TV is Your Father Now

Television in 2008 was a bit on the slow side. Damn those writers and their legitimized complaints! Hollywood has never been about sensible contracts, it's been about paying millions to Jennifer Aniston.

With the writer's strike behind us we can get back to what we all know best: socially isolating routine. Television in 2008 DID have a few things to teach us, especially profound as we bring in the New Year. So now for the best and worst -- and those shows just shameful enough to guide our lives in the right direction -- I present TV Teaches 2008. Television has raised you so well, so heed its solid advice.

Learn from Your Disappointments:

True Blood

Lesson: Lightning does not strike twice. (And can't reanimate the dead.)

How did Alan Ball's knack for creating fascinating character studies on Six Feet Under translate into the lifeless caricatures of True Blood? How does a telepathic woman named Sookie Stackhouse -- who freely masturbates on her front steps AND hooks up with the undead and a shape-shifting man-beast -- manage to be that excruciatingly dull? I guess Alan Ball really is trying.

This show's still in the grave, struggling to claw its way out admirably with gratuitous nudity and slapdash violence. But a corpse is a corpse no matter how you dress it up. Here's hoping that second season finds its footing. And a pulse.

Weeds

Lesson: Like any good high, it eventually wears off.

Mary Louise Parker is still effortlessly stunning, even when her character makes absolutely no sense. Part of the fun of Weeds in its solid first two seasons was that willingness to go anywhere and subvert the family sitcom dynamics. But I'm not sure I like when "anywhere" consists of young son Shane talking to his dead father and masturbating to photos of mom. This is ditch weed, pure and simple; worth a couple laughs before you feel sick to your stomach.

Learn from Your Guilt:

The Real Housewives of Atlanta

Lesson: Money can't buy you happiness or talent, but it can pay for your divorce lawyer or someone to raise your child.

As with most reality television, you'll hate yourself in the morning, but not as much as you'll hate other people. Take the lineup of edited-for-their-degradation personalities this season:

Sherée wants to be a fashion designer, minus that whole design thing. With all that expensive planning for the debut party of her line, she can't be bothered to have any actual clothes to show for it. Meanwhile, Deshawn sets ridiculously high but spirited goals for her charity auction, while the Atlanta elite offer up disgruntled shrugs instead of bids. Her grand total? Zero dollars and everyone's condescending two cents. And then there's Kim, a twenty-nine-going-on-fifty mom who spends thousands of her "Big Papa's" dollars trying to put out her country album. If only she cared about music or could sing. There's also brash Nene and boring-because-she's-friendly Lisa. It's trash television that does society a service: it helps you look down on the people that look down on you.

Learn from the Best:

Summer Heights High

Lesson: You were the awkward kid in high school, and you still are.

HBO made a smart move picking this one up. Chris Lilley's Aussie mockumentary about personal lives at a public school is hysterical and his triple performance is just astounding. It's contrastingly sweet and crass, and consistently clever, and manages to transcend the format in a way that even Christopher Guest could respect. All the better that Lilley uses actual high school students to meld with his troupe of delusional characters. Also impressive that, as a comedy about high school, it actually manages to capture the atmosphere perfectly while still managing to be broad and offend absolutely everyone.

Mad Men

Lesson: The old days weren't any better, but you could drink in your office... Legally.

Drama with subtlety, rich in character and nuance, with episodes that merit repeat viewings? If you had told me I could find this on AMC, I would have told you to step out of the sixties and into the real world. This kind of quality is so rare nowadays, even on cable television. Even more marvellous that a show about selling an image actually manages to live up to the advertising. I'd say Don Draper is the new Tony Soprano, without the therapy and the mob connections. He's at the top of the world, unknowable and fascinating even to himself, and yet the cracks of the facade are starting to manifest and shake the ground of those in his path. I look forward to the elegantly marketed aftermath.

A Momentary Mad Man

I'm having a bit of a Mad Men fever recently. Maybe it's that I just watched The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency, or maybe it's that certain television shows are just bred better than others. Mad Men is high class, top shelf television. Not that models forced to live in a model house in aim of censored nudity isn't making someone's life richer.


Either route it's perfect advertising.

Yet there's something missing from television all too often, just about as much as exposed nudity. That something is writing, and Mad Men has more than its share. Not just story editors either, but living, breathing writers! The episodes have plots, themes, arc, and there has been nary an autopsy or a hit-and-run. Only on AMC... the network that has whittled the namesake American Movie Classics down to include to include Pet Sematary Two. When did they get all respectable like? The executives at AMC must keep the office bar stocked. That's how they do it at Sterling Cooper.


The ladies look padded and perfect, the men talk big and fall far; the politics, well... they're a little outdated. Were the sixties really a better time? Don Draper says no, I assure you. He's fighting on and off the job, stealing namesakes... And his wife Betty certainly wouldn't contest. Lately she'd rather take out the neighborhood birds with a gun.

Points in the first season had Mad Men feeling a touch heavy in its footing, but lately the characters have settled and their depths have been reached with a subtlety I so greatly value. Beautiful production, an ace and eclectic cast, and more than enough subtext for a course on Women's Issues or Business Management. And I've said it before and I'll say it again, Jon Hamm can sell anything.

These are some of my favorite moments of recent Mad Men... Miss Holloway, hold my calls.

The Gold Violin

ep. 7

All along it was the Draper Family responsible for Global Warming. Their after-picnic littering would cause audible gasps nowadays. The family outing's postcard perfection is quickly crumpled and tossed over discussions of kids tinkling outside and sticky hands inside the car. Hysterical, sad, telling and topical; one of the best uses of the show's period-piece element.

A Night to Remember

ep. 8

What is it about Joan Holloway? Played by Christina Hendricks she practically glows as she floats about the office; a seductive sizzle of red so easily capable of masking her torments. This episode featured a lovely and revealing moment when Joan removes her bra strap and caresses the indent beneath. There's so many layers under those so many layers. It sums up her character perfectly in a single image and it's shot like the heavens of Douglas Sirk.


Although it's called Mad Men it's actually the female roles stealing most of my attention. Set in the era of emerging women's rights, we follow Joan, Betty and Peggy's richly detailed struggle with matters of choice and power. Peggy's moving up the ladder of male dominance while Betty's moving out into the world, away from the home life that suffers.

On Janice Dickinson? Apparently the Russian girl hoards carrot cake.

The Jet Set

ep. 11

When TV shows hit their stride you get great episodes like The Jet Set. Oddly enough it's an episode where the lead character leaves his element and his usual setting, but in a way Don is forever outside his element, always selling and seeking something intangible. L.A. was fertile ground for Don's developing identity and I was surprised to approach the return flight with some hesitation...


No more poolside Don! But then I guess he isn't much different from the regular Don...


The episode also featured the show's third gay character, Kurt, whose office proclamation, "I'm homosexual. I make love with the men not the women," is so charming to me even still. Seriously classy.


It gives even more promise for future material, hopefully for Kurt as well as the closeted sadsack, Sal. Kurt just gave Peggy her Bravo-style gay makeover, meaning next season he could very well move into an L.A. model house. Even for a show set in the sixties, Mad Men is ahead of its time.