Conversations with Nick C

In less than three weeks Downton Abbey will return with its fourth season.  Supposedly we will have a man of color enter those hallowed halls this year, and he will be a jazz musician, to boot. In fact, I imagine this season will be all about the "Jazz Age" and the "Roaring Twenties".  Lady Edith will start wearing colored tights, short skirts, and continue her muckraking feminist ways with her "blog" (newspaper column) in London; and Lady Mary will probably fall for the musician guy, infuriating everybody to no end.  It will all end with the stock market crash of 1929, and Downton Abbey and all its residents on the brink, facing financial ruin.

Shoulda said, "Spoilers!", hunh? Whatever.  I have not seen it yet.  And, I could be completely wrong.  (Although, I fear I am not.) And, do not get upset.  I love me some Downton Abbey.  I really do.  Really.

But that is merely tangential to what I would like to speak about.  You see, last year during the bloodbath that was Season Three of Downton Abbey, someone had the hilarious and perfect notion to post a picture of Lady Mary on friendface, with a caption that read something  to the effect of, "Donate to PBS or Lady Mary snuffs it!"

I shared this story with Nick C, and we came up with yet another one of our wonderful notions that will never come to pass.

Why not really do that? PBS is always struggling to make ends meet.  Heck, the GOP would love to see PBS abolished altogether except for Antiques Road Show.  Why not raise money for your programs by holding your most treasured characters for ransom?

Imagine the drama! Put a little picture of Lady Mary in the left hand bottom of the screen with a "Money Clock" as Downton Abbey plays.  The viewers would be given a deadline and a financial target they would have to meet to keep Lady Mary (or Lady Edith, or whoever) alive.  The phones would be ringing off the hooks! You would never have to run another dreaded Pledge Drive again!

But, it could work for commercial television, as well.  Take a show like Mad Men, par example. Mad Men is a cultural phenomenon that has a rabid cult like following, yet, does not really ever receive very high ratings, despite all the critical praise heaped upon it.

Mad Men and Matthew Weiner and AMC would be a perfect test case for our idea in the commercial teevee universe.  Instead of donating to the network, viewers would naturally be urged to buy the Mad Men's sponsors products!

Now Peggy Olson is pictured in the bottom left hand corner.  And, viewers know that if they do not purchase a certain amount of cases of Johnny Walker Red before the clock runs out, that Ms Olson's life is in severe danger.

In this way, perhaps Matthew Weiner could raise enough revenue for the program to get the network, AMC, off his back?

Nick C and I think this is a brilliant idea to really add spice and drama to our everyday television viewing.  Plus, it could get more money in to the hands of the artists who create all this great television.  Remember all the hullabaloo when Mittens said those nasty things about Big Bird at the 2012 Presidential debates? Well, imagine the support if Big Bird's neck truly was on the chopping block?

Food for thought.

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And, now for fun, an entire episode of PBS' Miss Marple after viewers refused to donate enough money to keep her character alive:

(Credits finish, and we find ourselves EXT: DAYLIGHT at Tea Time in one of the many luxurious verdant gardens of LADY GERTRUDE's expansive manse.  Her husband, LORD NIGEL, is reading the Financial Times at the table, occasionally sipping at his tea.  Their restless bespectacled daughter, LADY GWENDOLEN, plays with her scones, and fusses with the buttons on her blouse.  LADY GERTRUDE, however, maintains a rigid imperious calm, presiding over the entire table, sipping tea, and reading Vogue Magazine.)

LADY GERTRUDE:

Really, Gwen darling, could you please stop fussing with those buttons? You are driving poor Mama to absolute distraction.

(LORD NIGEL sighs and casts a glance at his wife.)

LADY GWENDOLEN:

But, Mama, the ball is just a fortnight away, and I have yet to hear from Peter, what his intentions are.

LADY GERTRUDE:

I thought we had agreed you would be attending the ball with Sir Westley?

LADY GWENDOLEN:

(sadly, and with desperate quiet intensity) But, Mama, ... Sir Westley is ninety-four years old ...

(The Irish house servant, NIAMH, enters.)

NIAMH:

Your lady? The Vicar Leicester is here to see you.

LADY GERTRUDE:

Oh, dear.

(LORD NIGEL clears his throat and casts a glance at young NIAMH.)

LADY GERTRUDE:

(Exasperatingly) Thank you, Niamh.  Show him the way.

(NIAMH exits, and VICAR LEICESTER enters.  The VICAR stands to the left of LADY GERTRUDE, and says:)

VICAR LEICESTER:

Oh, that I would have the grace to visit you, Lady Gertrude, in better circumstances!

LORD NIGEL:

Good heavens, Man! What is the matter?

VICAR LEICESTER:

I can barely bring myself to speak of something so awful in your company.

LADY GERTRUDE:

Vicar, please.  Tell us your news.

VICAR LEICESTER:

It is that wanton lady, Miss Needlesham.  She has been murdered!

LORD NIGEL:

(Alarmed, dropping his paper, and sitting bolt-upright in his chair) My God!

VICAR LEICESTER:

Yes.  And, what is worse, with the dear Miss Marple passing away last year, I do not know how we should ever find the culprit.

LADY GERTRUDE:

(Brushing the crumbs of a scone off her lap) My dear Vicar, I am sure that St Mary Mead Constable Henley will be perfectly capable of finding out who would want to kill that vulgar woman.  (To her husband,) More tea, dear?

(Fade out, credits roll.)

THE END

I know I say this every week now,

But I am officially "over" Mad Men.  I am watching from pure grisly fascination at this point.  And, it is not just me anymore.  (h/t to Melissa V-H for the link) Perhaps the real Mad Men backlash has begun at last?

Mad Men now is simply a new Twin Peaks.  Weird interior lighting on top of weird dirty soapy characters doing weird dirty things in front of wood paneled walls, or crazy 60s wallpaper. It is so weird! And dirty! And that wallpaper!

Hey Polanski, stop saying sexist shit at film festivals. I'm one of your biggest defenders but my patience is running thin.

(And this whole Sharon Tate Megan Manson family red star t-shirt connection just makes me roll my eyes, ...  And, what book will they read this week? I can not wait! Maybe some Thomas Pynchon book, like V or The Crying of Lot 49.  I should start a Mad Men Book Club Betting Pool here at work.)

See ya next week!



Ardent

Thank frickin' goodness for Call the Midwife.

The Wife and I were away from our television set last Sunday, enjoying our second anniversary celebration, thank you v much, and we had an absolutely bloody marvelous time. (Hotel Vitale, Michael Mina, a movie, Boulevard, the City, the Ferry Building -- much more on all of this tomorrow.)

These ladies could solve the whole Israel/Palestinian thing, I have no doubt.

So, we settled in to watch our Sunday lineup yesterday instead.  Man, am I glad we did that.

Although Veep was hilarious as usual, it was v strange, and uncomfortably awkward all the way through. Even though it was nice to see two more In the Loop vets make an appearance.  No Veep next week, it gets a week off for Behind the Candelabra, which Renee and I are seriously looking forward to.  Veep is fine, great, still almost perfect; they just had to have an episode to really raise the stakes and set up the last four installments.

But, can we talk about Mad Men? Seriously, what the fuck was that? Honestly, the way the last few seasons have gone I can finally confirm that I am strictly watching Mad Men in the way I watch The Newsroom on HBO.  Purely for the gore and carnage on the side of the road as we drive on by. Sunday's episode, The Crash, was a complete travesty; an abomination.  The Wife and I believe it would have been much better if it all had been a dream.  Because we certainly could not believe what happened on screen.  Completely implausible, and frankly, smacking of self-indulgence and pretension.  Why so many people consider this program one of the greatest dramas ever is beyond me.

Then, we finished up with Call the Midwife, and faith was restored again.  Great acting, great writing, great stories, and some thoroughly cheesy soapy moments.  A breath of fresh air after Super Awkward Hallucinatory Sunday.

There is hope.  Perhaps the future is not broken, after all.













Mwah, ... 

I suspect that by the time the Wife

Gets close to, or catches up to the current episodes of Mad Men, she will have already become bored with it, and that it will be a show she promptly forgets about.  It is like an ephemeral Don Draper affair.

I also suspect that the Wife suspects that I probably like Mad Men more than I let on.

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And, oh yeah, that was just about the slammingnest greatest birthday weekend evah! Big thanks to Mum and Da, Bob and Barb, and my Sweetie!

More on Jardiniere, Ginger & Rosa, The 39 Steps and everything else great about the weekend soon!

xxxoooxxx

My new obsession: Yma Sumac

She is amazing, stunning, great, an Inca Princess!

Last night the Wife and I finally learned

Why people abandon grocery carts full of product on the sales floor.  They do not pay for the product, they simply leave the store.  We learned it watching an episode of Mad Men.

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(Yes yes yes, I have finally bowed to enormous outside pressure and have decided to give Mad Men another chance.  Renee and I have started at the very beginning, naturally, and have knocked off about seven episodes of the first season in two days.  The Wife likes the program, but, honestly, I feel much the same way about the program now as I did before.  I still believe that they cynically use the anti Semitism, and sexism, and racism in the show to "sex" up the program, and make it "edgy", and more attractive to the viewers.  I also feel that the writing is horribly uneven, with many scenes rambling on incoherently way too long.  Another good standard for films or plays or scripted television or whatever for me, is that even if it is a serious drama, is that there should be a good deal of humor, and Mad Men just does make me laugh, at all, ever. The period detail and costumes are fantastic, but I also think they are so heavy handed with it at some times, that it makes me want to scream.  In an episode I watched last night, we must have seen a half dozen inset close ups of the lettuce and tomato "chip 'n' dip".  I get it.  Someone built or found this amazing 60s artifact.  Give the PD and the props person a raise, already.  Some of the sets are great, yet some of the sets do not play well under nighttime lighting.  Notably, the Draper kitchen makes for a terrible nighttime setting that reminds me of high school theatre.  And, no, I am not buying, or care about Don Draper's secret hidden past.  At this point, the only characters I really seriously care about are Christina Hendricks' Joan, and Maggie Siff's Rachel Menken.  But, I will keep on watching until the end, and keep everyone updated, even though I am seriously underwhelmed at this point.)

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Anyroad, let us get back to abandoned grocery carts:  There is a scene in the first season where the notorious divorced Kennedy-supporting neighborhood walker, Helen Bishop, confronts the dopey, annoying Mrs Draper about the fact that Mrs Draper gave Bishop's very strange son a lock of her golden hair, which he is keeping in his "treasure box".  Bishop scolds Draper, and asks why a woman like her would give something like that to a nine year old boy.  Draper loses her cool, and slaps Bishop.  She then buttons up her pocket book, abandons her full grocery cart, and exits the scene.

I immediately turned to the Wife and said, "That's why people abandon their carts at the store!"

The Wife said, "Sometimes bitches gotta slap some bitches!"











All my love,
Ardent

"She needs the ten inch bamboo cigarette holder, and the black leather patent gloves"

P.S. This post has been corrected for Renee's real quote, as she has given the go ahead for such.

AH

I was reluctant and loathe

To start watching The Hour on BBC America.  First, because, after reading a review in the SF Chron, it seemed The Hour was another Mad Men rip-off like Pan-Am and however many others there are.  And, second, because I would have to watch the program with commercials, which I simply cannot abide these days.  We tend to dvr everything in this house, just so we can skip the ads.  (Love you RedZone! No commercials ever!)

Abi Morgan.  Yeah, how about a photograph of the writer once in a while?

But David Thomson wrote some nice things about it in his blog for The New Republic and mentioned how you can see it commercial-free onDemand with Xfinity (Comcast.)  (Thomson spelled Xfinity wrong, by the way.  He spelled it Exfinity.  But, is not that cute? Thomson lives in the City and we have the same cable provider.)  So, I watched the first three episodes of Season One last night.

(Sigh, and audible grin.)  It is great, of course.  Here is the amazing British cast, many of them big favorites of mine:  Dominic West (McNutty in The Wire, barely in Chicago); Ben Whishaw (I'm Not There); Romola Garai; Juliet Stevenson (so many things: Drowning by Numbers, Truly Madly Deeply, Inspector Lewis, A Place of Execution, Miss Marple, Bend It Like Beckham, When Did You Last See Your Father, etc, ... ); Burn Gorman (fantastic in Bleak House); Anna Chancellor (Miss Marple, Inspector Morse and Inspector Lewis!); Oona Chaplin (Game of Thrones and The Devil's Double); and Julian Rhind-Tutt (Poirot, Miss Marple, and AbFab).  Plus, The Hour is part of the BBC America Dramaville Series, so each episode is hosted and introduced by Idris Elba ("Stringer" Bell in The Wire, The Office, 28 Weeks Later, Law and Order, and AbFab.)

It is similar to Mad Men in style, with plenty of red lipstick and nylons for everyone! There is not as much sex as in Mad Men, though, and The Hour is told in a much more traditional, theatrical storytelling type of way.  The show is about a newsmagazine program, complete with a love triangle that features a woman producer, a privileged dense anchor, and a slightly unhinged journalist.  So, there is the Broadcast News similarity, as well.

The performances are great.  Ben Whishaw and Romola Garai are the real stand outs here. And it looks great, shot in a louche candlelit sort of a way, plus the script is chock full of fabulous dialogue, written by Abi Morgan (Ms Morgan is also a playwright, but she has two movie scripts coming out next month, Shame -- cowritten with the director, Steve McQueen -- and The Iron Lady.  So we'll be hearing a lot more about Ms Morgan very soon.)  The whole thing is a fabulous fun entertainment and much more my cup of tea than Mad Men.  But that is probably just me.

You should definitely check it out.  The Wife and I will finish Season One tonight with a big bowl of popcorn.

Kisses,
xxxoooxxx


Ardent

As happy as I am to see Todd Haynes'

Fantastic Mildred Pierce get a bushelful of nominations for this year's Emmys, it is hard to take the Emmys seriously, considering that Treme did not get a single nomination and The Wire never won one, either.

Y'know, I get just as much red lipstick and nylons watching Miss Marple (and a much better story, to boot.)

But, hey, Katrina, NOLA, that's so mid-aughts.  Who gives a care about those folks anymore, really?

Meanwhile, there are a passel of new programs coming your way this season, set in the early sixties, when it was okay to say, Negro; fire women when they got pregnant; and smoke in your office.  Sweet!

Hey, I like bright red lipstick and nylons as much as any red-blooded, straight (or gay) American Dude around, but, for crying out loud, that show is soooo overrated.

And now we are going to get a dozen more or so just like it (but none as good.)

(Yeah, yeah, I know, I am no fun.  I did not Sex and the City, either.)