Empire

I've had so many ideas for blog posts swirling around in my head the past couple weeks, it's been difficult to decide what to write about. And then I realized I was using that as an excuse to be lazy. So I'm kicking off some more regular posts with a review of my favorite mid-season premiere of the season: Empire.

Just to clarify....not this Empire.

THIS EMPIRE.

What's not to love about rich people scheming and backstabbing? Sure, this is kind of a common plot in television, but you guys. Empire is really really good. I think it's actually crazy good. It takes everything that's awesome about shows like Dallas, but isn't ridiculous or campy. I was completely hooked in just the first few minutes and every episode keeps getting better (and the ratings have gone up with each episode which is kind of unheard of these days on network television).

The plot is very King Lear set in the modern music industry. Lucious Lyon (Terrance Howard), is a former drug dealer turned hip hop mogul and the CEO of Empire Entertainment.  In the pilot episode, he's diagnosed with ALS and told he has only three years to live. Of course his thoughts turn to his legacy, and he tells his three sons that one of them will inherit Empire...and they will have to prove they deserve the honor. So basically, they are competing among each other for ULTIMATE POWER. Well, ultimate music power. Well, millions and millions of dollars. The stakes are high is what I'm saying.

Everyone instantly starts plotting against one another and the waters are further muddied with the arrival of Cookie, Lucious' awesome ex-wife and mother of the three sons. She's just out of prison where she served time for getting the seed money for Empire Entertainment by getting involved in some drug deals. Cookie is just an all-around badass with amazing fashion sense and is pulling for her second son (he's very much of the John Legend-type singer/songwriter school) to be the heir. But since the son is gay....Lucious is against the idea.

If Cookie ain't happy, ain't NOBODY happy.

I mean, seriously. THE DRAMA. There is so much going on with this show it's crazy, but it all makes sense, the performances (at least as far as the older characters are concerned) are really strong, and the music throughout the show is great. It's also really nice to have a black-centric show that doesn't feel like it was just thrown together (ahem, Blackish. Looking at you). This is a tight, well-made, compelling drama.

Empire has right off the bat established itself as must see tv for me, so give it a shot and I bet you'll get hooked. You can find it Wednesdays at 9:00 EST on FOX, and catch up with the three aired episodes over at the show's website.

A Deliciously Disturbing Meal

You guys.  You guys!  You watched Hannibal, right?  RIGHT???  The season finale actually occurred the other week while I was, as Arsenic Pie termed it, decamped to parts unknown, but finally caught up now that I am back home.  And damn.  That’s how you do a season finale. 

"I feel like this won't end well for all of us..."

We’ve talked about Hannibal here a couple of times in the past.  It remains the show that I am continually most flummoxed by on television if only because I have no idea how it is that this show is airing on network TV and has not yet been pulled by the censors or cancelled by the network.  Hannibal is artful in its presentation of murder.  It spends just as much time focused on the presentation and styling of the cinematically murdered dead bodies as it does on the cuisine.  The fact that it often merges those two worlds is completely intentional.  This is, after all, a show about a serial-killing cannibal. 

Creator Bryan Fuller is known for highly stylized television (he’s the mind behind Wonderfalls¸ Pushing Daisies, and Dead Like Me) but that style tends to be hyper-saturated and fairytale-like.  Hannibal, by contrast, is just as visually stylized but is far more grounded in the real world.  All those whimsical colors are de-saturated and made cold and steel-y.  The visual representations of Will’s inner mind, including the frightening representations of the Stag Monster that Will sees as the emblem of his relationship with Hannibal and his own growing inner madness, are muted, dark and disorienting to say nothing of the insanely creative and visually stunning ways in which people die on this show, which has included a human body being made into a string instrument so that the killer can "play" the body's vocal chords with a bow and bodies with the skin of their backs flayed and then displayed like wings while the bodies are posed like angels.  I mention all of this because these aspects of the show came into pitch-perfect place during season two’s finale.

Human being grown into a tree. That...can't feel good.  

For those needing a brief catch-up, Hannibal the show has been following the early years of Hannibal Lector (Mads Mikkelsen) during his time as a respected psychologist, aesthete, and member of Baltimore society.  His friend, FBI profiler Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne) uses Hannibal to care for Will Graham (Hugh Dancy), a fellow profiler who is uncanny in his ability to understand killers but whose ability to do so has made him emotionally and mentally vulnerable.  Of course, turning Will over to Hannibal Lector for safe keeping is like asking the Republican Party to watch after women’s rights initiatives.  Which is to say, Hannibal is essentially on a psychological feeding frenzy with Will, distorting him throughout season one and manipulating him into his own deranged psyche.  

Season two follows Will’s descent into madness and suspicion that his friend is not the kindly man we believe, but instead is “The Chesapeake Ripper”, a serial killer known for a highly inventive and poetic murdering style. At the start of season two, Will has been incarcerated in a mental institution based on Hannibal’s convincing the FBI into believing that Will is the Ripper.  Will is eventually released and begins a dangerous game of cat and mouse with Hannibal, trying to convince him that he has become Hannibal’s protégé and is, like Hannibal, a superior being able to murder and maim just as poetically and meaningfully. All the while, Will is playing double-agent by working with Jack Crawford to bring Hannibal to justice.  Or is he? 

Will’s madness and instability is a key theme throughout the season and it’s left mostly ambiguous as to whether or not Will is truly working with Jack or has become an honest to God killer like Hannibal is training him to be.  The back and forth culminates in a season finale where everything comes to a head – Jack confronts Hannibal in his home, attempting to bring him down but in the process is attacked by Hannibal and possibly left to die from a mortal stab to the neck in Hannibal’s own pantry.  Fellow psychologist and sometimes-friend to Will Alana Bloom is shoved out of an upper story window in Hannibal’s home and left to die, broken and bleeding in the rain on the sidewalk.  Will himself is stabbed by Hannibal and, you guessed it, left to die in the kitchen (of all places) after coming clean about his attempt to bring Hannibal in.  Hannibal himself displays what might be the most unhinged moments of his life as we’ve seen them so far in this series, clearly hurt by the betrayal of Will whom he has come to invest so much in.  “I gave you a precious gift,” Hannibal tells a dying Will, “but you didn’t want it.”  The homoeroticism of Hannibal’s attack on Will, the intermingling of their relationship with each other, and the almost tenderness with which Hannibal carries out his final sentencing on Will is one of the reasons why I am amazed this show is still on the air.

Subtext entirely intended.

Season two ends with Hannibal leaving his own home as three of our main characters lie extremely close to death behind him.  Hannibal walks off into a cleansing rain, away from the police who are about to arrive and discover exactly what has gone down.  His life under the radar is over; Hannibal knows this.  And so our final shot is of him fleeing on an airplane to France with a surprising traveling companion: Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier, his own therapist who had previously been open with Will about her beliefs that Hannibal was dangerous and Will innocent of the crimes he was accused of.  Why Bedelia is on that plane and why she smiles so lovingly at Hannibal in the final shot given how clearly terrified she has been of him throughout the season is one of the mysteries that Fuller has promised we will learn in season three.

A special note about Bedelia Du Maurier – she’s played by Gillian Anderson at her iciest.  Everything about Anderson’s concept of this character, a mysterious former colleague of Hannibal who has been seeing him as her only patient after being attacked herself at some point in her past by another patient, is dead on.  Everything about her communicates a frozen person, from her almost white-blond hair that never moves to her slow, controlled walk.  This is a woman who has been traumatized and is so terrified that she’s concluded the only way to stay safe is to remain utterly still.  Anderson is an amazing actress and manages to make that iciness come off as damage, rather than bitchiness.

But at least she has a well-apportioned kitchen?

Hannibal will definitely be back next year and I already can’t wait.  The focus will reportedly be on Will Graham’s hunt for Hannibal, leading into the events from the books that fans of the characters will already know.  (The first book about Hannibal Lector, Red Dragon, is set after the events we’ve seen so far in Hannibal with the most famous volume, Silence of the Lambs, occurring after that.  Fuller has said that the show has a plan to include the events of both of those stories, including that most famous compatriot of the good Dr. Lector, Clarice Starling.)  Hannibal probably isn’t one of those shows that I can tell you to start watching if you’re not already inclined – the disturbing visuals coupled with the general concept are high bars for folk who aren’t particularly interested in this genre.  But if you can stomach (heh) the concept, the show is so well worth the watching that you won’t regret the attempt. 

When you were a kid, your mom likely told you just to try a few bites of the food on your plate before you could say you didn’t like it.  Appropriately enough, the same is true for Hannibal. 

TV Sluts: Live! And in Person!

Clovis originally wrote the beginning of this post...and then had to leave town for work. *sad trombone* So I'm actually posting it (I'm = Maggie Cats) and writing the introduction to the introduction. Got it?

Oh, whatever. Just go with it.

Clovis:

Two things happened this week that are both rare and heavenly: Haley’s comet will make a pass-by to earth (no visuals, but there was a meteor shower!) and three of the TV Sluts managed to find ourselves in the same room at the same time. What did we do? Watch television, natch.

Damn, those are some good-looking tv bloggers. From left to right: Arsenic Pie, Maggie Cats, and Clovis.

Arsenic Pie, Maggie Cats and I all caught the first two episodes of Salem, WGN’s bloody and provocative new thriller set in Salem, Massachusetts during the infamous witch trials. How is it? Well, it ain’t your father’s Crucible, that’s for sure.

Salem covers the real history of the witch trials in only the broadest of strokes, something we should frankly expect from a show that takes one of the most poignant episodes of the real horrors of fear-mongering and suspicion in early American history and goes, “yeah, but sexy witches are totally more fun, right?”

Obviously the show places fast and loose with the facts, but fans of history and Arthur Miller will recognize some of the high points – In this incarnation, we see the events through the eyes of John Alden, a soldier who has recently returned to Salem after a long time as a POW in an Indian camp, to find Salem has become a hotbed of witchy activity. John Alden is not to be confused with John Proctor, the upstanding moralist in Arthur Miller’s play, but in real life is one of the contemporaries who wrote about the witch trials and thus how we know many details about that event. (Fun fact, he’s also my great- great- great- great- great- great- great- great-grandfather. True story.)

So who’s leading this sudden upsurge in witchery? Unbeknownst to everyone but us viewers, it is Mary Sibley, John’s former love who has married into wealth and power in his absence and apparently also developed a taste for witchcraft after having a magical abortion in the woods. Yes, you read that right – this show doesn’t just go there, it has a summer home there plus a timeshare with options on New Year’s. In the first two episodes alone we see Mary’s demon abortion, apparitions of an Old Hag attacking a teenage girl, a demon orgy in the woods that looked like something out of evil Burning Man, a frog that is repeatedly expelled and shoved back into a man’s body, and a broomstick appropriated to a use that is far from its traditional expectation.

Watching Salem is kind of like this.

In short, Salem is what American Horror Story: Coven should have been – utterly crazy, completely unafraid of gore and terror, and willing to go the extra mile to bring the squicky and the sexy into the same room with each other. I make no secret of how much I enjoy watching train wreck shows – for that reason alone, I’m going to keep up with this one. But what did the other TV Sluts think of it? Take it away, Ladies…


Arsenic Pie:

Will you all think less of me if I say that I liked Salem? I didn't like it in an "OMG this is so thought-provoking and riveting" way, but I liked it in more of an, "OMG. This is so awesomely ridiculous that I cannot look away" way.

Aside from the completely anachronistic "I call bullshit" line from our hero, John Alden, I was interested in how the show mixed fantasy with actual events. It's an interesting take to say, "No, there were legit witches in real actual Salem doing all kinds of bad in order to get rid of people they didn't like" instead of the intense Arthur Miller "Joe McCarthy is an asshole" theme. I think that we are more familiar with the latter, and with the teenage Abigail Williams as the primary accuser. I'm not actually sure which character in the show is supposed to correspond with which character in The Crucible and which character in The Crucible corresponds to real life. I will defer to Clovis on that point.

I am more familiar with the play (English major what) than I am with the actual people in Salem. The Crucible was Arthur Miller's own particular brand of fan fiction, and he took people from the real trials and put them in his play but I'm not really sure how that translates to historical fact. Giles Corey, a character on Salem, appears in the Miller play, as does Brigid Bishop, who I believe at least gets a mention. In the play, Mercy Lewis is just one of the little nasty Salem accuser girls and not the one who is "bewitched" and it's Betty Parris who becomes bewitched. So, I did like that they changed things around. The play does rather beat one over the head with its morality stick whereas the show is morally ambiguous. Also, there are a lot of gross-out moments on Salem, which, sadly, there is a deplorable lack of in The Crucible.

ANYWAY, Salem also diverges from The Crucible in that its protagonist and primary accuser is a grown-up LADY, Mary (forgot her last name). In The Crucible, obviously it is the teen bitch-whore Abigail Williams. Mary, the only inexplicably English and posh colonist in Salem, was a member of the poorz and a SCARLET WOMAN because she was having RELATIONS with John Alden and she became pregnant. Enter her BFF Tituba (who is never hot in The Crucible, but she's gotten a teevee makeover), who is a witch and she convinces Mary to give up her baby to the forest in exchange for what turns out to be social elevation. Mary ends up married to some really old man, but no fear. She totally keeps him under wraps BY SHOVING A MAGICAL FROG DOWN HIS THROAT to keep him quiet. Mary's entire agenda is to punish the swells of Salem for keeping her down all those years, and I am pretty sure she's hoping that the witchy folk can take over Salem and build like Hogwarts or something. Anyway, she's a horrible human being.

I think the most interesting character thus far is Anne Hale, who is the daughter of Reverend Hale. She is both UPPITY and FORWARD, and is not content to work on her sampler. Oh, no. Girl wants to hit on John Alden and draw photos in the graveyard. Shocking. I think there's a lot of growth potential for her character, but her arc is a bit predictable at this stage. Cotton Mather, who leads the witchcraft investigation (legit -- how was that ever a thing?), is kind of an idiot and a hypocrite at this point, albeit hot, so I would like to see some more development with his character. As for John Alden -- I don't know. He just kind of reminds me of Russell Crowe.

Survey says: I think I will keep up with it unless it completely jumps the rails. Well, I think it already sort of went off the rails, so if it goes off further into Dracula land, I may give up on it. It kind of reminds me of Sleepy Hollow in the sense that it's mixing historical events with fantasy while being aware that the show is kind of silly.


Maggie Cats:

You guys. This show is crazy. And by that I mean crazy awesome. But seriously, it's also just crazy. The first two episodes alone fulfilled my "WTF" quota for probably the next 6 months. It's like somebody went into my brain and plucked out all the things I wished a show would be but was too embarrassed to admit, even to myself.

I went into Salem with no prior knowledge; I can't remember if we ever read The Crucible in my high school (we must have, right?) and I don't think I ever saw the movie with Winona. The actual Salem witch trials never really featured heavily in my interests, despite the fact that I was a History major with a semi-focus on early America. So I can't speak to the, ahem, historical accuracy of the events...though I am pretty certain that the Salem witches weren't real witches, so from my perspective the show can basically dowhatever the hell it wants. AND I LOVE IT.

Clovis described it as a train wreck, but I tend to disagree. Unlike American Horror Story, which basically throws every ridiculous plot device at the screen and sees if anything sticks, Salem unfolds in such a way that I think the writers know exactly what they are doing. The plot may be insane, but it doesn't feel random. Sure there's buckets of blood, sex, demons, and all the other good stuff, but it none of it feels out of place in the world the writers have created. And yet, it still manages to shock and surprise.

In short, Salem is not for the faint of heart. But if you enjoy the macabre, the surreal, and adult themes (i.e. sexy times!), and aren't squeamish, I think Salem might be the show for you. You know us TV Sluts will be watching.

Our impression of the banner at the top of the blog. 

Salem airs on WGN America (check local listings for stations) on Sundays at 10:00pm EST.

We Used to be Friends

After years of waiting and waiting (and waiting)...the Veronica Mars movie is finally here! There was no doubt this was a movie made for the fans, both literally and figuratively, since most of us ponied up the money through Kickstarter to get the thing made.

But was it worth the wait? In this post, TV Sluts past, present (and future?) comment on the film and discuss whether it met our expectations.

Oh, and it probably goes without saying...but spoilers ahead!

First up: Clovis!

The good – I love these characters and loved seeing them again. I loved the ending. Even though we knew from the first moment we started watching that there was no way in hell that Veronica was ever going to go back to New York and be a lawyer, it was still gratifying to see her (spoiler alert) taking over that Mars Investigations chair in the last shot. Also? More Mac. Always more Mac. I would watch a tech-heavy Mac spin off where she fights cyber-crime.

The bad – I wanted the movie to look as noir-y as the show did and it never quite managed it. All the saturated color and shadows of the show kind of got sunshine’d out in the movie. Also, the limitations that the movie was working off did have an impact – scenes that should have been rewritten clearly couldn’t be because there wasn’t time to do it; characters had to written flatly in case an actor couldn’t make the shooting schedule. (Though the fact that Rob Thomas and Co. pulled off everything they did that quickly is pretty amazing.) 

My big beef though was that never once did I ever believe Logan may have actually killed Carrie. In the show, Logan is written to be ambiguous about his actions – we believe that he can be underhanded or murderous. I would have liked there to be a bit more doubt about Logan’s guilt or innocence, and as such there’s no good tension there at all between Logan and Veronica. 

That said, I did enjoy the movie a lot although watching Veronica Mars was similar to watching Serenity in that they’re both total nostalgia bait and reminders that you’re never going to get back what you once had.

The only thing that I really didn’t like was the obscene number of “we used to be friends” lead-ins that all the media articles on the movie used. Come on, feature writers – think fresh.

Next: Sri!

My favorite Veronica Mars character is Eli "Weevil" Navarro, the leader of the local bike club (PCHers). The only thing we knew about his characters from the previews was that he had "gone straight" and gotten married. By the end of the movie, Weevil has survived a gunshot wound and had reclaimed his role as head of the PCHers. Someone commented to me about how depressing it was that he ended up back where he started. But what is a noble villain without the villainy? He's just a noble dude, and god knows Life kicks noble dudes in the teeth. Also, without Weevil, Veronica lacks the necessary underworld contacts/street cred to be a successful PI. Also... leather jacket. Enough said.

...and then, Priya!

The VM movie was like saying hello to an old friend. A two hour treatment of what made the show so great...a girl with an identity crisis unknowingly longing to return to who she was before and realizing that freedom comes from stopping that fight and taking up the mantle of crusader against the powerful. She is an imperfect heroine that doesn't always do the right thing but along with a rich diverse broader cast of characters finds a way to at least try.

Weighing in from Texas, here's Cheryl:

I adored it. It felt like a long episode, albeit a much darker one. Not that Neptune was ever sunshine and roses, but this was a whole new level of messed up. I get the feeling that it was probably the show Rob Thomas wanted to make but, you know, Standards and Practices. The only real complaints I have are how out of the blue Logan joining the Navy felt (not that I object, especially not to that uniform, I just would like to know what led up to that decision) and the path Wallace's life took. Why is he not an engineer? What happened that made him give up on the dream that was so important to him he stepped down from the basketball team? I think a lot of the movie was set up for the book series though, so maybe we'll get the answers there.

And finally, what did I think?

It's so rare for something to meet your expectations. And maybe it's just the excitement and a bit of rose-colored glasses...but honestly? I loved it. I have no complaints. I have no quibbles. I didn't go into the movie "wanting" anything specific to happen, I just walked in and let in unfold. It was Rob Thomas' story and I was beyond happy and content to just be along for the ride. It felt like hanging out with an old friend, where no matter how long you have been away from each other, you just pick up right where you left off. Of course, in this case the old friends happen to be some of the most supremely messed up people ever with major trust issues who wouldn't know a healthy relationship if it walked into the room and dropped its drawers...but still. My opinion might change upon further viewings, but for now? Nothing but love and gratitude that I got to revisit the world of Veronica.  

And let's be real. Vinnie Van Lowe, Cliff, Deputy/Detective Leo, Principal Van Clemmons...and OMG CELESTE KANE?? How could I ask for more? 

Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts in the comments below!

Recapping AHS: Guest Star!

Okay you guys – I admit, part of the reason I was so behind on recaps was because this season has been kind of, well, boring. Despite everything going for it, it’s just been hard to muster the interest, you know? So imagine my relief when we finally got an episode where things actually happened. It’s not the best AHS episode ever, but it is the best one this season so far.

Picking up where we left off, Fiona is offering Marie a cup of tea (and whiskey) and sympathy, offering her shelter from the witch hunters. It’s not clear if Marie has turned to Fiona because she really has nowhere else to go or just because she truly does recognize Fiona as an equal. (I’m hoping for the former – way more fun.) Either way, that night as she sleeps Marie gets a visit from the creepy as all hell Papa Legba who is the source of her immortality. (Thank you Voodoo Gods for finally bringing a scary character into a show that’s supposed to be about horror.) He tells her tonight is the night for her to pay her due, slaughter of everyone she currently knows and cares about be damned. To pay the price, Marie sneaks into the newborn ward in a hospital and selects an infant. Silly Marie – don’t you know babies are tagged so you can’t steal them from the hospital? Silly police who are here to stop her – Marie gets all magic-y and forces the two cops to kill themselves as she walks off into the night with the child.

Strange thing? Still hot.

The next morning, Cordelia angsts over the realization that Hank is the one who went all Columbine on Marie and her hair salon. Marie confesses that she hired Hank to kill the witches, so she’s got a bit of culpability here as well. “You were my sworn enemies!” she reminds them. Either way, Fiona reminds them, witch hunters don’t act alone.

Upstairs, Misty is singing to herself and practicing her Stevie Nicks-style shall turns. Fiona butters her up, though Misty is skeptical about Fiona’s newfound desire to share power with her as the potential new Supreme. To show exactly how magnanimous she can be, Fiona introduces Misty to her “old Friend, the White Witch.” Who is, yes, Stevie Nicks. For realz. Misty promptly faints upon meeting her. “You owe me five bucks,” Fiona tells Stevie. “I told you she was going to do that.”

Later, recovered from her vapors, Misty and the rest of the witches listen to Stevie perform Rhiannon on the grand piano and geek out along with Ryan Murphy behind the camera for getting Stevie on the show. Madison kvetches that she’s a big Eminem fan, so when does he play? “Marshall?” Fiona asks. “You’re not his type.” As she finishes, Stevie gives Misty her shawl and wishes her luck on the Seven Wonders test that she’ll soon have to pass.

OTP!

Upstairs, the younger girls emote over why it is that Misty is suddenly supposed to be the next Supreme (ATTN: Writers – finish these conversations quicker. We don’t need to have this same scene in every episode.) and try to out-witch each other. Meanwhile, the older witches pool what they’ve been able to learn about Delphi Trust, the front company for the witch hunters. Turns out the family dates back to Old Salem and has been hunting witches since the colonial times. Fiona suggests a sideways attack by cursing their money supply and bringing them down financially, rather than coming at them physically. Cordelia wants to help with the spells, but Fiona says she is tainted and can’t help anyone due to her association with Hank. Marie and Fiona cast a spell involving a maze, herbs, mice and a lot of traps as, elsewhere, the SEC and the FBI begins to close in suddenly on Delphi.

The spell, however, takes a lot out of Fiona as she collapses. While Marie tries to help her restore her strength, Fiona asks Marie for her secret for staying young and healthy. Marie reveals that she sold her soul to Papa Legba back in the 1830s. “I thought I was the shit back then,” Marie says. Having just given birth to her first child, she didn’t accept the idea of death until one night when Papa Legba came to her and offered her eternal life in exchange for a price. Thinking she was just going to have to get occasionally sexy with him, she agreed without understanding what he wanted was a pure soul, which meant giving up her newborn child and then one child each year thereafter. File under “Devil, deals with.”

On the streets, Madison and Misty have joined the tail end of a New Orleans jazz funeral procession. Because that’s what you do when you’re young, powerful, and really enjoy eating grilled chicken on a stick, and when your show runners realize that you’ve done almost an entire season and not yet had this iconic piece of the city in a scene. Madison points out that Misty is about to be showered with gifts as the new Supreme and that everyone, even Stevie, was likely just playing her as the new power on the scene. As the funeral makes its way into the cemetery, Misty enchants two gravediggers at Madison’s request.  Madison wants to show Misty that she is just as powerful as Misty is and to do that, she resurrects the man about to be buried. Confused, the man stumbles out of his coffin. Madison convinces Misty to drop the shall that Stevie gave her into the coffin as a way of proving that she isn’t enslaved to anyone else as the new Supreme. Silly Misty does exactly this, turning her back to Madison just long enough for Madison to conk her on the head, drop her into the coffin, steal back the shall, and send the gravediggers back to their work, entombing Misty into a grave. “Stupid bitch,” Madison smirks as she dances away to the tune of the jazz band.

Now, now… more just like naive. 

Nan and Zoe have gone to the hospital to visit Luke only to be told that Luke has died. Nan takes the news hard and insists on seeing Luke’s mother, suspecting her part in his death. The two come to Luke’s house, planning to find Luke’s body and bring him to Misty to resurrect him. Mother tells them that she’s had Luke’s body cremated, producing the urn. (Luke only died, like, yesterday. That’s some quick service crematory service I must say.) Nan is…displeased and forces Mother to her knees. Zoe tries to intervene, but Nan sends her flying into the next room. Nan grabs a bottle of bleach and puts it into Mothers hands. “You have to be cleansed,” she tells Mother and magically forces her to start chugging the bleach.

In the conservatory, Mrytle is playing a theremin despite Cordelia’s attempts to angst herself into an early grave. “Don’t be a hater, dear,” Mrytle tells her when Cordelia asks her to stop making that god-awful creepy noise. Recognizing how defeated Cordelia feels, Myrtle suggests that maybe she should leave the coven and seek out a new life. “Your salad dressing is absolutely magical, maybe you could bottle it?” she suggests.

Fiona, mindful of Marie’s advice that Papa Legba comes to those who are desperate enough for him, prays for his attention in her room. Her devotion (and a few lines of coke) are apparently enough for him to show up out of the blue, mostly invited, like a creepy Adele. Fiona gets down to brass tacks – she doesn’t want to die and is willing to do what it takes to stay alive eternally healthy. Papa Legba says he’ll need her soul and one night a year she needs to perform a service for him, for example “could you cripple your child?” he asks. “Today?” Fiona responds. “Absolutely.” (Comedy!) But seriously, Fiona will do anything. It deal is struck and Papa moves in to seal it with a kiss, but pulls back at the last minute. The deal is off, he tells her. “You have no soul.” Whaaaaaaaa? Well, the Axeman, helpful spirit that he is, appears and points out that all they need to do is find the next Supreme and take her down. “Let’s just kill them all,” Fiona vamps.

Thank you, creepy voodoo man, for finally giving me something in this show to not want to think about when I'm falling asleep. Aside from that enema thing, that is.  

The next day, Nan can hear the thoughts of the baby that Marie stole. Trying to rescue it, she is stopped by Marie and Fiona. Despite needing the sacrifice, Marie has genuinely come to see the baby as being something like her own. Seeing a two-birds-one-stone problem here between Papa needing a pure soul for Marie and Nan who is suddenly a liability,  it’s to the tub where they unceremonially hold Nan’s head under as she struggles to survive. “Oh come on, you’re not the first witch to be drowned,” Fiona tells her because misery loves company?  Either way, Papa isn’t thrilled about Nan’s innocence. “She’s innocent. Mostly,” Fiona insists. “She killed the neighbor, but the bitch had it coming.” The argument is apparently persuasive as Nan’s spirit emerges and accepts Papa’s offer to take her to the other side. “Anywhere is better than here,” Nan says and goes with him.

Later, because we can’t just use Stevie Nicks once, Fiona listens to Stevie play the piano in the parlor, finally letting some of the horror that she’s just been complacent in seep in. And yes, the final scene is total emotion bait, but damn if it’s not beautifully shot and damn is Jessica Lange doesn’t sell all the emotional exhaustion that Fiona, a woman who would like to do the right thing but ultimately is always drawn in by her own dark impulses, is dealing with.

Love Sucks

Friends, Romans, Fangbangers – lend me your ears. The sixth season premier of HBO’s wacky vampire love story, True Blood, is this weekend and given the show’s penchant for outrageous storylines and ridiculous character decisions, I am totally going to be recapping this bitch for your reading pleasure. But what of those of you who have not seen any True Blood and are wary of jumping into recaps in year six of a show? Fear not! I’m here to give you a brief rundown on the major players and themes.

Hey - I wonder if there's a double-meaning in that...

True Blood is set in the small town of Bon Temps, Louisiana in a world where, just prior to the start of the series, vampires have revealed themselves to be real and for the most part joined civilized society. The discovery of a synthetic blood substitute called True Blood, has made feeding off humans passé since it’s now easier for vampires to just pick up a six-pack of the stuff and call it an evening than slaughter a family in their sleep and have to relocate every few years before the locals start to get suspicious. Of course, if vampires are real one has to wonder what other supernatural forces might be out there, and oh boy do we find out.

As a sidebar, even if this doesn’t sound interesting to you, you owe it to yourself to at least watch the main titles. They’re seriously amazing and have won awards for how well they are made while at the same time capturing the look and feel of the entire show. 

Go ahead and watch. I’ll wait.

But who are the characters for us to hang our narrative hats on? Roll Call! Our “hero” is Sookie Stackhouse, played by Anna Paquin at her breast-y-est. Sookie is waitress at a local diner who can read minds and occasionally demonstrates other weird abilities that are initially unexplained. Sookie gets wrapped up into all the supernatural nonsense when she begins dating Bill, a 170-year-old vampire. Sookie’s twin brother, Jason, is the town’s resident poon-hound and all around dim, but lovable, bulb, like a Louisiana version of Ryan Lochte. Tara, Sookie’s best friend is the smartass skeptical one, while Tara’s cousin, Lafayette, is the town’s resident cook and fabulous gay man. Eric is the region’s “Sheriff” (kind of like a vampire middle-manager) and with his companion, the seriously amazing Pam, he runs a vampire bondage bar, because even in this world just being a badass vampire isn’t enough to pay the bills. Rounding out the supernatural cast is Baby Vamp Jessica, werewolf Alcide and a menagerie of ethereal, yet still kind of rape-y, fairies. Yes, really. Sookie, Tara and Lafayette all work for Sam, the owner of Merlotte’s Bar, though with all their vampire/werewolf/shapeshifter/fairy shenanigans, it’s rare that all of them actually show up to their shifts at the same time or at all.

Monsters, pictured in a rare moment of lighthearted bonhomie that doesn't involve viscera.

The wide variety of characters and the frankly ridiculous plotting is part of what makes the show, for me at least, stupidly watchable. It’s a train-wreck, much in the same way that the first season of American Horror Story was, but it’s so much frickin’ fun that you can get past the insanity and just enjoy the bloody, soapy good time. The stories are melodramatic, but enjoyable. The sex is hot and plentiful. (Seriously, how did swamp trash get so good-looking?) The show doesn’t believe it’s anything more than it is – a modern day Dark Shadows, albeit one given a much more significant budget, the pedigree of Oscar-winning actors and producers and a cable network that’s very willing to allow the show to indulge its adult desires with relation to sex, drugs and violence.

And to be honest, True Blood was never a show built on restraint – the opening scene of the first episode is a man getting a handjob from his girlfriend while they’re driving because she’s bored. The show clearly believes that if there are more than two scenes that pass without someone getting splattered in blood or being naked, the writers just aren’t trying hard enough. Meanwhile the metaphors are anything but restrained; vampires are referred to as having “come out of the coffin” and conservative religious groups protest the proposed Vampire Rights Amendment with signs that say “God Hates Fangs”. Vampire bars are depicted in the same cautiously naughty light as gay bars were in the 1970s – not hidden exactly, but not a place that anyone who wasn’t “like that” went. What saves the show from being completely offensive is, actually, this over-the-top sense of drawing comparisons. Because the show isn’t hiding its comparisons of vampires as a sexual minority, it avoids the uncomfortable implication that previous movies have made that all gay people are predators and murderers. “We’re here, we’re undead, get used to it” may as well be the show’s tagline.

So where does this put us for the season six premier? Spoilers Ahead!

To recap briefly over five years, Sookie and Bill met shortly after the Great Unveiling that told the world that vampires exist and that they just want to be treated like everyone else. Things could have gone okay, even for the sleepy southern town of Bon Temps, LA, with having an “out” vampire in their town until a series of murders occurred that naturally everyone thought Bill was committing. Sookie and Bill catch the real killer (it was Jason’s utterly human co-worker) and in the process learn that Sam is a shapeshifter and that there is a vampire hierarchy that must be obeyed at all costs. Season two brings us both a maenad named Maryann who almost destroys the town with drunken debauchery (of course that’s how it would happen on this show) while a religious group called The Fellowship of the Sun forms to combat the tolerance that the world is beginning to show for vampires. Think of them as the Westboro Baptist Church, except for the fact that, as we see, not all vampires are very fluffy, so maybe they actually have a point.

Not like you need me to tell you this, but their sunny optimism clearly indicates that they're evil. 

Season three brings us werewolves for the first time along with the story of a Vampire King who rules over Louisiana and enjoys causing a particularly destructive form of mischief. The season ends with Sookie learning that her strange abilities are the result of her being part fairy. Season four sees a coven of witches setting up shop in Bon Temps, introducing magic more thoroughly into the story line and setting up the vampires and the fairies as natural enemies of each other because vampires who feed from fairies can survive in the sunlight.

Season five delved deeper into the vampire community’s social structure, giving us The Authority, a sort of Ministry of Funny Walks for vampires only with less funny walking and a lot more purified blood sacrifice. The Authority is experiencing a schism in the vampire world between vampires that want to integrate with humans and pay taxes and play with puppies without eating them afterwards and those vampires that really, really miss the eating puppy parts of life and would just like to get back to slaughtering humans like the good old days in the Middle Ages. The season ends with Bill drinking from a vial of sacred blood that supposedly comes from Lilith, the first vampire. Bill “dies” and is reborn as a naked blood-coated demi-god who turns and advances on Sookie and Eric before the two can run away.

Thus, we begin season six wondering what, exactly, is Bill now that he’s met “the true death” and been reborn as some kind of new entity? How will The Authority’s corruption spill over into the already fractured relationships between humans and vampires? Will the Fellowship of the Sun swing opinion to their side, in which case the more loveable vamps (NEVER LEAVE US, JESSICA!) could be in danger? For God’s sake, how quickly can we get to the bloody sexy times? Starting this weekend, we’ll start to see.

MOAR PAM! MOAR!!

True Blood airs starting this Sunday, June 16, on HBO. 

Everyone Cries When They're Stabbed

So, I just spent the better part of the last view days mainlining the Canadian gem of a show, Slings & Arrows, to the detriment of all else. Yes, yes, the first season is ten years old, but if you missed it the first time it aired on Sundance, the entire series is back on Netflix streaming. I am an uber geek and I own a box set, but if you, unlike me, spend your money on things like food, rent and bills, you can also get it on DVD from same. 

Slings & Arrows, people. OMG. Where to begin.

Slings & Arrows is a cynical behind-the-scenes look at the goings-on of The Stratford Festival  a fictitious Canadian Shakespeare festival in the equally fictitious New Burbage, Ontario. No one can ignore the fact that the show is mocking the famous and successful mecca of North American theater. However, most of the actors and writers on the show are Stratford vets themselves. Uber hottie Paul Gross portrays Geoffrey Tennant (no relation to David), the unstable yet brilliant artistic director of the New Burbage Festival, who fights the good fight against forces that would destroy good theater: apathy, pretension, commercialization, mass marketing, cynicism, corporate interference, cliche, musicals and Darren Nichols.

If you want to say something to the proletariat, just cover it in sequins and make it sing.

Geoffrey is given the job as artistic director after his former friend and mentor, Oliver Welles (Stratford mainstay Stephen Ouimette), is killed after he falls into the road drunk and is hit by a pig truck.

But not to worry, Oliver's ghost appears to Geoffrey after his death to guide him as he directs, and only Geoffrey can see him, lending more credence to everyone's belief that Geoffrey is insane. Before Oliver's death, Geoffrey hadn't seen Oliver in over seven years after Geoffrey walked off stage during an apparently incandescent production of Hamlet, which Oliver directed. Geoffrey had a mental breakdown and left, and Oliver lost his edge and began staging trite, predictable productions which relied on special effects and big-name stars as draws, rather than relying on honest productions with a core group of solid, gifted actors. Further complicating things is the fact that Geoffrey's former love, Ellen Fanshaw (Stratford and Shaw Festival vet Martha Burns), is still at the festival, but she's getting older, thus is playing Gertrude and boinking men half her age in a desperate attempt to feel young again.

Each season, the show focuses on one main production of a Shakespearean play, and OMG we get to watch brilliant acting not only from the cast, but also from the "company" of players when the productions are ready for previews and performance. Although they can't show one or two entire Shakespearean plays during the performance episodes, we do get to see scenes from these productions, which are no less magical on teevee than I'm sure they would be in real life.

The show was written by Susan Coyne, Bob Martin and Mark McKinney of Kids in the Hall fame, who also stars as starched-shirt managing director, Richard Smith-Jones. 

The first season focuses on Hamlet, and stars Rachel McAdams as Kate/Ophelia. If you can watch her turn as Ophelia and not get chills, then you my friend, are dead inside. DEAD. DEAD LIKE YOU'VE BEEN HIT BY A PIG TRUCK.

 You mean after this I'm going to make The Notebook?

The second season features The Scottish Tragedy and Romeo and Juliet, and the third features a hysterically bad original musical and King Lear. I can't even begin to talk about how good this show is, and if you like theater, black comedy and good TV, you must get all over this forthwith. The acting is phenomenal and the writing is sharp-witted and wickedly funny. I just love Canadians. Even when they say "fuck" every other word or are supposed to be drunk or partying, they are SO ADORABLY DORKY. 

Fabulous Canadians appearing on S&A:  writer, actor and filmmaker Don McKellar as the uproariously pretentious Darren Nichols; actress, writer, director Sarah Polley as Cordelia/Sophie (her father, Michael Polley, appears in each episode as well); actor and erstwhile Gilbert Blythe, Jonathan Crombie, as Geoffrey's understudy in Season 1 and Lionel Train (yes) in Season 2; Warehouse 13 star Joanne Kelly as Sarah/Juliet; the late William Hutt as Charles Kingman/Lear and the late Jackie Burroughs (Aunt Hetty on Road to Avonlea) in a minor but effective role during Season 2. 

Unlike some other shows about theater which I won't mention that try to push their preachy, phony agenda upon the masses, Slings & Arrows takes the stand that good theater does not have to be dumbed down to be appealing to the masses. It carries the message that overwrought, overly thought-out and (dare I say it) overly theoretical productions are not good theater; they are simply dishonest interpretations that are more about the director and his/her enormous ego than anything else. In Geoffrey Tennant's mind, the play is the thing.

There are only three seasons, but the story feels very complete when you finally finish the last episode. Slings & Arrows doesn't take on social problems and try to correct them in "a very special episode" and that's what makes is so true and so goddamn fucking honest. It says within the tiny world of the New Burbage Festival and struts and frets its hour upon the stage with stunning brilliance.

Hannibal Lecter, Fashion Plate

Something occurred to me while I was watching NBC's new drama, Hannibal. Maybe I've been watching too much Project Runway, or reading too much Mad Style* over on TLo, but the costuming on Hannibal really struck a cord with me

I can't speak for the book versions of Dr. Lecter, but Anthony Hopkins' Lecter was always fastidious and almost fussy about his appearance. But I don't remember him demonstrating much in the way of fashion other then your typical men's suits, and of course for almost all of Silence of the Lambs he was dressed in standard prison hospital wear.

He's not exactly at the forefront of fashion with this outfit. Still, better than wearing the blood of your victims, eh?

But NBC's Hannibal is very different. In fact, I would say he's downright dapper. The character is portrayed by Mads Mikkelsen and has thus far demonstrated a flair for wearing colorful, boldly patterned suits, complete with coordinating ties, pocket squares, and vests.  It's all very European and very different from most men on television.

But Hannibal isn't like most men, is he? He dresses in color, patterns (usually checks and plaids) and layers. And I think this is all deliberate. The image he projects to the world is complete serenity and control, but I think the busyness of his suits reflects the madness inside. Of course, he favors plaids because even his madness has a logic and structure. And the meaning of all the layers should be obvious--Hannibal would make an onion look uncomplicated.

 Well, hello there. Can I interest you in a nice glass of Chianti?

It's very unusual to find such attention to costuming in your typical television drama. Or maybe it's just very unusual for me to notice. In any event, I appreciate the attention to detail displayed by the folks behind the scenes, and I find myself looking forward to each appearance of Hannibal. Not just because he's a fascinating character portrayed by a great actor--but because I want to see what he's wearing.

 Really the entire point of this post was just to look at this picture again. Amazeballs. 

*Mad Style is a truly excellent set of posts by Tom and Lorenzo over on their blog where they analyze every detail of the costuming on each episode of Mad Men for clues of what is to come. It's amazing what they deduce about the characters from the clothes and reading each Mad Style post is pretty much half the reason why I watch Mad Men. 

The Truth (And Three of Our Plotlines) Will Out

Okay guys, shit goes DOWN in this episode and for real, it might be my favorite one of the series so far. Not only do things actually happen that move the plot massively forward, but there's some truly awesome humor, character revelations and fast-paced action happening. If the show can keep up a pace like this, the second half of the season is going to be amazing.

Mother’s having an understandably bad evening processing the news that the police officer she’s sleeping with to keep her safe from a murder conviction is actually the pivotal figure in an international sex smuggling operation. “I can’t imagine what a shock it is,” Emma, the Living Irony Machine says, “finding out a guy you’re that into is a monster.” #ISeeWhatYouDidThere. Mother tries to make a break from the hotel and drive to Shelby’s, but Norman runs after her, literally jumping into the car through the window as Mother yells, “Son of a Bitch!” at him. Less than two minutes into this episode and the irony meter is already about to explode. Norman manages to get Mother to stop the car despite the repeated donuts it spins as they wrestle for wheel. Norman comforts a sobbing Mother, telling him that they’ll find a way to get Shelby. This might honestly be my favorite scene in the entire series so far and Emma sums up the entire thing nicely with a sardonic, “well, shit.”

Elsewhere, Dylan emotionally tells his employers at the pot farm about Ethan getting shot and then running down the shooter. The Boss, Gil, is actually impressed with him for taking initiative and instructs Dylan how to effectively torch Ethan’s truck so there’s no evidence left of the murder. As he does, Dylan meets his new partner, Remo. Remo is less impressed with Dylan, partially because Remo is in his 40s and Dylan is all of 21 but mostly because it turns out that Gil has told Remo he is working for Dylan, not the other way around.

Can't wait for the annual employee review.

Back at the motel, the Chinese girl is asleep in one of the rooms. Norma inspects her bruised and bloodied arms before tucking her in and then heading back to the house where Emma again insists that they go to the police or at least the FBI. Mother and Norman are not keen on bringing more of Johnny Law back into their crime scene. Mother convinces Emma that they’ll convince the girl to go to the police on her own. Sidebar, I ask again, why leave the Chinese girl in the motel where she was previously held captive when there are at least 20 good bedrooms in that rambling mansion the Bateses live in? Oy. Waking her back to her car, Emma confesses that her mother left their family, not wanting to care for a kid with cystic fibrosis. This spurs some actual affection between them all and Mother hugs Emma sweetly before sending her off.

That night, Mother plots to go back to Shelby’s house. Norman wants to go too. Mother apologies for not believing Norman when he first told her about the Chinese girl. Norman wants to know if there’s something wrong with him, remembering how she said he sometimes sees things that aren’t there. Dylan finds them and they bring him up to speed. Dylan and Norman agree to go to Shelby’s boat. On the way there, Dylan tells Norman that he’s bought a place on the water and he wants Norman to live with him, away from Mother. Norman is noncommittal. They board the boat, looking for the missing belt. While they search, Dylan asks Norman how his father died. Norman says a shelf in the garage fell on him in a totally non-suspicious way, why? Dylan says that Mother hated Norman’s father and she was miserable and Norman needs to stop making excuses for a bastard father and an insane mother. Just then, Dylan finds the missing belt hidden in the ceiling. Dylan throws the belt overboard, promising that it won’t wash up or float. “Now she’s safe,” he says as he throws the belt into the harbor.

But is she though? Back at the house, guess who’s coming for dinner sex? Shelby arrives feeling randy and tries to get Mother to head down into the motel with him. 

"I have a incestuous thing going with my son, so what does it tell you that you're creeping me out sexually right now?"

Three minutes later, Mother has the best bored sex face ever as Shelby clearly thinks more of his ability than she does. When he notices she’s not as enthused and asks what’s wrong she tells him she’s just worried about Norman. Just then, Shelby hears what sounds like water running in an adjacent room. He tucks it in and heads out to investigate. If it weren’t for the gun, this would make for an awesome French farce. He correctly identifies the room the Chinese girl is in, but she’s showering and can’t hear him. Mother tries to cover, saying it’s a painter from Sacramento (that old chestnut), but just then the Chinese girl opens the door and ruins the whole thing. She panics and runs. Shelby chases after her, pushing Mother to the ground and calling her a bitch when she tries to stop him from shooting the girl. As Shelby runs off, the boys arrive back home. Dylan says Norman is coming to live with him, causing Mother to instantly all but totally forget about the Chinese girl being chased by the psychopathic cop and demand to know why Norman would do this to her? Norman says it’s because she killed his father, but Mother sighs and sadly tells him that’s not true. The family drama could continue, but Shelby reemerges from the woods and boy is he not happy.

He takes them back to the house for a family meeting before deciding that this is all Norman’s fault, putting his gun into Norman’s temple. When Mother tries to say that they’ll all stay quiet he strikes her hard and remember how Norman sometimes goes into a blackout rage? Well, here it comes again. Norman charges Shelby with an assist from Dylan. Lots of punching, kicking and Shelby and Dylan are at opposite ends of the house shooting at each other around corners. The fight leads upstairs with a wounded Shelby chasing after Dylan while Norman is unconscious in the kitchen and Mother dragging him out of the house.  Mother calls 911 and gets a dazed Norman to their car. Typical horror movie cliché, the car keys aren’t in her purse, but upstairs with Shelby. Just then she hears two gun shots coming from the house. A few tense moments later, we see a man emerge from the house… it’s Shelby looking FUCKED. UP.  He points his gun at Norman and Mother before collapsing on the ground.

Your mileage may vary on this image.

Dylan comes running from the house and Mother runs to him, hugging him for what I think is the first time. “You’re safe,” he tells her. Norman meanwhile is still sitting blankly in the car. Dylan says they need to tell the truth about what happens when the cops arrive, but Mother says he doesn’t know the whole story. She, of course, doesn’t tell him about killing a man who raped her on her kitchen floor, which would explain some things, but she does tell him about how Norman’s father died – they had been fighting, him calling her a whore and that saying she’s cheap. Norman had been listening from the kitchen when his father started to beat Mother, causing Norman to calmly walk to his father and hit him over the back of the head, killing him. Norman seemed blank, so Mother took him to his room and let him lie down. Then she dragged his father to the garage and staged his accidental death before showering to get rid of the blood on her while Norman woke up and found his father's body, bringing us right back to that first scene in the pilot episode.

Maybe the fact that we've both killed someone will bring us closer together as a family?

Mother tells Dylan that Norman is innocent and he doesn’t know what he did. “You can either get out of my way or you can help me,” she tells him as the police arrive. 

Scream Thy Last Scream

Get out your go-go boots and girdles, ladies! It's time for Season 6 of Mad Men! Lest we fear that this season, like the last, will lapse into what Clovis affectionately terms, "The Megan Show," it looks like all of our beloved morally bankrupt characters are back with plenty of angst to go around!

It's the very late 60's on Mad Men. Just a season or so to go, and I can make fun of people for wearing 70's clothes. Don Draper is still a womanizing alcoholic, Roger Sterling is still struggling to adjust to the 60's (as the decade comes to a close -- might want to get on that, Rog), Joan Harris still has huge...tracts of land and Pete Campbell is still a smarmy creep. All is right with the world.

That's right, girls. I slept my way to the top.

Matthew Weiner doesn't straight up come out and tell us what year it is, so those of us who don't have any recollection of the 60's or 70's had to do some Googling. Figuring that the show wouldn't gloss over the tumultuous year that was 1968 -- and going off the growing sideburns and general hirsute appearance of the male characters; remarks about it being close to the new year; and the first human heart transplant having been performed -- we are able to place the season premiere at the end of 1967. 

The advertising gnomes at Sterling Cooper Draper Price have moved on since Lane Price's in-office suicide last season. There are many new underlings working in creative. Price has been most recently reincarnated as General U.S. Grant in the Civil War reenactment porn that is Lincoln. Speaking of identity crises, both Our Hero Don Draper and Silver Fox Roger Sterling are examining themselves and their lives in this episode. Roger has taken somewhat positive action and traded in his dropping acid with Timothy Leary days for psychoanalysis. Don is on his usual regimen of hard drinking, chain smoking and banging the neighbor lady.

We begin this season opener with the troubling image of what we can only assume is Don's POV of staring up at the ceiling, after having what we can only assume is a heart attack. Megan Draper talks in the background and another male voice assures Don that he will be all right. That fades to Megan frolicking around in a bikini on a Hawaiian beach, next to the very alive Don. For some light beach reading, Don has chosen The Inferno.

You do your existential crisis your way and I'll do it mine, capiche?

I'm sure Don is curious about what level of hell he will be assigned to after his early demise from apoplexy. Or cardiac infarction. Or lung cancer. Whatever it is, I'm sure he'll be a few notches above Pete Campbell. 

What should bother you the most about me is how fucking adorable I am in real life.

This vacation is actually work. It's an all-inclusive trip courtesy of a client, Sheraton.  They even get a taste of traditional Hawaiian culture at a luau hosted by a guy who doesn't even look Hawaiian. They're encouraged to eat poi. Ah, commercialized tribalism. Don's made more than a little uncomfortable when some old lady recognizes Megan from her teevee role and calls her Corinne, and asks for her autograph. That must be how Megan feels when some random person walks up to Don and calls him Dick Whitman. Oh, snap.

Then Megan and Don have some hot hotel sex. After which, Don is unable to sleep, so he goes down to the hotel bar and drowns whatever sorrows he has in a highball. He takes out his cigarette lighter and stares at it. It's from his time serving in Korea, and it has his name on it. And remember folks, that lighter says Pvt. Dick Whitman. 

He is soon joined by an intoxicated soldier on leave from Vietnam.  The soldier sees Don's army-issue cigarette lighter from Korea, and he identifies Don as a vet. He drunkenly informs Don that he doesn't like Hawaii because the indigenous population "looks like" Charlie. All righty then. He also tells Don that he's getting married tomorrow, because he's heard that married guys tend to make it out of Nam at a higher rate than non-married guys. He asks Don to give the lucky bride away and Don, who often displays a weird sense of chivalry he lacks in other areas of his life, agrees.

Look at me supporting this institution I utterly fail at upholding. 

In Fat Betty Francis news, Fat Betty Francis can't drive. Betty has gone to see The Nutcracker with Sally, Sally's friend Sandy and Betty's mother-in-law. Afterward, she gets pulled over for running into someone, and her Mother-in-Law From Hell (Fifth Circle; lovely neighborhood) tries to get Betty out of a ticket by telling the state trooper that Betty's husband is Someone Important. Smokey Bear tells Old Lady Francis that he doesn't give a tin damn who Betty's husband is and cites her for reckless driving.

Teen Future Dope Fiend Sally Draper has befriended a wayward violin prodigy named Sandy. Sandy has joined the Francises for the holidays and Little Bobby Draper has a crush on her. The Francis fam discovers Sandy's headed to Juilliard and encourages her to play a piece for them and they're all very impressed with her mad skillz. Betty teases Henry about having Lolita-ish thoughts about Sandy. Henry tells her she takes it a little too far (she does), but she backs off and says she's kidding. Betty later finds Sandy downstairs, getting a jump on that  three-packs-a-day smoking habit. Sandy tells Betty her woes about being a motherless waif, and her dream to go live in New York City with all the bohemians, artists, vagrants, ne'er-do-wells, layabouts and hippies. She also reveals to Betty that she actually did not get into Juilliard. Betty starts to feel maternal -- probably for the first time in her life -- and discourages Sandy from quitting school and moving to the city. Betty tells her about her less-than-glamorous life as a model before she met Don, but this does nothing to discourage Sandy. Betty's own children hate her, so when Sandy disappears from school and tells Sally that she went to Juilliard early, Betty goes on a search for her in the seedier part of the city.

Tell me about it, stud!

Betty confesses to Sandy that she's on a diet, and Sandy tells Betty to forget the diet because she looks fine the way she is. We see that this the kind of mother/daughter relationship Betty definitely doesn't have with Sally  and that she would probably like to have. Now that Betty's started to figure out what she wants in life, she's realizing what she doesn't have and what she wants to change.  Maybe at this point in her life, she actually wants to be a mother, instead of having children because that was what was expected of her. As a sidebar, anyone who's seen the stalkerazzi photos of J-Jones knows she's lost her baby weight, but it's interesting, unique and kind of brave for the show to feature a woman who is struggling with her weight, yet who remains attractive. 

Returning home, Don and Megan run into their bellman and he drops dead in front of them. Oops. Actually, that was a flashback to a heart attack he'd had several months ago, and Don and Megan are surprised to see him back at work. Again, we see Don reminded of his own mortality.

In living in sin news, Peggy returns home from dinner with Abe and gets a call from her boss, Bert Peterson. Apparently, some comedian went on Carson and joked about American soldiers cutting off the ears of Viet Cong soldiers. This causes issues for Peggy's Super Bowl ad campaign, which is for headphones. Their ad is a Jim Belushi-looking guy in a toga, with the tag line of "Lend Me Your Ears." The headphone company now wants to pull the ad, and Peggy has to "call Ted." Peggy meets with the client and she tries to appease him with a new campaign. Peggy has difficulty getting in touch with Ted, and she ends up having an awkward conversation with a pastor at Ted's retreat. 

Diamonds, daisies, snowflakes...That Girl!

Back at the office, Don runs into Dr. Rosen in the elevator. Rosen's office is in the same building as SCDP. They shoot the breeze, and Don mentions he's got a stockroom full of Lika cameras. He offers to give Rosen a free camera if he stops in after work, and Rosen agrees. In other awkward elevator conversation news, Bob Benson from accounts "bumps into" Don in the elevator and offers him a coffee. Bob's been to the Pete Campbell School of Smarm, and he almost gets to bribe Don with tickets to the Cotton Bowl. Creative is hoping for some inspiration from Don because of his Hawaii trip, but he's got nothin'. 

A professional photog is on hand to take pictures of the partners and senior execs. Not much of Our Mrs. Reynolds in this episode, but I'm sure there will be a lot awaiting Joanie in the coming weeks. Joan has a nose for weed, and she thinks it smells like reefer in the office, but doesn't know if it's the photographers or creative. (I bet it's Roger.) Rosen stops by to get his camera, and he reminds Don that Megan and Mrs. Rosen are putting together something for New Year's.

Roger's on the phone with his flavor of the month when his histrionic secretary enters. She gives Roger the news that his mother has passed away at the age of 90. Roger appears unmoved, but comforts his secretary and instructs her to ask Joan what to do about the arrangements. One awkward hug later, and she's on her way to plan a memorial.

Hour Two begins with Megan informing Don that her role on the telenovela she's on is getting bigger. This leaves Don to attend the memorial service on his own. 

Over at Betty's, Sally is indifferent about Sandy leaving school. Sally's a little jealous of Sandy's talent and Betty's interest in her, so she tells Betty she doesn't like Sandy and is glad she's gone.

Some guy named Wes Anderson keeps calling me.

Betty's worried so she goes in search of Sandy. She stands outside a decrepit-looking building in some really bad neighborhood, presumably somewhere in the Village. Betty does manage to find herself at a building that Sandy has been in, because she finds her violin there. 

At the memorial service, Roger has to confront both of his ex-wives, first Jane and then Mona.  Some folks arrive with food, and Roger's perplexed because he didn't order it. There's a card from some guys in accounting (one of whom is named Bob), but Ken Cosgrove takes credit for it. Harry Crane wants to bang Roger's married daughter, and Don arrives shitfaced.  

This old lady, who had been insisting that she be allowed to speak first, waxes philosophic on the departed's love for her one and only son, Roger. This makes Don puke. Funniest. Funeral. Ever.

As if things weren't bad enough, Mona shows up with her new (husband? fuckbuddy? boyfriend? sugar daddy?). Roger doesn't want him there, and yells at his neglected daughter, Margaret. Then Roger tells everyone to GTFO. Upstairs, Roger tries to bang his old, old lady (Mona) and she refuses. WTF is wrong with her? I'd fuck Roger. Maybe the whole leaving her for a woman half her age thing... Downstairs, Roger decides to have some family bonding time with Margaret, at Mona's urging. He gives Margaret a jar of Jordan water, and promises to help her husband with his new business venture. Aww. Dad of the Year right there.

Back in the Village, life isn't all incense and peppermints here at the homeless youth hostel. They don't have water, heat, electricity or food. They dislike Betty and her cornball lifestyle, because she has things like warm clothes and a running toilet. Betty finds some of the counterculture youths have stolen the ingredients to make goulash. Betty asks if they've seen Sandy, and one of them claims that Sandy sold the violin to him. Betty doesn't believe him. She helps the flower children make some far out goulash, and waits around for Sandy to show up. One of them lets Betty know the Summer of Love is over and she has to leave. She is about to leave and take the violin with her, but she hesitates as she's heading out the door and leaves the violin behind with the gutter punks and their squalor. Then Betty dyes her hair. 

Don makes it back to work and gives Miss Chambers the lighter, with some story about how he picked it up by mistake and asks her to send it back to the army. The execs from Sheraton arrive, and they're not thrilled with Don's proposal. They feel his art, which shows a man's discarded clothes next to footprints that lead into the ocean, reminds them of someone's suicide. Don doesn't see it, but the Sheraton execs want to see something else for their ad. Roger's secretary informs  him that the reason he's been unable to reach his shoeshiner is because his shoeshiner died. His family brought over his shoeshine kit, and Roger takes it into his office and breaks down crying.

Don and Megan have a New Year's Eve party -- with fondu! Their guests are the Rosens and Don and Megan's neighbors (the wife of which is hot for Don). Nothing really happens until Dr. Rosen gets called into work and has to head to the hospital on cross-country skis. Can you still do that in Manhattan? Inquiring minds want to know.

The mysterious Ted shows up at the office. Peggy's able to come up with a solution to her Carson issue through going through her commercial outtakes. I really hope Peggy starts sleeping with Ted. He's way better-looking, way less annoying and way less hairy than Abe. Ted gives her the praise she never got from Don, and she's pleased. Ted seems intrigued and we all know Peggy's a sucker for an unavailable man. Have an affair, Peggy! Because why not?

After Dr. Rosen's off on his skis, we see Don sneaking into an apartment. There's a woman waiting for him there -- and why, yes, that's Mrs. Rosen! Don sleeps with her, and then he makes some comment about how he "doesn't want to do this" anymore. Then...stop. He goes home afterward to the sleeping Megan.

Like...what the hell, Don? Seriously. So, we see that the free camera was (an apology? payment? restitution?) for Don sleeping with his wife. Whatever it is, it's a pretty pathetic one, I must say. It's like Don tries sometimes to be a good person, but then he just fails. 

Really not certain why Don is cheating on Megan. Once again, we see Don married to a beautiful, sexually confident woman, but having an affair. We can only believe that's Don's own sense of self-loathing that leads him to cheat. Is it his fear that he didn't deserve the beautiful model Betty or the talented and smart Megan? As far was we saw on the show, he was faithful to Megan until her acting career took off, but I'm uncertain if he was ever faithful to bored hausfrau Betty, so the true reason for Don's infidelity is still a matter of speculation.

Say what you want about Megan, but once she finds out he's cheating, she's going to cut off his balls with a switchblade. Perhaps Don's fears of dying of a heart attack are unfounded.

A solid start to Season 6. My only real complaint is the commercials. I know this is a show about advertising and all, but the show ran eight minutes into a third hour, and I can only presume that was to make room for all the ads. I think I'm going to watch it on the DVR from here on out so I can fast forward. 

Overall, the filming, lighting and coloring of the show have taken a darker tone. The production has heightened the use of reds and browns so the effect seems like they're filming on late 60's era film. Not really sure what's happening in episode 2, because as per usual, the Mad Men previews are so poorly edited that I have to believe their haphazard and out-of-context organization is on purpose. So, I guess what we have to look forward to next week is that some people say some things and other people react.

Mad Men airs at 10 p.m. Sundays on AMC.