Mad Men: For Adults Only

You know what I like about Mad Men? I like that during any given "episode" I won't be reminded of some stupid "modern phenomena" like drugs or alcoholism or the environment or sexism or homophobia or whatever.

What? They have that shit in Mad Men? Well yeah, I guess they do. I mis-spoke. What I like about Mad Men is that it doesn't beat me over the fucking head with the topic, and more importantly, it never proselytizes.

Mad Men may be the best-written TV show in history. We, the viewers have to decide who the "good" and the "bad" characters are. We ourselves must judge these people from this time in history. The writers are not going to lead us like children through the moral minefield of "right and wrong."

How refreshing it is to be treated like an adult by a TV show.

Color of Life

I've got nothing of my own right now, so please enjoy the following video selection. I don't have much in the way of comment about it, because I don't really know anything about it, except that it's a clip from defunct Japanese TV show called Vermillion Pleasure Night. It's really pretty interesting and cool, both visually and musically, for what it's worth. I don't think you'll be disappointed.



[VIA]

Mad Men

On Saturday I started watching season 1 of Mad Men. I just finished it this evening. Now I know what everyone's been talking about. I like it. Very much. In fact, I'd almost forgotten that a straight-forward, gimmick-free TV drama could be this good.

I suppose some might say that it's a period piece, which can be its own kind of gimmick. But I'm not buying any of that. Mad Men may take place ever-so-slightly beyond my memory's fingertips, but I was alive then and I have memories of other people's memories... Period piece my ass...

Whoa!

I mentioned a while back that I've been catching up on some TV shows that I like, especially Battlestar Galactica and Lost. I finished Galactica a while ago. Today I watched the first seven episodes of Season 6 of Lost. Whoa!

I have to hand it to the writers of Lost. They're not fucking around. The way they keep moving the plot forward while at the same time giving even more depth to their characters should be appreciated by TV viewers everywhere. Bleh... that sounds lame. Seriously, the writers of Lost rock, and I don't have any problem at all saying that this show is likely one of the best things to ever appear on TV. Hell, they've sucked me into the story.

The writers of Lost have basically thrown in every dramatic "device" one could imagine and managed to make it cohere. And they've developed their characters to such a degree that the viewer has no nagging questions of motivation. When a secondary character says to Ben Linus "I'll have you" rather than killing him, we are not left conflicted. We would have done the same thing.

That's the strength of Lost. In every case, in every situation, wouldn't we all have done the same thing? Is this also a weakness? I'll let you know when I finish.

I'll start watching TV again...

... when American Idol has "Rolling Stones Week" and somebody does this tune:


I'd settle for an "American Idol Out-takes" show  in which someone dedicates that song to Simon Cowell and gets kicked off the program. That person would be my "American Idol."

TV Snooze

I gave up on TV as a news source a couple of years ago. This very clever, very well-done parody pretty much nails one of my biggest complaints about TV news "reporting":



[VIA: Cynical-C]

Vampira

I don't know how I missed this, but I just found out that Maila Nurmi (aka Vampira) passed away in January. As an icon from my youth, she's right up there with Godzilla, Bela Lugosi's Dracula, Boris Karloff's Frankenstein, all the biggies. There's no denying the huge influence she had (and continues to have) on popular culture. She was pretty hot, too...

24? Oh, you mean a "two-four"?[*]

I've mentioned here before that I don't get a chance to watch much TV these days. This week, however, I've been watching repeats of 24 (season 4) on Fox Japan. Now, I have a computer and all that, so I've been aware of this show from it's first season, and I've even read posts about it on a few different blogs. I get the impression that certain segments of the American right are particularly fond of 24, but for the life of me I can't figure out why...

It seems to me (after watching a handful of episodes this week) that 24 portrays the USA and the American people generally as the stupidest, most incompetent, greediest, back-stabbing-est lot of retards in world history. (Look, I don't write the fucking show, so don't go getting all pissy with me, OK? I actually have a much kinder view of Americans than the writers of 24 seem to.) "Oh yeah", some of you are no doubt thinking, "Americans look bad because of all the torture scenes, this Kyklops guy is some kinda lily-livered leftie." Well, actually, no. In fact, in context the torture scenes are the one aspect of the show that might be seen as relatively flattering to Americans (I think I've seen 4 or 5 people tortured so far this week, and two of them were actually bad guys--that's better than baseball!).

No, I'm not talking about all the maiming and torturing. I'm talking about how the show portrays every level of the American government as incompetent and corrupt, and (seemingly) the vast majority of American citizens as traitorous scumbags who'd sell any old Islamofascist a nuke for a pack of smokes and a few beers. Don't know what I'm talking about? Fuck, a blind man could see it.

Take the episodes of season 4 I've been watching this week. There's this evil mastermind Islamofacist (at least he seems to be an Islamofascist), Marwan , who in the few hours I've been watching has been able to evade every imaginable level of American security and 1) cause a bunch of nuclear reactors to go into meltdown mode, 2) shoot down Airforce One with an American fighter plane, 3) snatch the "football," and 4) steal a nuclear warhead and launch a missile attack.

What, I ask, are we to infer from this? That this Marwan guy really is a mastermind? Give me a fucking break...

And then there's all the help Marwan seems to be getting from "actual" Americans. From people inside CTU, inside government, ex-military personnel, spies, and beer-drinking good old boys, right down to your average thug on the street--they're all on Marwan's fucking payroll!

I ask again, what are we to infer from this? That Marwan is rich and the Americans on his payroll are simply following the dictates of a free market? Give me a fucking break...

I love this show, and I love that it's on Fox, the same network that gave us The Simpsons and X-Files. 24 is quite possibly the most subversive show in TV history...


[*] Where I come from a "two-four" is a case of 24 bottles of beer.

My Kind of Show

Apparently somebody says "fuck" on Deadwood (season 3) 1.73 times per minute, slightly fewer times than the 1.76 "fuck per minute" rate of season 2.