Monsters of Television

“That’s exactly what we look like.”

Shawn ages horribly.

I have a feeling the title of this post is going to get me a lot of spam. Maybe I should have titled it “v1agra.”

It appears that Season 5 is going to be the one that the show rife with references to myriad media properties and pop-culture-historical artifacts is going to start toying with its own mythology and reference itself. Ushered in by last season’s finale with one of the few times a legacy viewer has been rewarded (Yang to S3 finale’s Yin), S5 has already had an episode where characters make fun of Shawn’s “I have a clue” face (“Not Even Close … Encounters”), this episode exposing the dynamics of Shawnngus with versions of themselves 30 years aged, and then, coming after the hiatus, It’s a Wonderful Life gets the Psych treatment in December.

What results is this show actually rewarding long-time viewers. Okay, not necessarily long-time viewers but an audience that has seen at least a handful of episodes. While Psych is generally an esoteric show in its extensive knowledge of pop-culture, we’re starting to see some jokes where the punchline is purely for long-time viewers. And they land.

Mark of a good series is able manipulation using its own mythology. Right?

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“You must not think I have an honest bone.”

If you want to look extra condescending, you have to give big eyes.

You have to be happy White Collar came around when it did rather than a few years ago when the country was gripped by No Limit Hold ‘Em television (later remarked by several as the end of a varied game weekly poker night). You couldn’t flip a channel without seeing some poor schlub taking his cards too seriously, wearing Blu-Blockers and iPod earbuds to hide his tells, or some minor celebrity shuffling his or her chips for charity. I would imagine with the weight media outlets were throwing behind the game, we would see confidence man Neal Caffrey slumped behind a card table far more than we do now. And it’s just not where he belongs.

Clearly, that place is finding excuses to take his shirt off for visitors.

The stuff with Not-Dead Kate is starting to come to a simmer (though a lukewarm one if that’s possible) and we get an interesting nuance in the idea of criminality in the White Collar gaze. Apparently the “heart of gold” status extends further than just to prostitutes in the Old West.

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“I was Charles freaking in Charge.”

“Let’s agree to never do anything worthwhile ever again. I’ll have ‘Ferg-face’ and you’ll have ‘Whoa’ — forever and ever.”

There’s a line we commonly use here when we review a brand new series: pilots are hard. And it’s true. So much context to establish, characters to force a connection with, so many ways that first impression of a storyworld can go wrong and turn an audience off. Building something special within the ever-withering allotted time for a show on ad-supported television can be a vexing, horrifying, story-crushing experience. It’s a cutthroat world and we don’t envy any of them the task.

But I have never watched a show where the people involved obviously hated their jobs so much.

Backstory for those of you who don’t watch Gilmore Girl re-runs every day (I’ve seen the entire season about three times in the past two years) and aren’t particularly in the know of all things ABC Family: a while back Joseph “Whoa” Lawrence and Melissa “Explains It All” Joan-Hart starred in an ABC original movie called My Fake Fiance that shattered all kinds of ratings records for the network. Mind you, this is a network just recently burgeoning with original series (Secret Life of the American Teenager, Make It or Break It, etc) and, just a few years ago, was the home mostly to just Full House reruns. I’m just saying the bar probably wasn’t all that high. Viewers ate the movie up and remarked at the chemistry shared between the two leads. So ABC Family decided to capitalize on the stalling careers of the beached sit-com talent. The press release even used the word “manny” to make sure everyone knew how hip and smart they were.

What they came up with was a derivative plot driven by cliche sit-com tropes (you could have made bingo cards) and lies. So many lies.

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“That IS writing.”

Common in the threads of Mad Men are counter-culture characters who embody the changing tide of the 1960s, specifically toward the well-oiled advertising infrastructure. From episode 1, we see a whiff of hostility toward what Don Draper does, from the affair he opens the series with to the college-aged kid he fails at seducing while visiting Anna. Generally, these threads are aimed at Don, the tailored-suit-armored embodiment of that super-structure, as they try to challenge him. The counter-culture characters are generally amazed when they come face-to-face with a man in advertising, as if they’re seen a “g-man” in the flesh; the concept is bandied about so much and so elevated that any tangible evidence almost feels unrealistic. “Really? You’re in advertising?” And then come the disparaging comments representing the movement. Don quells them with firmness but charm and they either decide they are at impasse or move on to something else.

Kinsey’s party (where we meet his girlfriend) also has a bit counter-culture in it (Kinsey being an interesting figure as a member of the culture while working in advertising) but, now that the show is into the mid-60s, specifically post-Warhol, it’s interesting to see how they maintain this thread. Sure, last week they had Stephanie clumsily represent but she lacked bite and true hostility. So why not see what happens when you deeply embed Draper-by-proxy into the anti-commercial artists’ culture.

Fight my battle, Peggy.

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“Did you get pears?”

This might be the funniest/most telling/allegorical/best/most fourth-wall-breaking/funniest again frame in the entire series.

WARNING: The following post never really discusses the nudity in Mad Men that probably didn’t need to be disclaimed. Reader discretion is advised.

The masks are slipping a little for Don and Peggy, more for the former than the latter, but they are quick to recover in the privacy of their own dominions. And while Don’s story with Allison is interesting, and I’m finally glad to see Pete in the line-up again, it’s Peggy that provides the most intrigue here.

I make it no secret that I have a penchant for the our gal copywriter but I’ve mentioned that, just as Don is being set up for The Big One (where Don finally falls on his face rather than his feet) that Peggy is headed for a fall herself, at the very least a tipping point. Don and Pete have big pieces of this episode but it all feeds into her. And that doesn’t even count the big L word they never even drop.

No, the other one.

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“I had it coming.”

Ah, the incorruptible Lane Pryce. One night with Don Draper and you’re now just one of the boys.

Lane’s relationship has been somewhat tenuous for the length of his time on the show. He started off just as much a caricature as the rest of the limeys (limies?) that took over Sterling Cooper last season, a cup of tea and an elitist football reference short of a stereotype. While he was the most willing to accept America as his home (to his wife’s chagrin) and seemed the most sympathetic character in the new cast introduced in season 3, he has pretty much held on to the stuffy, stiff-upper-lip, moneyman type.  But he’s fallen on hard times, particularly in his marriage with his cold and “severe” better half (she is English afterall — which media has taught me is par for the course unless receiving a Joni Mitchell education), and wants a break. And who’s back just in time to drag a man of scruples into the tarpit that is his own existence? Fresh off his own stint of jackassery, it’s Don Draper, expert in swallowing pain and then drowning it in brown liquor and quasi-anonymous sex.

He really should wear a cape or a pencil mustache or something, just to warn people.

In other news, Joan finally gets a storyline this season.

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“Screw him. I love Christmas.”

Slut.

Watching the opening credits sequence always made me feel like this show is supposed to be about the fall of man, his collapse while either being distracted by his industry or completely swallowed by it. Through the first three seasons, this mantle prophesied by the silhouette in free-fall was obviously supposed to descend upon our “protagonist” Don Draper since he is clearly the focus of the series. His path thus far, however, has been more horizontal than vertical, blowing in the winds of his times like a tumbleweed with a few hiccups that he has, more or less, escaped from unscathed.

This season, however, slowly chips away at his puffed-out persona. Now that he is alone, his actions, which aren’t terribly different than they were before the divorce, are suddenly more lecherous. Now that he is free to philander as much as he pleases, his affairs seem less smooth, more feral, uncivilized, more desperate. His confidence has been shaken and this almost feels like the beginning of that collapse we’ve been hoping would eventually occur (but probably won’t for a while).

Does Peggy really want to follow in Don’s footsteps that much? Also: does Glen remind anyone else of an escaped Todd Solondz character?

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“You have a nice little practice going?”
“I do all right.”

“How do you expect to fool them into thinking it’s me?”
“By using another black man and the assumption that all black men look the same to the upper-middle class.”
“That’s dash cunning.”
“We know.

So White Collar is starting to remind me of Chuck and it’s not just the Bryce Larkin connection.

Chuck has been a spy for over three years now and, though he’s supposed to be a “secret” agent, he’s been implicating his friends and family into his web of subterfuge and awkwardness little by little since then. The very people he explicitly stated that he never wanted to affect with the job that fell in his lap are now either knowledgeable of what Chuck does or actively participate in missions, exposed to danger exacted by enemy agents and even Chuck himself.

While I don’t think Neal is carelessly exposing his loved ones to danger, he does implicate his criminal friends into FBI cases and missions in exchange for immunity, passes, and what I can only assume is healthy compensation from Uncle Sam.  Mozzie doesn’t seem like the type to work pro bono for the Suits. And now even Alex is involved.

Who’s next? June? Dead Kate Who Is Not Really Dead? Is there anyone Neal has left in his life that is still a criminal? And, if not, with his solving crime and everyone he knows being in cahoots with the Law, what gray area is left for him to raise the stakes?

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“That’ll do, pig.  That’ll do.”

Let’s just give up the pretense and call it the Peter and Mozzie Show.

For a show that likes for Neal to operate in such a moral gray area they really don’t like their good guys to be bad, do they?

After yet another false cliffhanger from last episode (Diana having the music box locked away), I’m not sure if the show is just going to constantly pitch me on their good guys going rogue (even if they never do) or if it’s setting me up, crying “villain” until I don’t believe it then flipping the script when Peter takes off his mask and reveals that he’s really Kate or something.  For now, however, the good guy characters are very much good guy characters, no matter how much they try to fake me out.

In fact, everyone in the series is pretty much a white hat right now.  Neal operating in his gray area of the law has almost evaporated with the “death” of Kate.  There is no seasonal villain now that Fowler has gone underground, just a mystery left from the detritus of last season’s botched music box hand-off.  Neal has stopped his search for what happened and just works for the FBI now, nothing extracurricular.  The only connection he has to his past life is Mozzie, and even Mozzie is warming to the suits.

So even this show, once upon a time steeped with the story-world-consuming (if completely annoying) seasonal search for Kate, is kind of becoming the thinly-plotted but character-heavy fare summer USA is known to do and do well.

And we’re kind of fine with that.

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