Mad Men – Betty. Is. Pissed.
The end of cable seasons always sneak up on me. Only three episodes of Mad Men left this season?!? Really? I’ve been waiting for a few weeks now for the show to tackle the assassination of JFK, and as we creep closer and closer in time to November 1963, I can’t help but think that the writers are saving it for the season finale.
In the meantime, however, there is no shortage of things happening in the lives of our characters. I thought this episode, with its plot twists, brought one fact to the forefront: Betty Draper is pissed off.
Ratings Clack – Where is FlashForward headed?
FlashForward is one of the more interesting shows of the new season where ratings are concerned. On the one hand, so far it has been a huge upgrade for the 8-9 spot on ABC. And while it has been surpassed by Survivor, it does continue to hold off Bones in the demo. On the other hand, the ratings don’t seem to be settled yet, which makes each week a new adventure. This week, the yo-yo headed back up. What will next week bring? One can only guess. I continue to think that it will eventually be passed up by the fiercely loyal Bones audience at some point, finding its place as the number 3 show in the hour. Elsewhere this week, there was good news for Dancing With The Stars, NCIS, Law & Order, So You Think You Can Dance, and Smallville. The news wasn’t so good for Hank, Parks & Recreation, Three Rivers, or Melrose Place.
Ratings Clack – Favre and Baseball create havoc
It was a strange week for ratings. Brett Favre playing against Green Bay made for a huge Monday Night Football (21.84m/9) audience on ESPN. And then the baseball playoffs ran through the rest of the week, calling a lot of the seemingly odd drops in viewers into question. Despite that increased competition, there was some good news to be had. The Biggest Loser, Bones, The Office, Lie To Me, Castle, and The Simpsons all managed to make gains week-to-week. Dollhouse also got in the game, stopping a four episode streak of series lows. On the other side, it’s starting to look like ER took all of it’s viewers with it when it left. The premiere numbers for Three Rivers were not good, and NBC’s dueling medical dramas continue to struggle. Read the rest of this entry »
Mad Men – Just as I suspected, Don isn’t a member of PFLAG
While Don will surely keep Sal’s secret, his help certainly ends at the point where Sal’s homosexuality starts affecting the work.
That’s what I wrote about the season premiere, in which Don and Sal had their awkward adventure in Baltimore. Don knows all about wanting to keep certain aspects of your life private from those you work with, so he certainly wasn’t going to run around outing Sal to the rest of their Sterling Cooper colleagues. However, his willingness to keep Sal’s secret does in no way indicate that he’s down with the gays, as we saw last night.
As a viewer, I have a love/hate relationship with Don Draper. Sure, he’s smooth, charming, enigmatic, wounded, and obviously ridiculously good-looking. But this week’s episode makes it really difficult to overlook his more negative qualities. As I watched him in bed with that floozy teacher, all I could think of was the million different ways I would murder him if I were Betty and I found out my husband was cheating on me again, while I have an infant at home. Plus, when he was talking to Sal, and hit him with the disgusted, “You people,” it was a jarring reminder that Don Draper isn’t the hero we sometimes make him out to be.
Mad Men – When the cat’s away
Beware of those dog days of August if you’re married and it’s 1963. I never thought that I would be comparing Pete and Betty while watching Mad Men, but, by golly, they were certainly going through parallel plots in this episode, weren’t they? I didn’t think this episode carried quite the same gravity as the previous two, but watching Betty strut around Rome like she owned the place was worth the price of admission.
Ratings Clack – Is Dollhouse about to get pulled?
Week two of the full-tilt-boogie season brought with it some interesting things, including premieres for Animation Domination, The Amazing Race, Trauma, Hank, and The Middle. We also saw more huge numbers from House, NCIS, and Grey’s. But after all of that, the most interesting story again comes from the show with the worst ratings on all of the big four networks, Dollhouse. After season two premiered to a series low last week, things got even worse. Episode two just barely cleared the 2 million viewer bar, while falling below a 1 in the demo. Reached for comment, my BFF Jill said, “OMG! RLY!?”
Yes, really. The situation is dire. Even the hardcore Whedonites are now at DEFCON 1. Someone has got word that the show could be in danger of being pulled from the air. I don’t know anything more than they do about that, but I would expect it to get one more shot this Friday, before baseball takes over. If episode three doesn’t show some sort of improvement though, I wouldn’t be surprised if baseball makes way for a series of House and Bones repeats on Fridays at 9. Read the rest of this entry »
Sex and the women of Mad Men
Sex.
It was everywhere in this week’s stand out installment of Mad Men. For once, however, it seemed to not be focusing on Don (save for the awkward conversation with Sally’s teacher). Instead, it was the women of Mad Men, particularly Peggy and Betty, who were doing the deed, or at least thinking about it, in this episode.
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