A Very Good Night

Last night, Sunday, May 27, 2012, was maybe the best night ever for high-end television drama of the one-hour kind.  Both Mad Men and Game of Thrones had epic game-changing episodes.  Both are about power, in different ways.  Tonight I'll talk about the former.

In the antepenultimate episode of the season, "The Other Woman," Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is pitching Jaguar and all they need to seal the deal is for Joan to sleep with one of the three decision makers.  At the same time, Peggy, arguably the #2 character on the show, is feeling ready to leave.  It's a show about choices and prices paid for women to do men's bidding, as filtered through a Jaguar pitch tagline, "At last, something beautiful you can truly own."

So is Peggy owned by a new agency that picks her up for more than her asking price?  And is Joan owned or owner as she take a piece of SCDP for herself and her son?  And is there anything Christina Hendricks can't make us feel?

Then there's Don and his young bride, Megyn.  She wants to act, she's treated like chattel at the audition, and he's terrified that she's going to abandon him for her career.  Their fights are so much more awesome than Don and Betty's because they know each other's secrets, they're at way different points in their lives and they are both New York City sophisticates.  It feels like real adult fights - not TV adult fights.  A little S&Mish at times, which fits with the era.  Just as the Europeans were refinding the Marquis de Sade in literature and theatre.

If there's a project to this season it has to be revealed in the final two episodes.  This year's theme, according to creator Weiner, is "Every man for himself."  So will Don we left isolated - by Peggy, estranged from Joan by the knowledge of what she did and his adamant opposition to it, by Megyn getting the out-of-town rehearsals and previews gig?

We've had seasons with "the return of Don Draper" as the project.  Often with a diminishment of marital or family life.  Would that be a retread?  Or is there something deeper planned?

My pet theory: at the end of the season, Don quits.  Maybe goes West to design surfboards.  Maybe becomes the perfect mix on Don Draper and Dick Whitman.  Maybe quits being Don Draper.

More on Game of Thrones to come.  And if you think this season is big, the third book is oft considered the best.

Enjoy this time of plenty.  Over the next two weeks, it ends.

Visual Style of The Wire

Finally, credit where credit is overdue. I've always thought of The Wire as having noir elements along with the social realism. It's not a documentary - it's exceptionally well-crafted and relevant fiction. Now someone has analyzed the show's visual style and, guess what, in its own way it's as brilliant as the writing:

Style in The Wire from Erlend Lavik on Vimeo.

Major kudos to Erlend Lavik. This one gets added to the canon.

The Game is On

Loved the first episode of the second season of Game of Thrones and I'm grateful they aren't spending any time explaining who everyone is who's survived from last season. The recap at the beginning went by like lightning so if anyone is new to the show, they probably are still mystified.

In fact, I'm not sure if I'd be adrift in this new episode without having read the books in the interim -- and would love to know if anybody who reads this was -- but HBO has done a service by providing the following introduction to the new characters, some of whom we've met tonight:



The show is huge and the story even more vicious than the first season. And much more viciousness to come...

GoT Recap

This is the perfect way to prepare for the second season of Game of Thrones:



Melisandre. Weasel Stew. Wildfire. The Ironborn.

We're in for a ten-week long treat.

Mad Zeitgeist

From Chris Matthews' show:

As for tonight's unprecedented two-hour season opener, after an extra year away, I found it promising. I had expected 1966, given the amount of time off, and any further you're in the most amazing year, 1967, Summer of Love, the moment before the fall.

Best line of the night was Roger's wife. He says, "Why don't you sing like that?" and she replies, "Why don't you look like him?"

Yet again on Mad Men, like in Citizen Kane, nobody gets what they really want.

Royal Pitch

It seems that HBO releases a new Game of Thrones Season Two trailer every week. From last night:

Season 2 Trailer: Price For Our Sins

Which brings me to the question of Mad Men, returning with Season Four this upcoming Sunday, one week prior to the HBO show season premiere. I understand creator Matt Weiner's ironclad refusal to give spoilers, but there's no new footage in any of the trailers released for this season thus far. Will that hurt viewership?

Yes, the HBO series is based on a series of published novels the spoiler issue isn't the same, but they sure are giving fans what they want -- and building to a fever pitch. Just this past weekend, at WonderCon in Anaheim, they put my head on a spike:

Ouch!

Palinstein

About three-quarters into the great HBO movie, Game Change, I realized what genre the director Jay Roach and screenwriter Danny Strong were playing with. Sure, it's a great political genre movie, up there with their 2008 triumph, Recount, which did great service to the 2000 Florida recount battle which led to George W. Bush becoming President without winning the popular vote (and subsequently led to the debacle in Iraq, the crash of the economy that plays a part in this new movie and, now, the massive GOP amnesia about the eight years they controlled the Executive branch of our government). But it's something more: Game Change is a monster movie.

'

The monster is, of course, 2 1/2 year Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Not only does the movie recreate her origin story as a force of hate-pandering and resentment reinforcing on the national stage, but it does a terrifying job of treating her as both representative and contributing cause to the nightmarish Republican Primary of 2012, as reactionary as any in national political memory. The fact that Willard Mitt Romney, a supposed moderate and former Governor of the generally Liberal state of Massachusetts, has veered psychotically Right trying to outflank and outpander his highly Conservative opponents, the fact that this very week past he was incapable of summoning the courage to strongly vilify Rush Limbaugh for his misogynistic smearing of citizen Sandra Fluke, proves that whatever prairie fire Sarah Palin ignited in 2008 has yet to burn out.

The progression is like something out of a 1950's sci-fi movie, only instead of an unknown virus reeled in by inquisitive scientists, it's an unknown, unveiled GOP Governor from the most remote state in the Union. Coming from the coldest state as well, it hearkens back to The Thing. She's let in through all decontamination barriers almost by accident to positive fanfare, sparking all sorts of activity including massive investment (here a rush of small-donor campaign contributions), then she begins to falter, unable to adapt to this unfamiliar environment.

But have no fear (or, rather, have dread), because like Frankenstein's monster and most others, it has the ability to learn. Palin studies the television coverage as it goes from ridiculing her to reveling in her speaking power, and she goes through a classic movie-monster chrysalis stage. In the middle of the movie Palin (played to genius perfection by Julianne Moore, ditto Ed Harris as John McCain and, carrying the main story with ease, Woody Harrelson as campaign chief Steve Schmidt) goes silent. She doesn't respond to her handlers, sinks into funks, rattles around on her Blackberry, essentially seems to fall into some sort of catatonic state that ends up feeling more like gestational hibernation.

When she emerges she's unstoppable. She can't be controlled by the campaign, takes on her signature disregard for the truth (and outright lying), whips up crowds with various degrees of hate speech and gets that scary Palin gleam in her eye. The movie doesn't hit it too hard -- it's a smart piece of work -- but it's that gleam that haunts.

In the framing device, Steve Schmidt (Harrelson) is interviewed by Anderson Cooper, and it's clear the scientist no longer has any control over the monster, just a wary, chastened point of view he didn't have at the beginning. To Schmidt's credit, he was just as penitent on The Morning Joe Show this a.m. Unlike the party of Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, Perry, Bachmann, Cain, etc. etc. he's emerged as a man of honor. His party could use more of his type of candor and reality.

On the other hand, Palin is still in the celebrity politics business, the recidivist Tea Party will celebrate it's fourth anniversary this year, and 52% of Mississippi Republicans think President Obama is a Muslim.

There you have the bigger monster: the GOP electoral base.

A Tale of Bart and Homer

Game of Thrones fever hits Springfield:

To watch more, visit tag

Doh! is coming.

Game of I Can't Wait

April 1st, it returns. Here's the longest look yet:

It's already been up on the Net for a few days, so please forgive me.

And, to be sure, War is Coming.

Of Course He Isn't

Mitty Mitt Mitt. What's to be done with you? The day after you win the Florida GOP Presidential Primary, you remind everybody why you should never be allowed in the Oval Office:

“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there,” Romney told CNN. “If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”

Host Soledad O’Brien pointed out that the very poor are probably struggling too.

“The challenge right now — we will hear from the Democrat party the plight of the poor,” Romney responded, after repeating that he would fix any holes in the safety net. “And there’s no question it’s not good being poor and we have a safety net to help those that are very poor . . . My focus is on middle income Americans ... we have a very ample safety net and we can talk about whether it needs to be strengthened or whether there are holes in it. but we have food stamps, we have Medicaid, we have housing vouchers, we have programs to help the poor.”

I love Soledad's incredulity bordering on outright contempt, if not for his callousness then for his impolitic messaging. While I agree that it is unfair to take the quote out of context -- although it is something the Romney campaign does to President Obama unapologetically in ads itself -- the actual context is pretty dreadful, tin-eared and reveals a candidate without the Big Picture of American society today.

On one hand, it's easy to take as Freudian slip that Romney doesn't care about the "very poor," but is he essentially saying there's always going to be a permanent underclass in this country that will never move out of social welfare programs?

Or is he even aware what it means to be "very poor" and how many families in America are below or near the poverty line -- per Wikipedia, "Most Americans (58.5%) will spend at least one year below the poverty line at some point between ages 25 and 75."

Or is he making a false distinction, since employment uncertainty has grown among those "middle income Americans" thanks to layoffs like those experienced by Bain Capital-managed companies?

And where does he get the 90-95% for those "middle income Americans?" Is that what he believes, or just a pander since his wealthy, almost all now from investments, has branded him Mr. 1%?

And where does he get off even citing class differences when he's ready to excoriate Obama for "class warfare" every time the President suggests that millionaires and billionaires should pay more than a 15% capital gains tax? Class division works when you need to pander, right Mitt?

And that pander, is it actually an attempt to separate out the "middle income Americans" from the "very poor" since he's given up in trying to get votes from the "very poor" and, in fact, may benefit from his Republican Party's work suppressing those votes?

And is there some sort of missing class here? I don't mean "the very rich," I wonder about the just plain "poor." Is that a different category than the "very poor?"

And why is the GOP always trying to cut programs for the "very poor" if Mitt says it's important not only that we have safety net (Ronald Reagan's term, originally, as he cut it), but that he'll vaguely "fix it" where it isn't working?

If so, what is his analysis of the state of the safety net...and what proposals, if any, does Mitt have to fix it? The only proposals he's shown thus far benefit the rich he claims not to worry about.

And, finally, did he just admit that the Democratic Party actually does care about the poor, f'real?

To the three remaining GOP Presidential wannabes: Stay in the race. This runner stumbles. Badly and often enough and egregiously enough that his Party is questioning his ability to take on President Obama in the Fall. Some are even saying this Election Cycle is a wash, time to start strategizing for 2016.

Per the TPM video below...the concession stand is having trouble keeping enough popcorn in stock to enjoy the GOP 2012 Presidential Election show.

Game of Anticipation

Now that I've read four and a half George RR Martin A Song of Ice & Fire books, being just about in the middle of the one that came out late last year, it's strange to look at the new HBO teaser trailer (#2, with a lot more imagery) for Game of Thrones Season Two.

On the one hand, I'm so incredibly super-psyched to see these characters made flesh again. Tyrion, Danys, Jon, Robb, even fucked-up Cersei (as played so well by Lena Headley), and now Melisandre (being played by Black Book's awesome Carice Van Houten) and fucked-up Stannis.

On the other hand, these characters are like ancient history to me now. When Season One ended after the 10th episode, I was so insanely eager to know what happened to next to these characters, I read A Clash of Kings which is the basis for this upcoming season, and it's a doozy. If they get all the plot in and pull off a huge mother of all battles, it could be the best season of TV since The Wire.

But then I read A Storm of Swords, which the series creators/showrunners, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss say is too big for one season and will be split in two. And A Feast for Crows, the slower one that opens up new character veins in entirely fresh locations, and pissed off some diehard fans by splitting in half the simultaneous chronological events with popular characters that Martin held for the fifth book, the one I'm currently reading, A Dance with Dragons.

So I'm 3,500 pages down the road in this epic saga from the events that will kick off this new season in March. Some of these characters...well, they're almost like ancient history.

I will say this: if you love Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister, as the Emmy and Golden Globe voters did or maybe even more, this is the season for you. We left with his father making him Hand of the King - the job in which the last two holders have died while serving, Jon Arryn (who's suspected murder sets off the whole series and plots) and Ned Stark (who everybody thought was the series lead for the run). Thus far the only power Tyrion's had is as much of his family fortune as his father allowed. Now he has real power.

I'll also say that my favorite book, the third, A Storm of Swords, lives up to it's name. It's not just the violence, it's all about the costs of war, not just to the characters but to the land, the people. The ending is like, three corkscrew twists that blow your mind to pieces. And while I'm so glad they'll take two seasons to tell the whole story, it's painful to think that's maybe three more years away.

So here's to the return of the champion series. As excited as I am for the March return of Mad Men, the rich world of Sterling, Cooper, Draper & Pryce is not really a fair match for the massive tapestry of Westeros and lands beyond.

Winter is coming. Just in time for Spring.

Until April

SPOILER ALERT

This has a been a generally terrific second season of Boardwalk Empire, with slow first episode (again) but picking up a lot faster than the first season did. The Sunday night season finale was gutsy in the sense that they ended the Jimmy Darmody story, but the really tripped out episode was the penultimate one, where Jimmy finally got his origin story and we got all the back story we could have ever wanted, and more. It's not just Game of Thrones, it's not TV; it's HBO: The Incest Channel.

It's a mistake to kill off Jimmy in the sense that Michael Pitt played the most riveting of the four main characters (Nucky, Margaret, Agent Van Alden being the other three top billed leads) to a large degree because he has been just so riveting to watch, so easily period, with a silent film star's profile, always lit beautifully. It'll be interesting to see if the show can recover. My bet is on Michael Shannon -- the little hint of things to come is his moving with au pair and infant to Cicero, IL, which is where Al Capone kept his home base. Maybe the disgraced agent uses that cover to infiltrate and take a shot at redemption as a Fed?

I diligently watched two other HBO shows, comedies, starting with Hung's third season. By the end of the first season the show had found its feet (and other body parts), a great conceit that showed America in recession, the growth of man who's just starting to find his feminine side, and a very smart, funny cast with Jane Adams possibly the funniest character on TV -- her Tanya always so needy, so ready to compromise morally to fulfill her needs, so transparent. Season two was peak Hung but this season, with Thomas Jane's Ray and Tanya finding some success (and still more farce), some terrific comic sex scenes, and a tender start to rapprochement with his wife, Jessica, a career highlight for Anne Heche. It wasn't quite as necessary overall as season two but always put a smile on my face from start to finish.

Then there's the Best Television Show of 2011 You Aren't Watching, Enlightened. Written by Mike White and Executive Produced by White and star Laura Dean. The story is of a female corporate exec who has a meltdown when she's fired essentially for having an affair with a married boss, then comes back from a meditation retreat in Hawaii all "enlightened" only to struggle as all those she returns to are not. Diane Ladd (her real life mother and the false Mrs. Mulwray in Chinatown) plays her uptight, loner mother, Luke Wilson does he own career highlight work as her drug-addicted ex-husband with whom she's also trying to connect, and Mike White plays her co-worker, a nebbish who's also trapped in the new basement division doing data entry on an ominous 1% vs. 99% computer program.

While often inducing cringes over Dern's character's innocence and spiritual/political activism in situations where her corporate colleagues and former friends think she's a freak, the highs of the story are huge, and Dern turns in yet another brilliant performance. She's David Lynch's muse, alright, and did a blowaway Katherine Harris also on HBO, and her level of commitment and specificity is wonderous.

Then there was this preview, and all the other shows, well, they just didn't seem quite so critical:

Let's hope Mad Men in January is enough to keep me happy until April. Otherwise it's just a wait.

Just the Facts, Ma'am

It's like a piece of television history dying off like an old oak tree. R.I.P, Harry Morgan:

Harry Morgan, the prolific character actor best known for playing the acerbic but kindly Colonel Potter in the long-running television series “M*A*S*H,” died on Wednesday morning at his home in Los Angeles. He was 96.
...

In more than 100 movies, Mr. Morgan played Western bad guys, characters with names like Rocky and Shorty, loyal sidekicks, judges, sheriffs, soldiers, thugs and police chiefs.

On television, he played Officer Bill Gannon with a phlegmatic but light touch to Jack Webb’s always-by-the-book Sgt. Joe Friday in the updated “Dragnet,” from 1967 to 1970. He starred as Pete Porter, a harried husband, in the situation comedy “Pete and Gladys” (1960-62), reprising a role he had played on “December Bride” (1954-59). He was also a regular on “The Richard Boone Show” (1963-64), “Kentucky Jones” (1964-65), “The D.A.” (1971-72), “Hec Ramsey” (1972-74) and “Blacke’s Magic” (1986).

...

Mr. Morgan’s television credits were prodigious. He once estimated that in one show or another, he was seen in prime time for 35 straight years. Regarded as one of the busiest actors in the medium, he had continuing roles in at least 10 series, which, combined with his guest appearances, amounted to hundreds of episodes.

Wow, talk about a prolific career. It's a face and delivery a number of generations grew up with.

Another end-of-the-century moment, about a decade later than originally scheduled.

Norse People

Two great pieces of entertainment -- last night the psychotically good first episode of HBO's Game of Thrones and tonight out at the theater amazed how good and suspenseful I found Joe Wright's Hanna. In both cases, crucial stretches of the movie are in some snow covered forest, the northern something or other, and what living in a land like that forges into people.



Starting off in an arctic place, Saoirse Ronan is now the first serious action star of her generation:



Really a treat in the theater -- particularly Cate Blanchett so nasty and some amazing long, flowing action takes, one with Eric Bana in particular -- great to watch. Bond with a soul.

Leave it to the northerners to bring. it.

Best Season Ever

American Idol has never had this level of talent this early in the game, and no obvious frontrunner this late. The drama last week, which Michael Slezak masterfully shows in his smart, genius-ly edited week 4-part video report on TV Line, with the judges save of early fave Casey Abrams after three weeks of grow-ly performances and now all 11 contestants going on tour rather than the traditional 10, is only heightened this week when two singers will be eliminated.

Tonight's performances of Elton John/Bernie Taupin songs were, as a whole, more consistently good than any other season. In other years actually singing ability started to fall off, weaknesses revealed that weren't brought out by the audition process, only now on the big, live TV stage. This year it's mainly about preference, who you find more or less boring. However, I found that this night actually crystallized some things for me.

The best singers, most interesting, most imaginable as recording artists after the show, are, in the order that I think they'll finish:

1. Pia Toscana: Young, gorgeous Howard Beach woman with arguably the best instrument of all the singers, real conviction and wow moments while still seeming so humble, radio-ready version of Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me tonight. At the moment, the one to beat, especially if she comes back and rocks convincingly, brings Howard Beach soul to River Deep Mountain High as she promises for next week.

2. Scott McCreery: Solid country skills, showing growth this week nailing Elton in a pure country vein. However this turns out, he will have a career.

3. James Durban: Brings the rock and roll sorely asking everywhere else but needs to do another controlled performance after two fun but not 100% consistent performances. But I think he's a top three, if there's any justice, and if he can show some real growth over the next two weeks, he could set himself on a trajectory to win it all.

4. Casey Abrams: Finally got musical again this week, and had my second favorite performance on Your Song. Casey can change it up more than anybody else without bending the songs out of recognition, and tonight he dug so deep post-save to show it was justified. And that last note was, per Randy, a Major Ninth. Could usurp James' position in the top three -- a month and a half from now.

5. Haley Reinhart: Best performance of the night, and a new classic version of Bennie and the Jets that bears rewatching more than any of the others tonight:



She could be the Lauren Alaina smoter, a nice girl who may have a country career in her future, but is not the second coming of Carrie Underwood. I'm sure the producers want to keep her around as long as possible for the country audience, maybe even scoring a top three position for herself, but I don't see the depth. She has a huskiness that makes her and Haley somewhat duplicates, especially as the weeks weave on. Top six and then duplicate elimination round.

Haley is the wild card. Can she keep growing, bringing her tone, moves and style without falling into Broadway? Could she be a top three or even win? I don't see that yet, but I like the Chicago vibe and the bluesiness. If she gets the chance to do a Janis Joplin song that hasn't been overdone or done better (i.e. by Crystal Bowersox last year) and makes an all-time great idol version of it, she could set a killer trajectory. She commits more than Lauren, but the smokiness can sometimes get overpowering.

Tonight it worked.

Tomorrow night, results night, is all about justice. While they are all good, the rest are cannon fodder. Thia (great voice with an interesting, almost adult character, but ultimately too young for the show, missing some essential life experience), Stefano (charming and talented but ultimately Vegas), Jacob (talented, remarkable instrument and energy, missing some depth), Paul (interesting voice but now the weakest singer remaining) and, finally, Naima, whom I love the best of this bunch and better than some of the others, but who needs an Idol Moment and has not had one yet. I'm hoping she survives at least a couple more weeks to see.

So if you're an Idol hater you probably haven't read this far, but if you've ever been a fan, now's the time to tune in again. So much of the goodness has to do with the new judge line-up as well, with Jennifer Lopez making a real name for herself anchoring the panel from the middle. You'd have expected Randy, moved over the top the far right Simon Cowell position, but while he's brought a little of the veteran harshness, it's Lopez who really feels for the singers and gives them the consistently smart, useful, professional feedback.

Steven Tyler was better in the audition rounds when he was more honest and willing to cut, now he's Mr. Affirmation, the old Paula role, with some crazy sayings that are either funny-brilliant or funny-Paula crazy. Occasionally he says something positive but professionally helpful, but I think everyone would like to see him step up his game.

Change is good. Interesting real people recently discovered and playing out their future week-by-week on the national stage of the highest rated show on U.S. television, and all the social media being generated and swirling around it.

And Ryan Seacrest, the other survivor of all 10 seasons including the Producer, cements his dominance as the best host-repreneur in the business since his idol, Dick Clark.

Thank the Good Lord

My role model will return:

AMC, Lionsgate Close To Deal With Matt Weiner For 'Mad Men'

The negotiations, I believe for the final two seasons (leaving us where, say, with Nixon getting elected in 1968? New Year's Eve 1969/1970?), took a long time, so we probably won't see new episodes until into the Fall at the the earliest. It'd be interesting to see Don Draper competing head-to-head with all the fall big network shows, as it's always been the summer up until now.

But he's back. The only bummer is that it'll be more than 39 weeks since we last saw a new episode -- closer to 52.

K to C

Hot on the heels of yesterday's new media/new media merger comes today's: Keith Olbermann is reported by The NY Times as headed to Current TV. That's a move from establishment cable media to new media grassroots, continuing the narrative one day later.

Current TV is a public affairs channel which was co-founded by Vice President Al Gore. If Olbermann goes there, he would be landing at a much smaller channel than his former home, MSNBC. (The Times notes that Current is only available in 60 million homes, whereas MSNBC is available in 85 million homes.) He would also not be able to start for some months; the deal he made with MSNBC upon his departure stipulated that he not appear on television for at least half a year. But the move would allow Olbermann to potentially bring a whole new audience to Current.

It's a social media world. The new broadcast channels are Facebook and tablet apps. The gates of international broadcast have been blown open, there's a huge populist train riding through -- and picking up both speed and passengers, and both AOL and Olbermann have jumped on aboard.

Hello, 2011.

Baggin' with the Stars

I'm not a fan of this show, so it's somewhat hilarious to me that their money-grubbing decision to enter the Palin Family Enterprise may backfire bigtime:

At first, having Bristol Palin participate in 'Dancing With The Stars' seemed like a brilliant idea. Just like Kate Gosselin before her, casting an admittedly bad dancer who was shrouded in controversy has raked in big ratings and tons of press. But now the joke is on the show's producers, as they fear Bristol is actually going to win this thing.

"This will be a disaster for the show if Bristol wins," one TV insider tells me. "Any creditability the show had will be over. It will go from being a dancing competition to a popularity competition where whoever has the most rabid fan base will always win no matter how little talent they have."

Plus:

"Another problem the producers foresee is that after Bristol wins no one in Hollywood will ever want to be on the show again," a well-placed ABC source tells me. "Why would a real star want to compete and lose against someone like [former U.S. Senate candidate] Christine O'Donnell or Levi Johnston."

Bonus:

A friend of one of the judges tells me Bristol has made a fool out of all of them. It's now painfully obvious that the judge's scores and opinions mean nothing.

I'm sick of hearing people say that Palin is winning because people identify with her failings. This is the exact opposite of what Conservatives claim to believe, that it's all a meritocracy and we shouldn't be dumbing down classrooms to make it nicey-nice for the less talented. No, this is massive Tea Party drone voting, making their political point, whether or not they're using computerized means to generate "legitimate" email addresses and flood they system. Does anyone, anywhere, honestly doubt this is all about Sarah?

I'm starting to think that Palin's world and that of her drones is an even more self-aggrieved subset of the Glenn Beck audience, your true talent is, ostensibly, your adherence to the Sarah-approved ideology, no matter have provisional or acausal the selection. Because the apparatchik reason isn't even what it's all about; the only ideology that matters is that which reinforces the vanity production of Sarah Palin that is her politelebrity career.

And this is where Sarah Palin is, for once, a true pioneer. Her grifter roots are clearly Amy Semple McPherson, Richard Nixon and Joe McCarthy but no one has ever done what she's doing before in world political history, mainly because there wasn't a mass media quite like this one before. With so many outlets, so much hunger for content, this rapacious time of widening rich-poor gaps as our corporate feudalistic solidifies for what may be centuries, with so many buyers out there, mass media networks of books, cable, digital, social, Sarah Palin has engineered the very first political campaign where the networks have paid candidate for the honor of creating their long-form campaign commercials and giving them huge hours of airtime, frosted with dominating amounts of free publicity

TLC has given Palin her biggest TV deal, paying her production company to make the shows, with their staged scenes and obvious cutaways, semiotics gone haywire in the ultimately lumpen service or reinforcing Palin's brand messaging and image, endlessly tiresome, endlessly smug, endlessly mean high school girl in the big leagues.

The Obama Family and the Democratic Party had better start adapting immediately. If you think this is polarized nation now, just wait until we're watching entirely separate television shows.

Wait, we already are:



I don't care how serious a candidate, politician or statesman you are. You have to at least acknowledge that this new evolution of bullshit is the most significant since Sen. John Fitzgerald Kennedy bested Vice President Richard Milhous Nixon in the first nationally televised Presidential debate.

One can only hope that, thanks to some combination of narcissistic ambition and aggrieved venality, just as Nixon ultimately lost control of his brand image Palin and her family will lose control of theirs. I mean, even the type of vile use of "gay" and "faggot" as a vicious insult by a teenager, the type of language parents are generally held responsible for teaching their children is wrong, hasn't led to a single admonition of Sarah Palin's mothering skills. Is this the kind of language Mama Grizzlies teach their little grizzlies? Grrr.

The fact is that Palin is media ascendant. There's a rule in Hollywood that you're only a superstar for three years, then the public moves on. You can still be in the firmament, even at your peak earning, but the audience for and against you is already formed, and you're not dominating their fantasy lives anymore.

So can we date Palin's superstardom from when she spoke at the 2008 Republican National Convention? I think maybe from when her book came out last year, her first purely commercial endeavor (and a huge success -- her big step-up that caused her to ditch her elected office about halfway into her commitment). If that's the case, she'll peak next year, and start fading in 2012, just in time for the GOP Primaries.

But is the answer more ominous. Is the TLC show where she really starts, taking over the airwaves? Even on Fox, she's not in control, and you can see the short-circuits behind her eyes, her hard little smile growing tight or tipping downwards when O'Reilly catches her out as is his sport.

This is the playing field now. The killing field. The battleground. This is where political war is now being waged. Politicians on the Left may develop a different flavor, maybe one that doesn't seem so constructed, really candid and unedited as Obama can be in ways she never will. The key is to leverage your celebrity as a brand that attracts curious, interested and engagement-starved viewers. If you're not already a politelebrity you need to become one, and if you already are then you need to exploit it with speed and savvy to get control of your image and blast away with your messaging.

This will also become a new discipline in political consulting. I recommend the talent agencies getting their Blue and Red political teams on and integrated with production and network sales. I even mean Below the Line crew. Control everything.

It's post-1984. 1984 has nothing on this. Orwell meets McLuhan. Makes you want to burn the whole mother****ing thing down.

Vote Bristol.

Post-WWI Masks

I started my very first Facebook discussion thread here, on Richard Harrow (Jack Huston), the mysterious and lethal disfigured WWI veteran taken in by Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt) in the HBO series, Boardwalk Empire. We don't see much to Harrow even when he's in a scene, due to his habit of hiding in the shadows and, mainly, behind the mask that shields the world from the true horror of his injured face. If you can handle it, here's how Harrow looks on the show without his mask. And here's with the cover-up (and Jimmy):



Thanks to the Facebook discussion, I've been connect to this fascinating article, "Faces of War" (by Caroline Alexander in Smithsonian magazine 2007) on the origin of these masks in two studios, one in England and one in France (the latter run by an American sculpter, Anna Coleman Ladd), which went to painstaking ends to help make these wounded soldiers as whole as possible. It was the new technologies of the war which gave rise to this need:

The large-caliber guns of artillery warfare with their power to atomize bodies into unrecoverable fragments and the mangling, deadly fallout of shrapnel had made clear, at the war's outset, that mankind's military technology wildly outpaced its medical: "Every fracture in this war is a huge open wound," one American doctor reported, "with a not merely broken but shattered bone at the bottom of it." The very nature of trench warfare, moreover, proved diabolically conducive to facial injuries: "[T]he...soldiers failed to understand the menace of the machine gun," recalled Dr. Fred Albee, an American surgeon working in France. "They seemed to think they could pop their heads up over a trench and move quickly enough to dodge the hail of bullets."

The detail work of these studios were huge and actually took a lot longer than today's plastic surgery to achieve the desired results:

In Ladd's studio, which was credited with better artistic results, a single mask required a month of close attention. Once the patient was wholly healed from both the original injury and the restorative operations, plaster casts were taken of his face, in itself a suffocating ordeal, from which clay or plasticine squeezes were made. "The squeeze, as it stands, is a literal portrait of the patient, with his eyeless socket, his cheek partly gone, the bridge of the nose missing, and also with his good eye and a portion of his good cheek," wrote Ward Muir, a British journalist who had worked as an orderly with Wood. "The shut eye must be opened, so that the other eye, the eye-to-be, can be matched to it. With dexterous strokes the sculptor opens the eye. The squeeze, hitherto representing a face asleep, seems to awaken. The eye looks forth at the world with intelligence."

This plasticine likeness was the basis of all subsequent portraits. The mask itself would be fashioned of galvanized copper one thirty-second of an inch thick—or as a lady visitor to Ladd's studio remarked, "the thinness of a visiting card." Depending upon whether it covered the entire face, or as was often the case, only the upper or lower half, the mask weighed between four and nine ounces and was generally held on by spectacles. The greatest artistic challenge lay in painting the metallic surface the color of skin. After experiments with oil paint, which chipped, Ladd began using a hard enamel that was washable and had a dull, flesh-like finish. She painted the mask while the man himself was wearing it, so as to match as closely as possible his own coloring. "...Details such as eyebrows, eyelashes and mustaches were made from real hair, or, in Wood's studio, from slivered tinfoil, in the manner of ancient Greek statues.

Here's one of the before-and-after photos accompanying the article:



The success of these masks were huge, per this testimonial:

"Thanks to you, I will have a home," one soldier had written her. "...The woman I love no longer finds me repulsive, as she had a right to do."

Facial disfigurement is one of those topics that grows in the imagination. So much of how we communicated, how we recognize, how hold our self-image has to do with what's above the neck. Appearance seems to matter almost as much as functionality, as the loss of an eye may be hidden with a patch or prosthetic eyeball, but a severely disfigured face calls attention to itself, especially on first apprehension.

I wonder if this is one of those, "there but for the grace of God" type emotions it evokes. Dear Lord, please spare me in your mercy. In a certain way, aging disfigures us in slow motion. I recently looked at photos of myself from twenty-odd years ago, and wondered where that confident-looking young guy was when I was in my twenties.

As for the show, so far Richard Harrow has only killed someone who richly deserved it. We have yet to see him in actual rage, and perhaps he has none, just a technical approach to assassination. Perhaps the development of his character will lead to his disfigured face somehow becoming mirrored by a disfigured soul.

For now, Harrow is our angel, if an angel of death. We're in sympathy to him, and we like Jimmy more for bringing Harrow aboard, even if for self-serving purposes. Loyalty does count for something, after all.

I leave it to the creators of Boardwalk Empire to make the most of Harrow, and continue to surprise us.

Back to Jersey

Now that the midterm election is finally over, and as we wait for the inevitable GOP overreach, it's time to return to the arts, specifically the television arts, and a new show that, eight episodes in, has become an addiction for the past several weeks.

I speak, of course, of HBO's Boardwalk Empire, which takes place in Prohibition Era Atlantic City and follows the web of crime surrounding and often led by Enouch "Nucky" Thompson, County Treasurer and king of the town.

There's the noted pedigree, of course, of Creator and Executive Producer Terence Winter of The Sopranos fame, and no less than Martin Scorsese, Executive Producer and Director of the tone/look-setting first episode. Like many HBO shows (including The Wire and Six Feet Under) it took sticking to it through a number of episodes before the hooks caught. I trace my first perking up to episode four, when Michael Kenneth Williams (all hail Omar from The Wire) finally received a great monologue to deliver in his role of Chalky White:



The final hook was the end of the following episode, when Kelly MacDonald as Margaret Schroeder brings the FBI to raid lead character Nucky Thompson's (Steve Buscemi) big private event and he responds by showing up at her door and initiating their romance. Since then the intrigue has heightened, the violence and sex ramped up, and whether it's entirely accurate or not, they makers are doing a notable job of creating a 1920's atmosphere, if in a way we've never quite experienced before. I expect they looked at films like Scarface and The Roaring Twenties for inspiration, 1930's pictures that basically depicted the crime scene of that era. It's particularly strong in the grotesques, most notably a disfigured World War I veteran sharpshooter wearing the type of mask that had to do in that pre-plastic surgery era, just introduced (with a bang) this past week:



It doesn't hurt that the character, Richard Harrow, is played by Jack Huston, grandson of legendary Director-Writer-Actor John Huston, known for him crime films himself. The show may also be a turning point in respect for Gretchen Mol, who goes the distance and then some as a showgirl with loose morals. In movie-actor-studded cast, Michael Shannon is another standout, playing sexually repressed (or perhaps heavily sublimated into his work) FBI agent Nelson Van Alden. Michael Stuhlbarg, coming off his genius lead in the Coen Bros A Serious Man, plays legendary Jewish mobster and World Series fixer Arnold Rothstein. And English actor Stephen Graham (Public Enemies, Snatch, This is England, Band of Brothers) plays a convincingly insecure, unpredictable and violent young Al Capone.

But the guy you really can't take your eyes off is Michael Pitt as James "Jimmy" Darmody, Nucky's protege and maybe (it seems hinted at) his son by way of Gretchen Mol's Gillian. Pitt first received notice in sexually provocative material, Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers. He's also worked with Gus Van Sant playing a Kurt Cobain-modeled character and has his own band, the Brooklyn-based Pagoda, where he leads as vocalist and guitarist. Not a typical career for a major leading man in the making, but that's what he feels like on this show.

Pitt's Jimmy is a war vet himself, carrying hidden wounds, having thrown away half a Princeton education and an out-of-wedlock child. His trajectory thus far has taken him from a backwoods booze hijacking gone wrong to Chicago where he's gotten in with Capone and his mob bosses, but it looks like he's headed back to A.C. soon (per this trailer for Episode 8):



Pitt is so period in his looks, the tempo of his movements, his voice and demeanor that you can easily imagine yourself watching this character, this actor in a silent movie from that era. His profile, in particular, seems straight out of the type of drawings found on magazine covers of that era. The perfect R-rated movie star -- every moment, you're wondering what he's going to do next.

If there's more to say about the show's themes or that of individual episodes, that'll have to be for another post. I'll just leave it that we're watching a world pretending to be on the up-and-up on the outside but drenched in corruption just through the door, where Prohibition is a public fig leaf but merely enables the powerful to dilute their liquor ten-fold and makes exponentially more money than they would have under full disclosure.

Come to think of it, sounds a little like post-Citizens United America. A little like the election that just kicked it off.