The Strange World of Thomas P. Coombe

Mad Men: Just Like the Olden Days

I'm starting to think Mad Men would do well to spend a little more time at the office.  It's not that I watch this show expecting it to unfold like The Shield, or that I'm not enjoying all the small character moments.

 But, as Dave Itzkoff put it in the New York Times: "When your biggest revelation of the night is that Pete and Trudy Campbell are pretty good dancers, it may be time to pick up the pace."

 Spending more time in at Sterling Cooper -- where the British are keeping the Americans on a tight financial leash, where Pete and Ken are battling for the same job, where Peggy is blossoming and Joan is struggling -- might help liven things up a bit. And it would save us all from another repeat of "Sally Draper and the Case of the Missing Five Dollars."

 

The Strange World of Fletcher Hanks

While this blog is called Tom On TV, occasionally I like to talk about other things I like: movies, books, and comic books. This is one of those times.  

 Anyone who knows about Batman can tell you he was a pretty vicious guy in his early days. The Batman stories I read in the 1980s and 90s always talked about his refusal to kill. Fifty years earlier, the character had no such code.

 Still, the dark version of the Dark Knight has nothing on Stardust, the Superwizard, the vengeful, godlike "hero" of a series of comic books from the earliest days of the medium. He turns criminals into rat-like creatures, exiles them to faraway planets and imprisons them in ice.

Mad Men: What's the Matter With Kids These Days?

No matter what else happens this season on Mad Men, I doubt I'll find a scene as charming as Peggy's Ann-Margaret impression in front of the mirror. At work, she'd been part of a team working on a new campaign for something called "Patio," which apparently was an early version of Diet Pepsi. 

 

The plan is to put together an ad that rips off the opening scene of Bye Bye Birdie, with an Ann-Margaret look-like running toward the camera. Peggy's put off by the whole thing: the way her male colleagues respond to the actress, the way ad seems to be selling a product meant for women to men, the way Ann-Margaret sings. ("Shrill," says Peggy.)

Mad Men Season Premiere: Bill and Sam's Excellent Adventure

In the New York Times yesterday, Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner said his drama's third season would be about anxiety. It was an anxious time for the country, he argues: just getting over the Cuban Missile Crisis, the country would end 1963 with an even worse shock.

 "People were unsettled by this crisis," Weiner told the Times.

 People are unsettled as Mad Men began its newest season Sunday night. No one feels safe at Sterling Cooper , where the new British parent company PPL is cutting jobs. And it's Don Draper's birthday, which means he's ancious over turning 40. No, just kidding. Because it's not really Don Draper's birthday, but Dick Whitman's.

What I've Been Watching, Part IV

  When Funny People opened to a so-so box office and lukewarm reviews, people began asking if Judd Apatow's moment had passed. I'm not among those people, because I've yet to see the movie. Even if I had, I'm willing to forgive a lot from Apatow, thanks to his involvement with Freaks & Geeks. I finally watched the series over the last week or so, and concluded it's one of the best things ever to air on TV.

 For those of you unfamiliar with the show: When I say I watched the entire series in one week, don't picture me on the couch with an adult diaper, watching hour-after-hour of TV in a fog. Altogether, the show lasted only 18 episodes, and NBC aired 13 of them in the summer of 1999 (and probably at 3 a.m. or something).

At the Movies: In the Loop

Early in my time at my last newspaper, I sat down for an interview with two local officials, one of who had a legendarily foul mouth.

 I'd been warned about the guy ahead of time, but figured, "Hey, I've worked in a factory, and in restaurant kitchens. I've heard everything there is to hear."

 That was the first -- and only -- time the phrase "goat-fucking" came up in an interview. I don't even remember what the story was about, but I remember that moment. The interview was on my mind yesterday as I watched the British comedy In the Loop. It's about foul-mouthed political attack dog, an in-over-his-head government minister and the minister's press secretary, and the way the three men get caught up in the American debate over invading an unnamed Middle Eastern country.

 It's a very funny movie, but kind of an unpleasant one, filled with a lot of clever characters saying clever -- and often mean -- things to each other. It's hard to root for any of them, so maybe the best bet is -- as one reviewer suggested -- to close your eyes and let it work as a radio play. The dialogue is that good.

 The characters, both British and American, are at each other's throats thanks to Simon Foster (Tom Hollander), a British cabinet minister who gives an interview claiming that war in the Middle East is "unforseeable." This goes against the party line, and Foster only makes things worse in a follow-up news conference:

  "For the plane in the fog, the mountain is unforeseeable, but then it is suddenly very real, and inevitable."

 As reporters start asking who the mountain represents in the metaphor, Foster adds something about how it's sometimes necessary to "climb the mountain of conflict," a phrase that's immediately snatched up as the bumper-sticker slogan for the pro-war faction in Washington.

 Foster and his press secretary Toby (Chris Addison) are sent to D.C. by the prime minister to act on his behalf, although it becomes clear they're fairly clueless, caught up in a behind-the-scenes battle between pro and anti-war state department officials. Among the anti-war crowd is a general played by James Gandolfini, the closest thing the movie has to a hero. He's great, by the way, shedding Tony Soprano's New Jersey accent but none of the menace or gravitas.

 In the middle of all this is Malcolm, the prime minister's political fixer (the attack dog I mentioned earlier), played by Peter Capaldi, who just steals the movie. His Malcolm is a volcano of irritability, extremely creative vulgarity and pop-culture-themed insults.

(Various characters are referred to as "Ron Weasely," "the baby from Eraserhead" and "the lady from the Crying Game.")

 Capaldi introduced this character on a British sitcom called The Thick Of It, which dealt with a lot of the same themes as here (politicians saying stupid things in public), but on a smaller scale. The show was created by Armondo Ianucci, who directed In the Loop. When I watched it on BBC America years ago, Malcom's epic profanity was bleeped out, which, in a way, made it funnier.

 Tom Coombe