So much TV on Sunday night; inaugurating a new occasional feature: A round-up of mini-reviews. (All rights reserved to expand upon these thoughts later in the week.)
• Mad Men: “I got a million of ‘em,” said Michael Ginsberg, quoting Jimmy Durante and referring to ideas he has for ad campaigns. He’ll need ‘em, since this week’s theme was “every man for himself.” I know — when isn’t that a Mad Men theme? This night READ FULL STORY »
On last night’s Mad Men, the ad agency sought to please a client by doing what was described as a “Hard Day’s Night campaign” — that is, a youth-oriented pitch that would leech off some of the Beatlemania energy that was in the 1966 air. Don Draper and colleagues faced a mop-topped fop of a client who wanted some cool music in the ad, and after he left, Don said to Megan, “When did music become so important?” READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Frank Ockenfels/AMC
This is shaping up to be the best Mad Men season yet. There are a a number of reasons for that — the bold variations in storytelling styles from week to week; the already vast shades of mood displayed by dizzy newlywed Don Draper; the saga of Peggy Olson, destined to become either an ad agency superstar or the female Freddie Rumsen, it’s her choice — but I’m going to narrow this post down to one current live wire sparking the series: Roger Sterling. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Carolyn Kaster/AP
President Barack Obama slid smoothly onto Late Night with Jimmy Fallon Tuesday night to slow-jam some news to the late-night host’s youthful audience. READ FULL STORY »
Remember the first season of The Killing, when lots of people you knew were watching and talking about it every week? How great we thought it was that Mireille Enos had emerged from Big Love to become a star, and that Joel Kinnaman was killing it as her frowzy partner? Now, amidst Sunday nights filled with must-see TV (Mad Men, The Good Wife, Girls, Game of Thrones, etc.), the second season of The Killing seems to barely take up so much as a sentence of the pop-culture conversation on a Monday morning. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Jojo Whilden/HBO
Girls premiered on Sunday night, and looking over the comments running beneath my highly positive review of it, I noticed that a lot of them are… highly negative. Typical comments on EW.com: “None of the characters are really likable”; “boring and depressing”; “talk about the media over-hyping something”; “this is the problem with this generation”… READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Jojo Whilden/HBO
There is no joy in Girls-ville. It’s a testament to how well Girls, the new HBO creation by writer-director-star Lena Dunham that premiered Sunday night, is constructed and paced that the overwhelming joylessness that could easily have engulfed this enterprise was mostly avoided in its premiere episode. Dunham was wise to commence her first episode with a scene that placed her sad-sack central character Hannah with parents played by Peter Scolari and Becky Ann Baker. These two pros brought an energy to the crucial set-up of the show — that these people who brought Hannah into the world, who’ve paid for every morsel of food and every morsel of education she’s taken in, have decided, two years after her college graduation, that the buck stops here. (Scolari has long lived in the shadow of the out-sized success of his erstwhile Bosom Buddy Tom Hanks but he’s remained a fine laser-focused comic actor, while Baker has had too few opportunities to display her brand of tough maternal affection since her brilliant work on the brilliant Freaks and Geeks.) READ FULL STORY »
Before he brought out Michelle Obama as his first guest last night, David Letterman spent his post-monologue desk time ruminating on the vagaries of booking guests during an election year. He said some presidential candidates refuse to appear on his show. Prodded by Paul Shaffer to name names, Letterman said, “Rick Santorum won’t appear on the show. They’re afraid, afraid I’m going to chase ‘em around the theater with a hammer.” READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Lewis Jacobs/NBC
Last night, the second episode of Awake spent most of its time with Jason Isaacs’ cop Michael Britten flicking back and forth between his alternate worlds, tracking down a “little guy” (the title of the episode). But it reserved its deeper mystery for the final couple of minutes. READ FULL STORY »
