Spectacular Summaries Sunday :: top 10 gifts 2012 gave me

It’s not showing any signs of stopping yet.  And there will be much linking.

10. The Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy
No, really.  Hear me out on this one.  I will admit, this is sort of my wild card in-joke gift of the year, but for some reason, man.  That strange animated swirling glowing spectral star system is something my people and I absolutely cannot stop making jokes about.  (We realized that True Blood‘s Iraqi smoke monster is another of the Ghost Galaxy’s cousins, too.)  It wasn’t like it was creepy, but it was just so random that we can’t stop talking about it.

9. A Minor Bird by Sucré
Due to the way the days of this year panned out, I’m still putting my Top 10 albums of the year up tomorrow, but three of them go into this category, none of which should be surprising.  (Not that any of this list should be an overall surprise, but hey.)  Anyway, though.  Stacy has always been my favorite DuPree sister (I mean, I love them all very much, but Stacy plays keyboards, and that endeared her to me from the get-go) and her solo project, or solo-ish project at least, is just a legitimately good album in and of itself.  It’s become one of my favorite I Am Getting Ready To Go Somewhere Fancy albums (it’s got that certain je ne sais quoi about it) and also one of my favorite I Am Doing Creative Things Alone albums, and certain of the songs I just love to turn up at full blast and listen to as I take in the world around me.

8. Brave
As I just said on Friday.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who could say “but I don’t think I can actually explain how much this movie means to me,” and that actually makes me very happy.  This is one of the few movies I’ve actually gotten into heated almost-arguments about; “but I heard it was really feminist,” I once heard someone say, sounding sniffy about the premise.  “Yes, so?” was my immediate retort, and I proceeded to summarily dismiss just about every argument I had ever read a critic making against the movie (there are plenty of dude role models, why can’t a little boy have a girl role model because little girls are expected to have boy role models, Merida is not a lesbian just because she doesn’t want to get married and likes archery BUT EVEN IF SHE WAS why is that a big deal but I’m pretty sure her sexual orientation is the opposite of the point, etcetera).  I mention to you guys every time I go off on these giant rants, which might make you think I do it a lot, but not so.  There are plenty of rants I’ve wanted to rant that I’ve refrained from, but Brave is one of those rants I will rant forever.

7. Mad Men season 5
As I alluded to on Tuesday, I’m still not sure what to make of the situation with my Joanie (Christina Hendricks).  Because Mad Men has so much going on, I’ve noticed they have a habit of spending an episode dealing intensely with one character’s emotions, then just alluding to it for the next few episodes, and the situation with Joan was close enough to the season’s end that they didn’t circle back around to another Joan Feelings Episode.  We did, however, get Meaningful Looks between her and Don (Jon Hamm) and her being a Super Total Badass both at the meeting and in their new office space, so that’s something.  I was happy for Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) deciding to do what felt right for her and go elsewhere, but I really do miss her around Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.  I do.  I, as mentioned, mourn Lane (Jared Harris); I am intensely curious about many of the other characters and the paths they’re taking, particularly Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) and Megan (Jessica Paré).  This was largely a gift just because of how long we had to wait for it, I admit, but it’s also one of those cases where my ambivalence about many of the situations they explored is actually a compliment.  I’m intrigued, I’m just torn.

6. Game of Thrones season 2
I never actually did a season 2 wrap-up post about Game of Thrones, largely because of the fact that the schedule I watched it on would have made it too late.  So I’m just going to link to my Game of Thrones tag, because gods know there’s plenty of meta scattered through the thousands of posts in there (and also because everything else gets a link, so consistency demands it).  Season 2 differs from A Clash of Kings more than season 1 differed from A Game of Thrones, and some of those differences were strange, yes.  (Having recently finished A Storm of Swords, finally, I’m looking forward to how they deal with the obvious changes Talisa [Oona Chaplin] is going to cause in the next seasons.)  But some of the changes, I actually… don’t entirely mind?  I don’t know exactly why Ros (Esmé Bianco), but a lot of the functions she serves are ones that other characters directly served and they’re just condensing it into one beautiful redhead, so that’s okay I suppose, and I’m fond of her for silly personal reasons.  For example.  And though I’ve gone off about this on my tumblr just a tiny bit, I guess this is the best time to really address the matter of Dany (Emilia Clarke) and her dragon drama (well, beyond the Doreah [Roxanne McKee] side of it, which I’ve already analyzed to pieces) here: anyone who says that Dany spent the entire season “just running around screaming about her dragons” is wrong and silly.  You know how long Dany actually spent “just running around screaming about her dragons”?  The equivalent of about one episode.  It was really “WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS?” (a reasonable question) then “OH you have my dragons” then she wasn’t in an episode then “OKAY I’M GOING TO GET MY DRAGONS NOW.”  I’m copypasting from a tumblr meme rant I did now, because this is also important: “Oh, and I actually really liked the changes to the scene in the House of the Undying, mostly because in the book, it came off sort of SUDDEN MAGICKS WHAT IS GOING ON OH NO HERE COME JORAH AND BLOODRIDERS TO HELP ME MAKE IT STOP and in the show, it was more HERE IS A LOT OF TEMPTATION, OKAY, BUT I KNOW WHAT I NEED TO DO EVEN IF IT HURTS, AND GUESS WHAT?  HERE I AM COMMANDING MY DRAGONS AND SAVING MYSELF.”  Also, it’s not like everyone else doesn’t “run around screaming about” one or two things, either.  So.

5. Halcyon by Ellie Goulding
As I alluded to last Monday and will discuss more tomorrow, this album is my jam.  I like that it’s a little darker than Lights (though don’t get me wrong, I love Lights too) and I feel a little more personally connected to a lot of the songs.  Also, I love that Ellie Goulding actually gets played on the “normal” radio sometimes (not enough to make my people grumble, like they do about Adele [which sucks, because she's still really talented, but], but enough) because it means that I know a song on the radio.  (“Only You” came on at a bar the other night; the friends I was with had been singing along to all of the Katy Perry, One Direction, and other insanity that played while I sat on top of the pool table and wrinkled my nose in confusion, but once there was Ellie, I could sit there whisper-singing to myself and smiling because finally I knew what was going on.)  This album is good for driving, for introspection; a lot of the tracks are good for exercising; it’s super morbid in places, even in the chipper-sounding songs (because really, “Anything Can Happen” sounds super-happy but isn’t, and I love that).  Also, she’s British.  This is a failing of mine forever.

4. The Avengers
Were there things this movie could have done even better?  Of course.  Perfection doesn’t exist, and once I heard that Joss had wanted to write in Janet Van Dyne to be played by Morena Baccarin, a hollow space of longing opened up in my heart (both because there should always be more lady superheroes and because there should always be more Morena Baccarin).  But did this movie do a lot of things really, really right?  Oh, yes.  The dynamics between the characters, the platonicness of every relationship (and I was thinking about this; it’s not rare to have a bunch of platonic dude relationships, but if there’s a woman, especially if there’s only one main woman, she’s almost always tied to one of the guys, but that is not the case here, thank goodness), the characterizations, the dialogue (of all of the characters, I actually think Nick Fury [Samuel L. Jackson] has the Whedoniest lines), the Whedonverse in-jokes (actors, references, anything in between) – it’s just overall warm fuzzies.

3. Synthetica by Metric
While Halcyon and A Minor Bird were sort of slow-burn favorites for me (there were tracks I loved intensely from the get-go, but the whole of the albums took a few listens to fall as deeply in love with), Synthetica was sort of instant.  I’ve been into Metric since junior year of high school, when one of the other editors on my school newspaper, who was graduating that year, gave me a whole stack of music to continue her Good Music During Newspaper Layout Parties legacy; I don’t think I’ve ever said thank you to her, because we haven’t actually seen each other… probably since then, actually, but I would very much want to.  Metric is a beautiful group, and Synthetica, while not perfect because that isn’t real, is almost a perfect album.

2. The Cabin in the Woods
For so many reasons.  I’ve refrained from writing too too much Cabin meta, but this is mostly because I’ve read some really intriguing pieces of it by other authors.  (I tend to talk more about things I hear/see fewer people talking about, I think.)  I really do love this movie, though.  I love it for all of its meta, I love it for its simultaneous genre critique and genre overhaul; I haven’t seen a lot of the allegedly big famous horror franchises, but I have been known to enjoy a terrible straight-to-video horror film or ten, so I’m comfortably aware of the conventions, enough to enjoy seeing them ripped to shreds.  I love it for its social critique: as some of the meta I’ve seen has said, the pigeonholing of characters is uniquely American.  The athlete/scholar/fool/whore/virgin thing is a different version of the ever-referenced Breakfast Club: characters have to be reduced to one thing by others in order to make them understandable to said others.  Clearly, there’s much more to them, but that would be too complicated.  Men are defined by what they do (sports, academia, humor) but women are defined by who they do (or don’t do).  What this movie does, though, is both acknowledge that this is the way that we (and in this case, “we” ends up being a global evil corporation based in ancient rituals and monsters, which is oddly apt) often view things and acknowledge that viewing things in such a way can only lead to danger.  Reducing people to one dimension and then sacrificing them so that we may continue to go on our merry only leads to badness.

1. True Blood season 5
I’m linking here to my talking about the season premiere, then my talking about the season finale, then just my True Blood tag, given the exceptional amounts of discussion that goes on within it.  (Aside from day topic tags, the only tags I have that are more populated than the True Blood tag are the Buffy tag and the Dollhouse tag.  I’m sure this is mostly season 5′s fault.)  I was going back and forth about whether I should put Cabin or this at number one on this list, but I realized that honestly, it had to be this.  It couldn’t not be.  I have several friends who watch True Blood, and the reactions to season 5 have been varied; “I liked it,” one said, “I just didn’t understand all of it.”  And that’s totally valid.  It’s very different from the books by this point, but I’m, as I have mentioned 1000 times, more than comfortable with that.  There are bunches of reasons that this is at number one, almost all of which I talk about way too often: Nora Gainesborough (Lucy Griffiths), obviously, by herself and also plus Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) and plus Salome (Valentina Cervi), the joy of Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten) and Tara (Rutina Wesley) like I mentioned on Tuesday.  Pam and Tara as individual characters, Eric and Salome as individual characters, Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) as an individual character, Luna (Janina Gavankar) and Sam (Sam Trammell) by themselves and together, the utter adorable that is Emma (Chloe Noelle), the awesome that was dearly departed Molly (Tina Majorino), the twist of fate that is evil Bill (Stephen Moyer), the fact that Sookie (Anna Paquin) got to develop outside of the context of any romantic entanglements at all, the joy that is assertive Alcide (Joe Manganiello), the fun evil of Russell (Denis O’Hare) and his cuteness with Steve (Michael McMillan), the sassiness and wonder that is Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis).  The fact that the book is fun, but the show is just getting dark and going into serious things like hate crimes and religious fanaticism, but cloaking it in this seemingly absurd world of supernatural whatever.  The fact that here is this show that people routinely brush off, as I’ve said, as being SEXY VAMPIRE SEX OHMAHGAH, but it is actually dealing with these more serious topics.  The fact that yes, sure, horrible things happen to female characters sometimes, but horrible things also happen to male characters; power on this show is divided fairly evenly between female characters and male characters; Lilith may be evil, but it’s fascinating that vampire God is a woman; when characters try to coddle women, they get called out on it (like with Sam and Luna); femininity is not regarded as an inherent weakness, but not every character “does” their femaleness in the same way: this is actually, at least in my read, a pretty lady-positive show.  The fact that this show is open to and seems to encourage non-vanilla/heterosexual sexualities and, provided that they are consensual and not rooted in evil, treats them just the same; the fact that this show is intensely bisexuality-positive.  The fact that sure, there’s SEXY VAMPIRE SEX OHMAHGAH, it’s about vampires and shifters and werewolves and fairies and goodness knows what else, but the whole of it is actually very well-written and the characters are realistic.  (Maybe sometimes a little too: having just been down South, I can [re-]vouch for the fact that folks like the townspeople extras in True Blood do definitely exist, particularly though not solely in that geographical region.)  Clearly, I could go on about this for ages.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: one thing (temporarily) ends and another begins.

Aka, the Sunday I wished the Tonys weren’t because I wanted immediate Mad Men season finale and True Blood season premiere and the weekdays I made up for it.

Obviously I’m into a lot of television programs.  But of currently-running programs I think I am the most intensely into three right now: Game of Thrones and Mad Men and True Blood.  (As evidenced by massive collections of posting pertaining to them, often in sequence, and the immense ladyfeels I have about some of their characters.)  So it was sort of neat and tidy that Game of Thrones ended one week and the next week Mad Men wrapped up and True Blood its place. The tried and true HBO Sunday night pattern will not fail me.

So.  SPOILERS I GUESS.   Bullet-pointy as always.

Mad Men:

• After two weeks of everything happening quickly and all at once, the season finale actually felt sort of slow.  Not bad-slow, at least bad in terms of boring; it was just a different pace than the breakneck speed of angst and tragedy we’ve been subjected to recently.  It’s what aftermaths feel like though: the more I think about it, the more I appreciate the fact that this episode was finely scripted fallout and building tension.  Building to what?  Well, I guess in eighteen months or however long they make us wait this time we’ll find out.
• One of my people compared it to the series finale of The Sopranos: it’s fascinating, and lots is happening, but it’s all so relatively small compared to what’s gone down in the past that you just have to feel like it’s just paving the way for something horrendous.  It doesn’t matter that not a lot of horrendous actually goes down.  It’s the art of making you think it could.
• We’ve had a season now of Megan (Jessica Paré) as a main character, and I still can’t decide how I feel about her.  I like that she’s willing to call Don (Jon Hamm) on his bull.  I don’t necessarily like how he sometimes babies her.  I like that she’s ~going after her dreams~ in theory but it also makes me wary for future plot dramatics.  I don’t know if I have any defining feelings about her a a person.
• I still can’t decide how I feel about Don’s getting Megan the commercial.  On one hand, it was the right thing to do (although seriously, that was their Beauty and the Beast setup?  She looked like a German beer festival waitress in that costume) but on the other hand, it makes me very, very wary.  That look on Don’s face at the end, I think I know what that might mean and I don’t like it.  He’s been so good this season.
• I think it’s interesting that every time we’ve seen an adult female’s mother on the show this season, it’s served the function (at least for a little while) of questioning the daughter’s modernity.  Megan’s mother Marie (Julia Ormond) has shown up a couple of times now to be passive-aggressive and to wind up boinking Roger (John Slattery), but this time she also basically told Megan to give it up and let Don have her as a kept wife, essentially as arm candy or a trained housepet that cooks dinner.  Peggy’s mother Katherine (Myra Turley) really only showed up long enough to criticize Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) for deciding to cohabitate with her boyfriend Abe (Charlie Hofheimer) without marrying him.  And Joan’s mother Gail (Christine Estabrook) has been there to support her and to help take care of her child, but she still had plenty of things to say in the first few episodes that made Joan (Christina Hendricks) really cranky.  (“Greg’s not going to allow you to work.”  “Allow me?”)
• Oh and while we’re on the subject of Joan.  Let’s talk about Joan.  My darling should have some proper meta slated for sometime in the nearish future, so I’m not going to spend time going into the subject of what transpired two episodes ago right now.  (Except to say ow, my heart.)  I just want to buy her a drink and give her a hug and tell her it’s okay.  She shouldn’t feel like she’s expected to solve everyone’s problems, and she should know that she certainly shouldn’t feel like her only worth in problem-solving or in anything else is her ability to use womanly wiles.  She can use them like nobody’s business, but this way of thinking is legitimately not her fault.  This way of thinking is the bull that she’s surrounded by on a daily basis; the if only I mentality is understandable, it really is, but baby, it wouldn’t have solved the problem.  I also want to tell her that yes, the guys are basically jerks, and yes, she deserves better coworkers.
• Completely shallowly, though, I will (again) exclaim GLASSES CHAIIIIN. 
• You know who I want to hit the most lately?  Pete (Vincent Kartheiser).  I want to punch the smug little smirk off of his face and shake the weird entitlement/white knight hybrid mentality out of his skull.  He is not a good coworker.  He is not a good husband.  He is not a good self-actualized person.  He should really work on those things.  He owes it to himself as a person and he owes it to Trudy (Alison Brie) who I will irrationally defend forever.  I’m not saying he’s a bad person (though these last episodes haven’t exactly given a lot of evidence that he isn’t), but he needs to figure out his issues.  He needs to sort out why he behaves in such ways as he does and not do it.
• Also, this is the second Mad Men season finale that has had a sequence that made us stare at each other and go “wait, this must be a dream.”  We had that reaction regarding Don’s proposal to Megan, and we had that reaction to Pete’s weird avenging hero-that-fails scene on the train.  I’m still coming to terms with the whole business of Pete and Beth (Alexis Bledel) and her husband Howard (Jeff Clarke).  I still don’t know what to make of it.
• Basically, you know.  Feelings.

True Blood:

• WELL.  Unlike Mad Men, which picks up months and months and months later, True Blood picked up this season literally right after last season ended.  Actually backtracked to a couple of events that transpired in the finale.  Considering the cliff-hangery nature of said events, that made sense, but.
• I have fewer things to say about this, because I love True Blood a lot but it does not get me quite as feelingsy right off the bat; also premieres don’t get me as feelingsy as finales.  Probably because they’re introducing plots and ideas and things, not wrapping them up (for now).  But this is not from a lack of enjoyment.  I did enjoy it quite a lot.
• Pam (Kristin Bauer van Straten) is brilliant and I really really hope that she and Eric (Alexander Skarsgard) have a chance to make up amid all the AVL political messes and surprise-vampire-Tara (Rutina Wesley) (??) and many other things that are going to be going on.  She may be apologizing to Eric, but she is not apologizing for who she is.  She’s still good ol’ caustic Pam.  And I love her for it.
• Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) is beautiful.  I don’t really care about her hanging around with drunk college kids, though I see the point it served, and when did she put green in her hair, and that was a fancy Rock Band setup.  (Makes sense, it being all in King Bill’s Grand Mansion and all.  Though I can’t imagine Bill ever playing Rock Band.)  Mostly I am just devoting a bullet point to Jess because of when she burst into Jason’s (Ryan Kwanten) and told off Steve Newlin (Michael McMillian) and… whoops.  That sounded a hell of a lot like babygirl verbally declaring her intent all assertively.  (And while wearing a corset, which… yes, was there before, but.  But.)
• Well, I’m worried that Nora (Lucy Griffiths) is eventually doomed.  I don’t know when, it might not be for a while, and I hope this is one of my failure predictions.  I like her.  I am fully aware that this is completely irrational since she hasn’t been there for that long and my best reasons for liking her are that I like vampire family structure stuff, I like ladyvampires who are capable, I like that she was wearing leather wristlength gloves while she and Eric got, y’know, reacquainted and that she kept her bra on even though it’s True Blood where you can show all the boobies you want (and the gloves and the bra coordinated), and I like British people talking.  But.
• The synopsis on our television for the episode contained, after the descriptions of what everyone else was up to, the phrase “Alcide warns Sookie.”  Seriously, other than wolf politics what does Alcide (Joe Mangianello) do but warn Sookie (Anna Paquin)?
• Eric and Bill (Stephen Moyer) are buddies now, okay.  They couldn’t have thought they were getting out of this that easily though.  If it was going to succeed, it wouldn’t have happened until the second-to-last or last episode of the season.
• Also, Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) is a pro.
• This is officially nothing like the book.  And I do not care at all.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: a Mad Men MBTI

(Aaaand Joan and Peggy both wound up in my I__J range.  I swear I don’t plan this, I have no way of doing so with the type indicators I use, but it happens and I embrace it.)

This is taking into consideration the characters in their entirety.  And again, speculative, all of these are, but based on observations from the show and not from hypotheticals too much, so that counts for something.  I adore doing these.

Joan Holloway Harris (Christina Hendricks)
ISTJ.  “They are noted for devotion to duty. Punctuality is a watchword of the ISTJ. The secretary, clerk, or business(wo)man by whom others set their clocks is likely to be an ISTJ… ISTJs are easily frustrated by the inconsistencies of others, especially when the second parties don’t keep their commitments. But they usually keep their feelings to themselves unless they are asked. And when asked, they don’t mince words. Truth wins out over tact… Only in times of great distress is the Introverted Feeling expressed… Otherwise, feeling is inferred, or expressed nonverbally, through eye contact, or an encouraging smile.”  I have given some thought to the introvert/extrovert issue with a lot of these characters, and for as sociable as she can be, for as good as she is at handling people, I really do think Joan is an introvert in her way.  She’s one of those introverts who is good at putting on an extroverted face, but it’s pretty clear that it’s just that, putting on a face.  She does it because it’s expected of her, because it suits her work life and her social life, and she’s not dissatisfied because of that (though she is dissatisfied, period; I swear, this woman is getting some meta tl;dr someday, in more than just these short bursts).  But what she projects is only a part of who she is as a person and only a part of how she actually feels about things and people around her; very few of the characters on the show get to know Joan the introvert because she doesn’t let them.  She doesn’t want them to see that part of her.  It took a few episodes in the first season for us the audience to even get to know Joan the introvert.  But for as skilled as she is at faking it, because she was raised to be admired, Joan the introvert is in there somewhere.

Harry Crane (Rich Sommer)
INFJ.  “INFJs have a knack for fluency in language and facility in communication… Extraverted feeling, the auxiliary deciding function, expresses a range of emotion and opinions of, for and about people. INFJs, like many other FJ types, find themselves caught between the desire to express their wealth of feelings and moral conclusions about the actions and attitudes of others, and the awareness of the consequences of unbridled candor.”  Oh, Harry.  Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce’s resident derp.  He tries to be a decent person, I think, and sometimes he has decent ideas, but his well-intentionedness has bit him in the ass before.  Sometimes he doesn’t think before he acts, and that leads to silly.

Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss)
INTJ.  “INTJs are perfectionists, with a seemingly endless capacity for improving upon anything that takes their interest. What prevents them from becoming chronically bogged down in this pursuit of perfection is the pragmatism so characteristic of the type… they do tend to be scrupulous and even-handed about recognizing the individual contributions that have gone into a project, and have a gift for seizing opportunities which others might not even notice… INTJs are idea people.”  Idea people.  Oh, my Peggy.  My dear.  She is just intelligent and brilliant and she loves what she does genuinely and I love her for it.

Lane Pryce (Jared Harris)
ISFJ.  “ISFJs are often unappreciated, at work, home, and play. Ironically, because they prove over and over that they can be relied on for their loyalty and unstinting, high-quality work, those around them often take them for granted–even take advantage of them… In the workplace, ISFJs are methodical and accurate workers, often with very good memories and unexpected analytic abilities… ISFJs make pleasant and reliable co-workers and exemplary employees, but tend to be harried and uncomfortable in supervisory roles.”  Lane.  Lane is so British.  I feel like that’s the best way to describe him sometimes.

Megan Calvet Draper (Jessica Paré)
ESFJ.  “ESFJs are generous entertainers… They by nature “wear their hearts on their sleeves,” often exuding warmth and bonhomie, but not infrequently boiling over with the vexation of their souls. Some ESFJs channel these vibrant emotions into moving dramatic performances on stage and screen… ESFJs are also capable of discerning patterns and philosophies, but such perceiving is subject to the weakness of the tertiary position, and the results often lack the variety and complexity of connections that more complex systems require.”  Megan didn’t fit in at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce because (everyone treated her crappily and) she is just too much of an optimist, I think.  Or she tries to be.  I don’t have a lot of Megan feelings still, at least not ones that last, but I think she’s at her core a decent human.

Don Draper (Jon Hamm)
ENTJ.  “ENTJs are often “larger than life” in describing their projects or proposals. This ability may be expressed as salesmanship, story-telling facility or stand-up comedy. In combination with the natural propensity for filibuster, our hero can make it very difficult for the customer to decline… Clarity of convictions endows these Thinkers with a knack for debate, or wanting knack, a penchant for argument… Feeling in this type appears most authentic when implied or expressed covertly in a firm handshake, accepting demeanor, or act of sacrifice thinly covered by excuses of lack of any personal interest in the relinquished item.”  While Joan is an introvert who acts like an extrovert, I think Don is an extrovert with introvert tendencies in some ways.  He has a lot of internal though process business to deal with, but he also needs to be with other people sometimes to be happy.  He isn’t comfortable being alone, even if he likes being by himself sometimes.  He needs people in his life.

Betty Hofstadt Draper Francis (January Jones)
ESTJ.  “ESTJs are joiners. They seek out like-minded companions in clubs, civic groups, churches and other service organizations. The need for belonging is woven into the fiber of SJs… Much of their evaluation of persons and activities reflects their strong sense of what is ‘normal’ and what isn’t… Extraverts are attracted to the ‘object,’ the external things and people in observable reality.”  Betty also has introvert tendencies in her extroversion; Betty is also uncomfortable with being alone, though.  She needs to define herself by either doing something that pertains to people or by the people she is around.

Roger Sterling (John Slattery)
ESFP.  “ESFPs love people, excitement, telling stories and having fun. The spontaneous, impulsive nature of this type is almost always entertaining. And ESFPs love to entertain — on stage, at work, and/or at home… Almost every ESFP loves to talk. Some can be identified by the twenty minute conversation required to ask or answer a simple factual question… When overused or overestimated, however, Thinking becomes a liability.”  Roger is really a hot mess of a man sometimes.  His extrovert tendencies get him in trouble; he sometimes gets ideas in his head and can’t let them go no matter how awful they are, which is the other letters acting up.

Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser)
ENFP.  “ENFPs are both “idea”-people and “people”-people, who see everyone and everything as part of a cosmic whole. They want to both help and to be liked and admired by other people, on both an individual and a humanitarian level… For some ENFPs, relationships can be seriously tested by their short attention spans and emotional needs. They are easily intrigued and distracted by new friends and acquaintances, forgetting their older and more familiar emotional ties for long stretches at a time. And the less mature ENFP may need to feel they’re the constant center of attention, to confirm their image of themselves as a wonderful and fascinating person.”  Pete has his ideas, yes.  Pete also tries to be a people person, which sometimes fails but sometimes succeeds.  But, uhm, attention spans and needs for attention?  Sounds like Pete all right.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: 18 months is too long.

I’m speaking, of course, about this Sunday’s premiere of Mad Men‘s fifth season.  As evidenced by both my Sunday giddiness and my frequent mentions of the show’s other seasons on this blog, I’m sure you can all imagine exactly how I was feeling about it.  Namely, every positive emotion.

Mad Men is one of those shows where I actually dislike a lot of the characters sometimes.  But then they do something that makes me like them, and then they do something that makes me dislike them again, and then I like them again, and… you just can’t actually decide for sure.  (Except for sometimes: I like Joan [Christina Hendricks] always, obviously.  I like Peggy [Elisabeth Moss] always.  But.)  I sort of love that, though.  I love that everyone is so complicated that you can’t know how you feel about them, but you can’t help but care about them even still.

This is a bullet-pointed list of thoughts that don’t spoil anything too serious, because I want everyone who would to watch it for themselves.  (Everyone who doesn’t, go ahead and skip this.  As I’m sure you always do when the post does not pertain to your interests.)

• I just finished an epic all-four-seasons rewatch.  I did.  But before this episode, I’d honestly forgotten how hilarious this show can sometimes be.  Or maybe everyone had just turned their sarcasm dial up to eleven now because they all feel like they could get away with it now.  I don’t know.  It was two hours of nonstop sixties snark, and it made me so so happy.  Peggy snarking, Don (Jon Hamm) snarking, Joan snarking, Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) snarking.
• The standoff with Roger (John Slattery) and Pete.  Oh, my gosh.  Spoiler: telling his secretary to pencil in a fake appointment at six in the morning so Roger would show up to it and get his.  Then “some of us are above that kind of trick” and the look.  The smug, knowing look: smug because he got one over on Roger, knowing because Roger sure wasn’t going to tell the others what happened, since it would make him look like a fool.
• This Roger who is sans responsibility is just hanging around the office all day acting like a sarcastic asshole, and that’s simultaneously terrible (for everyone else who has to deal with them) and sort of amusing (for everyone that’s watching).  I don’t really like Roger as a character, I never have, but he’s amusing, so that’s something.
• So I guess Megan (Jessica Paré) and Don did get married.  Since they’re now living in a supercool sixties apartment together and wearing wedding rings.  Given Don’s history of being terrible at relationships (and to a lesser extent the happenings of the episode and how I’m sure that’s reflective of the rest of the time) I don’t entirely know how well it will happen, but Megan seems much more prone to not taking his b.s. and snarking right back at him.
• And… passive-aggressively stripping and cleaning.  Was that a one-time thing or a usual thing with them?  I don’t know.  Hm.
• Megan’s party.  So many thoughts.  Apparently she’s friends with all sorts of 1960s quasihipsters?  And she’s approximately 1/5 of a quasihipster herself, given her mod hair and mod eyeliner and tiny dress and singing like she did.  Apparently the song is now a thing for people to discuss online, so I won’t, much, except for to say I was just trying to translate the lyrics as I heard them and failing miserably because my French is paltry at best.
• But oh mydear sweet lord, Lane (Jared Harris) imitating her dancing for Joan in the office.  Oh my dear sweet lord.  I’m not sure I’ve been so close to literally rotfl-ing in the recent past.  I love when British people dance or are sarcastic or dance in a sarcastic fashion.
• I do not love when British people that are Lane creep on a picture found in a lost wallet.  That was sketchy.  That was a moment for me, but then the dancing and Lane’s general way with Joanie put me back on the side of things, and I had to like him again.
• This is the paragraph devoted to Joan: she wears glasses sometimes and I love when she wears glasses.  (Completely necessary italics.)  She had the baby.  Nobody knows it’s Roger’s, and it’s a boy.  (Kevin…?  I choose to believe that the name was Greg’s idea, and will until told otherwise, because I don’t like that name.  But I want Kevin and Tammy Campbell to be buddies. I want Sally to babysit them.  I want all the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce children to hang out.)  Also, every time anyone flops desperately on a bed, I think of Kiki’s Delivery Service, but I also think of how it is such a perfect representation of a feeling that everyone has.  Also, my Joanie loves her son, but she also loves working.  I feel like Joan’s line to Peggy in season one is a perfect picture of her:
  “Although sometimes when people get what they want, they realize how limited their goals were.”
  I think Joan has realized how limited her goal of marriage+baby was — not in general, and some people are happy with that life, but Joan herself is not.  She enjoys work, and she needs it in her life.  Mommy Joan would be happier being Working Mommy Joan.  And I love this about her.  And I love that Lane acknowledges that she is so very necessary.  And I love when she’s buddies with the others in the office.  And I… love her.  Surprise.
• Also, Christine Estabrook as Joan’s mother.  Not really contradictory to my headcanon, nope, so that’s good.  And Christine Estabrook is a perfect mother-who-needs-to-impart-b.s.-gender-roles-on-her-daughter.
• Also, let’s talk about Peggy.  Peggy is a badass and is perfect.  Peggy is sometimes sarcastic, sometimes businesslike, sometimes self-deprecating, sometimes drunk and chatty and sarcastic again, sometimes friendly, always awesome.
• Megan and Peggy seem to have become friends, ish.  Except for the part where Megan also seems like… a cranky optimist?  She doesn’t like everyone’s negative attitudes, and she doesn’t believe they’re necessary, but she also seems to believe that people don’t generally suck.  …meliorism?  Maybe?
• And also, Don’s comment to the kids about Betty (January Jones) and Henry’s (Christopher Stanley) new house.  “Give my regards to Lurch and Morticia.”  Or something like that.  Brilliant snark, because really, my people were all looking at the house when they pulled up and saying things like “so Betty and Henry moved to a mausoleum?”  In retrospect, I’m also reminded of the Haunted Mansion, but the one at Disney World, not the one at Disneyland.
• Basically, all the feelings.  And also all the excitement about the season.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: 4 doomed Mad Men relationships and 1 maybe-not-doomed one

5. Trudy and Pete Campbell (Alison Brie and Vincent Kartheiser)
And actually, I think this is the only one that doesn’t spell certain, absolute doom.  Trudy is too sweet for Pete.  Pete is kind of a d-bag at times.  But I think that Trudy brings out the good in Pete, even if he doesn’t always benefit her as much, and they have a pretty good chance of being happy, at least for a while.

4. Betty and Henry Francis (January Jones and Christopher Stanley)
They’re still in the early years of their relationship, but any marriage that begins with a proposal while the woman is still married to someone else can’t end well.  And they’re neither of them particularly good people.  I’m just… wary.

3. Megan Calvet and Don Draper (Jessica Paré and Jon Hamm)
Similarly, I’m skeptical of any relationship that Don finds himself in.  Especially one so completely whirlwind as his engagement to Megan.  Megan, who we still don’t have a feel for; Megan, who just seems like the next woman, not the woman for him.  Don hasn’t got the greatest track record, and Megan doesn’t interest me that much as a character, but the odds that she’s too sweet to get wrapped up in the hell of being Don’s wife and looking the other way (’cause you know he can’t stop himself from cheating) are pretty good.  I don’t know.  Maybe they’ll wind up being good for each other.  Maybe it will work out for the best.  But it’s Mad Men, where most relationships nosedive, without fail.

2. Jane and Roger Sterling (Peyton List and John Slattery)
Well, they have to.  Roger knows in his heart that Jane was a mistake.  He’s been seeing that since season three: that marrying Jane just gives him another emotional infant to look after.  Jane should be off having fun, stupid fun, and Roger should be with someone who isn’t so absolutely terrible for him.  Because, despite his age, Roger is really just a child, too; and while he’s not always a particularly good person, Jane isn’t either.  Jane is young and silly and shallow, and she hasn’t committed any grievous sins of character, but she’s… not nice.  She’s not responsible.  She’s not a good influence on Roger’s temperament.

1. Joan and Greg Harris (Christina Hendricks and Sam Page)
As mentioned before, I’m firmly in favor of the “Greg dies in Vietnam” plot.  Mostly for the fact that it would allow for theoretical Don + Joanie bonding friend times, and I friendship that so hard, I do, but also because, while I don’t think that Roger is the ideal for her, exactly, I think that the only time I like Roger is sometimes with Joan.  I think that she helps him be not a child.  I think that, even though she knows it’s stupid, she does love him, and she doesn’t love Greg.  Not in the same way.  It’s not the smart match from her end, but it’s the one that, ultimately, is what they go back to.  They’ve already gone back to it.  I don’t know how they’re handling the Joan+Roger baby; season five begins sixteen months later, or something, I read, and that could mean many things.  But I hope it turns out okay, because I want a happy something for my Joan.

–your fangirl heroine.

 

Sundry Sunday :: the ‘I didn’t know I’d love you so much’ 5 list

Def.: Actors and actresses that appeared in media from my childhood/adolescence that ended up being much more significant in my media life now.  Not people like Anna Paquin that I never stopped loving and being aware of; people who sort of disappeared from my radar for a while, then became very relevant again.

5. Alexa Vega

(First seen here in Spy Kids, then in Repo! The Genetic Opera.)  Let’s just not mention the debacle-except-for-one-minute-of-Summer-Glau that is Sleepover, because I never liked that movie, so it’s not relevant.  Spy Kids was my jam when I was, well, a kid (and in a way, a different kind of “I didn’t know I’d love you so much” for Robert Rodriguez).  Alexa Vega in general doesn’t matter a whole lot to me, but Repo is for sure my jam now.  And that the little spying kid girl grew into “I have a blood disease” Shilo Wallace, who sings the line that the title of this list is from?  That’s pretty rad.

4. Vincent Kartheiser

(Here seen in All I Wanna Do and Mad Men.  And in the interim, he was on Angel.  So that’s rad, too, I guess.)  All I Wanna Do is a silly, straight-to-video movie about a girls’ boarding school in the 1960s.  I loved it deeply.  Even though it was ridiculous.  In it, Vincent Kartheiser played the townie boy who courted one of the boarding school girls; now he’s love him/hate him/love him/hate him again Pete Campbell on Mad Men.  I don’t love Pete by any stretch of the imagination.  But he is a fascinating character.

3. Ben Foster

(Here seen in Flash Forward, and then just in real life.)  I remember watching Flash Forward on the Disney channel as a kid.  I don’t remember a single detail about it, but I learned that it starred not one but two people I adore.  First off is psycho darling Ben Foster, who I think is wonderful in any role he does.  Even as gratuitously shirtless flying guy in X3.  Especially as the crazyass in 3:10 to Yuma.

2. Jewel Staite

(Here seen in Flash Forward and in a photo shoot from recentish times.)  The other star of Flash Forward was, apparently, my baby Jewel Staite.   And that makes me very happy.  I wish I remembered a damn thing about the show, I really do.  I also want to find recordings of it to watch some day, because I’m sure it was awesome.  And I wanna know if tiny me related to her on that show like big me does to Kaylee on Firefly.  I think tiny me was a little Whedonmafiapsychic or something.

1. Eliza Dushku

(Here seen in Bring it On and a Dollhouse promo shot.)  As I’ve before mentioned.  I loved Bring it On to an unhealthy degree.  And I was peripherally aware of Eliza’s career between then and my Great Whedon Revelation, but it wasn’t the same.  She was my favorite in Bring it On, and I love her in Buffy and Dollhouse now.  (Even if Buffy was technically before Bring it On, I wasn’t aware then.  So yeah.)

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: rampant infidelity on television is rampant.

10. Rose and Agent Nelson Van Alden (Enid Graham and Michael Shannon, Boardwalk Empire)
Van Alden is such a moralizing tool that it’s sort of a given that he’d do something immoral at one point.  He’s in a different city than his wife, and their marriage is so awkward and loveless that it’s no wonder he violates it.  That he cheats is almost better than who he cheats with, Nucky’s former bitch Lucy (Paz de la Huerta).  Their sex scene remains one of the creepiest I’ve ever witnessed.

9. Martha and Seth Bullock (Anna Gunn and Timothy Olyphant, Deadwood)
Seth only sleeps with Alma (Molly Parker) the once, and it’s after resisting much temptation and many come-hither glances.  He married Martha after his brother died in the war, because back in the day, it was considered good form to marry your brother’s widow.  Theirs was not a relationship born of love, but rather it was one of convenience, and as such, the moment of infidelity is somewhat justifiable in his eyes.  Once it’s complete, though, he brings Martha and Martha’s son William to the camp.  He’s had his moment, he’s ready to be Martha’s husband now.  It does mean that when Alma is later pregnant, she has to marry Ellsworth (Jim Beaver) to save face, which means that their relationship is also born of convenience that is in turn born of infidelity, but hey.

8. Carmela and Tony Soprano (Edie Falco and James Gandolfini, The Sopranos)
Tony cheats on Carmela so many times that it’s not even funny, and it doesn’t really ever matter with who.  Sure, it may matter for a couple of episodes apiece, and after a while Carmela tries to end it, but that only lasts a little while, too.  He tries, but he’s not successful.  No matter what he does, he can’t seem to have a faithful relationship, even though he gets angry at Carmela for thinking about being unfaithful.  It makes absolutely no sense, because he’s not a charming man, and it’s not as if he’s King Henry VIII with power and money (well, he’s got power and money, but not every one of his women on the side knows that), but that’s just that.

7. King Henry VIII and everyone (Jonathan Rhys Meyers and, again, everyone: Maria Doyle Kennedy, Natalie Dormer, Annabelle Wallis, Joss Stone, Tamzin Merchant, Joely Richardson, some other ladies on the side of on the side)
But speaking of King Henry VIII, here he is.  Henry is a great, ideal historical cheater d-bag.  He cheats on one wife, marries the mistress and makes her his wife, then cheats on her.  Two of the wives get executed for adultery, which feels hypocritical, but he’s, well, a d-bag.

6. Gemma and John Teller (who grows up to be Katey Sagal and who’s flashbacked as Victor Newmark and Nicholas Guest apparently, Sons of Anarchy)
It’s said in flashback and conversation, hence John not having a solid actor face, but it’s still an important plot point.  Disenchanted with club life, John goes to Ireland and sleeps with, impregnates, and falls in love with Maureen Ashby (who grows up to be Paula Malcomson).  Meanwhile, Gemma is getting closer and closer with Clay (who grows up to be Ron Perlman), and that whole… extravaganza isn’t fully explained yet.  But the point is, it leads to a baby, a lie, a fatal accident, a marriage, a quantity of ground laid for a lifetime of lies.

5. Gemma and Clay Morrow (Katey Sagal and Ron Perlman, Sons of Anarchy)
Lifetime of lies, remember?  Clay is actually fairly faithful, a lot of the time, but his sleeping with Crow Eaters gets Gemma’s insecurities peaked and makes for a lot of drama.  Also it means that Jax (Charlie Hunnam) has a model for dealing with his problems, a model that tells him it’s okay to sleep with random women to cope, but since Jax and Tara (Maggie Siff) aren’t yet married, they’re not on the list yet.  And he’s been pretty faithful since the whole Trinny debacle.

4. Mona and Roger Sterling (Talia Balsam and John Slattery, Mad Men)
Roger sleeps with all the women, and again, it’s one of those slightly confusing things.  He’s a powerful man, and I guess if you’re into silver foxes, he’s good at that?  He’s in the Henry VIII pattern in a way, too; he’s married to Mona, he divorces Mona, he sleeps with Jane (Peyton List), he marries Jane, he cheats on Jane with Joan (Christina Hendricks).  Poor Joan is the person he probably really loves, but she’s not in the marriage cycle.

3. Joan and Greg Harris (Christina Hendricks and Sam Page, Mad Men)
She’s just in the “trying to do what seems societally right” cycle.  Joan only sleeps with Roger the once after she’s married, but it gets her pregnant.  She says she aborts the baby, but she doesn’t.  And who knows what will happen in season five.

2. Trudy and Pete Campbell (Alison Brie and Vincent Kartheiser, Mad Men)
Pete cheats on poor Trudy a few times: first with Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) the night before the wedding, again with Peggy one early morning at work, once with forcing himself on a nanny from down the hall when Trudy’s away.  He seems to cheat, like so many of them do, out of boredom: he’s happy with Trudy, or he should be, but occasionally he feels compelled to do something bad just to do something.  He eventually apologizes for his ways, somewhat, but he seems like he could do it again, under the right wrong circumstances.

1. Betty and Don Draper (January Jones and Jon Hamm, Mad Men)
Don cheats with all the women, too: the client, the schoolteacher, the bimbo, the model, the secretary.  Betty doesn’t cheat with Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley), exactly, but she kisses him and she marries him right quick once she’s divorced.  Don actually waits a season before getting engaged again, and not to anyone he’d been with in the cheating, but I’d worry about him with Megan (Jessica Paré) too.  She can’t keep him happy forever.  He’s restless and has issues with love.

–your fangirl heroine.

Film Friday :: the part where I still follow some performers anywhere

Remember this?

Women in Trouble is a film from 2009 that I happened to see on television.  But apparently in 2010 (and recently enough that it’s still on the New Releases wall at Blockbuster) they made a sequel to it, Elektra Luxx.  And since most of my reason for watching the first film was Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and he was actually listed on the box for this one, well.  I couldn’t very well stop myself, chalk it up to morbid curiosity, or completism, or something.  Then I saw that Elektra Luxx also starred one Timothy Olyphant, and I was more than sold.

I honestly enjoyed the sequel more, I think.  And maybe this is just because of the existence of Timothy, and also the prevalence of Joseph’s Bert Rodriguez (he was actually a character this time) and the fact that Marley Shelton was in more than one scene this time around.  The story was a bit less disjointed, because aside from delving into the subplots of Holly (Adrianne Palicki) and Bambi (Emmanuelle Chriqui) being all btw I love you in Mexico and of Bert and his life, it was mainly centered around Carla Gugino’s titular Elektra.

Pregnant, as she’d before learned, she’s now quit the porn business and is teaching a course in sexology at the community center.  (There was one deleted scene starring one of her students, the student’s man, and a threesome woman — it was amusing, but probably would have disrupted the movie’s flow overall.)  She’s trying to figure out what in the hell to really do with herself.  Cora (Shelton) appears with some stolen lyrics from dead Josh Brolin’s suitcase on the airplane where she was stewardessing and where he died, and she wants to give them to Elektra because they’re all about her, but also she wants to know if Elektra will seduce her fiance so she feels less bad about cheating.

Elektra is hesitant, but she takes drunken Cora home; as she’s leaving, she thinks she passes the fiance in the hallway, and since this person is Timothy Olyphant, she decides to go for it after all.  They do go for it, at it, for the gold, across the finish line, etcetera, but just kidding!  He’s really a detective that dead Josh Brolin’s band hired to find the lyrics that Cora stole.  (Spoiler?)  The fiance is actually Justin Kirk from Weeds, which… is a slight shame, because I was enjoying the idea of Timothy Olyphant + Marley Shelton, but at least now I know that Timothy and Carla will have epic chemistry when she appears on Justified next season.

This doesn’t stop them from flirting some more, but nothing comes of it.  Elektra is discussed at length by Bert.  Bert’s sister Olive (Amy Rosoff) tries to use his classy porn critiquing website to become an internet pinup model.  Bert then winds up in conversation with Trixie (Malin Akerman), and he passes out, but she talks at him, and she’s into him and he’s into her once he gets over the tragedy of Elektra’s retiring.

Various other wackinesses ensue: Elektra is stuck in another elevator with her neighbor Jimmy (Vincent Kartheiser), who is naked because he went into the hallway while fighting with his wife Eleanore (Emma Bell, who I had to explain was in fact on The Walking Dead, she was Amy the one I liked who died, and she was on one episode of Dollhouse playing an Active called Tango who was apparently recreating Cabaret for someone at one point and liked pancakes).  Elektra hallucinates the Virgin Mary (Julianne Moore).  Elektra flashes back to visiting her twin sister Celia in prison.  Elektra smokes more fake cigarettes with Charlotte (Isabella Gutierrez).

A famous author, Rebecca Linbrook (Kathleen Quinlan), is in Elektra’s sex class, and they decide to write a book together, fulfilling the Virgin Mary’s “something good will happen” prophecy.  And, oh yeah, she’s secretly Eleanore’s mother (there was another deleted scene; again, the continuity would’ve been shot, but I like Emma Bell’s face, so it was fun).  Then at the end Elektra goes into labor and Timothy Olyphant is there again.

It’s a cute movie.  The first one kind of needed to be seen for it to make sense, but since I had seen it I was good.  It’s not a necessary viewing, but it was an amusing way to spend the evening.  That’s something.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: 10 television children I want to see grown up.

10. Isabelle Hodes (Allie Grant, Weeds)
Isabelle got more of a plot than a lot of the kids on this list have, with her whole child modeling career, but the last we see of her is her helping her mother Celia (Elizabeth Perkins) run the taken-over drug business.  I understand that the show was focusing more on Nancy (Mary Louise Parker) and family’s new lives, but I want to know what happened with Isabelle.  I always adored her, and you know she was totally the brains of her mom’s attempts at the drug operation.  Did that drug operation last?  Did Isabelle keep modeling?  Did she get a totally awesome lesbian girlfriend once she got into high school?  I vote all of the above.

9, 8. Every single child on Sons of Anarchy (Kenny [John Abendorth/Mason Charles] and Ellie [Lela Cortines/Kerris Dorsey] Winston, Abel and Thomas Teller [both babies or toddlers and anyway I'm not 100% caught up so I'm not Googling it lest I hit a spoiler], Lyla’s kid who I can’t find on the Sons wiki or anywhere else)
C’mon, I wanna see if they stay in the life or they rebel some wacky way or what.  And they get two numbers because there’s so many of them.  Ellie especially.  Will she marry a biker guy?  Will she run away and go live in England with an investment banker?  Will she become a pornstar like stepmommy Lyla (Winter Ave Zoli)?  (I hope not that.)  Any of these choices are possible.  Kenny, I couldn’t say.  I also vote that Thomas becomes a doctor like his mommy Tara (Maggie Siff), but in medical school, he decides he’s more interested in psychology than surgery, and Abel is going to be the Teller man who actually publishes a book (it won’t have anything to do with MC life, though; it’ll be something wild and crazy, like Harry Potter but not).  And I don’t even know for Lyla’s kid.

7. Aylesh Rohan (Emma Kenney, Boardwalk Empire)
Okay.  So Aylesh just appeared.  I don’t know if she’ll recur or what, but I love her already.  She’s Margaret’s (Kelly Macdonald) youngest sister, come from Ireland, but she’s the most American of them by far.  She’s a little bookworm, and she’s intuitive as all get-out: looking at Margaret’s hat, she spun a story about Margaret’s beau that was 100% accurate, just playing, but still.  She’s just super-cute, and I want her to finish school, get a college scholarship to some lady’s college, and become a novelist.  I want her to write stories about psychic equestrian girls or something.  And I want to see it all happen.

6. Teddy and Emily Schroeder and Tommy Darmody (Rory and Declan McTigue, Lucy and Josie Gallina, and Brady and Connor Noon, Boardwalk Empire)
Teddy should be a professor of economics.  Tommy should run away to Europe and marry a French woman and bake.  Emily should become a gutsy lady attorney and be able to work for the underground, like Robin Weigert does on Sons.  These are all things I’d like to see happen.

5. Cassandra “Wheels” Kowalski (a baby, United States of Tara)
You know that baby is going to grow up to be awesome.  If she’s only answering to Wheels and Chinese swear words as an infant?  Just imagine what an epic little geek girl she’s going to be.  I refuse to imagine her being anything but.  I just have this feeling she’ll grow up and be some cross between a scenester, a Mod kid, an anime character, and a cosplayer, and she’ll be adorable and nerdy and all the likeminded boys will fall all over her.  And Charmaine (Rosemarie Dewitt) will just be saying to Neil (Patton Oswalt), “This is all your fault, and I don’t mind.”  Because quirky though she’ll be, she won’t be a screwup.

4. T Tsetsang (Brandon Dieter, Dollhouse)
Now that the world’s not in hell, T can grow up with both of his parents in a stable fashion and help rebuild the entire world!  The children are the future, and since he’s one of the only ones, well.  Be the future, T.  There’ve got to be other thoughtpocalypse babies scattered around the world, and they’re all going to converge on LA, because LA is the center of everything, and together they’ll… I don’t know.  Something important.

3. unnamed baby Washburne (is not born yet, the Firefly postseries timeline)
Even if “Float Out” hadn’t confirmed it for us, I’d have chosen to believe that Zoe (Gina Torres) was pregnant at the end of Serenity.  (The line in “Heart of Gold” is as good as proof alone: “You and I would make one beautiful baby.  And I want to meet that child one day.”  I don’t know if that was at all planned, though I suspect it was, but it’s perfect.  It’s like, there will be a baby but you will not be around to meet said baby yourself.  Stab stab stab heart, literally.)  But the confirmation just sent me absolutely around the bend with wanting this to happen.  I don’t care if technically this is comic canon, it’s an extension of the show but in print.  Baby Washburne is a girl, Zoe said, and until I’m told otherwise, I’m christening her “Hannah,” because that’s alliterative with Wash’s given name, Hoban, but not derivative of its ridiculous, and also it means “favor” or “grace,” which… well, clearly Zoe was in someone’s favor and grace to be luckily pregnant, and I like names that mean something without being absurd or obvious, and also I’ve always liked that name.  And I want to know all about Hannah’s (and any fantastical Kaylee/Simon or Mal/Inara or River/some person we haven’t met yet but not Jayne/anyone babies that would occur) adventures in space.

2. Sofia Metz (Bree Seanna Wall, Deadwood)
Sofia and Alma (Molly Parker) leave the camp at series’ end, but then what?  I think little Sofia grows up a proper lady under Alma’s care and then decides that she’s going to be a teacher, because Martha Bullock (Anna Gunn) was a powerful figure in her life, and she wants to give back to the world and teach other immigrant children how to speak English and belong in America.   She’ll have suitors, but she’ll marry in her late twenties, late for those days, and when she has children, she’ll give the girls the names of her sisters as middle names, but her son will be named for Ellsworth (Jim Beaver).  I don’t know why it was so easy to invent her future, but it was.  It’s like a Dear America epilogue.

1. Sally Draper (Kiernan Shipka, Mad Men)
I want this so much.  Sally can turn out one of two ways: highly successful and awesome and badass, or just rebelling to rebel and sleeping with all the wrong guys and trying to “find” herself in ridiculous ways.  I hope the former.  I want her to be class valedictorian and do something really, really intellectual as a profession just to stick it to Betty’s (January Jones) notions of femininity.  I want Sally to be a freaking neuroscientist or something, and I want her to have tumultuous but safe love affairs, and I want her to go to wacky New York parties and write books, and I want her to be awesome. And she’ll somehow become friends with Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) and Pete’s (Vincent Kartheiser) baby, but she won’t know that, but we would, and it would be beautiful.

–your fangirl heroine.

Television Tuesday :: the Mad women and feminism

Specifically, this is elaborating on thoughts found in an essay in the book Mad Men and Philosophy, edited by Rob Carveth and James B. South.  The essay is “Mad Women: Aristotle, Second-Wave Feminism, and the Women of Mad Men,” by Ashley Jihee Barkman.  It’s a very well-written essay, and very correct in many places.  I couldn’t help but thinking, though, that the analysis offered in the essay might have altered slightly had the essay been written after season four and not after season three, and so I will expand upon thoughts, with all respect and admiration to Barkman.  I am but a pop culturally analytical college student, so I’m sure I don’t have the same credibility, but bear with me.

The essay begins with a description of the woes that the women face and their reactions: “sexual harassment in the workplace, adulterous husbands, and even nonconsensual sex,” and they’re “shown coping in an era fraught with what Aristotle, in a qualified sense, would deem ‘injustice’”(203).  Fair points.  Barkman disregards Aristotle’s view of women as being “incomplete men” early on, so that’s not an issue.

Her essay also has the three main female characters, Peggy Olson [Elisabeth Moss], Betty Draper [January Jones], and Joan Holloway Harris [Christina Hendricks] are the primary focuses, and this makes sense.  Peggy, she says, “is the lone individual who receives due justice — that is, she is treated as possessing a rational soul — but seeks it out as well”(205).  Betty is less fortunate; “Perhaps her beauty muffles her chance at self-actualization”(211) but at the end of her marriage to Don (Jon Hamm) “the threshold of injustice she can bear has been reached”(212).  Joan, somewhere in the middle of the two experiences, is “an invaluable part of the ad agency”(213) but Barkman describes her as “the least progressive of the three women”(212).

This is a notion I have a problem with.  “She neither initiates like Peggy, nor reacts like Betty, but patiently waits for her due.  Joan is a woman comfortable and content in the values and expectations of those in the pre-second wave world (of feminism),” Barkman writes, also on page 212 of the book.  In the first seasons, this is true.  Joan, despite being college-educated and clearly efficient in the workplace, has been raised to believe that a woman’s worth is in her looks, and she doesn’t see much reason to question that.  She knows that that’s how the world of the office is and there’s nothing she can do to change it, so she may as well accept it and make the most of it.

But by season four, there’s a bit of a shift.  She came onto the new agency, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, from the ground up, helping organize and initiate the move and facilitate the new organization, and she’s proved herself even more “invaluable” in the new workplace.  Despite having not been working after her marriage to Greg Harris (Sam Page), Roger Sterling (John Slattery) knew that they couldn’t make the transition without her.  And though it’s not really said explicitly, Joanie is happier when she’s working.  She seemed restless in the life of a housewife (the dinner party in 3xo3, “My Old Kentucky Home,” has forever won the award for Most Heartbreaking Accordion Performance in my heart) and having purpose is something that helps, especially as Greg transitions to the position of a military doctor and is there for her less.

But there’s this telling conversation between Peggy and Joan in the last episode of season four, “Tomorrowland,” and I will actually copy the entire thing out because I think it’s just that important.

Joan: Whatever could be on your mind?
Peggy: Can you believe it?
Joan: Happens all the time.  They’re all just between marriages, you know that.  He’ll probably make her a copywriter.  He’s not gonna wanna be married to his secretary.
Peggy: Really?  Is that what he meant?  “She admires you.”  Jesus.
Joan: That’s the way it works for some.
Peggy: You know, I just saved this company.  I signed the first new business since Lucky Strike left.  But it’s not as important as getting married.  Again.
Joan: Well, I was just made Director of Agency Operations.  A title, no money of course.  And if they poured champagne it must have been while I was pushing the mail cart.
Peggy: A pretty face comes along and everything goes out the window.
Joan: Well, I learned a long time ago to not get all my satisfaction from this job.
Peggy: That’s bullshit.
Both women laugh.

Don has just become engaged to his secretary, Megan Calvet (Jessica Paré), and the men in the office seem more focused on this event than either of the actually workplace-related advancements that Peggy and Joan have made.  The other women in the agency come and go with some regularity, but these two have stuck around, and they’re clearly doing important work.  And even Joan’s tired of sitting around just letting it go unnoticed, now.

More importantly, though, I think Barkman’s essay neglects the other women of Mad Men, the supporting supporting characters.  Women like Midge Daniels (Rosemarie Dewitt) and Rachel Menken (Maggie Siff), like Trudy Campbell (Alison Brie), like Helen Bishop (Darby Stanchfield), even like little Sally Draper (Kiernan Shipka).  Each of them have something interesting to say about the female condition, too.

Midge is the first woman-on-the-side of Don’s that we meet, a beatnik intellectual with artistic inclinations and a generally pretentious worldview.  The similarly inclined men she’s seen palling around with serve mainly to point out that even the alleged advanced thinkers of the time are stuck in these silly gender roles.  They criticize Don’s participation in the ad industry, but do nothing of substance themselves; the men still treat the women like objects, and the women allow it.

Rachel is another story.  Having grown up in her father’s department store, she’s determined to revitalize it.  She’s an independent woman, and she doesn’t see why her interest in business should counteract her femininity: “If I weren’t a woman I wouldn’t have to choose between putting on an apron and the thrill of making my father’s store what I always thought it should be.”  (1×01, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”)  She rebuffs Don’s advances repeatedly, observing that such a relationship would be unwise, and when she does finally act on her interest, she does so on her own terms.  When he begs her to go away with him, she refuses, still convinced it’s the wrong decision.  She’s going to do what she feels is right, and she’s not going to let anyone walk all over her.

Trudy is the picture of domestic bliss on the outside.  Pete’s (Vincent Kartheiser) wife, her family brings him business ties and she makes him respectable.  She keeps a neat house (well, apartment) and she’s always smiling and loving.  They argue, yes, and the dramatics that come from their struggle to have a baby are a point of contention for quite a while, but that’s about all there is to it.  Pete cheats a couple of times; not much comes of it.  Trudy loves him and supports him no matter what.  She’s happy just being his wife, but on Trudy it doesn’t seem like giving in.  It’s truly the life she’d wanted, and while she’s bright enough to have more, probably, she’s content.  And she’s far too good for Pete, too.  She negates the stereotype present in a lot of media that men with wandering eyes or who work late a lot always have harpies for wives (ergo, the cheating/avoiding home/whatever is their fault and not the man’s).

Helen is a neighbor of the Drapers, down the street: she’s important in Betty’s evolution as a character, being the first divorced woman in the neighborhood, and while Betty looks down on her for a while (all of the neighbor women do) she softens, becoming momentarily friendly.  Of course, that doesn’t end well, as Helen’s son Glen (Martin Holden Weiner) is a creeper and Betty gives into it, but Helen is the first picture of a completely independent (save child support and such) woman, the first openly liberal female character on the show; she paves the way, I think, for Betty’s eventual decision to divorce Don.  (I’m sure Betty decided that she’d be careful to remain proper even after divorcing, remarrying almost immediately; none of that going around for recreational walks wearing pants and volunteering and holding a job for her, oh no.)

Sally is honestly becoming one of my favorite characters on the show.  She started out just a little girl, window-dressing in Don’s suburban life, but as she’s growing up she’s rebelling a bit more against her mother.  Betty’s concerned over her beauty, her weight (which is ridiculous; she’s got a rounder face, like a lot of children do, but she’s not pudgy), her behavior.  Things like intellect hardly factor in.  Sally’s just trying to grow and to discover herself (sometimes literally and sometimes through actions like cutting her own hair, both seen in 4×05, “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword”).  She’s not interested in Betty’s ideals.  She wants to be her own person.

I’m interested to see how season five (oh, god, next year) contributes to these portraits.

–your fangirl heroine.