I don't usually link to comments on other boards - it just feels weird - but this comment, on Ta-Nehisi Coates' Mad Men discussion thread, just utterly blows me away:
I didn't view this episode as didactic, but I did view it as contrived, and I loved it. Because it was all about the women - women's ambitions, their desire for financial stability, recognition, dignity, and career fulfillment - and how men's perceptions of them threaten, vex, and enable those goals. It struck so many nuanced notes that I could relate to from my experience as a female. Sunday night, I wanted to personally thank Matt Weiner for writing (and being able to write!) a female-centric storyline that I could deeply feel and identify with.
I can see why people would be distracted by asking themselves whether this male character or that male character would realistically behave that way. In most movies and films, it is exactly the opposite; the women are used to tee up dramatic situations for the focal character, which is typically male. And the female character's actions might not ring true, because they are plot devices. In this episode, the males were pawns to the storyline; their actions were the contrivances that would position the women characters at very particular, intense crossroads. It's true - I could see the writers in the room setting up these situations, but the pay-off was so satisfying for me as a woman AND as someone who loves the short story format for its sometimes-evident mechanics, setting up the final gem.
White Collar is pretty obvious about its formula, but it works. There's a real clear emotional connection that we got to saw develop, and they're not that different for how they appear on paper.
Common Law is *so* forcibly Odd Couple bromance, coming in heavy off the bat with the show's name and central conceit WHICH MAKES NO SENSE, but I'm really not getting the organic vibe off of this. I keep thinking yeah, Starsky and Hutch, Crockett and Tubbs, Sam and Dean...they all make it work, and it pretty much worked right off the bat.
I guess I'm three episodes into Common Law so far, and they just don't click. The opposites attracting thing...it's all tell and very little show.
Michael Ealy is really pretty good at the half of the dyad he plays, but I find the other guy notably unremarkable. There's no there there in his tight-assedness.
It's so by the book that I can't help wondering if the racial thing was also deliberate.
However, next week looks like it features Henry Simmons, and he hasn't been in anything I could stand to watch since, oh, NYPD Blue. God, he's gorgeous.
On the tip of some of the other shows--Necessary Roughness--all its promos look angsty. I seem to recall it being more light-hearted, though not overtly funny as most of the other USA shows.
I'm a little confused by Fairly Legal and how they're playing the triangle. I generally like Shahi's character more than the description would indicate--I think she's really very charismatic, but they are writing her kind of stupid romantically--unappeallingly so.
Well, I enjoyed Necessary Roughness last year and I hope it will be good this year too.
I don't like how they're playing the triangle on Fairly Legal. I think that the back and forth is so sudden it doesn't make any sense.
I think that the back and forth is so sudden it doesn't make any sense.
Yeah--and it's Kate that bothers me, not so much the guys--they both want her--she's intelligent, warm-hearted and totally gorgeous. But I didn't feel they handled the transition of her getting back into bed with her ex very well, and are also short-shrifting her torn loyalties.
It's definitely not the concept or the acting--it's the writing for me.
I'm pretty sure I'll finish S1 of Necessary Roughness today, so we'll see how I feel about S2.
I can see why people would be distracted by asking themselves whether this male character or that male character would realistically behave that way. In most movies and films, it is exactly the opposite; the women are used to tee up dramatic situations for the focal character, which is typically male. And the female character's actions might not ring true, because they are plot devices.
Wow, yeah. I love this insight.
Wow, yeah. I love this insight.
Seconded. Or thirded. That's something I doubt I'd ever have thought of.
Yes it was. Am I a bad person for laughing when the Jaguar wouldn't start?
I was hoping that it would make him reconsider.
I hope that Megan is able to convince him that it wasn't his fault. She is the only other person who knows that Don fired him.
I felt so badly when Lane's wife bought the car. She finally does something for him, and all it did was drive him deeper into despair.
It is said that suicide is a hostile act, but it doesn't get any more hostile than the resignation letter.
