KIP MOONEY: You know there’s a problem with a show when the one episode featuring all the characters in the same location is the season’s most disjointed and inconsistent.
Aside from The Simpsons, I’m usually not a fan of sitcoms’…
COLD OPEN
ZOË RICE: The Fox News spoof wasn’t a home run, and it lagged a bit (with weirdly dated references, to Christmas trees for instance), but it was passable.
HOWARD MEGDAL: SNL’s Fox News problem is that it is consistently battling The…
SONIA BRAND-FISHER: A tense and turbulent episode of “Mad Men” this week where we get insights into the ambitions of women in marriage, and the positions of the husbands who must accept and love them. Megan’s ambitions take her out of the halls of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce into capris and acting classes so that she can pursue her dream while Don accepts it and lets her fly away as he breezes in from work. Beth Dawes (played surprisingly well by Alexis Bledel) is leading a similar life to her husband, Howard, in her ambitions to have “side dishes,” or really more like side amuse bouches since they seem to come and go pretty quickly. And then Pete, with the absent but still very present Trudy, wants someone to make him feel complex and validated and not that he is doing everything that he should, which seems to be Trudy’s strategy. I do wish we could see more of Trudy and Pete’s home life like we have in previous seasons, because right now I wonder if we are supposed to assume that her life is taken up by the baby and hence nothing really changes for her, or maybe Matthew Weiner is waiting for a big reveal later in the season.
HOWARD MEGDAL: You should be thinking of Trudy? What about Pete? Hell, Trudy would take up most of my thoughts, if I didn’t have a wife who tops even the fabulous Alison Brie!
KIP MOONEY: This week’s installment was just a great, low-stakes bit of comfort food. There were no big speeches or anything that was howlingly funny. It was just a consistently chuckle-filled half hour, and sometimes sitcoms need those.
After Lily…
STEPHON JOHNSON: FOX was able to cater to the younger generation better than anyone except for MTV. Was that a good or a bad thing?
CHRIS PUMMER:The really creative stuff in the Internet Age is all finding a much smaller niche than what big broadcast networks are by definition. So I think for sure Fox, being that network that broke into that club, probably will be the last of its kind.
MOLLY SCHOEMANN: May I please request a moratorium on all uses of the word ‘amazing’ that are not sung and followed immediately by the word ‘grace’?
Please?
No more ‘amazing’ vacations. No more ‘amazing’ microwaveable burritos. No more “you…
SONIA BRAND-FISHER: “Someday she will spread her little legs and fly away.” Wow, “Mad Men.” As if the show couldn’t get more carnivalesque, the amount that we are allowed to see of male and female sexuality in this episode, in this time period, is brought to the forefront in kaleidoscopic chaos. The women are costumed as wives, mothers, whores, and go-go girls. The men put on their respective uniforms of social acceptability. Yet the tags are switched around, identities are put into question and concern. We can’t believe our ears. We can’t believe our eyes. We can’t believe that’s Peggy in an apron holding a ham. Or can we?
HOWARD MEGDAL: So much to love in this episode once again, as brilliant in emotional interplay and subtle moments as with the visual imagery Sonia broke down.
CHRIS PUMMER: Bill Maher’s name surfaces more and more these days for the controversial things he says. Is this how he’s staying relevant?
// CINDY HILL: Now that individual firearms ownership, at least for the limited purpose of personal protection in the home, has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as a Constitutional right, will Democrats come out of the gun cabinet…
ZOË RICE: Over the past couple weeks I’ve been asked repeatedly if I like the new highly buzzed-out series, Girls. But the more pertinent question for this series is, “Do you like Lena Dunham?” Her name hovers fixedly on the credits screen for a good few seconds as the titles go by: Starring…created by…directed by…written by… The upshot is that even if you only sort of like the show but really like Lena Dunham, you’re still going to make Girls appointment viewing. I think that’s where I am.
HOWARD MEGDAL: I think Girls may have been the best pilot I’ve ever seen. And two episodes in, I am absolutely devoted to this show, and Lena Dunham appears to be on my must-watch list among writers. That was quick.
SONIA BRAND-FISHER: This Sunday’s episode of “Mad Men” lived up to its title and certainly took us to some far away places, like the deep subconscious of Roger Sterling, the most unstable anxieties of Don Draper, the biggest resentments held by Megan Draper, and the ever-changing thought processes of Peggy Olson. We tripped out and got cerebral, dropped some jaws, and actually started to like Megan a little bit more. We watched out heros feebly try to negotiate the territory between time, space, and good intentions. With another destructive relationship crossed out, “Mad Men” travels deeper into the knots and snarls that this season, and seasons past, have left to be slowly untangled.
HOWARD MEGDAL: Exactly! Roger and Joan getting out of their entanglements, back-to-back! Guessing it isn’t that simple, but that’s certainly what I thought of as well.