week were events north of the Wall, and what the Greyjoys are getting up to on the Iron Islands. The twists and turns of the intricate, interweaving subplots were great, but I have to say, I missed the longer, more detailed skulduggery so much in evidence last week. Still, from memory of the book, there’s still a heck of a lot to pack in in the remaining six episodes, so this breakneck pace may be more of the norm as the season progresses. If so, it’ll be a shame to lose so many of the thoughtful, lengthy character scenes, but a necessary progression of pace for the story. Still, excitement is always good, right?

Mad Men: Season 5, Episode 5 – Signal 30

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Simon

“Things seem so… random, all of a sudden. And time feels like it’s speeding up.”

Poor old Pete Campbell. It’s easy to dislike the obnoxious little toe rag – and kudos to the likeable Vincent Kartheiser for achieving that – but you can’t help feeling sorry for him. Maybe it’s karma, but nothing, absolutely nothing in his life ever works out the way he wants it to – chiefly, of course, his rather sad desire to be just like Don. Pete was front and centre in this episode – shamefacedly attending a stereotypically gruesome Driver’s Ed film at the opening, perhaps feeling like getting his drivers license would make him feel more of a man; and crying in a lift before crawling into bed with his unsatisfying wife at the end. In between, as usual, Pete’s life was a symphony of chaos as he tried and failed to be more of ‘a man’ than he is.

Not that it was all about Pete, though we’ll come back to his catalogue of disasters in a while. Like last week, the episode kept a focus on just a few of the characters, and what they had in common; their jobs and their seemingly empty marriages.If last week’s theme was The Long Dark Night Of The Soul, this week’s was Great Men (and Pete) And Their Wives. As Rod Serling might have put it, “Picture a series of hollow men… their lives unfulfilled at home, seeking empty solace in their work. Portraits of marriages on their way to Signal 30… in The Twilight Zone.”

The marriages in question were those of Pete, Don, Lane, Ken (nice to see him getting something to do again) and even, tangentially, Roger. Along the way, we learned some surprising things about a few of them, impressive for characters we thought we’d known for nearly five years. Ken, it turns out, has been quietly keeping up with his stories and making a bit of a (false) name for himself as a writer of pulp sci fi (hence the Twilight Zone reference). Now a publisher wants to collect twenty of his stories into an anthology, something he’d rather keep quiet.

Unfortunately for him, his proud but unthinking wife Cynthia had to go and blurt it out in front of Don and Pete at an uncomfortable soiree in Pete’s suburban home. And when Roger hears about it, he’s none too pleased about one of his best men moonlighting. After all, for Roger, the job is enough; but as Don tells Pete later, “Roger’s unhappy. You’re not.”

Still, Ken’s marriage to Cynthia seems pleasant enough compared to the hidden emptiness his coworkers are feeling. We know about Don, of course; yet again here, he seemed like yesterday’s man in his relationship with Megan. She wants to go out and have fun with their (read, “her”) friends; he wants, as he admits in a drunken moment of honesty, to “have babies”, something she’s plainly not ready for.

Lane, on the other hand, was finally letting his rather stereotypical English reserve slip to reveal the bottled up passion underneath. It started as he unwillingly let his wife drag him to a Manhattan ‘English pub’ to watch the 1966 World Cup Final (historical references abounded this week). Presently, we were subjected to the rather astonishing sight of Lane, roaringly drunk, cheering the winning England team and slurring his way through “God Save the Queen”.

Bizarre enough, but more was to come, as we saw Lane attempting to woo (in a business sense) the CEO of Jaguar US, who’d offered to bring his business to Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. I must confess, as an Englishman used to seeing American TV misconceptions of my culture, I was watching all of these scenes like a hawk, just waiting for the usual slips in dialogue or setting. But no, all was pretty accurate, as you’d expect from a show as meticulous about its detail as Mad Men. The pie and mushy peas in the pub looked real enough, the English accents sounded real, and even Lane’s statement about Jaguar’s imminent merger with the British Motor Corporation was spot on. Well done, Mr Weiner!

Lane’s unexpected snagging of a major advertising account threaded through the episode, entwining the scripts’ examination of our heroes’ professional lives. Roger in particular got a great scene in which we were reminded that he’s far more than a boorish, drunken buffoon; he’s actually a master at his work. The scene in which he educated Lane about his technique of faking drunkenness and using psychological tactics to win over clients showed why he’s a partner in the agency, and revealed him to be far more clever and subtle than we’ve seen of late. Intriguing that this should come up in an episode directed by John Slattery, the man whose portrayal of Roger makes him quite my favourite character.

The other side of the story, our heroes’ marriages, was encapsulated in the centrepiece of the episode, a magnificently strained social evening at Pete and Trudi’s Cos Cob home as he tried vainly to demonstrate to Don and Ken (his former rival) that he was “the man with everything”.The infighting for the position of alpha male began almost immediately, with Pete vainly trying the tactic of showing off his giant radiogram: “It’s like having a miniature orchestra”. Then Don turned up, and it became a contest for who could wear the most eye-burningly hideous checked sport coat (another continuing theme this year):

Plainly, Don won that one.

Amusingly, neither Don nor Megan could remember the name of Ken’s wife (causing a laugh out loud moment as she realised and involuntarily exclaimed “Cynthia!”). But Trudi was at her most charming, despite Pete’s drunkenly obnoxious ‘gracious host’ turn. Conversation at the dinner table took a gruesome turn as Pete took some relish in discussing Texas sniper Charles Whitman’s university tower shootings.

Then Ken unwillingly told a story that seemed (in a way that wasn’t entirely clear) to sum up the episode’s themes with a sci fi story: ‘The Punishment of X-4’, about a powerless robot whose only means of asserting himself was to remove a vital bolt in a bridge, killing everyone on it. The conversation turned wistful as all discussed what they’d wanted to be whn they grew up, a theme of missed opportunity that also suffused the episode. As Don said, “No one grows up wanting to be an advertiser”. It was a theme we’d return to later.

But the musing didn’t last long, as Pete’s first setback of the episode commenced. His surprising success at mending a leaky tap earlier turned inevitably to humiliation as it burst all over the kitchen, leaving (inevitably, again) the ever-manly Don to do the manly thing that Pete just couldn’t. Ken’s obviously not so worried; he just stood and smirked.

But it was the first in a long line of humiliations for Pete this week, as the script seemed determined to compress all his usual bad luck into a much shorter (and blackly funny) timeframe. His American Beauty-style fixation with a high school girl at his Driver’s Ed class seemed to be going so well… But things don’t go well for Pete, and he was left seething as she spurned him for a beefy high school jock with the all-too-accurate nickname ‘handsome’.

Later, as our heroes helped out with Lane’s recalcitrant Jaguar client, they found themselves in a high class brothel (typically, taken there by Roger), and we got an inkling of what’s really seething in Pete’s rancid little core. Humiliated once again by a prostitute’s faint praise of his biceps, he waited wearily while she tried various turn on techniques; the only one to which he eventually responded was, “you’re my king”.

There’s something desperately sad about Pete and his desire to be, basically, Don Draper; which was reiterated as he turned on a reproachful Don in the taxi home reminding Don of his own former infidelities. And unsurprisingly, given his growing guilt, Don was quick to agree, stating that he’d had everything (like Pete) and let it slip through his fingers. Together with his mellowing towards his ex-wife, this made it clear that he’s more than aware where he went wrong.

But fate (and the scriptwriter’s cruel word processor) hadn’t finished with Pete yet. It turned out that the brothel trip had cost them the Jaguar account; the CEO’s wife had found chewing gum “on his pubis”. Even Pete found that pretty funny, but Lane didn’t, leading to a slanging match (“all the hours I’ve spent on you to make you the monster you are”) and the surprising development of Lane challenging Pete to a fistfight.

Lane might be a steely businessman, but we’ve never had the impression that he was in any way physically tough. Clearly neither did Pete, who ended up on the floor with a bloody nose and a face full of bruises. It was an uncomfortable but irresistibly funny scene; I was with Roger when he commented, “I know cooler heads should prevail, but I really want to see this.”

While Lane celebrated his manliness with an embarrassing attempt to kiss Joan (and thank God she’s back at the office), Pete was reduced to sobbing in the lift. “I have nothing,” he wept at an embarrassed-looking Don. The irony being, of course, that it’s only true because he thinks so. He was summed up by Ken, off screen, narrating a story called ‘The Man with the Miniature Orchestra’, and sounding uncannily like Rod Serling.

This was a blackly brilliant episode. Less dark and intense than last week, it managed to interweave theme, character, and plot in some moments of desperate sadness and laugh-out-loud comedy. Particularly, it was nice to have some focus on Jared Harris as the prissy Lane, and Aaron Staton as the impossible to dislike Ken Cosgrove – the very antithesis of Pete Campbell.

If I have any complaints, it’s just that two episodes in a row with such a narrow character focus felt like the wider ensemble of the show was being neglected somewhat. Still, if Matthew Weiner keeps taking this approach, he could end up with, week by week, some acutely observed character pieces about everyone at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. My only request – please, more focus on Roger, and what’s happening with him and Joan.

Simon's incoherent blog

Random writings about things

Author Archives: Simon