the good: this week's mad men was, well.
Okay, yes. Arguably a bit heavy-handed. Then again, there are
PUBLISHED REVIEWERS dumb enamored of their normative attachment to the main male characters enough to miss the point, so. Also,
I do share amusement at the idea of the meta-shout-out from Jaguar, but for real? The only explanation for
this is that it came from someone who didn't actually watch the scene with the pitch in it.
Because it's clearly viewers being clueless, not lack of clarity on the part of the story. This is deliberate feminist critique like we haven't seen since, oh, Dollhouse. All this time the male leads have been so willing to treat women's bodies like a commodity; always considered power-disparate sex to be one of the perks of the job. But actually putting a number on it - well, that's just distasteful. I completely love how Pete's awkwardness is this huge force for modernity. Case in point, Don goes from pearl-clutching HORRAH at the proposition to former-secretary office sex within a couple of scenes. I'm as skeeved as anyone about the proposition, but I'm just as bugged by the hypocrisy on the part of everyone but Pete, who's as much of a scuzzbag as they are but he's at least the one who's willing to take the hit and be honest about it.
I think I really like Pete now?! ALL Y'ALL ARE BAD INFLUENCES. I also enjoyed so much how Lane, even out of his own sordid motives, at least did help her get the most out of it.
It was particularly effective because I watched this episode and the one before it just this evening. Joan, like Betty, is someone who I sympathize with a lot even as we don't have anything in common. I've liked her a lot better as time has gone on, and this is the first time in a while she's been front and center. Her marriage falls apart, and Dr. Rapist lands one last blow by being the one to initiate the divorce. But she and the world have grown past her old role, where she could have an emotionally/financially sustainable place in the world as Sexy Secretary. And here she's dropped head-on into the logical extension of that performance, and it's brutal. She totally deserves to be a partner - but ugh, to get it for this, not for all the grind she does day in and day out.
the bad: Sherlock
I really want to see this Moffat magic everyone is on about, but wow. I so don't. I watched the first season of Sherlock and loved it. Then I watched 2x1 and emphatically did not. Then I tried to watch Hound of the Baskervilles and was actually too bored even to snark, which REALLY NEVER HAPPENS TO ME, BABY, I SWEAR. But it was on and I kept seeing these wonderful reviews and anyway, my love for this Moriarty defies all reason. So I gave in to my morbid curiosity.
This was, of course, a mistake. I sat through the whole thing and cannot for the life of me remember why. This show is such Olive Garden. Like, it's terrible, it's terrible for you, it's not a fraction as good as it wants you to think it is, but I still sat there and chowed down!
MORIARTY YOU ARE MY FAAAAAVORITE. HE STOLE THE CROWN JEWELS, HAHAHAHA. Second favorite is the little girl who knew enough to run screaming from Sherlock. From the mouths of babes. (Though, speaking of the kid. Is that really such an ingenious Diabolical Plan that Sherlock is impressed? Being a stranger with poisoned candy?) Everyone else is, uh, fine, I guess?
I feel like Sherlock's characterization is BAD, BAD arithmetic. (giant unsubstantiated praise to the skies from other characters) + (sporadic half-assed acknowledgment of the sentience of other human beings) - (constant vicious douchebag lectures) = AMBIGUOUS CHARACTER, UH, STUFF!
So the thriller itself is pulpy and engaging? And, uh, it was less boisterously hateful than the last episode I watched? But like, this show thinks it has emotional resonance and shit. LAWL.
k. I'm really out.
unless Jim, you know. stayed alive. then I am back.
the scandalous: I know someone else watched the Desperate Housewives finale.
This is one of those shows that I would binge on once in a long while and then forget about, and then go back to and watch another run of, so I wasn't really caught up on this season. But when a show All About Ladies ends, I can't not mark its passing.
Things that were cool:
- MARCIA CROSS. DANA DELANEY. FELICITY HUFFMAN. EVA LONGORIA. TERI HATCHER. VANESSA WILLIAMS. KATHRYN JOOSTEN. what did American television even do to deserve all this talent and sheer brazen fabulousness?! in ONE PLACE, no less!
- Karen McClusky SAVED THE DAY. Like, you knew she would? But it was so awesome when she did!
- I adored the soapiness of the whole thing. Like, Julie's water breaking on Renee's wedding dress?! If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.
- hahaha, I liked the very end, that last shot of the woman moving in with her SEKRIT BOX OF SEKRITS!!
- MARCIA CROSS. this bears repeating.
Things that were not:
- basically all of Part 2.
- TOM SCAVO, YOU UNDERMINEY DICK. H8 U. The second time I gave up on the show, it was because Tom was all like, "wah, wah, Lynette, YOUR cancer is so hard on ME, stop whining and get me a SANDWICH" and she was like "OH MY GOD, YOU ARE RIGHT, I AM SO SORRY." so I guess it is consistent characterization that he turns an awesome job offer from her BFF into why it is so hard for HIM to be around her? Christ alive.
- everything Katherine went through, and she couldn't keep her happily ever after with Robin? Why did they have to break up?! explicitly because Katherine STOPPED BEING INTO WOMEN? It wouldn't have changed anything if she'd rolled into town alone and said "Robin is home in France at our chateau!" I really don't expect progressive television, but I really dislike when stuff goes out of its way to be regressive.
- I'd have noticed if Andrew had died, right? Where was he during his mother's murder trial? he was my favorite thing about those first couple of seasons.
Anyway.
Just 'cause.