The Mad Men Variety Hour

After the gang from SCDP/CGC got a visit from Dr. Feelgood, all trippy hell broke loose for a full June 1968 weekend.

Ken Cosgrove's "It's My Job!" tap dance became an internet sensation, as it should have. I was watching somewhat live and rewound 3 times to believe the television moment I thought I had just witnessed.

Not only did a shot in the ass have Ken's foot feeling all better after his misadventures with the GM suits, but he managed to turn it into a satirical, stage-worthy routine with the cane as a prop. And you had to feel the undertones of a minstrel show with the black secretary Dawn looking on in bewilderment.

But all kinds of things were happening as the office in the Time-Life building turned into Vaudeville. As Rick James once posited on Chappelle's Show, "Cocaine is a helluva drug." I don't know what was in that shot, but it was a helluva drug. It gave Don Draper visions of his very troubled childhood, it made Stan Rizzo a pick-up artist, and it brought the whole gang to Michael Ginsberg's maturity level.

While the episode was entertaining and thought-provoking, as a medicinal journey might advertise (advertising!), it seems like a cheap trick in a tired series.

The Sopranos, from which Mad Men boss Matthew Weiner evolved, was guilty of these types of episodes multiple times. Tony Soprano had hallucinations while in the throes of food poisoning, he had "the test dream," and tripped on acid with a Las Vegas hooker.

Other shows have done it too, and it seems like a ploy from the writers to be outrageous. Drug-enhanced visions have to be added to the criteria for Jumping The Shark.

Don Draper's character has become a little tedious with the flashbacks, the introspection, the women troubles. He will never find peace, not in the late 1960s. Not when his apartment's being robbed because of his carelessness, not when he's ignored his children for a married neighbor.

So where is the show going? What's the next TV writer hook to get us through the next episode? Stay tuned, I guess.

Whoa, Man

"I admire your predictability Elizabeth, it's comforting."

The Americans had been consistently excellent in its first season, but you could see it coming: a little cold water on The Cold War. In the form of the show's lead character, Keri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings. Her character has become too writer-friendly, too adamant, too one-dimensional.

Now every great show, from The Sopranos to Breaking Bad, isn't immune to some subpar episodes. But when the characters are too predictable, the luster can fade quickly. This isn't a comedy featuring Ralph Cramden or George Jefferson. Staid gets stale in a spy drama.

Elizabeth is definitely averse to the American pursuit of happiness like any good deep-cover KGB agent, but her demand for revenge on some bureaucratic lackey for the assassination of her beloved General Zhukov was just tiresome. And the flashback scenes with Elizabeth and Zhukov were just annoying.

The "covert" plan to target CIA middle-man Richard Patterson was dubious at best. But Elizabeth jumped all over it, somehow compiling a surveillance dossier on him in no time. She put together her best Jane Fonda outfit and librarian specs, and seduced him at the bar with jukebox selections and crossword puzzles.

So just while the first half of the show was frustrating, it led to the seduction/abduction scene in the ladies' room at The Wheel House, which set to Pete Townshend's "Rough Boys" was predictable in its awesomeness. The sequence was every bit as great as the opening chase scene in the pilot to Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk."

Then as Elizabeth puts her life in her husband/partner's hands all the time, she can't bring herself to say the words, "I love you. Come home."

You can't blame the writers for continuing to create tension, but the actor has got to be the one to grab the viewer's attention and empathy for the character. There needs to be investment, even if the character is flawed. Despite the terrible things they do, we love Tony Soprano and Walter White. And we could drop Carrie Mathison (Homeland) in a heartbeat.

With a couple of episodes left in a great opening season, we love the ass-kicking Elizabeth, but we want more from our femme fatale and her writers. Surprise us.

We Like Spies Like Us

The spy game of the 80s is great in retrospect. But in the decade itself, our undercover heros were as cheesy as the music and the fashion. Roger Moore was the worst James Bond, and Crockett & Tubbs were hopelessly slick in Miami Vice.

But when we look back, the infiltrators seem so much cooler. Donnie Brasco is in my all-time Top 5 movies, and the new FX series The Americans kicks the genre's ass - at least after one episode.

***CAUTION-SPOILERS***

So much tension and background information came out right out of the box that I'm hooked. But we'll get into the substance in a second. The style rocked.

The 80s music actually kicked ass, with Quarterflash's Harden My Heart and its distinctive sax riff preceding the first word of dialogue (and first blow-job) in the series. That was followed by an epic pulsating chase scene set set to Fleetwood Mac's Tusk. I still haven't gotten the Tusk beat out of my head. Also great in the shopping mall scene was Juice Newton's Playin' With The Queen Of Hearts.

Keri Russell fills out he mom jeans nicely, and the '77 Olds getaway car reminded me of The French Connection.

So high marks for nailing the audio/visuals of the era. But the story itself is pretty well-conceived.

There's the tension of the family dynamic and the mission. "Phillip" has adapted to the American family lifestyle, and can live it out for the right price. He longs to feel the love of his "wife" who is an agent first and a wife and mom second.

"Elizabeth" is the hard-ass officer, the presumed higher-ranking member of the sleeper team. Her loyalty is to the homeland, Mother Russia, for reasons we haven't yet been exposed to. She should have plenty of reason to hate the KGB, but evidently doesn't.

There's also the series-long cat and mouse game with the FBI guy across the street, which sort of reminds me of the dynamic with Walt and Hank in Breaking Bad. The superspies are one step ahead of the FBI at every turn and we don't know who to root for.

There were a couple of eye-rolls in the 90-minute premiere. There was the melee in the garage with the KGB defector who raped Elizabeth back when she was a cadet, with a ton of noise that didn't wake the kids or the neighbors. And the flashback sequences to Russia and the early days in the states made very little effort to make the characters seem 15-20 years younger.

But the show really moved. There's plenty of intrigue and a lot of sex. But the big hook is that the characters are believable and the husband and wife play non-traditional roles, especially for 1981. And anti-heros are big these days.

If we can embrace Tony Soprano and Walter White, then a couple of "Americans" shouldn't be so hard.

Things Breaking Very Badly For Hank Schrader

The thing with the new modern drama is that the bad guys are often the good guys, and the good guys are lesser good guys.

I think about the dogged Agent Harris, always coming up short against Tony Soprano. Tony was the show's hero, but the Keystone cop feds were one step behind and hard to dislike.

Or master criminal Stringer Bell toying with the squad from The Wire for the better part of 3 seasons, until getting caught in the crosshairs of two more vicious criminals.

***CAUTION-SPOLIERS***

In the case of the new best-show-on-TV, Breaking Bad, DEA Agent Hank Schrader isn't a perfect character, but he is a top-notch investigator. Unfortunately, he can't close on the elusive "Heisenberg," the local meth kingpin - who just happens to be Walter White, his brother-in-law.

While Walt is the perfect anti-hero, Hank's personal drama has won us over as well.

Hank is the ultimate bad-ass fed, but is dealing with some post-traumatic stress after a Mexican drug cartel blew up his border task force. So now he's having panic attacks, general anxiety, and behaving very erratically. His professional life is in limbo, and he can't talk to anyone - including his wife - about it.

But he still has his instincts and is right on top of the mysterious RV, the Blue Sky meth, and ultimately Walt. But Walt has the jump on him, since he knows his enemy.

When Walt and Jesse are cornered in the rolling meth lab, Walt pulls a fast one (with a major assist from "Better Call" Saul Goodman), arranging a fake car accident involving Hank's wife, knowing it would pull Hank from the scene.

When Hank finds out its a ruse, he gets dragged down one step further toward his emotional basement.

Now not only is he aware of the problems in front of him. He doesn't even know about the relentless evil "Twin Reaper" who now have made it their mission to chop him into half-a-dozen pieces.

Big Mad Made Bad Men

I think I've found the formula for the one-hour serial drama, or at least the ones I can't live without: The leading man as anti-hero.

Yes there are layers and complexity and some goodness, but each lives by his own moral compass and will do whatever it takes to preserve the life they've created.





Tony Soprano was the original iconic character of this type. He was the mob boss with a conscience - or at least a sense of one, that was driving him into panic attacks and depression.

He preyed on weaker sorts and stepped on anyone that got in his way, but you could always feel the underlying sense of responsibility. And so could the multitudes that made HBO the new Must-See-TV.

Mad Men's Don Draper certainly seems like an idealist. But he lives off the the identity of a slain military mate. He is a professional scoundrel and serial philanderer. Yet he has million-dollar ideas scrawled out on cocktail napkins and an air of invulnerability, so he is respected by all.

In Breaking Bad, Walter White isn't cut from the same cloth. He was the stooge, a victim of unfulfilled promise on the road to nowhere and had a date with terminal cancer. So the chemistry teacher made his own destiny, creating the purest grade of crystal meth on the market. The series doesn't dwell on the effect of the drugs in the community (which is bad enough), but it does graphically show the death and destruction left in Walt's wake. Yet we still root for him.

Which leads me to Big Love and Bill Henrickson, the self-righteous husband of three and father of eight. Bill may have finally turned down a darker path with his foray into politics, and a campaign for State Senator.

Bill's ability to talk to people and tell them how things have to be is what's most admirable about him. He has Heavenly Father on his side, or at least he's 100% certain that he does. He is straight and true no matter how many dumpster-fires are popping up all over his rather large family. "This will be resolved." has become Bill's mantra.

First Wife Barb is stepping all over toes at the family-owned, tribal-run Casino.

Second Wife Nikki has always been the train wreck. Now she looks to be straightening out the ship for herself and her estranged teenage daughter, but her polygamist compound ties are pulling her back.

Third Wife Margene is the mid-20s hottie whose career is taking off as a QVC-style jewelry hawk. As one of three wives, she's not getting the attention from Bill, and has turned a longing eye at Bill's 18-year old son Ben.

Daughter Sarah took in a meth-head and her son. The Mom took off, and Sarah's been playing Mommy to the baby without alerting authorities.

Brother Joey killed Roman Grant "The Prophet of Juniper Creek," then burned the body. Now he's being blackmailed by Nikki's ex-husband, who has his sights set on being the next prophet.

And forget about Bill's nutjob parents.

But maybe the most heart-breaking move Bill had to make was in his cutthroat political race. He fed Don Embry to the wolves, making him fall guy for a polygamist scandal in Home Plus, Bill's home improvement franchise.

Don was Bill's managing partner and spiritual confidant, and Bill made him "take the bullet" so he could maintain his political campaign.

Now Bill has cast out (in some form) both his son and his closest ally, the two men he entrusted to be Priesthood Holders in the newly-minted Church Of Bill, or whatever it's called.

So while Bill's lifestyle choices and manipulation skills have always been present in what is now the 4th season of Big Love, now he has to make the hard choices and turn his back on the people he's closest with. All in the name of Bill Enterprise.

Bill has flipped, over-reaching with his time, businesses and ambition, and his pride is bringing out qualities we don't like quite as much.

But the show has turned the corner too. Big Love was once quirky and unconventional, almost a comedy. Now the problems are serious and the mood is much darker, and Bill mirrors that.

One Door Closes, Another One Opens: The Mad Men Season 3 Finale

***CAUTION-SPOILERS***

I was always mesmerized but never quite understood the Mad Men opening animation. But now it's all falling into place.

Designer suit-wearing, slick and handsome ad man is nameless and faceless. Since everything is built on lies, he is ultimately alone and lives constantly in the shadow of his own demise. Have you met Don Draper?

He is an anti-hero of the caliber of Tony Soprano, and why do we love him? For his charisma and his skill. He sells people on ideas. He is calculated and instinctive. He is the smartest man in the room.

As a viewer I wondered why we were being sold that Don's wife Betty was the bad guy when she filed for Divorce. Yes Don is thoughtful, and a loving father, but his identity is a fabrication and he's been a serial philanderer. If it weren't 1963, Betty would have made minced-meat out of him in court.

While the scenes documenting the final split are heartbreaking, the confrontation over Betty's "life raft" Henry Francis, and telling the kids that Dad is moving out, it is still the secondary storyline. There's Don's "other" divorce.

When Don learns from Conrad Hilton that Sterling-Cooper is being sold for the second time in a year, the wheels go in motion. It takes just a few short days to turn Sterling-Cooper into a rogue ad agency that pirates the guts of the old agency in a weekend ransack.

First Don convinces Bert Cooper, the company's patriarch to forgo his "golden tomb" to give it one more shot. Then he sells Roger Sterling. Then Layne Price, the London bottom-line-man assigned to gut (and unknowingly liquidate) Sterling-Cooper. Then he has to sell Cooper and Sterling on Price, "can any of you do what he does?"

While balancing the time spent as his family is ripped apart, Don sells the once snot-nosed, now ever-evolving account man Pete Campbell to join in, if he brings his accounts of course. And finally Peggy, who takes a little more convincing. It's great to see elitist copywriter Paul Kinsey shattered when he realizes that Don took Peggy instead of him.

Throw in the triumphant return of Joan Harris to whip their outfit into shape with her organization and logistical wizardry and voila, "Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Price."


The nameless, faceless ad man once again exudes confidence, as he sits in his position of power. And what difference does it make what his true identity is? You'll believe whatever he tells you. You'll buy whatever he's selling you.

Mad Men Season 3 Premiere: Limit Your Exposure

For the first two seasons of TV's best drama, the show was the first to really reflect the times. Think about "Happy Days" turned on its ear. If you were a white man, it was your world, whether you wanted it or not. If you were a woman, a minority, a homosexual, you were limited and repressed.

Mad Men actually seemed dark and heart-breaking until Sam Mendes' 2008 film Revolutionary Road really delved into living the Great American lie that existed almost two generations ago. So I think season 3 is off to a brighter start.

***CAUTION-SPOILERS***

Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner took his Sopranos background into this project. Don Draper was the powerful, miserable Tony Soprano-type. And his wife Betty was the unfulfilled housewife with all the material goodies and all of the frustration of Carmela Soprano.

And like The Sopranos, while the main character drives the series, the colorful ensemble is what makes it so rich and deep. And when season 2 got underway, in very Soprano-esque fashion, we got the scoop on where all the characters were in their lives.

In this season opener, there was less "exposure" and more storylines.

The new London management of Sterling-Cooper has everyone on edge that they might be fired. Or pitted into a winner-take-all power struggle, like Campbell and Cosgrove sharing the position of head of accounts.

Salvatore Romano is outed after his first same-sex dalliance is interrupted by a hotel fire alarm, as is Don's effortless tryst with a sexy stewardess. Funny how seriously people took fire alarms back then.

And Don is still conflicted with "the lie," his idyllic suburban family life with a beautiful wife, two kids and a third on the way. Or is he really just the slick, self-absorbed pitch man who takes whatever he wants.

On the flight back from Baltimore, Don and Sal had the conversation that wrapped everything into a neat fortune cookie. The ad for London Fog raincoats: "Limit your exposure."

But even better, there was no cursory character development. There's a whole season to see what's going on with Peggy and her child, or Kinsey's foray into the civil rights movement. Or Joan's own lie with her very flawed heartthrob doctor fiance/husband.

Basically the debut of Season 3 was a major success, because there was plenty to sink our teeth into, but left us wanting more. Isn't that what advertising's all about?