selling your soul to the company store
I have been busy having Actual Training this week! This is both good and slightly disconcerting, as it turns out that one person who will be doing training with me was in my year at primary school. Most o_O inducing!
Oh, and the other thing I have been doing, mostly, is watching more Mad Men. I'm...er... halfway through season 3. *hides* I may need an icon.
I may have a new favourite character, and it is Sally Draper. She is AWESOME. I never like the kid characters! But Sally is brilliant. I love that she is a proper kid, a real youngster who has stuff going on that isn't Being Cute. She's messy in exactly the way real children are messy: she (and Bobby, but mostly Sally) has feelings and does things and gets in the way and is only predictable to the extent real people are predictable, i.e. sort of sometimes, but not reliably. She seems solidly believable in a way so few child characters are. I want her to grow up, move to a big city, chop all her hair off and KICK ASS.
I love that the Drapers are crap parents. They are really and unremittingly rubbish: Don is a better dad than Betty is a mum, but they are neither of them cut out for parenthood. (Part of that difference is that Betty is a mum all the time; Don is allowed the luxury of pretending his kids don't exist when he wants.) In a more reasonable age, they wouldn't be parents at all, and I think the show does a great job of showing how absolutely and fundamentally vital for happiness control over fertility is. I think we're a shown a Betty who loves her kids as individual people, but who really hates being a parent and resents them for making her be one. It's desperately sad, and fascinating, and I sit there practically bursting with empathy because my god, if I was born Betty? You BET I would be like that. And I would be hating the fact I was crap at it, too.
Which I think links interestingly into the ways that they've been showing the Drapers' as really being screwed over by living thirty years too early. Don and Betty are so dysfunctional not because they don't love each other or aren't each other's type - they are exactly each other's type, and they work very well together, right up to the second that societal crap gets in the way. They're struggling because the world has told Betty to be a housewife with kids and she's trying to be one, and because Don buys into that enough that he finds it difficult to remember that his wife IS the talented, beautiful, independent woman he keeps half-assedly chasing after. If they lived now? Sure Don would probably still have issues, but Betty would have no kids and she would be running something swishy and she would be rocking the world right by his side. But her world gives her no options for that. At all. Brr.
Talking of options: PEGGY. WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT SLEEPING WITH DOUCHEBAGS. NO. JUST, NO. EW EW EW EW. Duck Phillips is the most pointless douchebag in an industry riddelled with pointless douchebags. But other than your really, really terrible choice in dudes, rock on you. You knew the Padio campaign was doomed! You wrote a really adorable roomate-finding advertisement! You have a manipulative jackass of a mum, and a sister who you probably don't deserve because my god I don't blame her for being pissed off at you, but she loves you anyway. I love you for standing up for your right to equal pay, I love that you got an office because you were the only one ballsy enough to ask, I love that you are so effing adorable in your dresses and coats. Seriously, Peggy, were you queer and were such a thing chronologically possible, I would probably ask you to marry me. You are awesome.
...just don't turn into Don too much, okay?
And I think Peggy is about the only person at Sterling Cooper who would really and truly understand and sympathise with Joan's utter devastation, but Joan is never going to tell her. Which sucks: between them they would rule the world. (Dear Joan: Please Do. Love, The World.) I wonder how much she'd previously realised that she'd be better off being less gobsmackingly gorgeous... I don't know, but she certainly knows it now. Poor Joan. Married to a rapist alcoholic failure. Owww. But I am really hoping that's not all we're getting of Joan: I doubt it because Christina Hendricks still does Mad Men promotional stuff, but please to be reassuring me?
Also: while seeing some Mad Men promotional stuff, it becomes gutwrenchingly obvious that Christian Hendricks gets a whole lot of the treatment that Joan does in canon. Oy fricking vey, people: at least Ms Hendricks is hopefully getting better paid for it, because dear god they're about a minute away from asking her to play the accordion like a performing monkey.
(Which: ow, but also LOL of COURSE Joan can play the accordion. She can also tourniquet a lawnmowered foot better than her doctor husband and leap tall buildings in a single bound, and yet I still love her.)
The dudes are way less interesting than the ladies, but: Harry I briefly loved for having and expressing love for his wife, but he then turned out to be entirely useless. Pete is actually majorly growing on me - he's still an entitled douchebag, but he also seems to consistently be hoisted by his own petard. He's RIGHT more than maybe anyone else, but is entirely incapable of expressing it and explaining it in a non-douchebag way. Like his talk with Hollis about black people buying TVs - Pete is right that what they need is to find out what actual black people think, but he's entirely wrong to go in demanding that Hollis explains everything on behalf of all black people everywhere. And then because of that, Pete can't explain to the execs why "but WHAT IF THEY'RE BUYING THE TVS BECAUSE THEY THINK WHITE PEOPLE BUY THEM!!!!" is rubbish. And while he isn't exactly sympathetic, he's also actually realising that he's expendable and not that good at using the talents he does have, and that realisation is actually weirdly engaging. Helps that the actor can manage range beyond Smug Little Dickhead Who Makes Me Want To Smack Him.
(Duck Phillips is my new Let Me Punch Him character. Peggy apparently is just drawn to people I want to take a sock at. COME ON, Peggy!)
I really want to watch more, because the March on Washington and the Kennedy assassination must be coming right up. Eeee, show! Though twitter just asked if Don was now a Russian spy, so apparently I have surprises coming up. *g* My predictions are:
1. Don and Betty actually and properly split up, probably involving Betty, like, screwing that Republican dude she had the meeting with about the resevoir.
2. Peggy will go on to kick more ass, but I don't think she goes to Grey's - I think that was about her getting laid AND getting to keep the scarf. Which, go Peggy.
3. Peggy's baby is going to be relevant somehow - is Pete going to try to adopt it? After that Charleston though, I am weirdly rooting for him and Trudie despite them being Wrong on so many levels, so I hope it's not Trudie finding out.
4. Surely Roger Sterling has to retire and/or finally die of being a douchebag, right? Maybe Jane poisons him.
5. Joan is coming back but in some way I'm not expecting - could she maybe take a leaf from Peggy's book and argue herself into a better job somehow? And I am voting her husband gets sent to Vietnam, which is clearly getting to be a bigger and bigger thing, but that may be wishful thinking.
6. I think Paul is going to have to get smacked in the head about how he is very much not walking the liberal walk despite talking the talk (and smoking the dope), but if being ditched by Sheila hasn't done it, maybe he won't.
7. Don is going to run away again somehow - dunno how, but he is clearly chafing at the bit with the contract thing and just got done by some runaway hippies.
8. The Pete/Ken rivalry will come back bigstyle.
9. Stuff will happen that is way better than I am predicting. :D
Other random linkage:
This parody of science journalism - plus comments! is both hilarious and ow-inducing.
This is an art project showing immigrants as superheroes. A little on the nose, possibly, but I found it genuinely moving.
This entry was originally posted at http://soupytwist.dreamwidth.org/41396.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Oh, and the other thing I have been doing, mostly, is watching more Mad Men. I'm...er... halfway through season 3. *hides* I may need an icon.
I may have a new favourite character, and it is Sally Draper. She is AWESOME. I never like the kid characters! But Sally is brilliant. I love that she is a proper kid, a real youngster who has stuff going on that isn't Being Cute. She's messy in exactly the way real children are messy: she (and Bobby, but mostly Sally) has feelings and does things and gets in the way and is only predictable to the extent real people are predictable, i.e. sort of sometimes, but not reliably. She seems solidly believable in a way so few child characters are. I want her to grow up, move to a big city, chop all her hair off and KICK ASS.
I love that the Drapers are crap parents. They are really and unremittingly rubbish: Don is a better dad than Betty is a mum, but they are neither of them cut out for parenthood. (Part of that difference is that Betty is a mum all the time; Don is allowed the luxury of pretending his kids don't exist when he wants.) In a more reasonable age, they wouldn't be parents at all, and I think the show does a great job of showing how absolutely and fundamentally vital for happiness control over fertility is. I think we're a shown a Betty who loves her kids as individual people, but who really hates being a parent and resents them for making her be one. It's desperately sad, and fascinating, and I sit there practically bursting with empathy because my god, if I was born Betty? You BET I would be like that. And I would be hating the fact I was crap at it, too.
Which I think links interestingly into the ways that they've been showing the Drapers' as really being screwed over by living thirty years too early. Don and Betty are so dysfunctional not because they don't love each other or aren't each other's type - they are exactly each other's type, and they work very well together, right up to the second that societal crap gets in the way. They're struggling because the world has told Betty to be a housewife with kids and she's trying to be one, and because Don buys into that enough that he finds it difficult to remember that his wife IS the talented, beautiful, independent woman he keeps half-assedly chasing after. If they lived now? Sure Don would probably still have issues, but Betty would have no kids and she would be running something swishy and she would be rocking the world right by his side. But her world gives her no options for that. At all. Brr.
Talking of options: PEGGY. WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT SLEEPING WITH DOUCHEBAGS. NO. JUST, NO. EW EW EW EW. Duck Phillips is the most pointless douchebag in an industry riddelled with pointless douchebags. But other than your really, really terrible choice in dudes, rock on you. You knew the Padio campaign was doomed! You wrote a really adorable roomate-finding advertisement! You have a manipulative jackass of a mum, and a sister who you probably don't deserve because my god I don't blame her for being pissed off at you, but she loves you anyway. I love you for standing up for your right to equal pay, I love that you got an office because you were the only one ballsy enough to ask, I love that you are so effing adorable in your dresses and coats. Seriously, Peggy, were you queer and were such a thing chronologically possible, I would probably ask you to marry me. You are awesome.
...just don't turn into Don too much, okay?
And I think Peggy is about the only person at Sterling Cooper who would really and truly understand and sympathise with Joan's utter devastation, but Joan is never going to tell her. Which sucks: between them they would rule the world. (Dear Joan: Please Do. Love, The World.) I wonder how much she'd previously realised that she'd be better off being less gobsmackingly gorgeous... I don't know, but she certainly knows it now. Poor Joan. Married to a rapist alcoholic failure. Owww. But I am really hoping that's not all we're getting of Joan: I doubt it because Christina Hendricks still does Mad Men promotional stuff, but please to be reassuring me?
Also: while seeing some Mad Men promotional stuff, it becomes gutwrenchingly obvious that Christian Hendricks gets a whole lot of the treatment that Joan does in canon. Oy fricking vey, people: at least Ms Hendricks is hopefully getting better paid for it, because dear god they're about a minute away from asking her to play the accordion like a performing monkey.
(Which: ow, but also LOL of COURSE Joan can play the accordion. She can also tourniquet a lawnmowered foot better than her doctor husband and leap tall buildings in a single bound, and yet I still love her.)
The dudes are way less interesting than the ladies, but: Harry I briefly loved for having and expressing love for his wife, but he then turned out to be entirely useless. Pete is actually majorly growing on me - he's still an entitled douchebag, but he also seems to consistently be hoisted by his own petard. He's RIGHT more than maybe anyone else, but is entirely incapable of expressing it and explaining it in a non-douchebag way. Like his talk with Hollis about black people buying TVs - Pete is right that what they need is to find out what actual black people think, but he's entirely wrong to go in demanding that Hollis explains everything on behalf of all black people everywhere. And then because of that, Pete can't explain to the execs why "but WHAT IF THEY'RE BUYING THE TVS BECAUSE THEY THINK WHITE PEOPLE BUY THEM!!!!" is rubbish. And while he isn't exactly sympathetic, he's also actually realising that he's expendable and not that good at using the talents he does have, and that realisation is actually weirdly engaging. Helps that the actor can manage range beyond Smug Little Dickhead Who Makes Me Want To Smack Him.
(Duck Phillips is my new Let Me Punch Him character. Peggy apparently is just drawn to people I want to take a sock at. COME ON, Peggy!)
I really want to watch more, because the March on Washington and the Kennedy assassination must be coming right up. Eeee, show! Though twitter just asked if Don was now a Russian spy, so apparently I have surprises coming up. *g* My predictions are:
1. Don and Betty actually and properly split up, probably involving Betty, like, screwing that Republican dude she had the meeting with about the resevoir.
2. Peggy will go on to kick more ass, but I don't think she goes to Grey's - I think that was about her getting laid AND getting to keep the scarf. Which, go Peggy.
3. Peggy's baby is going to be relevant somehow - is Pete going to try to adopt it? After that Charleston though, I am weirdly rooting for him and Trudie despite them being Wrong on so many levels, so I hope it's not Trudie finding out.
4. Surely Roger Sterling has to retire and/or finally die of being a douchebag, right? Maybe Jane poisons him.
5. Joan is coming back but in some way I'm not expecting - could she maybe take a leaf from Peggy's book and argue herself into a better job somehow? And I am voting her husband gets sent to Vietnam, which is clearly getting to be a bigger and bigger thing, but that may be wishful thinking.
6. I think Paul is going to have to get smacked in the head about how he is very much not walking the liberal walk despite talking the talk (and smoking the dope), but if being ditched by Sheila hasn't done it, maybe he won't.
7. Don is going to run away again somehow - dunno how, but he is clearly chafing at the bit with the contract thing and just got done by some runaway hippies.
8. The Pete/Ken rivalry will come back bigstyle.
9. Stuff will happen that is way better than I am predicting. :D
Other random linkage:
This parody of science journalism - plus comments! is both hilarious and ow-inducing.
This is an art project showing immigrants as superheroes. A little on the nose, possibly, but I found it genuinely moving.
This entry was originally posted at http://soupytwist.dreamwidth.org/41396.html. Please comment there using OpenID.