Posts with tag madmen
Posted Oct 6th 2008 9:29AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free, Mad Men
(S02E10) This seemed an oddly structured episode, with the emphasis more on Betty than Don, with a splash of Pete and Kinsey thrown in. The idea that life was simpler in the old days, should anyone still think that adage applies, is disproved with every hour of
Mad Men that unfolds.
For Betty, the impending death of her father has shaken her to the core. A series of strokes has led to dementia and when Don accompanies Betty to visit him in her childhood home, she has to come to grips with not only the fact that he's slipping away, but also be reminded that nearly every vestige of her mother has also gone.
Continue reading Mad Men: The Inheritance
Posted Oct 5th 2008 1:07PM by Jason Hughes
Filed under: Other Sci-Fi/Supernatural Shows, Pickups and Renewals, Reality-Free
AMC has done pretty well for itself of late with the critically acclaimed series
Broken Trail, Mad Men and
Breaking Bad. I'm also hopefully optimistic that they will do a good job with their mini-series remake of
The Prisoner. Because of this established pedigree, I am incredibly excited to hear that
AMC is developing a series based on Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars novel. With Terry Goodkind's
The Sword of Truth series already coming to television, it looks like someone in TV land has been raiding my library. Oh there are so many more good sci-fi and fantasy series to develop. Feel free to stop by any time!
The article indicates the series is based on Robinson's 1992 novel of the same name, but I hope they take it a step further and look to his expanded
Mars trilogy. That way they can have several seasons of stories to tell. I guess, though, with the bigger story covering a couple of centuries there could be some casting problems. Hell, overhaul the entire cast every few seasons.
ER does it and it's been on the air for almost fifteen years.
Continue reading AMC develping Robinson's Red Mars for series
Posted Oct 1st 2008 8:41AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Ratings, Reality-Free
Did you see
Mad Men recently? As part of Harry's creating a TV division at the Sterling Cooper ad agency, he was made responsible for screening scripts of TV fare so that the content pleased/satisfied/supported the advertisers' desires. Interestingly, it was Joan -- the office manager/head secretary -- who was given the scripts to read and her main focus of
As the World Turns.
She became completely engrossed in the 1962 Oakdale story in which a character came to from a coma with a new personality. Her enthusiasm for the soap story convinced the advertisers to back
As the World Turns rather than
Love of Life, another CBS soap at the time.
Mad Men was historically accurate about
As the World Turns. It was the top-rated soap opera for 20 years -- 1958-1978 -- and in 1962 (the year in which
Mad Men is currently set),
ATWT had increased its share from 47.7 to 53.7 in just a year. It was the soap on the rise and over half all TVs on in daytime were watching this CBS soap.
Continue reading TV Squad Soap Report: SOAPnet's boom and a Mad Men memory
Posted Sep 6th 2008 11:01AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S01E13) The summer's officially over on
Swingtown, marked by Tom's Labor Day clambake at the shore, which turned out to also be a key party.
Now that the first season of the show has come to an end, it's clear that while they explored hot topics like open marriage, wife-swapping and group sex, the essence of the show was not titillation or a guide page by page through
The Joys of Sex. Swingtown was about the characters, three families and the changing times in 1976.
Questions, questions. Will Tom and Trina keep the baby? The Deckers are the open marriage couple and they've enjoyed the freedom to swing. But how amazing is it that they are the marriage that's in synch! They actually talk things out and share what they're thinking. You can't say that about the Thompsons and Millers.
Continue reading Swingtown: Take it to the Limit (season finale)
Posted Aug 30th 2008 11:26AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S01E12) "Do you think we closed Pandora's box?" -- Tom to Trina, after Janet's birthday party
You knew this was going to be an episode fraught with revelations when the strains of Carly Simon singing "No Secrets" played over the opening scene. Perfect song to comment on the surprises to come, as
Swingtown climbs toward the big season one climax next week.
The show is getting tantalizing terrific. It's not that I'm enamored with all the characters, but they've all become interesting to me. Even Ricky's struggle to come to terms with his best friend falling in love with the girl next door and leaving behind their buddy-buddy relationship, was surprisingly meaningful to me. The scene where Janet advised Ricky to show B.J. how important his friendship was to him was wonderful. His hugging Mom like that was so true; Janet is a tough mother, but she's the embodiment of love and support and Ricky needed his mommy in that moment.
Continue reading Swingtown: Surprise
Posted Aug 26th 2008 10:22AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Pickups and Renewals, Reality-Free
All right, let me say this up front and without equivocation: if CBS picks up
Flashpoint and cancels
Swingtown, I'm going to be ticked off. I'm not down on
Flashpoint.
As Jane wrote, Flashpoint is a good show. No
24, but solid procedural entertainment. However, when I read that
Canada's CTV has renewed up north and sources say that CBS is close to doing the same, I immediately got my back up.
Why should
Flashpoint get a break while an interesting, quirky and outside-the-box drama like
Swingtown may not? It's disheartening to me that
CBS is searching for a cable network to take Swingtown, while a "safe" crime show like
Flashpoint doesn't have that concern.
Continue reading The chances for a Flashpoint pickup are good
Posted Aug 25th 2008 3:04PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: TV Squad Lists, Reality-Free, Mad Men
Recently, when
I interviewed Matt Weiner, the creator of AMC's Mad Men, we talked about the movies, books and television shows that influenced the inception of the show. The 1960 Oscar-winning best picture
The Apartment was one, so were the sitcoms
Dobie Gillis and
The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Of all the television shows he mentioned, though, there was one that was the most influential. "You can't have the '60s without
The Twilight Zone. It is a mind opening experience for a generation," said Matt. "It was not just science fiction, it dealt with social issues. It's filled with the texture of real life. Just the idea of having a show every week where you don't know who is going to be in it and what it's going to be about, to have this acceptance of the fact that we don't know everything about the world. That in itself was something."
Going through
The Twilight Zone episode guide, there are quite a few shows in which you can see where
Mad Men could find inspiration. Here's four that reminded me of Don and Betty and Pete and Sterling Cooper:
Continue reading The Mad Men-Twilight Zone connection - VIDEOS
Posted Aug 9th 2008 1:10AM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Episode Reviews, Reality-Free
(S01E10) "All right, let's go fix this family."
Oh, if only it were as simple as a family vacation to repair the damage to the Millers. It's clear by now that something's missing between Bruce and Susan because she can't stop thinking of Roger.
And Laurie is going through teenage rebellion -- I recognize the symptoms -- and Bruce's answer is to threaten her boyfriend and rip the phone cord out of the wall. Of all the characters, Bruce needs the most work for the writers. He's way too predictable.
While the Millers are struggling, so too are the Thompsons. Janet made an appointment with a psychiatrist -- for Roger. The truth is that they both need counseling, as the therapist realized when she spoke with them. Janet is so much a woman of that time, unsure about getting a job because it may emasculate Roger and struggling with the attention she's received -- and enjoyed -- from Tom.
Continue reading Swingtown: Running on Empty
Posted Aug 8th 2008 4:23PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Interviews, Reality-Free, Mad Men
When Matt Weiner was a successful sitcom writer -- CBS's
Becker -- he had this idea for another kind of show. He couldn't figure out how to pitch it, so he wrote a sample script.
The Sopranos' creator David Chase read it and hired him. After copping a couple of Emmys for his work on that HBO drama, Weiner finally got his spec script sold. Now,
Mad Men has earned 16 Emmy nominations and Matt Weiner is working on the second season of the show.
Recently, for
TV Week, I interviewed Matt about the Emmy nominations. Here are some other thoughts he shared with me about
Mad Men:
TVS: What's the show all about to you?Matt Weiner: A lot of the episodes are about "who am I." A lot of the shows are about what's embarrassing. A lot of it's about denial, about how we juggle our work and our private lives. A lot of the issues that came up in the early 1960s are really hitting us right now.
Continue reading Matt Weiner of Mad Men: The TV Squad Interview
Posted Aug 5th 2008 12:27PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Pickups and Renewals, Reality-Free
Is AMC determined to shed its image as the second-best old movie channel -- number one id TCM -- to become a serious rival in series TV? It seems that the great success of
Mad Men and the nearly as great success of
Breaking Bad has emboldened AMC and they are itching for more.
AMC has ordered a political thriller pilot from executive producer Jason Horwitch.
The plot involves two potential fascinating elements: a secret society that has political power around the world and uses it to manipulate countries, and also an analyst working in a think tank who discovers that the people with whom he works are not who they seem to be. That last part sounds like a very Hitchcockian idea, especially if he's wrongly accused of something that happens on the job and has to go on the run or go undercover to suss out the bad guys. We'll see...
"This is a world you have not seen on television before -- it's not your typical spy thriller." That's what AMC is saying about the show, and if they can catch an
All The President's Men or
Parallax View paranoia vibe, they might be right.
Continue reading AMC picks up another new drama
Posted Aug 5th 2008 7:33AM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Comedy Shows, TV on DVD, OpEd, Weeds, Reaper, Reality-Free, Mad Men
Hey, let's all mark our calendars, because it's a big day in the TV world. Now all the people who aren't watching
According to Jim on TV can
not watch it on DVD.
Season one of the
ABC comedy (it's a comedy, right?) will be released on Oct. 21, 2008. It's part of a deal ABC Studios inked with Lionsgate Home Entertainment to distribute select titles on DVD. Season one of
Reaper is next on Nov. 4, followed by
Boy Meets World (which was
discontinued in 2006),
Hope and Faith, and
8 Simple Rules.
That's interesting, because I've got Season one of
8 Simple Rules here (no, I didn't buy it, a publicist sent it to me), and it's from Buena Vista Home Entertainment. So Lionsgate must be taking over distribution.
Continue reading According to Jim on DVD. Yippee.
Posted Jul 28th 2008 5:39PM by Jane Boursaw
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, Programming, OpEd, Pickups and Renewals, Reality-Free
Sparkly dresses, disco tunes, platform shoes, Studio 54... it's all about the 1970's in
Showtime's new drama,
Studio, which centers on
the iconic New York nightclub that brought it all home.
Bryan Singer -- undoubtedly one of the busiest guys in Hollywood -- is in talks to direct the pilot, with writer Chad Hodge and
Hairspray producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron helming the project.
Studio will begin in the months leading up to the club's April 1977 opening. Though fictional, the series will revolve around the real-life co-founder of the club, the flamboyant
Steve Rubell.
Continue reading Bryan Singer in talks to direct Studio 54 pilot
Posted Jul 19th 2008 11:01PM by Joel Keller
Filed under: 30 Rock, TCA Press Tour, Awards, Reality-Free, Mad Men
Tonight, the members of the Television Critics Association (including me) gathered at the Beverly Hilton to give out its annual awards. The membership voted on the awards in the month leading up to the press tour; we were given a number of candidates to choose from in various categories. The membership was also asked to choose recipients for an individual Career Achievement award and the Heritage Award, which recognizes a past show that had a big impact artistically and on the industry.
The members didn't reach back too far for the Heritage Award: it was given to
The Wire. As for current shows, the members gave
Mad Men a bushel of awards: Program of the Year, Outstanding New Program, and Outstanding Achievement in Drama.
30 Rock won for Outstanding Achievement in Comedy, and Tina Fey won the Individual Achievement in Comedy award for her performance.
John Adams won the mini-series award; its star, Paul Giamatti, won the Individual Achievement in Drama award. Lorne Michaels of
Saturday Night Live received the Career Achievement award.
A complete list of winners is after the jump.
Continue reading TCA Awards: Mad Men, 30 Rock and The Wire are big winners - TCA Report
Posted Jul 17th 2008 2:11PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: OpEd, Emmys, Reality-Free
I'm going to share my Emmy thoughts, but there's so much to digest, I figured I'd space it out a bit. If you missed the announcement, check out
Bob's live blog.
First thought: Why do I feel like I did when the Daytime Emmy nominations were announced? Oh yeah, because all
these nominations are predictable! Where's the surprises, where's the nominations from out of left field? These nominations lack the element of shock, at least to me. Here's my thoughts, plus I dug through the whole list and found some other interesting items...
Continue reading My reactions to the Emmy nominations, part one
Posted Jul 14th 2008 1:43PM by Allison Waldman
Filed under: Programming, Ratings, Reality-Free, Mad Men, Burn Notice
Numbers don't lie -- although some people can manipulate them -- but in all the ways that matter for television, the second season debut for USA's
Burn Notice was a 100% hit. The spy caper-drama did something that brings smiles to the lips of all cable execs,
it beat first run episodes of ABC and CBS programs.
I'm generally
not a numbers person. (I freely admit that I sucked at algebra.) However, the
Burn Notice success in Nielsen ratings and key demographics -- 1.8 rating/6 share among adults 18-49 and approximately 5.4 million viewers overall -- is impressive. It built on last season's numbers considerably -- 35% in viewership.
Continue reading Burn Notice premiere sizzles in the Nielsens
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