In Which We Drink the Clean Draught of Mad Men

Dark Waters

by ALMIE ROSE

Male. Female. Shallow. Deep. Lie. Truth. These are some of the conflicting themes boldly represented in last night's tonight's episode of Mad Men.

Mad Men is like a John Updike piece and a New Yorker cartoon formatted into a television show. It's not so much a television show as it is a culturally significant piece of art that I am lucky to bear witness to.

In these episodes we witness the eternal struggle between the opposites listed in the aforementioned lines. We watch as Pete tries to balance being a boy with being a borderline rapist. When Pete's wife goes out of town the first thing young Pete does is remove his shirt and tie all in one fell swoop. Pete's shirtlessness speaks volumes about nudity in madmen. Or the lack thereof. Which reminds me of something Kafka once said, but as viewers of Mad Men, I'm sure I don't need to tell you what.

As we watch young Pete grapple with the tower of responsibility we see Betty trying to climb a similar Jenga tower of her own; the one of womanhood. Betty and her female cohorts try to save the reservoir but Betty decides to enlist the help of a craggy looking man of political power. The question is, does Betty save the day, or does Betty's male friend save the day? Water, like gender, is a complex issue.

Don's shirt is white.

Pete's comely German neighbor stains a pink poofy dress, a garment that Pete is all too quick to sweep off of her hands. Pete, the man-child who was previously watching cartoons while eating cereal on the couch, is now trying to juggle the delicate and complex dynamic of gender issues. He wanders like a lost soul, or a poet, in the female clothing department. ("Republic of Dresses" as he refers to it, in his crisp and manly manner.)

Notice how he bows again to Joan who is always taking on the role of the eternal grandmother. Thus Pete is able to return from the department store not with a Chip N Dip, not with a rifle, but with an evening gown. This speaks volumes about the roles of men and women in the 1960s and foreshadows the women's movement. But then Pete basically rapes his female neighbor.

Betty is tackling a similar gender bend in which she tries to navigate the male dominated field of politics. She does so by kissing her reservoir savior. Later she and unknowing husband Don have the following exchange about something completely unrelated:

DON: "That's real politics."
BETTY: "Well you know, when you don't have any real power, you have to delay things."

Oh we know, Betty. We know, but can the women's movement be delayed? No, it cannot. The times are a-changing and a magic bus is pulling into its stop. All aboard the magical mystery tour and get off of my cloud. Betty's suit is pink. I think we all know what that means.

When even hinted at infidelity by Pete's starry-eyed wife, much like Lot's Wife, she falls into a pillar of Salt when Pete stumbles and in silence, confesses what his guilt cannot say. In this way, Pete's silence speaks volumes about his infidelity.

Trudy made a variety of cold salads.

And what of Betty's exterior compared to her interior? Betty's hairdo is exquisite. It's like sculpture, much like the fine city of Rome in which she is vacationing. In this way her hair echoes her suroundings, reminding us that Betty is always in style. "You think because of the way I'm dressed I'm shallow?" she asks Don, harkening back to the ever present reservoir theme. When Don later undresses her, we see that Betty is thin, but her hair is fat. This speaks volumes about the 1960s in so many ways. At least four.

They say that still waters run deep. But no water is still in Mad Men. These are churning waters rife with strife. These are waters that cannot be filtered into a reservoir, for no matter how many times you purify the waters of Mad Men, they will never be clean enough to quench your thirst. Bottled water is better for that.

Almie Rose is the contributing editor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Los Angeles. She blogs here, and she twitters here. She last wrote in these pages with tips for gentlemen.

"Where or When" - Diana Krall (mp3)

"I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry" - Diana Krall (mp3)

"Too Marvelous for Words" - Diana Krall (mp3)

In Which We See Our Future In Halloween Costumes

In Costume

by ELEANOR MORROW

Seeing someone dressed up as someone else is never comforting. Only Matt Lauer is improved by such a transformation, and this because otherwise he's going bald. JFK found his kids' costumes entertaining. We find them somewhat morbid and ironic. For a disguise to work, context is everything.

katie couric & matt lauerHalloween more often exposes societal ills without suggesting a more nurturing, religous path. Ms. Glock suggests Halloween is degrading to women:

I walked past the displays for the sexy devil and the sexy bunny and the sexy leopard — which, confounding logic, was already sold out — before happening upon the wall of full adult costumes. The first was Tavern Lady, an off-the-shoulder dress and faux-leather vest. It was followed by French Maid (ruffled mini-dress with matching headpiece), Cheerleader (pleated micro-mini and fitted vest) and Wonder Woman, which had not only a nearly invisible skirt but also red vinyl boot covers that reached to the thigh.

 At $49.99, Wonder Woman was among the priciest costumes, along with the Geisha — both $20 more than Stewardess, which consisted only of a polyester wrap dress with a plunging neckline.

Heidi Klum usually dresses up as something objectionable. Looking at her on Halloween is the same way I feel about viewing Ross Perot's real face. For feminist ex-Muslim Irshad Manji, Halloween is simply the site of her entry into open society.

hubert humphrey on halloween 1964Let's face it though, Matthew Weiner is a secret racist and blackface of course is among the most famous of the degrading costumes. I mean, who would dress their child in such a fashion? It's a wonder he didn't become a Somali pirate.

ted kennedy in his pirate costume, 1934To dress oneself in an objectionable fashion is common even in the highest levels of our government. As an AP dispatch reported in 2007,

A Homeland Security Department employee has been placed on leave for wearing a Halloween costume that drew complaints from other workers as being racially insensitive, even as it won ''most original'' honors from managers at an agency party. An inquiry is under way to determine proper sanctions in the incident, said Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary. The unidentified employee's costume of dreadlocks, dark makeup and prison stripes was deemed by Julie L. Myers, assistant secretary of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, and two other managers to be the most original at the party.

This year I'm not going out on Halloween.

Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in New York. She last wrote in these pages about District 9. She tumbls here.

"Mockingbird Song (live)" — Katie Melua (mp3)

"Scary Films (live)" — Katie Melua (mp3)

In Which We Are On The Fringe Of Things

The Edge of Good

by ALEX CARNEVALE

Occasionally a television show gets everything right but botches all one or two large decisions. This happened with Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman's show Fox show Fringe. They made a litany of awesome title sequences; they reminded one of a return to one of the great series of the last decade, The X-Files, they have solid writing when it doesn't verge on melodrama, but the casting is awful.

why is plaxico in jail while josh jackson walks free?Heterosexual man's hatred of Joshua Jackson goes back to his days as Pacey. Do you even understand how much less action I got in high school because of that? Pacey was a dick. All you needed was a mop of blonde hair. Paceys were fucked. Now Jackson enunciates every dreadful line of dialogue and sounds like a foggy horn. He doesn't look all that great either, kind of what a poppy bagel might look like as a person. Let's deport him back to Canada where he and Michael Moore can increase in size quietly together.

His would-be paramour (in one episode they went undercover together!) is the officious Anna Torv. She's probably the best actress on the show, but she's cold and icy and frankly, boring. Gillian Anderson is turning over in the grave she occupies with the career David Duchovny took from her. (Amazingly, Gillian Anderson is 64 years old and David Duchovy is 26. Who knew?) Torv's seriousness is ungainly and her hair looks as bad as her boss's.

Why do I feel like J.J. Abrams had a steamy night on the set of Lost with the bald former Dharma drone who ruins every single scene he's in? Lance Reddick is the worst actor on television besides Reba McEntire and Tyler Perry. Every single sentence is conveyed in this cold, unnerving grizzle. It's off-putting, and it gives his co-stars nothing to play off of.

trusting your career to j.j. didn't work for matthew foxThe only thing the show can find for a young black FBI agent (Jasika Nicole) to do is babysit criminally insane former human engineer. Torv whirls about radiantly, doing "work" when it suits her, double-timing the agency which she purports to represent. At the end of last season's finale, she met William Bell, the show's central MacGuffin. It was Leonard Nimoy, and I was not amused. The finale showed Bell in another universe where the World Trade Center didn't exist and Kanye stayed in college and was still interning for Louis Vuitton.

As intellectual or visual fodder, the concept of parallel universes doesn't really make any sense. Unlike serious science fiction, another universe draws no basis in reality from human experience. If there's more than one universe, then there are billions, and none of us mean very much. This isn't a very enlightening way to believe in the world.

Lost had the good fortune to become a jovial comedy, and Fringe seems to be aping this goal so far in season two. Here messy science fiction clichés combine with Pacey to create the show's only relief from the drudgery of weird science. What's missing is the wonder of discovery; the pattern that was created by universe splitting need not be an awful fate for those who must investigate it. Properly done, such a happening should free us from ourselves.

Alex Carnevale is the editor of This Recording. He tumbls here.

"Living the Blues" — Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash (mp3)

"I Threw It All Away" — Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash (mp3)

"Guess Things Happen That Way" — Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash (mp3)