A Few Mad Men Notes

As expected this week's episode of Mad Men dealt largely with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and specifically various character's reactions to the tragedy.  There's plenty to discuss, but I'm just going to quickly hit some things I enjoyed:

1) Loving your kids.  Or maybe not loving them like you thought you would . . . or should . . . or something.  Did Don really say he didn't actually love his kids?  I know Don is confused and continues with his little existential crisis and all, but really?  This seemed a bit out of character to me.  He at least always seemed to love Sally, right?  Hmmm . . . we'll have to see where that goes.

2) Bobby Draper!  I think they've had like 25 (approximately) child actors play Bobby, but here he finally gets a big story line.  Until now Sally has been the only one of Don's not-actually-loved kids to play a major role (and I wouldn't count on any additional screen time for Gene anytime soon).  But here's Bobby front and center, even making Don proud . . . at least until he shows more concern for Henry than his own father.  

3) Awkward hugs.  Peggy's hug with her secretary wasn't terribly awkward I guess, although it did come after her awkward comment about how it wasn't as bad as it could have been (meaning the rioting, but with the assassination in everyone's thoughts).  But Joan's hug of Dawn was as awkward as it gets.  Dawn didn't even turn to face her.  Yikes.  And speaking of awkward, I really enjoyed the early scene with the Drapers running into the Rosens in the lobby.  They're going to D.C. Don!

4) Peggy & Abe.  I never liked them as a couple and probably never will.  But I did enjoy Peggy's reaction to Abe casually mentioning something about raising their kids.  Although everyone seems to think it's a foregone conclusion that Peggy and Teddy will have an affair (and did you notice Teddy sitting in Abe's seat at the awards presentation?  Symbolism!), which could spell doom for her and Abe.  It would, however, keep in line with her turning into the new Don.  And she was even looking to buy a home in Don's neighborhood.

5)  Poor Pete.  And speaking of the new Don, as terrible as Pete can be, it's hard not to feel a little sorry for him as Trudy tells him not to come home to comfort her and their daughter and he's stuck ordering Chinese food (and having his own awkward encounter with the delivery man) in his bachelor pad.  He's like Don circa Season 4.  Pete needs to find a Megan.

6) Ginsberg.  More awkwardness as Ginsberg has the world's worst first date.  But I was reminded why I loved his character so much last year.  We need more Ginsberg.  And although I'm sure this has been theorized somewhere out there on the internet, I haven't seen it, so I'm going to throw it out there.  I could see a potential relationship between Ginsberg and Dawn.  First Dawn mentioned to her friend that she'll never meet someone at work, and now we Ginsberg failing at a potential relationship.  They're both minorities within SCDP, so could that get them together?  This is probably where Mrs. would tell me I'd reading waayyy too much into this show, but there it is.

7) Stan's facial expressions.  Roger will always get the best one-liners (and he was great with his zingers at the drugged out insurance guy he brought in), but Stan is quickly becoming just as good of a source of comic relief.  I'm not sure he actually had a line this week, but his weird grin and giggle and stoned demeanor with the insurance dude was flat out hilarious.

Read This!: Sultry with a Twist

By Macy Beckett

Book challenge book: Romance Novel

I love a good romance novel so I enjoyed this part of the challenge.

June Augustine left her hometown of Sultry Springs behind nine years ago but now, due to a bogus legal debacle, she is forced to return and do a month of community service. Of course, she has more than one run-in with her past love Luke Gallagher. Desire is in the air and passions heat up making Sultry Springs look not so bad after all.

Now, like most romance novels, this one required some suspension of belief. Some of the scenes I had to run by Mr. for their feasibility and he claimed that the author must never have met a man. The flashback love scene between June and Luke took place in pond and I just kept thinking "ew" "gross" "dirty" (actually dirty not naughty, I am not a nature girl). I side-eyed the need for the bee AND snake scenes (actually bees and snakes not metaphorical) because it seemed a bit much and was annoyed at June and Luke because I was like "you are in a romance novel, just get together and stop messing around!"  This last thought means there was good tension which is key to a romance novel.

All in all though, I liked this book a lot better than I was anticipating because the story was engaging and who doesn't like a spicy romance.  I am looking forward to the next book in this series.

Mad Men Thoughts

Warning:  SPOILERS for the latest Mad Men episode.

From Harry and Joan’s spat to Don and Megan’s invitation to become swingers, I have a lot of thoughts on this week’s Mad Men, so what was going to be a quick post got a bit long, but what can you do?

I’ll start with the SCDP vs. CGC (Cutler, Gleason, and Chaough) pitch showdown for Heinz because it was cool to see Peggy against Don (and Don listening through the door as Peggy used his old line on the client).  In a way it was Peggy cheating on Don and it might have been this as much as Megan’s love scene that drove Don to erupt at Megan (reminiscent of when he was mad at Megan when she left SCDP and he took it out on his work wife Peggy at the cool whip tasting).  And I have to give credit where credit is due.  Mrs. and I were talking after the episode and I said something about Peggy winning the account for CGC and Mrs. was like “they didn’t get the account”, and I later found out that Mrs. was correct and that I misunderstood what Teddy told Don.  Ooops.  Well Mrs. got a kick out of me telling her she was right (“can you repeat that one more time?”).  I’ll have to pay better attention so that never happens again.

So anyway lots of infidelity this week (well really every week) – we had Peggy cheating on Don, Don continuing to cheat on Megan, Megan “cheating” on Don in her love scene, Joan’s friend cheating on her husband, Timmy from Heinz hitting the town sans wedding ring, and of course SCDP cheating on beans with ketchup.  And it’s getting really hard to feel sorry for Don at this point.  He’s treating Megan like crap and acting like a hypocrite.  He gets mad at Peggy for doing something he himself would certainly have done (and was doing) by trying to win an account at all costs, and he gets mad at Megan for doing something that he does on a much worse level, since her “cheating” (and I’ll keep putting that in quotes because she didn’t really cheat) was fake and part of her job and done with his knowledge.  And note the similar way that Megan is thrown on the bed in her scene and the way Don throws Sylvia on the bed at her apartment (after giving her the penny – you know, just in case we missed all the prostitution allusions last week).  Don’s going to have to wake up and get himself right because he’s losing (or lost) all redeeming qualities.

Dawn finally gets some quality screen time this week and it’s about time.  I assume this is to help set up the MLK assassination next week (they couldn’t possibly skip over that, right?).  The show needs to give us more of the civil rights action going on, which I think will provide some interesting story lines.  I love that Joan put Dawn in charge of the supply closet and time cards.  She says it's a punishment, but it’s also passing the responsibility, which can only mean good things for Dawn, and hopefully for Joan as well.  She saw that she had to give up the secretarial/office manager duties if she’s ever going to be taken seriously as a partner.

And I guess I should at least mention the Harry and Joan argument.  Harry’s become quite the ass, but he’s both right and wrong here.  Right because he does appear to bring in a lot of business and is responsible at least in part for the company’s success, so he might really deserve to be partner (his personality notwithstanding).  But he’s wrong in that while Joan sleeping with the Jaguar guy was not the most moral or ethical way to become partner, she was a vital part of the organization prior to that and worked hard and was responsible for a lot of the firm’s success as well.  A partnership might really have been merited even if it wouldn’t have happened without the jerk from Jaguar.  And for some more parallels, I like how when Don and Megan were asked to join in some group love with her boss (or whatever he was) Megan said no even though she acknowledged this might cause her to lose her part, which contrasts her with Joan who gave in to sleeping with someone to get ahead at her job.

And finally, did I hear right that Ken’s father-in-law went to Notre Dame?  I always knew I liked that guy.  

Read This!: Rules of Civility

By Amor Towles

Finally done with War and Peace, I could go back to my normal books.  Hooray!

On the eve of 1938, Katey Kontent and her friend Eve, randomly meet the wealthy and handsome banker, Tinker Grey.  This meeting will result in a domino effect of events which moves these two everyday girls into New York high society leaving their lives and Tinker’s changed forever.

Katey is the narrator of the story.  Her observations about society were spot-on and at times humorous (not in a HA HA kind of way but a more sardonic one) and her poise and cool-headedness put me to shame.

The author really set the scene of what life was like for Katey and Eve.  They live in a boarding house where they share a room and bed with one another and clothes and a bathroom with all their boarding housemates.  There is a curfew where the matron shuts the door and locks you out for the night.  Got to keep the ladies in good morals I guess.  I also found the details of Katey’s job in the legal firm and how much she had to type nuts.  Can you imagine sitting all day typing away?  Oh wait…  Yeah I guess I can.  But what I can’t imagine is being handed a thousand pages to retype as a copy.  Yikes!  1930s life may not have been for me.

Lastly, there were some good one-liners in the book.  I think my favorite was paraphrased: “The problem with being from New York is that you have no New York to escape to”.

The Don Draper Wannabes

Warning:  SPOILERS for the latest Mad Men episode.

This week’s episode of Mad Men, “The Collaborators”, was basically the tale of two people trying to be Don and failing in most respects.

First we have Pete following in Don’s footsteps by bringing his extracurricular activities a little too close to home.  And while there are similarities in both affairs, there are also striking differences.  There’s never been any question that Don wears the pants in any relationship he’s in, and notice how Don tells Sylvia how it’s going to be (and really how great was that restaurant scene?) before they end up back in bed.  But for Pete, who tries and fails to control the situation with Brenda, Trudy shows him who’s the boss by kicking him out of the house and leaving him living in his office (first season Harry Crane style).  Pete will never have Don’s confidence and this was evident as well with their dealings with Jaguar, where Pete goes along with whatever Herb wants and Don purposely bombs the pitch to stick it to Herb and assert his authority. 

We also see both Don and Pete facing situations where their wife and mistress are thrown together in the same room, but Don plays it off coolly (albeit after exchanging a worried look with Sylvia), while Pete ends up struggling to do damage control as Trudy treats a bleeding Brenda and he’s left hissing at Brenda about what she told her husband.  It seems like Don is doing everything in his power to get caught (maybe he figures that’s the easy way out?), whereas Pete not only has a bachelor pad in the city approved by his wife, but is apparently trying to cover his tracks with this affair and still finds himself sheepishly lying awake while Trudy drives his mistress to a hotel.  I guess it's back to Draper 101 for Pete.  First lesson - pick a more mature mistress.

And then we have Peggy trying to be the boss and failing to do it as well as Don.  The staff doesn’t quite respect Peggy the way Peggy and the gang did Don once upon a time.  And while this is at least in part a gender thing, we see with her pep talk to the staff that she’s definitely still lacking in the motivation department.  And while Don is an expert at deception and keeping everything private, Peggy haphazardly tells Teddy about her conversation with Stan about Heinz.  While Don trusts no one, Peggy is still a bit too trusting.  So she’s still got a ways to go to be the new Draper, but she is still young. 

A few other quick thoughts:

A call back to earlier seasons with all of the money changing hands.  Much like Don tried to give Allison (his secretary back in Season 4) money after their drunken fling, we see him handing Sylvia a wad of cash after their tryst.  Seriously Don?  And lots of allusions to prostitution with the Don situation above, Pete trying to shoo Brenda away from his apartment (“Honey, can we move it along”), Herb showing up in Joan’s office calling back their night together, even the idea of SCDP cheating on “beans” with “ketchup”, and of course Pete giving money to Bob for toilet paper (ok, maybe that’s a stretch – but Bob doesn’t seem above selling himself to move up the corporate ladder).  And of course the more overt example of Don and his step-mom going to live with her sister in a brothel.

Couldn’t help but laugh at Don’s “dance with the one that brung ya” line – Don’s professional loyalty sure is different from that of his personal life.

Nice shot of Don unable to open his door at the end and just sitting in the hall.  Five seasons and Don is still confused as ever about what he wants and what he’s doing with his life.

This I assume is obvious, but what drama it’s going to be this season when Don and Sylvia’s affair finally blows up somehow.  I’ve already read a theory that she’ll get pregnant (since she alluded to how she would never have an abortion), where Megan just had a miscarriage (or maybe an abortion?).  It will be like something out of the soap opera that Megan’s in.

And finally, I didn’t love the flashback scenes.  We get it, Don was raised in a brothel and had a bad upbringing and that’s why he’s screwed up.  Maybe it’s just because I don’t’ believe that that goofy kid really grew up to be Don Draper.  I mean we all have our geeky awkward stages (some of us never outgrow them), but that kid becomes Don, the man women want and men want to be?  I don’t think so.

Read This!: War and Peace

By Leo Tolstoy

Book challenge: Book over 800 pages (This was 1308 to be exact).

I have been whining about reading War and Peace for weeks, not because it was bad, but because I am usually a fast reader and this took me a long time so I am going to get right to the point with this review and not make this as long as the book.

So War and Peace, there was war, there was peace, 2 ½ stars, done.

No one got that 2 ½ stars joke except for Mr. so I will move on and really review.

War and Peace takes places during the Napoleonic wars, particularly his invasion of Russia, in the early 19^th century and centers on the lives, loves, and deaths of the Russian families: the Rostovs, Bolkonskys, Kuragins, and Bezukhovs.   It is not only a novel but a philosophical work where Tolstoy illuminates us on his ideas of free will and why there are wars, among other things.

I joked on FB that this book made me realize just how long a Russian winter was because that is what it felt like at times.  While I enjoyed the novel parts, I could have for sure lived without the philosophy and many of the war scenes.  “Fleche”, “redoubt”, what are these?  Who knows?  Who cares?  I never bothered to look them up even though they were mentioned A LOT mainly because I have no interest in battles or how they are formed or anything like that. I just wanted to get to the love stories and intrigues. 

It is not unusual for a Russian novel to be philosophical so the philosophical thoughts didn’t throw me off by their mere presence.  I dislike philosophy so it was a turn off in general.  Also, I did think Tolstoy kept saying the same thing over and over and over just in different ways which is this: He didn’t like Napoleon and wars aren’t started because of one person, it is a collective movement of society and they aren’t won because of one person or strategy but because of the mind-set of the parties involved and luck. 

All in all, I think Tolstoy was a great story-teller.  The stories revolving around the above-mentioned families were great.  He could really create characters and set a scene.   I was really able to get an idea of what life was like for these people, their thoughts, and their feelings.  Even though the length bogged me down at times and not all parts were to my taste, I would recommend.

A final note....

A lot of the characters here speak in French because that is what was done (I assume) in the upper classes during this time period.  I did a lot of research into which translation I should read because the translator needs to be a good writer and not just translate word for word.  Translating is hard work especially when you are trying to convey a thought more than facts.  Anyways, the translator I chose originally had translated all of the French parts into English but I guess people didn’t like this because they felt while the Russian should have been translated, the French should not have.  I don’t have an opinion either way on this but in the edition I read, the French parts were turned back to French.  I attempted to read them and not the translated footnotes as is at the beginning of the novel and I realized just how rusty my French is (I used to read whole novels in French so this was a bit of a hit to my ego).  Either way, I gave up trying to translate myself and just read the footnotes.  When you have 1000 pages to go, spending 20 minutes translating a page of French won’t get you to the end.

Desire of the Everlasting Hills

Desire of the Everlasting Hills:  The World Before and After Jesus is the third installment in Thomas Cahill’s “hinges of history” series.  And as the title suggests Jesus takes center stage in this one.  A short description of the book would be to say it focuses on the Gospels of the New Testament and the motivations and backgrounds of the Gospels’ authors.  Cahill starts off by describing a little of the world in the years leading up to Jesus arriving on the scene and the political and social climate of that time.  But the main focus is on Jesus’ time on earth as told through the Gospels.  I took a class in college (one of my Theology requirements) comparing the different Gospel accounts, and this book touched on a lot of the same themes.

The Good:  The book contains a lot interesting (I need to find a better word, but whatever) information about the Gospels and their authors.  And I particularly liked the information about the world (the leaders, battles, etc.) in the decades before Jesus.  It always fascinates me to think about the parallel histories occurring in different parts of the world at the same time.  We learn in school about Julius Caesar in Rome and Cleopatra in Egypt and it’s interesting (there’s that word again) to think of those events happening before Jesus.  It’s a fun read at times because Cahill does a decent job of lightening the material in explaining his thoughts on various stories in The Bible.  A subject with the potential to be dry and boring is made into an easy read. 

The Bad:  Cahill’s tendency to write light can be both good and bad.  Occasionally he gets so casual that you wonder if this is really serious research (an example: “ . . . don’t look on a woman with lust?  Earth to Jesus:  Hello!").  He also tends to present opinions as definitive statements on things I don't think he provided proof for.  He would write for example that because no one can prove that Jesus didn’t perform miracles such as curing leprosy that we should just assume that he did.  Huh?  And when describing a similar story appearing in both Matthew’s Gospel and John’s Gospel he says that because John’s includes more detail we are safe to assume it’s more accurate.  Really?  Couldn’t it be that John is just a better storyteller?  So needless to say I take all of this with a grain or two of salt.

The Verdict:  I’d probably recommend it, but it’s not a must read or anything.  It made me appreciate that if you peel back all of the history of various Christian religions and the battles and terrible things that stemmed from it, you do see that Jesus’s message (regardless of whether he was the son of God or just another dude) was a good one.  And that message was ultimately what the Gospel writers were trying to get across to their various audiences.

Next up:  Menmoch The Devil by Anne Rice (what better way to follow up a book about Jesus than one about the devil?  You know, give each side their say.)