On the tv front
Most fo the best scenes from this week's episode of The Good Wife had been showed in the preview that followed the big event of this season, but "The Material World" still had its moments.
I appreciate that we didn't get to see the funeral. Lesser shows would have played that card. TGW chose to show the aftermath, with Diane and Alicia bonding and getting drunk together.
My favourite moments were Diane comparing Alicia and her to Irish mistresses, missing Will -- oh that empty office in front of hers! --, feeling alone, but I also loved the bad parody of True Detective that Alicia was watching in bed. It fit in the case of the week, given that the husband was a materialist philosopher, and it was hilarious, alhough only viewers of TD could catch the wink!
For the first time in ages, Kalinda's character is fleshed out. She keeps using sex, and her sexual partners, which has always been a major feature -- I do wonder if she has always been like that or if it's Peter offering to cover for her fake identity in exchange for sexual favours that started a trend --, but this time it is both to forget her grief and to get the work done. Well, forgetting in Carey's arms didn't work, so she decided to use someone else and to kill two birds with one stone. In this case, she worked on protecting Diane from David Lee's plotting. Getting rid of Damian by using Damian's cop buddy seemed to be the best shot.
Kalinda loved Will and Will loved Diane, so Kalinda will have Diane's back. Her transfering her loyalty to Will's "widow" makes a lot of sense.
I was thrilled by the new DA, played by our September from FRINGE !!!
As for Matthew Goode's character, Finn, I am not sure I want the show to go the romantic route, but the scene in which Peter bumped into him in Alicia's appartment was priceless! Peter must have felt cursed. Will is dead, but now there's an even prettier rival and he's already in the house!
Julianna Margulies was fantastic throughout the episode. I especially liked the scene in which she told Carey that if they took the client (aka the father of Will's murderer) she would quit the firm.
Alicia isn't only mourning Will, she's mourning the life she could have had, the roads she could have taken, and the life she once had. She's going through an indentity crisis. She borke down and now she's letting so many pretences go. Now she can admit that Will mattered so much to her, she can even tell Peter that, unlike his cheating, her affair with Will meant a lot. She's also mourning a marriage that died years ago and had been maintained on by artificial means, like someone who is brain dead but still breathing through machines.
I also noticed that she told Peter that she wouldn't divorce because they were both valuable for each other's work. It was harsh, but it also echoed Kalinda's storyine, and her using her partners.
The idea of romance died with Will who was the most romantic character on the show. The new world of TGW is a tougher one. Diane embraced it during her scene with David Lee, determined not to be the gazelle in the savannah, but the predator.
As for Mad Men which is a show I kinda have a love-hate relationship with...
Of course, I have mixed feelings about "Time Zones".
The episode was a bit boring, in the way it checked in with almost every character (but Betty and Sally), but I loved its opeing scene and its final ones.
I loved the opening scene with Freddie Rumsen who seems to talk to us, which in retrospect was Don Draper pitching by proxy. Except that Don was Freddy and Peggy was...the audience (or is it the other way round?). Freddie was literally intoducing the viewers to "the beginning of the end", since this season is the first half of a final season, Breaking Bad-style.
But Freddie was also Don's standin, and a way to reach Peggy, which says how much Peggy and Don are no longer able to communicate. The tables are turned, given what the Freddie/Peggy relationship used to be at the beginning of the show. She's the one calling the shot now...sort of.
It's so fitting for Dick Whitman to hide behind another man, again, especially a man who once was in his shoes!
Don is an outcast now, in both his professional and private life. He's falling and falling, just like his cartoonish counterpart from the credits sequence, dying in slow motion before our eyes.
I didn't care much for the Megan, Roger or Joan scenes, but I loved seeing my favourite character, Peter Campbell, being so true to himself and enjoying himself in California. His scenes with Don were so Pete! His outfit, his tan, his hugging Don and genuine happiness to see him, his enthusiasm over work and Californian sandwiches and his oversighting Don's current situation...and later his marking his territory with the pretty blonde. California Pete was perfectly in character.
But Mad Men has always been about Don and about Peggy, and Peggy isn't quite where the final episode from last season seemed to have left her. She didn't take Don's place, and she's reduced to answer to a creative head who is not as good at his job as she is. Joan's storyline echoed Peggy's, even though Joan is a partner. Nobody takes her seriously, because she is a woman, because of her looks and because she lacks the education. She outranks Ken but he treats her like a subordinate. She lets him because she doesn't quite feel legitimate for the way she got her position in "The Othe Woman". BTW she keeps expecting people to expect sexual favours from her!
BTW the idea of having stand-ins isn't only served by Don's trick, but also by the East Coast/West Coast dialectics. Every head in the firm how has a double on the other coast, while Don's current now lives in California, just like the true Mrs Draper used to live. But Megan is no more Don's wife than Betty's now, perhaps even less, as she doesn't seem to have any attraction to her husband left.
At the end of the episode Don ends up miserable in the freezing cold on his balcony (the counterpoint of another balcony, a warm place wherein Megan told him not to throw his cigarets!), while Peggy sobs on the floor of her apartment, alone. Her character has come from a long way, but men are still in charge. Ted chose his wife and left her, Pete is in California, Don deserted her and her new boss refuses to listen to her, adding that he must be immune to her charms, which was probably the worst thing he could say given that she played the game like a boy. It is as if Peggy's attempt at personal happiness when she got involved with Ted destroyed almost everything she had built professionally under Don's mentorship.
Roger's bed is filled with people, but lying there, he looks just as alone as Don and Peggy in their empty homes. I hope that his daughter forgiving him will foreshadow some sort of reconciliation between Don and Peggy, and some Don/Sally scenes. The last scene of season 6 was promising, with that look and moment of truth between Don and Sally.
Don is still lying to people, but he seems to have stopped lying to himself, if the plane scene is any indication. He was tempted twice during the episode, first in California by a Betty-look alike real estate blonde, secondly on the plane by a brunette that recalled a long list of mistresses, but he ended up alone.
This final ride does open on a depressing note, doesn't it?
I also watched Game of Thrones but I have little to say about it apart from
I'm still team Stannis !!!
But shouldn't he be sailing to the Wall? His wife really is a nutjob.
I'm glad they chose to spend half the episode in King's Landing, focusing on the purple wedding, instead of checking with Arya or Daenerys or Jon Snow.
Dinklage was great as usual.The whole sequence played as it did on the book so it was a good adaptation, but that's it.
Although, Cersei guessing Brienne's feelings for Jaime never happened in the book, was it? I mean, I know they changed stuff and that Jaime and Brienne weren't there when Jeoffrey was poisoned, but I don't remember Cersei having that sort of conversation with Brienne later either.
Oberyn still rocks. He would eat alive the knight of flowers...
Now that the young mad king is dead, we have another psychopath on board with Bolton's bastard. I'm completely unspoiled about that storyline given that it wasn't on the last book I read. Theon/Reek hearing the news about Robb was a nice touch.
I think they wrote themselves in a corner with Shae. There's no way her storyline can work now...well, if it does end the way it did on the book.
I appreciate that we didn't get to see the funeral. Lesser shows would have played that card. TGW chose to show the aftermath, with Diane and Alicia bonding and getting drunk together.
My favourite moments were Diane comparing Alicia and her to Irish mistresses, missing Will -- oh that empty office in front of hers! --, feeling alone, but I also loved the bad parody of True Detective that Alicia was watching in bed. It fit in the case of the week, given that the husband was a materialist philosopher, and it was hilarious, alhough only viewers of TD could catch the wink!
For the first time in ages, Kalinda's character is fleshed out. She keeps using sex, and her sexual partners, which has always been a major feature -- I do wonder if she has always been like that or if it's Peter offering to cover for her fake identity in exchange for sexual favours that started a trend --, but this time it is both to forget her grief and to get the work done. Well, forgetting in Carey's arms didn't work, so she decided to use someone else and to kill two birds with one stone. In this case, she worked on protecting Diane from David Lee's plotting. Getting rid of Damian by using Damian's cop buddy seemed to be the best shot.
Kalinda loved Will and Will loved Diane, so Kalinda will have Diane's back. Her transfering her loyalty to Will's "widow" makes a lot of sense.
I was thrilled by the new DA, played by our September from FRINGE !!!
As for Matthew Goode's character, Finn, I am not sure I want the show to go the romantic route, but the scene in which Peter bumped into him in Alicia's appartment was priceless! Peter must have felt cursed. Will is dead, but now there's an even prettier rival and he's already in the house!
Julianna Margulies was fantastic throughout the episode. I especially liked the scene in which she told Carey that if they took the client (aka the father of Will's murderer) she would quit the firm.
Alicia isn't only mourning Will, she's mourning the life she could have had, the roads she could have taken, and the life she once had. She's going through an indentity crisis. She borke down and now she's letting so many pretences go. Now she can admit that Will mattered so much to her, she can even tell Peter that, unlike his cheating, her affair with Will meant a lot. She's also mourning a marriage that died years ago and had been maintained on by artificial means, like someone who is brain dead but still breathing through machines.
I also noticed that she told Peter that she wouldn't divorce because they were both valuable for each other's work. It was harsh, but it also echoed Kalinda's storyine, and her using her partners.
The idea of romance died with Will who was the most romantic character on the show. The new world of TGW is a tougher one. Diane embraced it during her scene with David Lee, determined not to be the gazelle in the savannah, but the predator.
As for Mad Men which is a show I kinda have a love-hate relationship with...
Of course, I have mixed feelings about "Time Zones".
The episode was a bit boring, in the way it checked in with almost every character (but Betty and Sally), but I loved its opeing scene and its final ones.
I loved the opening scene with Freddie Rumsen who seems to talk to us, which in retrospect was Don Draper pitching by proxy. Except that Don was Freddy and Peggy was...the audience (or is it the other way round?). Freddie was literally intoducing the viewers to "the beginning of the end", since this season is the first half of a final season, Breaking Bad-style.
But Freddie was also Don's standin, and a way to reach Peggy, which says how much Peggy and Don are no longer able to communicate. The tables are turned, given what the Freddie/Peggy relationship used to be at the beginning of the show. She's the one calling the shot now...sort of.
It's so fitting for Dick Whitman to hide behind another man, again, especially a man who once was in his shoes!
Don is an outcast now, in both his professional and private life. He's falling and falling, just like his cartoonish counterpart from the credits sequence, dying in slow motion before our eyes.
I didn't care much for the Megan, Roger or Joan scenes, but I loved seeing my favourite character, Peter Campbell, being so true to himself and enjoying himself in California. His scenes with Don were so Pete! His outfit, his tan, his hugging Don and genuine happiness to see him, his enthusiasm over work and Californian sandwiches and his oversighting Don's current situation...and later his marking his territory with the pretty blonde. California Pete was perfectly in character.
But Mad Men has always been about Don and about Peggy, and Peggy isn't quite where the final episode from last season seemed to have left her. She didn't take Don's place, and she's reduced to answer to a creative head who is not as good at his job as she is. Joan's storyline echoed Peggy's, even though Joan is a partner. Nobody takes her seriously, because she is a woman, because of her looks and because she lacks the education. She outranks Ken but he treats her like a subordinate. She lets him because she doesn't quite feel legitimate for the way she got her position in "The Othe Woman". BTW she keeps expecting people to expect sexual favours from her!
BTW the idea of having stand-ins isn't only served by Don's trick, but also by the East Coast/West Coast dialectics. Every head in the firm how has a double on the other coast, while Don's current now lives in California, just like the true Mrs Draper used to live. But Megan is no more Don's wife than Betty's now, perhaps even less, as she doesn't seem to have any attraction to her husband left.
At the end of the episode Don ends up miserable in the freezing cold on his balcony (the counterpoint of another balcony, a warm place wherein Megan told him not to throw his cigarets!), while Peggy sobs on the floor of her apartment, alone. Her character has come from a long way, but men are still in charge. Ted chose his wife and left her, Pete is in California, Don deserted her and her new boss refuses to listen to her, adding that he must be immune to her charms, which was probably the worst thing he could say given that she played the game like a boy. It is as if Peggy's attempt at personal happiness when she got involved with Ted destroyed almost everything she had built professionally under Don's mentorship.
Roger's bed is filled with people, but lying there, he looks just as alone as Don and Peggy in their empty homes. I hope that his daughter forgiving him will foreshadow some sort of reconciliation between Don and Peggy, and some Don/Sally scenes. The last scene of season 6 was promising, with that look and moment of truth between Don and Sally.
Don is still lying to people, but he seems to have stopped lying to himself, if the plane scene is any indication. He was tempted twice during the episode, first in California by a Betty-look alike real estate blonde, secondly on the plane by a brunette that recalled a long list of mistresses, but he ended up alone.
This final ride does open on a depressing note, doesn't it?
I also watched Game of Thrones but I have little to say about it apart from
I'm still team Stannis !!!
But shouldn't he be sailing to the Wall? His wife really is a nutjob.
I'm glad they chose to spend half the episode in King's Landing, focusing on the purple wedding, instead of checking with Arya or Daenerys or Jon Snow.
Dinklage was great as usual.The whole sequence played as it did on the book so it was a good adaptation, but that's it.
Although, Cersei guessing Brienne's feelings for Jaime never happened in the book, was it? I mean, I know they changed stuff and that Jaime and Brienne weren't there when Jeoffrey was poisoned, but I don't remember Cersei having that sort of conversation with Brienne later either.
Oberyn still rocks. He would eat alive the knight of flowers...
Now that the young mad king is dead, we have another psychopath on board with Bolton's bastard. I'm completely unspoiled about that storyline given that it wasn't on the last book I read. Theon/Reek hearing the news about Robb was a nice touch.
I think they wrote themselves in a corner with Shae. There's no way her storyline can work now...well, if it does end the way it did on the book.