"Mad Men" wields all of the melancholy and ambivalence of the best "Sopranos" episodes, but there may be more of a sense of purpose here, an attempt to unearth the absolutely merciless social norms of the time. When a psychiatrist remains silent throughout a housewife's therapy session, then calls her husband to give him his professional opinion, or an OB-GYN warns a young woman that he'll take her off the pill in a heartbeat if he thinks she's "abusing" the drug by being a big slut, you can't help marveling at the ruthlessness of the era. This show should be mandatory viewing for any aspiring Pussycat Doll who thinks she's not teetering on the shoulders of feminist giants in those skintight ass pants. "Gee, that unseemly, shrill feminist attitude sure came in handy back in the day, when we were all treated like lobotomized infants!"
As Draper demonstrates, though, the restrictive attitudes and roles cut both ways, cornering both men and women in lives that, however successful and happy they appeared to be from the outside, didn't feel complete on the inside. "Mad Men" is smart, funny, eye-opening, and probably 10 times better than anything you'll see this fall, so don't miss it.
Wipeout!
There are so many more shows to write about, but there's a pressing and important item on my agenda: "John From Cincinnati" (Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO).
I was behind this show straight out of the gate. I love David Milch and I assumed that this show would take shape, like "Deadwood" did, over the course of the season. But, to put it in "Deadwood" terms, the current course defies fucking logic.
What the hell is going on? Every time I watch it, I feel like I just took some 15-year-old acid I found at the bottom of my sock drawer. Is it just me, or do none of these scenes fit together coherently?
All of the stuff that worked on "Deadwood" -- the odd speech patterns, the strange non sequiturs, the quirky interactions of the community at large -- don't work here nearly as well. When people speak strangely and say absurd things, sometimes, they're just seem like weirdos. And hey, I'm all for weirdos. But an entire town full of freaks who mill about, without any clear motivations or goals beyond upsetting each other?
We started with a clear notion of what the Yost family was facing: Butchie (Brian Van Holt) was battling a dope habit, Mitch (Bruce Greenwood) was suspicious that his grandson Shaun (Greyson Fletcher) would be corrupted by the surfing industry, and Cissy and Mitch were having marital problems. Linc (Luke Perry) was the antagonist, greedily eyeing Shaun but certain to poison him and rob him of his innocence, aided by his slutty underling Cass (Emily Rose).
So why isn't anyone surfing or even discussing surfing or the surfing business? Why did Cass sleep with Mitch, then pair up with John (Austin Nichols) during the same episode? Why would we care if Kai (Keala Kennelly) and Butchie get together briefly, when they're immediately split up by Shaun's long-lost mother? Why are Freddy (Dayton Callie) and Palaka (Paul Ben-Victor) lingering around the hotel instead of returning to their lives in Hawaii? Why isn't Freddy selling drugs, or doing much of anything?
Cissy doesn't kill herself, Butchie kicks dope, Mitch allows Sean to surf: OK, God is helping the Yosts. But what about the 50 or so other characters milling about? Some of them have had two or three scenes, total -- but Milch keeps introducing more, throwing in Jennifer Grey as Dickstein's fiancé and Paula Malcomson (Trixie from "Deadwood") as a cafe owner. Why should we care that Shaun's doctor quit and now pedals his bicycle around the hotel, waiting for more miracles?
Every story problem here is solved by divine intervention. And if it all adds up simply because John is some idiot-savant Jesus, armed with a message from God, then this show may be the best case against acts of God in dramatic writing that I've ever seen. Because once you center one story around God (Shaun is in a coma after a surfing accident, then he's magically healed) where do you stop? Once God's got his sticky fingers in everyone's pies, how does the whole mess keep from seeming completely arbitrary?
It's just like life! I get it. And I was willing to go with that, despite increasing randomness, until the end of last week's episode, when John suddenly started speaking in non sequiturs as the massive ensemble cast stood around listening: "Mitch catches a good wave. Mitch wipes out. Mitch wipes out Cissy. Cissy shows Butchie how to do that..." So we're recapping the big events of the Yosts lives. Fine.
But then: "Fur is big. Mud is big. The stick is big. The word is big. Fire is huge. The wheel is huge. The line and circle are big. On the way, the line and the circle are huge. On the wall, the man at the wall makes a man from the circle and the line."
Yawn. Yes, I'm sure it all means something, if you have the patience to write it all down and pick it apart. But if you're going to do that, why not flip through some Plato instead?
On the "John From Cincinnati" Web site, you'll find writer Steve Hawk quoting David Milch:
"The important point that I'm trying to make is that storytelling has nothing, whatsoever, to do with logic. Logic is a limping stepchild of the true processes of the spirit. It's an illusion. It's a defective little parlor trick. Associations are the way that we perceive. Electrical connections caused by the juxtapositions of experience. That's the way we are really built, and storytelling takes into account that truth."
Logic may be a limping stepchild, but that limping stepchild is the Quasimodo that brings the audience water when things get a little too exhausting and chaotic to bear. If there were enough big, beautiful moments, or even little, poignant or sweet moments to nourish us, then fine. But mostly what we find here is hot-tempered fights and non sequiturs, and whether that reflects the true processes of the spirit or not, anyone can see that what began as a fairly engaging story has unraveled before our eyes. Time to roll out the defective little parlor tricks, guys!
Even if it all fits together in the end -- which, knowing Milch, it won't -- what's going to keep our interest in the meantime? John wandering around, repeating the same four or five lines, with not a single wave in sight?
I hate to write that, because I'm a longtime proponent of big, creative leaps of faith that make no obvious sense, but this show needs a miracle even more than the damaged inhabitants of Imperial Beach do. Instead of wasting his time, HBO should send David Milch to an island bungalow with a case of good whiskey so he can write us the full final season of "Deadwood" that we deserve.
Next week: Yes, that sense of entitlement becomes you! Just ask the high-stakes litigators of FX's "Damages" or the bank robbers of Spike TV's "The Kill Point."
About the writer
Heather Havrilesky is Salon's TV critic. She also maintains the rabbit blog. You can find more of her columns in the I Like To Watch directory.
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