Mad Marg: March Madness, More Mad Puns. (Yay! Mad Men!)

Mad Men makes its shockingly-long (17 months!) awaited return to AMC tonight. I've been playing around with how to write about the show for a few days now. So much has already been said about this spectacular drama that while I certainly don't want to be redundant on the internet, it is probably unavoidable.

I'm just so damn excited, you know.

Roger looks so tiny!

It's so good.

If you don't watch, you don't have time to catch up before tonight - but that's sort of okay? I discovered the show online (Netflix has all 4 previous seasons!) and also caught a bunch of episodes at first on some marathon on like Showcase or something like that.

Unlike the network comedies that I feel are constantly in crazy-stressful danger of being cancelled, thus breaking my heart forever, cable shows have some reprieve. As long as some people are watching (even just a few!), either live or PVRed or on-demand, and even more people are streaming (legally!) and buying DVDs, and as long as their showrunners still feel like making new episodes, then you have far less worries about your favourite show going off the air completely. Yes, you have to wait a long time between seasons (not unlike the British model), but it's okay. You know it's coming back, after all.

Cable shows certainly do get cancelled - a prime example is the Dustin Hoffman star-vehicle Luck on HBO, which despite being initially renewed for a 2nd season, was cancelled before finishing its first. Now, numerous factors came into play with this cancellation, including less-than-invigorating ratings but also the sad deaths on set of three racehorses. Who is to say if Luck would have picked up viewership if allowed to continue, but of course, those incidents didn't help its chances.

Poking about the Nielson website puts a lot of the ratings business into perspective, the main thing is simple that cable shows aren't expected to hold the same crazy ratings as network shows. And this is an awesome thing. Without the threat of being axed just because of a conventionally low rating, cable shows are given a lot of creative stretching room.

AMC and HBO and Showtime and so forth, these are the places where serial storytelling is given the space to breathe. I love serialized shows! I want to make a commitment to plot and character! I want to feel robbed and lost if I miss an episode - this puts me in a minority, but at least there are enough of us to warrant a wide selection of interesting television choices at any given time from cable (on the internet, and on DVD, yes, but still from cable for the most part).

So why was the lack of new Mad Men episodes such a dry expanse of TV wasteland for me? Well, it wasn't, I had lots to watch! BUT, it is my favourite drama, even compared to other cable offerings, and here's why:

Unless you are really into graphic violence, which I am not, then Mad Men comes out tops. The storytelling is complex and nuanced - it is a show that expects so much from its viewers. A simple, quiet scene about anything - workplace protocol, a picnic with the kids, anything! - has any number of different layers and subtext. It is a very distinctive show-not-tell style of writing, that leaves most things unsaid. Your experience watching is made all the richer if you have an understanding of politics, life, and culture in the 1960s - you can watch this scene (below, context: Joan was sort of rude to Paul's African-American girlfriend at a party) without a knowledge of race relations in the 60s and think maybe Joan is just being a (slightly racist) bitch - but when you know what was actually happening at the time, with an understanding of how someone in her position (class, upbringing, gender, race, so forth) would see the scenario, and suddenly you see that although she's... well, wrong, she's also right.
 

And Joan! Oh Joan! She is one of my all time favourite women on television. And she's a prime example of how well Mad Men constructs its female characters. Unlike for example, The Walking Dead where the female characters are one dimensional and for the most part, useless, Mad Men has created these rich portraits of the three lead women on the show, Joan, Peggy, and Betty. Even actresses only appearing in a few episodes have been given dense material to work with, and that is such an exciting and positive turn. For a show based upon a womanizer, and set in a sexist and tumultuous environment, Mad Men is great for women!

Give me your dress, Joan.

One of the other appealing things about Mad Men, which other cable dramas lack, is that although there are many bad things that have happened to its characters, there is always a sense of hopefulness. It is hardly a bright and shiny light drama (although, there are moments of pure humour, notably in the excellent 4th season), but we always recognize that there is another day tomorrow. You may chastise me for only watching a few episodes of Breaking Bad before finally admitting to myself that I didn't want anymore of it - but my god, what a hopeless show... there is no way that anything can turn out well for any of those characters. I eat The Walking Dead up with a spoon, but c'mon! The zombies are probably going to win that thing, and how depressing is that?

Maybe it's because it is 2012 and I can imagine Peggy Olson as an adorable, spunky 73 year old who probably knows how to use Facebook!

-Marg
@acuteinsomnia

Marg: Waving My Arms Wildly at The Walking Dead

*Spoilers, obvs.*

Oh hi Rick.

I move around a lot while watching The Walking Dead.

I stay sitting. I don't move my bum.

But my arms, oh how my arms they flail. And oh how my hands point wildly.

"There! Right there!" I shout at my boyfriend, as though somehow he is unaware and thus in danger, "Walkers!"

I have a complicated relationship with The Walking Dead. I caught the season 2 finale last night (a day late - which made my Twitter feed a spoilers nightmare) - when I wasn't gesticulating crazily toward the screen and hitting my TV watching companion because I was irrationally convinced that he wasn't seeing the herd of zombies - when I wasn't doing that, I was predicting deaths out loud left and right.

This worked out surprisingly well for Rick.

"You just want everyone to die!" Ben said.

"No, it's not who I want to die - Lori would be the top of that list, as you well know," I replied, "It's who I think will die - which is lots of people."

I really do see Lori as one of the least likable characters on a show filled (filled!!) with unlikable characters. That is part of my complicated dealings with The Walking Dead. I think that basically, we are supposed to like Rick's wife, aren't we? We are at least supposed to understand why he likes her, and wants to protect her, and all that jazz. Lori is selfish, and spiteful, and irrational, and not even an interesting interpretation of any of those traits. She offers nothing of great value to the group - she cooks sometimes, I guess? She certainly doesn't do a good job of caring for her son. She never seems to know where that goofy kid is. She's pregnant, and although that is giving as some big motivation to keep her alive at all costs (staying on the farm so long, Shane's whole nutzo deal the last few episodes), it actually makes her a giant liability to the group. She will slow them down (ever met a pregnant lady? Waddling doesn't move you away from zombies fast enough), and if she actually managed to make it to the labour stage, it may shock you to learn that walkers would probably be pretty interested in all the screaming and smell-of-blood-on-the-air happening. Laurie staying alive is a target on the backs of the whole group. But, it's a pretty ballsy move for a TV to let a pregnant lady get ripped apart by zombies. So I knew she wasn't going to kick it in the season finale.

This isn't even from the Finale, I just want you to see the size of that hat.

My boyfriend thinks that they may have to kill off Carl just because he is getting too old to play his character. They can put that young man in all the gigantic sheriff's hats they want, he is still ageing at a rapid and disturbing pace. The actor playing lil' Carl will be 13 this year - what are they going to do when he has his growth spurt?! But obviously, they couldn't knock off the kid yet, so he was somehow safe.

I was pretty convinced that poor T-Dog was going to pass on during this episode, simply because last week they actually gave him some lines. I don't think it is controversial to say that their treatment of the ONLY African American character of this last season has been downright shameful. I was pleased then, when he survived, and wasn't at all surprised when after the downfall of the farm, he was the most eager to get the hell out of dodge. Unfortunately, he was stuck in a truck with that damn Lori, who actually threatened to tuck and roll in order to get back to the others. This is, I must again mention, a pregnant woman. Always thinking ahead is that Lori. God.

Burning zombies probably stink worse than usual.

The downfall of the farm, by the way, was one of the best sequences the show has managed to pull off all season. It did not have the tense dread of the first walker-herd in the Season Premiere, or the unexpected horror of the walker attack on camp in Season One - but I do feel that the chaos and somehow-not-overwrought symbolism was well constructed and effective.

I've spent all season disliking Andrea almost as much as Lori, but in the last few episodes, I was finally beginning to if not warm to her exactly, then at least understand her motivations a bit more and certainly, to see her merit as a group member - Andrea at least knows how to shoot a gun, most of the time. I was actually pretty shocked when she was left for dead at the farm - "They forgot Andrea!"

These people, who willingly pulled Maggie's sister away from a hoard of zombies, who got so into the fray that Hershel was sprayed in the back of the head with blood when Rick took out a walker close enough to touch him, who went back and picked up that damn always-offended-at-everything Carol on a freaking motorcycle - they managed to leave one of their toughest group members behind. Perhaps it is her staunch refusal to be saved - her unwillingness to be the sort of person who needs to be rescued by this particular group of... wieners. She does get saved of course, but by someone who is really obviously... well, amazing. I mean... what? What was that?! Walkers on leashes! What?!!?

I was so confused. So confused. Apparently she's amazing.

That was how I ended the show... literally shouting "what?!!?" at the screen. I flailed some more. I was in shock. Not because there was that much that shocking, but because I have watched all season, and The Walking Dead was really just finding its feet and now, I have to wait until basically forever for more!

Yes, I do have a complicated relationship with The Walking Dead. Often the acting isn't strong enough, and the dialogue is suspect, and it is too slow, and there aren't enough walkers or immediate danger, the writers treat the female characters atrociously (making them unlikable!), and it's just a deeply problematic show.

But, very few shows make me scream "what?!" in disbelief and make me angry that I have to wait months for their return - so for all that is wrong, The Walking Dead is doing something very right.


-Marg
@acuteinsomnia


Do you watch The Walking Dead? Are you going out of your mind? Comment!