Christina Hendricks plays dishy office manager Joan Holloway on Mad Men. She's like a red-headed kitten, taking razor-sharp swipes at men and women alike, then retracting back to wide-eyed innocence. However, it's not the first time Hendricks has proved she can turn on a dime from innocent to femme fatale. She looks completely different here on Firefly as the seemingly naive, subservient Saffron, who has convinced Captain Malcolm Reynolds that he's inadvertently married her in an obscure backwater ceremony--turns out she's got motives of her own:
Bonus: This was not the first time Hendricks appeared on a Joss Whedon show--she had to pay her dues with bit parts like this on Angel--don't blink!
Showing posts with label mad men. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mad men. Show all posts
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
The Subtle Art of Retribution on Mad Men
I'm all caught up on Mad Men Season Two, thanks to iTunes and I have to say, there's definitely one thing creator Matt Weiner learned from his time on The Sopranos. Oh, there are no dead girlfriends or cement shoes, but there are still delicious platters of revenge being served up on this show, cold as a spread from the local deli.
New York ad man Don Draper set the bar for exacting punitive damage in Season One. In the episode "Red in the Face," Don brings his boss Roger home for dinner, who promptly gets drunk and hits on his wife. Roger apologizes to Don the next day and Don seems to accepts it. But then you see Don slipping the elevator attendant a few dollars before he takes Roger out for a three-martini lunch. When they return for a client meeting, the elevator has mysteriously broken down. Here's what happens next:
While nothing so far compares to that masterpiece, Season 2 continues the grand tradition (spoilers below!):
Peggy Olsen, promoted from the secretarial pool to copywriter, berates her replacement for a lack of discretion on behalf of their mutual boss, Don.
When Joan, the office manager, finds the new girl sobbing...
...she figures out the perfect place to put the new, enormous Xerox machine.
When Joan Holloway takes a not-so-subtle jab at her ex-lover's Paul Kinsey's new girlfriend, who happens to be black, he confronts her. "You...falling in love with that girl just to show how interesting you are." Before he can retort, she says "Go ahead. What part is wrong?" Later, a xerox copy of her drivers license mysteriously appears on a bulletin board, revealing, horror of horrors, that Joan is 31.
These last two incidents may not be revenge on a conscious level, but they are certainly payback:
Peggy's sister and mother are raising the child Peggy had two years ago out of wedlock. Meanwhile, Peggy has compartmentalized her life, ignoring her son and living a seemingly glamorous life on Madison Avenue, which drives her sister crazy. This is exacerbated when the family invites their local priest over for dinner and he takes an interest in Peggy's work, asking for advice on his Palm Sunday sermon. In confession with the father later that week, the sister "admits" to being so angry at her sister for having seduced a married man and having a baby out of wedlock.
Betty has been up all night worried about Don. She suspects he has been fooling around, and he has--he's been sleeping with the wife and manager of his client and has had an accident while driving drunk to her beach house. When he arrives home, her anger turns to concern when Don confesses to having gotten in a car accident --due to a bad reaction to alcohol and his high-blood pressure medicine. The next day, taking his first bite of a home cooked meal, Don asks for salt but Betty refuses. Their daughter asks why. "Because we love him," says Betty as she coolly takes a bite of meatloaf.
Have I missed anything? Let me know!
New York ad man Don Draper set the bar for exacting punitive damage in Season One. In the episode "Red in the Face," Don brings his boss Roger home for dinner, who promptly gets drunk and hits on his wife. Roger apologizes to Don the next day and Don seems to accepts it. But then you see Don slipping the elevator attendant a few dollars before he takes Roger out for a three-martini lunch. When they return for a client meeting, the elevator has mysteriously broken down. Here's what happens next:
While nothing so far compares to that masterpiece, Season 2 continues the grand tradition (spoilers below!):
Peggy versus Joan
Peggy Olsen, promoted from the secretarial pool to copywriter, berates her replacement for a lack of discretion on behalf of their mutual boss, Don.
When Joan, the office manager, finds the new girl sobbing...
...she figures out the perfect place to put the new, enormous Xerox machine.
Joan versus Paul
When Joan Holloway takes a not-so-subtle jab at her ex-lover's Paul Kinsey's new girlfriend, who happens to be black, he confronts her. "You...falling in love with that girl just to show how interesting you are." Before he can retort, she says "Go ahead. What part is wrong?" Later, a xerox copy of her drivers license mysteriously appears on a bulletin board, revealing, horror of horrors, that Joan is 31.
These last two incidents may not be revenge on a conscious level, but they are certainly payback:
Peggy versus her sister
Peggy's sister and mother are raising the child Peggy had two years ago out of wedlock. Meanwhile, Peggy has compartmentalized her life, ignoring her son and living a seemingly glamorous life on Madison Avenue, which drives her sister crazy. This is exacerbated when the family invites their local priest over for dinner and he takes an interest in Peggy's work, asking for advice on his Palm Sunday sermon. In confession with the father later that week, the sister "admits" to being so angry at her sister for having seduced a married man and having a baby out of wedlock.
Betty versus Don
Betty has been up all night worried about Don. She suspects he has been fooling around, and he has--he's been sleeping with the wife and manager of his client and has had an accident while driving drunk to her beach house. When he arrives home, her anger turns to concern when Don confesses to having gotten in a car accident --due to a bad reaction to alcohol and his high-blood pressure medicine. The next day, taking his first bite of a home cooked meal, Don asks for salt but Betty refuses. Their daughter asks why. "Because we love him," says Betty as she coolly takes a bite of meatloaf.
Have I missed anything? Let me know!
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Peabody Awards 2008
Last year, my favorite show, Battlestar Galactica, won a Peabody Award, along side South Park (Creators of that show are also huge fans of BSG). This past Monday, it seems every other show I have ever loved and mentioned on the blog also won: Mad Men, 30 Rock, Project Runway (first reality show to do so), and The Colbert Report.
Here's a clip of the honorees
Of these shows, the only one I really want to watch but cannot is Mad Men, which will kill me when Season 2 comes back next Sunday, June 27. This is the one show that gave me second thoughts about giving up TV. If Season 2 is available on iTunes, I will definitely purchase episodes. Here's chapter 1, 2 and 3 of the pilot, available in full from AMC:
The only winning series this year I haven't seen is Dexter, CBS/Showtime's series starring Michael C. Hall (Six Feet Under) as a serial killing forensic expert who channels his urges into killing other serial killers--I'm sure it's good, but it's not my cup of tea.
Here's a clip of the honorees
Of these shows, the only one I really want to watch but cannot is Mad Men, which will kill me when Season 2 comes back next Sunday, June 27. This is the one show that gave me second thoughts about giving up TV. If Season 2 is available on iTunes, I will definitely purchase episodes. Here's chapter 1, 2 and 3 of the pilot, available in full from AMC:
The only winning series this year I haven't seen is Dexter, CBS/Showtime's series starring Michael C. Hall (Six Feet Under) as a serial killing forensic expert who channels his urges into killing other serial killers--I'm sure it's good, but it's not my cup of tea.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Election Night
I did not watch the Super Bowl, though I hear it broke records for viewership this Sunday. I had no skin in that game so if I watched, it would have been for the ads and, perhaps unsurprisingly, you can watch these ads at anytime on Hulu. What is surprising is that the ads are so popular with a certain segment of the population, that they themselves are sponsored by General Motors and Toyota. I'm particularly fond of the Justin Timberlake repeatedly getting hit in the nuts in the Pepsi ad.
No, the super event I've been awaiting this month is Super Tuesday. Part of my rules about no TV is that I still can watch major news events, and I think this qualifies. Really, though, I'll have to stay up past my bedtime to know who won my state because it's supposed to be close. So if it was just a matter of who won, I might as well not check the news till tomorrow. But I love looking at the information graphics as the returns come in. Whether it's sports or elections, it's fascinating to see how the networks choose to visually depict who's ahead, what's the score, and how much time is left in each segment of the game, or election night as the quarters click down and the polls close in each state. Watching their use of color, maps, and graphs to show how districts voted, how certain they are of the outcome based on precinct reporting and time left, I am tempted to pull out my Edward Tufte books and do a critique of their visual explanations every time I see them.
From the technology that helps votes get counted quicker to the technology used to create those instant information graphics, we're a long way from 1960, when it was Nixon vs. Kennedy. That was my inelegant segue to the topic I really want to talk about, which is the AMC original series Mad Men. Here is a clip of the episode named after that election. The fictional New York ad agency, Sterling Cooper, has been hired to help the Nixon campaign. The episode not only showcases the slowness of the returns (everyone thought Nixon was going to win), but also serves to highlight how accepted sexual harassment was in the workplace (nearly every episode makes me thankful to have been born in the ERA era).
This show won two Golden Globes a few weeks ago, which no one heard about because the awards ceremony was canceled due to the writer's strike. This includes both best TV Drama and a Best Actor in a Drama nod to Jon Hamm, who plays Don Draper, the Madison Avenue hero/antihero of the show. He's a hero if you like to see an advertising genius at the top of his game, a self-made man who rose up from nothing based on merit alone who puts sniveling, entitled boys in their place. He's an antihero if you don't like the fact that he has made that perfect life built on lies, two-timing not only his wife but also his mistress and finding new ways to hawk Lucky Strike cigarettes even as the Surgeon General is condemning them. And since most of you haven't seen the show, I won't reveal the biggest, most central lie of them all.
The fact that Jon Hamm can make you believe and love such a liar is why he won the Golden Globe. Tune into AMC, buy season one on iTunes, or wait for this to come out on DVD--I will let you know as soon as I know.
No, the super event I've been awaiting this month is Super Tuesday. Part of my rules about no TV is that I still can watch major news events, and I think this qualifies. Really, though, I'll have to stay up past my bedtime to know who won my state because it's supposed to be close. So if it was just a matter of who won, I might as well not check the news till tomorrow. But I love looking at the information graphics as the returns come in. Whether it's sports or elections, it's fascinating to see how the networks choose to visually depict who's ahead, what's the score, and how much time is left in each segment of the game, or election night as the quarters click down and the polls close in each state. Watching their use of color, maps, and graphs to show how districts voted, how certain they are of the outcome based on precinct reporting and time left, I am tempted to pull out my Edward Tufte books and do a critique of their visual explanations every time I see them.
From the technology that helps votes get counted quicker to the technology used to create those instant information graphics, we're a long way from 1960, when it was Nixon vs. Kennedy. That was my inelegant segue to the topic I really want to talk about, which is the AMC original series Mad Men. Here is a clip of the episode named after that election. The fictional New York ad agency, Sterling Cooper, has been hired to help the Nixon campaign. The episode not only showcases the slowness of the returns (everyone thought Nixon was going to win), but also serves to highlight how accepted sexual harassment was in the workplace (nearly every episode makes me thankful to have been born in the ERA era).
This show won two Golden Globes a few weeks ago, which no one heard about because the awards ceremony was canceled due to the writer's strike. This includes both best TV Drama and a Best Actor in a Drama nod to Jon Hamm, who plays Don Draper, the Madison Avenue hero/antihero of the show. He's a hero if you like to see an advertising genius at the top of his game, a self-made man who rose up from nothing based on merit alone who puts sniveling, entitled boys in their place. He's an antihero if you don't like the fact that he has made that perfect life built on lies, two-timing not only his wife but also his mistress and finding new ways to hawk Lucky Strike cigarettes even as the Surgeon General is condemning them. And since most of you haven't seen the show, I won't reveal the biggest, most central lie of them all.
The fact that Jon Hamm can make you believe and love such a liar is why he won the Golden Globe. Tune into AMC, buy season one on iTunes, or wait for this to come out on DVD--I will let you know as soon as I know.
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