At the conclusion of Season 6, the SCP partners had put Don on an open ended leave of absence, because even though he’s the main protagonist of the show, he’s also a scumbag that fucks anyone and drinks anything, and for the first time there were huge and obvious negative impacts to his work performance.  The firm has been split, with a satellite branch opening in Los Angeles, with Ted and Pete moving to Cali.  And Betty is skinny Betty, not fat Betty.

Don Draper

Don’s alcohol-soaked chickens have come home to roost.  Or some of them have.  Only Betty knows about Dick Whitman (I think?) so not everything is out in the open.  But Don’s drinking and fucking finally impacted his performance, when he crashed and burned last season with Hershey’s.  I actually liked the Hershey’s pitch.  But the first three episodes of season 7 have been fascinating for Don.  Always a secretive, self-made/self-destructive loner who is never comfortable being alone, Don recruits Dawn as a mole inside Sterling Cooper and feeds pitches to Freddy Rumson.  And trumping that, he goes bi-coastal with his wife, and elects not to inform her that he isn’t working.  Yes, maybe it is every married man’s dream to enjoy the benefits of being married, while enjoying the freedom of being a bachelor.  But dudes, eventually, the girls figure it out.  And they aren’t usually too pleased.  They think you don’t love them and stuff (because you probably don’t love them).

But as far as episode-closing scenes go, Don’s ending to ep1 and ep3 have been “best of the series” outstanding.  First, Don unable to close his patio door with snow pouring in, but also unwilling to make a simple and obvious fix that would allow him to shut it, leaving him freezing his balls off, does a fantastic job of mirror-imagining his entire life.  Isn’t all of this mystery and intrigue and sleaziness a little silly at this point?  But the “holy fuck did he really just do/say THAT” ending to ep3 is even a little bit better.  Going forward, I have to believe Donald Draper has a plan.  To the casual observer, it might not be a very good plan, but I bet the man has a plan.

Peggy Olson

Yes Don Draper is the protagonist.  But wouldn’t Peggy-as-lead-protagonist be at least equally fascinating?  And to some degree she obviously does carry a lot of the show.  Last season Ted was definitely leaving his wife for Peggy…until he wasn’t.  Peggy’s “well aren’t you lucky, to have decisions?” line to Ted toward the end of season 6 had just copious amounts of resonation.  It’s every woman’s comment to every man, ever.  Supposedly responsible men have failed Peggy throughout the series, which is why it’s interesting but not surprising when…

…she shows up in season 7 as the underling of another vaguely incompetent, argumentative, offensive man.  Of course as the enlightened new millennium audience that we are, I think most of us are constantly hoping for Peggy to finally make a real and lasting crack in the Sterling Cooper glass ceiling.  Especially when she’s compared to the LSD gobbling hippy orgy king Roger Sterling, the testically-deprived japanophilic racist Burt Cooper, and the whiskey soaked unavailable pussy hound Don Draper.  But Michael Wiener’s constant reminder to us is, THE FUCKING GLASS CEILING STILL EXISTS NOW!.  As of 2014 Women still don’t become creative directors or partners in these types of firms with any type of regularity, so why should Peggy get to win in 1969?  And even with all of that in mind, I still couldn’t see why Peggy was such a giant bitch to Don when she saw him (“can’t say that we really missed you here” fucking OUCH) until I remembered that he was a complete asshole to her throughout last season.

So far this season, the glaringly terrific triumph was the final 15 minutes of episode 3.  Don’s return to the office, set against Betty’s trip to a farm with Bobby, was simply exquisitely eloquent visual storytelling.  Don has never been so completely out of his element, and since Don needs to be constantly in his element in order to allow his social subterfuge to be effective, the discomfort for both Don and the audience is almost physically palpable.  As disgusting as he’s been, he isn’t full-on Walter White as Heisenberg, and you can still feel sorry for him.  The scene is magnificently shot, mimicking the hustle of an office while still flexing complex characters that now have 3-6 years of backstory.  And Don’s story is ultimately Betty’s/Sally’s/Bobby’s story too, seeing that Betty and Bobby are pretty likely permanently fucked up with out a solution is just as impactful.  Mind blowing, Emmy nominatable material, this.

Be back next week with look-ins on other characters!

The post Mad Men Season 7 Character Studies Part 1! appeared first on screensnark..

Chaos can be at once beautiful and completely destructive.  Chaos captured on film (when done well) is equal parts confusion and intrigue.  The mid-season finale of season 4 of The Walking Dead was all of the above, while still eliciting a tinge of the infuriating frustration that it had previously achieved in past seasons.

I’m sure it’s been typed before (maybe by me?  Last week?), but this show is at its worst when it gets bogged down in heavy handed dialogue while hitting repetitive plot points over the head with a sledgehammer into infinity.  Is it not then at its best when it shortens and simplifies the speechiness and instead lets both the length and the content of the sermons be dictated by action, tension, and suspense?

One way to project utter chaos onto the small screen is to throw so much action, tension, and suspense into one 42 minute stretch that it’s damn near impossible to follow everything that happened.  Yeah, I retained the big shit just fine.  Mexican standoff with a tank?  Got it.  Governor killed?  Twice?  Got it.  (For the record, stabbed through the heart, then shot through the head.  We’re led to believe.  Never showed a body, zombies didn’t devour, so anything’s still in play with the Governor if AMC gets ratings desperate around S6E16.)  Prison is completely trashed, turns out Lizzie is a cold-blooded killer after all (and may also be a rat-obsessed serial killer), and Herschel lost his head.  Finally, all of the prison dwellers have been scattered to the four winds, with little to no evidence of a fall back plan.

But the real chaotic beauty to this episode is that so much shit happened in so little time that I don’t really know who lived or died, and I have no idea who is grouped with whom going forward.  Yes, Governor and Herschel are dead.  But is the Governor’s woman Lily?  Are the semi-butch lesbians still with us?  I think it’s reasonable to assume that at least Lily and Lily’s sister’s girlfriend didn’t make it, and at least the latter took a Lizzie bullet to the forehead.  I know that Maggie and Glen are separated, but I have no idea who else is on the bus, if Bob Stuckey’s through and through bullet wound killed him, or if Baby Judith got consumed just like her mommy did.  Without watching the ep again, I’ll still have no idea.  But I’m not doing it, because watching all of those half-stories unfold over the next 2-3 episodes should make for fantastic TV.

Two major nits to pick.  First, if there was going to be a major battle at the prison between Rick’s people and Governor’s, why not do it at the end of last season?  Yes, so far the 4th season has been pretty far above average thus far, but inserting a prison battle at this point smacks of “oh shit we fucked up and the fans are pissed, let’s do something about it” syndrome.  Anyone binge watching this show is going to get through season 3, and then immediately WTF after they watch S4E8.  The show has also been notorious for milking characters and set pieces for every drop of ratings gold.  I don’t have a major complaint that they did it with the prison.  But they also did it with the farm, so its worrisome that the next time, the results won’t be this fulfilling.

Secondly, the season has been a bit predictable.  While the individual episodes have displayed the above chaos, from episode to episode, it’s been pretty damn easy to figure out what comes next.  People get sick.  People find cure.  Governor appears.  Governor takes over.  Governor attacks.  Also, I love the potential of the Lizzie serial killer storyline, but I did predict it about a month ago, and it seems to be playing out exactly as I suspected.  If they do it, great, but a few unexpected twists thrown in would be appreciated.  How about Tyrese suspects, then kills Lizzie in a fit of rage?  Or Daryl kills Lizzie because she was the cause of Carol’s exile?  Or one of the kids sees Lizzie being not so tough, and so he/she offs her?  But now I’ve predicted all of that shit too, so I just need to stop.

Briefly, I think my favorite scene of the ep was the dormant zombie crawling out from under the mud bank and biting the Governor’s adopted daughter, especially coming right after we were lulled to sleep by the zombie trying to cross the river and getting caught in the current and swept away.  It was classic horror movie suspense, and was just a little campy.  I loved it.

All in all, an exciting and dramatic conclusion to a thus far entertaining season.  Five things I look forward to the most in February:

1. Serial killer Lizzie resolution/Tyrese explodes/Carol returns.
2. Scattered groups trying to reunite
3. Increased zombie threat due to the lack of prison fencing protection
4. New locales to be explored, hopefully eventually branching out from rural Georgia (we’re still there in the comic after 112ish issues)
5. There’s going to be a grand cliffhanger, and this season I have absolutely no idea what it is

8/10

The post The Walking Dead S4E8 Review, “Too Far Gone” appeared first on screensnark..

It’s a topic I’ve often pondered: how would a serial killer fare during the zombie apocalypse? Is he a mass murderer capitalizing on the lack of law enforcement, or is he just super practical?

This week’s episode missed the mark for me.  I appreciate the direction the show is moving, and am generally satisfied with the season so far.  There hasn’t been a lot to bitch about, and that’s been nice.

My first problem with this installment was that we got an attempt at a character profile from writers and a director who clearly had little experience in presenting a TV audience with an examination of an individual.  There were moments in which the audience is allowed inside the Governor’s immediate perspective, such as him standing at the end of the pier admiring his anchored-zombie-depositied-in-a-pond handiwork, or Governor scouting out the lay of the land at the prison.  There were also moments where we are clearly outside his perspective, witnessing his ending of Martinez by way of a golf club (probably 5 or 6 iron).  This shifting of perspective makes it difficult to capture and present the Governor’s motivations, which are still murky at best, preventing the audience from truly understanding the character.  When One-Eye Bri brings the ruckus to the prison, I want to know why he’s doing it.  Is it to protect his replacement family, whom he was so reticent to engage with in the first place?  Does he want revenge on Rick and Michonne?  Or is he just a megalomaniacal despot who isn’t satisfied until he is not only running shit, but murdering anyone that he can’t 100% control?  This is where the fascination lies in this character, and this episode missed a golden opportunity to explore.  Since he’s very likely to be dead relatively soon (next episode?) I’m afraid this might be the last chance we had.

The other major issue I had with this episode was that it was likely at least a partial reset button for the entire season.  We closed out season 3 with the Governor leading a Woodburian assault on Rick’s prison.  Now with season 4 episode 7, we see the Governor outside the prison, contemplating another assault.  Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions, and maybe the still-murdering, still-manipulating, still-autocratic Governor is simply going to propose a truce between the prison dwellers and his ragged camp of non-zombies.  However, regardless of the outcome of the mid-season finale next Sunday, we’ve returned to the human vs. human confrontations that we’ve seen repeatedly over past seasons, and we’re moving away from the zombie threat that had resurface over the first five episodes of this season.  But if AMC was going to have an assault on the prison in season 3, they may have wanted to come up with a different idea for S4E8 than “assault on the prison”.

Not all is lost, as the episode had several stand-out cinematic shots that were gorgeous, which has been something that the series has missed out on.  One of the great advantages of the zombie apocalypse will be the serene beauty that will return to the Earth following the cessation of mankind’s destructive tendencies (cue Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth!).  It’s been a missed opportunity, because showing the zombification of humanity against the backdrop of beauty resulting from the end of civilization would be the great irony of the cataclysm.  But in this episode we get fantastic shots of the Georgia sunrise, and the aforementioned shot of the Governor standing at the end of the lone pier above a pond that is the definition of serenity.  Even the scene with Martinez and Mr. Governor hitting golf balls off the top of the RV showed the purity of the surrounding landscape versus the horror of the zombie pits.

It was also nice to see the Governor return to his murdering roots, but I would have preferred that his chess game be mapped out completely, with every piece falling exactly how he had planned.  I want my Governor to be so obviously smarter than everyone else around him, and more sadistic, and more manipulative, that his cult of personality is impossible to ignore and dominates the screen at all moments.  We got glimpses of that, but since he’s likely dying around 9:50 EST next Sunday, we’ll never be getting the Governor on full blast.  Unless they let him escape again.  I don’t think will, will they?  Unless they just have him kidnap Michonne or something.  Then we get 8 more episodes of David Morrissey, which could be great, but more than likely will be lukewarm at best.

I’m at least looking forward to the end of this two episode detour, which hasn’t derailed the season completely but did limit the momentum that had been building.  Hey AMC, don’t fuck up next week!

6/10

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As some faithful readers may recall, my review of last week’s installment of TWD had it positioned among the best the series has produced thus far.  Everything that holds the show back (dialogue that would never be spoken by actual humans, retreading the same plot beats ad nauseum, forgetting that zombies are what makes a zombie show a zombie show) was conspicuously missing, while we were given a great acting performance by Scott Wilson as Herschel, the satisfying resolution of the sickness plotline that had been driving the first few episodes, and a cliffhanger to leave the audience salivating with the hinting of the long-awaited Rick/Daryl confrontation.  It was everything I love about the show tied up into one action packed, suspenseful hour.

And then this week, we swing 180 degrees in the other direction (720 degrees?  9,361?).  Not only is the Governor back, now we know where he’s been, and where he’s going to be before he’s back.  I actually loved the first several minutes of what was essentially a horror montage of Philip/Brian’s rapid decent into madness.  I wouldn’t have minded if they had gone full bore with it, complete with visual stimuli, unintelligible voices mixed in with the music, etc.  I absolutely loved this shot, and thought that the entire episode was worth it just to get it:

This show is SUPPOSED to be over the top!  I don’t think they use insane artistic imagery like this nearly enough.  In the rush to achieve “Prestigious TV Drama” status and be counted amongst the Mad Mens, Wires, Breaking Bads, etc., the show has often lost track of what it is.  Imagery like the Governor standing in front of a blazing Woodbury building makes me think Scott Gimple has a decent handle on the level of bombast he needs to shoot for.  Sure, he risks spilling over into Camp Campiness, but fuck it, IT’S A FUCKING ZOMBIE SHOW.

The rest of the episode is literally torn straight from the first Walking Dead novel, Rise of the Governor, although the chronology has been screwed with a little.  After he’s ditched by his machine gun-wielding colleagues (Martinez and Shumpert, for those interested, I prefer to imagine that this Shumpert is the Knicks Iman Shumpert, although he’s 6’5″ and about to be traded) the Governor that we’re re-introduce to is a walking contradiction.  He’s at once fighting to remain anonymous but obviously craving human contact (as long as no one knows who he was), he meets a family similar to his old one but burns the picture he had kept since everything went to shit, and he doesn’t seem to think he deserves redemption, but his actions lead the viewer to believe that he’s actively penitent anyway.

It’s one thing for a person like the Governor to ask for forgiveness, it’s quite another for him to be forgiven.  I don’t think Walking Dead writers are asking the audience to forgive the Governor (does one ever get forgiven after gunning down a dozen or so innocents?) but rather they are asking the question, once a man has committed an atrocity, but there’s no one left in the world to punish him, where does he go, and what does he do with what’s left of his life?  It’s a fascinating question, and I hope it’s the primary focus of next week’s episode.

I have to confess that I was a little disappointed that we didn’t just jump right back into the prison shenanigans this week.  But what we did get could have been a major letdown (especially since AMC obviously only kept the Governor around at the end of last season because he was a ratings bonanza, HELLO SHOWTIME/HOMELAND/BRODY/DAMIAN LEWIS) and instead proved to be well shot, well written and full of intrigue.  From a season that could have been stagnant and full of repeated storylines, I’ve been thoroughly entertained from the outset.  We also have been given a perfect setup for the remainder of the half season, and I have nothing but good feelings right now from Zombie Apocalypse-ville.

7/10

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Hot damn, what a fantastic episode!

This was one of my favorite episodes of the series so far.  The show is at its best when it focuses on telling the story of a few people trying to survive the zombie apocalypse, and combines that with classic elements of horror.  The show loses the audience when it tries to tackle colossal social issues like race relations or when it delves too deep into specific inter-personal relationships.

This episode was a pedestal for Herschel, and allowed him to show off the depth of his character, from concerned father to medical professional to still-devout Christian to empathetic zombie killer.  Throughout the hour, Herschel was attempting the impossible, trying to save everyone from the sickness, while not getting sick himself.  All the while trying to avoid walkers while not letting any of the infected see someone else turn.  The episode was so Herschel-centric that I was more than concerned that this would be the last of him.  It was well-acted, well-directed, and well-written, and I was convinced that the old one-legged, snow-bearded, doodle-bugging semi-recovered alcoholic was gonna get himself bit.  But he managed to make it through, with a fantastic shot of him alone in a cell, sobbing over his Bible.

Which in my opinion should have been the last shot of the episode.  Without the minute long epilogue, I think this would have been my favorite episode yet from The Walking Dead.  We get the anticipated return of the Governor, who I wasn’t expecting to see again until episode 8.  I don’t think it was necessary at this point, and it definitely detracted from the quality of the individual story told on Sunday night.  We should get some (hopefully) fascinating backstory focused on the Governor in the next ep or two, either filling in details from his past (would be interesting) or letting us know what the dastardly villain has been up to since the end of season 4.  I hoping for off-the-rails, batshit crazy.  Take the gloves off completely.  Show him talking to his preserved but completely dead daughter.  Better yet, show him shacked up with Andrea’s corpse.  Let it fly, writing staff, don’t hold anything back!

The rest of the episode served as accompaniment to Herschel’s moment in the sun (or moment in the dark?).  Rick and Carl working together to off the biggest herd of zombies killed yet was touching, a real father/son event.  At this point, I think Rick is just hovering on the edge of sanity.  His decision making is haphazard and inconsistent, but it is still decisive.  His actions viewed long term are inconsistent and hypocritical, but  having gone through what he has, they would be at this point.  I’d like to see Carl ditch the, “but dad I’m all grown up” bullshit, but that’s just me.

So apparently the sickness is over with little fanfare, Daryl Dixon is back, looking for Carol.  This of course sets up the Daryl/Rick confrontation that was probably inevitable.  Rick has Maggie and Herschel already on his side, but I don’t think Daryl will be so easily swayed, even if Rick’s argument for keeping Carol away makes sense.  It will be interesting, because Daryl and Tyrese will both be super pissed off, for entirely different reasons.

Also, I’m still holding out hope that my Carol/Lizzy murderer theory is true.  There were still some signs of Lizzy being a budding sociopath (treating the zombie like a dog, playing with blood), so I don’t think we’ve seen the last of this yet.  I think we get at least one episode with the governor, then shit starts flying through the air in the last two before the mid-season break.  I’m excited, I think this is the best path the show has ever walked down.

8/10

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As an unapologetic supporter of the Walking Dead comic series, I constantly find myself desperately WANTING to like this show.  Even during the fallow period of Season 2, which is pretty much 100% undefendably horrible, I still had an intense desire for the show to be great in order to prove to people that it was worthy of being considered “more than just some stupid zombie show”.

I feel like now, I can step away from that undying allegiance a little, for two reasons.  First, the show is a ratings juggernaut.  No one can doubt that the show has achieved phenomenal popularity beyond any fanboy’s wildest expectations.  There’s always a sense of masturbatory validation when something that you’re plugged into from the jump explodes into the mainstream public consciousness.  It’s not seemly, but it’s there, and yes, it feels good that other people like something that I like!

Second, the public’s acceptance of comic books as source material for other forms of media has exploded, even since the first season of TWD aired.  For some reason, even though geek culture has exploded into movies, TV, books, and all other forms of media, the actual original source for the content is still shunned as “too nerdy”.  Movies based on comic book characters gross in the billions and TV shows based on comic books pull huge ratings, but discuss the comics themselves and be immediately ostracized as an OMG NERD.  It’s unfortunate, but the media being created from the source has shifted into the primary consumable blockbuster material, and that’s a major paradigm shift from even ten years ago.

So having removed my unyielding need to defend the show, I can be freed up to actually examine if it’s really good.  Super-ultra specific analogy: I’m a Steelers fan.  Our QB used to be Kordell Stewart.  He was my QB, so I had to defend him, no matter how terrible he was.  But then he wasn’t my QB anymore, he was the Bears QB.  And then, he was fucking terrible, terrible, terrible.

So what can really be said about The Walking Dead, halfway into the first half of the fourth season?  It’s been worse, but it always seems like it could be significantly better.  The biggest concern coming into the season was that the entire cast would be eternally bogged down in the prison, just like they were stuck by the invisible barrier that surrounded Herschel’s farm that kept everyone stagnant during season 2.  That’s been navigated nicely by sending various characters on road trips, while leaving Tom Green behind at the prison to play with snakes and have threesomes.

Other positives abound.  Introducing a quick-killing sickness, and tying it nicely with the zombies amps up the danger inside the prison, and uses the claustrophobia factor to double the fear quotient.  Having a mystery run its course through the first handful of episodes was also extremely effective, and I don’t believe that it has been solved, either.  It also never hurts to add two Wire alumni to the cast.  In my head, I keep thinking that the characters are named Cutty and D’Angelo, and really, why can’t they be named Cutty and D’Angelo?

D’Angelo Barksdale

Not everything is perfect.  The dialogue still sometimes feels like it was written by a 5th grader, while still being as heavy handed and cumbersome as humanly possible.  People don’t talk like that.  Maybe in the zombie apocalypse people talk like that.  But I don’t think this virus, or parasite, or whatever it is causes everyone to start talking like William Shatner.  Also, the show has always gotten away with presenting itself as possessing a “no one is safe” element.  They killed Lori, they killed Andrea, they killed T-Dawg.  But as the ratings grow, is AMC really going to risk killing Rick, Carl, Glenn or (gasp) Daryl?  Game of Thrones benefited from its source material in that George RR Martin killed off his main protagonist in the first novel.  But Robert Kirkman isn’t going to off Rick any time soon, and there’s no way AMC is killing off their version.  In a show based on fear, the audience’s main fear has to be that the hero might actually die.  The fact that Rick Grimes will never die strips out a significant amount of potential drama from a show that could frequently use an injection of it.

Crackpot Theory:  Carol didn’t murder those people.

1. The ten-year-old girl (Lizzie) killed the people because Carol told her she has to be “tough”.
2. Carol sees the murdered bodies and helps Lizzie cover it up, dragging the bodies and burning them.
3. Rick sees evidence that Carol is involved and calls her out, but Carol feels responsible for the Lizzie and covers for her, since she promised her father before she stabbed him.
4. Lizzie is deranged, and is feeding rats to the zombies, and is murdering her some motherfuckers.
5. Rick takes Carol out the prison with him, eventually deciding to leave her to protect her from Tyrese, but give her a fighting chance.
6. The murders start up again and are out in the open this time, proving that Carol wasn’t the murderer.
7. Rick realizes that Carol didn’t murder anyone, so he is guilty as shit because he left her out on her own.
8. Rick decides he has to go find Carol and save her.
9. We end episode 8 with it revealed that the Governor has captured Carol and is keeping her in his Woodbury torture dungeon, holding her in his Woodbury torture chair, with Andrea’s dead corpse still there.  Rick finds evidence that Carol might have gone back to Woodbury to live there, and we fade to black.

That shit would be the shit.  It won’t happen, because it would be pretty awesome, and if there’s one thing this show does not do, it’s things that are undeniably awesome.  But if that does play out, I’d be psyched.  I just realized that I didn’t really review this episode.  Sorry.  I might actually review next week’s episode.

8/10

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