The Strange World of Thomas P. Coombe

At the Movies: The Last Exorcism

 My belief in a supernatural world has diminished as I've gotten older, but there's still a Catholic school portion of my brain that's somewhat terrified of all things Satanic. 

 Yet what I found more terrifying about The Last Exorcism -- the latest in fake-documentary horror, and probably the best thing the sub-genre has produced -- were all the nightmares visited -- or that appeared to have been visited -- upon poor Nell by the real world.

 In fact, the movie's abrupt, bizarre conclusion -- the source of anger among moviegoers who'd apparently have liked a less ambiguous ending -- would have been even more frightening and effective had it not tipped to the supernatural side of the scale.

 But that's one of my only complaints about the movie. (I'll post the other one below* to avoid spoilers. So be warned, they're on the next page.)

 Like I said above, it's easily the best of the fake-documentary horror movies I've seen. (The two that come closest are The Blair Witch Project, which started it all, and the Spanish movie Rec, which purports to be footage caught by a news crew of a zombie-like outbreak. It was remade in America as Quarantine, which wasn't bad, but lacked the old world, supernatural spin Rec put on the source of its zombie plague.)

Mad Men: Darling Don't You Go and Cut Your Hair

 A few weeks ago, Todd VanDerWerff of the AV Club wrote an essay comparing Betty Henry/Draper to Livia Soprano, the most frightening mother figure in television history.

 And while Betty hasn't put a hit out on Sally -- not yet anyway -- she's slowly becoming more monstrous. The more time we spend with the new Mrs. Henry, the more those comments about how Mad Men is actually the aduly Sally Draper's recollections in therapy seem on target.

 Actually, this week's episode -- which was almost as strong as last week's "The Rejected" -- finds 10-year-old Sally on her way to therapy after mom and dad decide she's out of control. The evidence against her: she chops off some of her hair, and is caught -- to borrow a phrase from Dr. House -- "marching the penguin" at a sleepover party. (Everyone else is asleep, and she's caught by a friend's mom. For obvious reasons, it's kind of a jarring scene.) 

 What's interesting here is the time Betty spends with the therapist, "Dr. Edna," before Sally has her first session. We've spent the episode -- and most of this season -- horrified by Betty's behavior towards her daughter, but with Dr. Edna, she's more sympathetic. (Note that she tells Betty to call her that, because it's "what the kids do." A telling line, although I doubt the therapist has had enough time to glean what we already know: Betty is herself still a child.)

 Hearing Betty talk about her own mother -- long dead before the start of Mad Men -- we realize she's only treating Sally with the same iciness her mom had for her. It doesn't excuse things like her slapping Sally or casually threatening to cut her fingers off, but as we reflect on what we already know about Betty's upbringing, we can see how she got this way.

 Livia died as unredeemed and malignant as when we met her. Maybe there's still hope for the former Mrs. Draper. 

 Other thoughts:

•  Most of the world was in love with the scene with Peggy on the scooter, and while that had its charm, I was more taken with the fact that she had to know how long the drinking bird kept drinking.
• Don to Faye: "Why does everyone need to talk about everything?" If Betty is this show's Livia, that was Don channeling his inner Tony Soprano, who longed for the days of the "strong silent type."
• I'll never get tired of Don's new secretary -- who, believe it or not, played Ralph Macchio's mom in The Karate Kid -- even if Don and everyone else clearly has.
• I wonder if it's an accident that the head Japanese businessman was named "Saito," the same name as the honor-obsessed colonel in The Bridge on the River Kwai.
• Roger's refusal to work with Honda -- and his outright hostility towards the company's reps -- was the only part of the episode that didn't work for me. 
• But I did like Don's scheme to win the Honda contract and outwit his self-proclaimed nemesis Ted Shaw. I realize the show can't do a client of the week story where Don, Peggy, etc. has to charm some new company, but I like when the show can pull off little capers like this one.

 Tom Coombe

  

What I've Been Watching: Mad Men Charms, True Blood Goes Nuts

 "I'm a little bit in love with stoned, yelling-over-the-music Peggy," I wrote last night during Mad Men's party scene.

 I've had one of these moments at least once every season. Yes, Joan is a goddess and the Betty Draper/Grace Kelly analogies are kind of apt, but my Mad Men watching heart will always belong to Ms. Olson.

 Anyway, I was more than a little in love with the latest episode, for the way it handled Peggy's story, made me realize I've actually missed Pete -- I loved how fatherhood spurred him into action -- and then managed to tie all the plot threads together.  

 Favorite moments: Peggy peeking over the office wall at Don after Alison quits; Lane giving Pete a snarky response after "I'm going to be a father," then rethinking it and genuinely congratulating him (most other shows would've ended on a caustic line); and as always, Roger Sterling, talking to Lee at Lucky Strikes after new tobacco regulations forbid them from showing athletes with cigarettes, and how they can get around it: "Bowling's a sport...how about horse racing?...Lee, the jockey smokes the cigarette."

 Least favorite moment: This was a very strong episode, but I could've done without the shot of Peggy and her new bohemian friends literally walking away from the assembled suits. It was a little on the nose, and was saved from being even more obvious by the decision to close not on that moment, but on Don returning home to his apartment and the "Didja get the pears?" couple. Nice work, by the way, by John Slattery (Mr. Sterling himself), who directed this episode, the first cast member to do so.

                                                                               ***

 After last week's episode, I joked to my girlfriend that True Blood could retitle itself "Blood and Fornication." (OK, I may have used a slightly different word.)

 This week had far more of the former than the latter, but frankly, I'm only watching the show for the non-Bill Compton vampires at this point. Eric, Pam, Jessica, Nan Flanagan and -- especially -- Russell* are all fascinating, and any time we leave them to spend with, say, Arlene or Jason or Sam and his snot-nosed brother, the show just gets stuck in a swamp.

 *I'll confess I had no clue who Denis O'Hare was before this summer, until he blew me away as Russell, True Blood's best villain so far. If you're a Stephen King fan, it's worth tracking down the audio book of Just After Sunset, where O'Hare is one of the narrators on "N," a truly frightening short story.

 But this week, any boredom I felt watching the human characters was washed away with that amazing, completely insane final scene. Why couldn't this show just have been about the vampires in the first place?

 Tom Coombe

 

What I've Been Watching: Rich Kids, Poor Kids, Mad Men

 Once again, I'm a little pressed for time, so I'll be combining my thoughts on three different shows into one post.

 The excellent critic Matthew Zoller Seitz gave this weekend's Mad Men the old Worst. Episode. Ever.

 While I don't exactly agree, I think his piece raises some good points -- especially where the Anna cancer story is concerned -- and, like whatever he writes, is worth the read.

 I mostly found "The Good News" to be frustrating, taking two promising storylines and cramming them together into one episode, so that neither of them really worked.

 Getting to see cold, intense Don Draper turn into the more likable, relaxed Dick Whitman for an episode -- and then back again -- was a treat. And a lot of Don's night out with Lane was a hoot. (Seeing Jared Harris respond to the shushing lady during the Godzilla movie in his pseudo-Japanese will probably never stop being funny). Either of these scenarios -- if stretched out over the course of an episode, sharing time with other characters' storylines -- might've made for a great episode. But using both of them, and then giving Joan so little to do with her story, made for a subpar episode. I don't think it's the worst -- there were a few episodes midway through last season where I was really bored -- but certainly not among this show's best. Let's hope 1965 will be as kind to the viewers, as well as to the folks at SCDP.

                                                                               ***

 A few weeks ago, my girlfriend decided -- pretty much out of the blue -- that she wanted to watch Gossip Girl. She'd never expressed an interest before, but she said that summertime called for something light and "girly." The plan may have been for us to Netflix them and then Megan watch the show on her own, but I started watching with her and now I'm sort of hooked.

 Slightly. I mean, it's not on the level of Lost or even Fringe. But there's something about the show that keeps me watching, even though I think the show could easily be retitled Pretty Rich Kids Making Bad Decisions.

 Because that's the plot of every episode: Person A either lies or hides the truth from Person B, then winds up red-faced when the truth comes out, usually at a party. Repeat for three seasons.

 All the same, I realize I'm not the show's target audience. And to be fair, the characters are all pretty likable, and the dialogue can be clever, even when the plots aren't.

 But what's made Gossip Girl especially interesting this summer is the fact that we're watching it concurrently with Friday Night Lights, a show featuring teenage characters who might as well be living on another planet. On Gossip Girl, the wrong-side-of-the-tracks family (laughably) consists of a young man who's been published in the New Yorker, his sister who interned with a world-famous fashion designer, and their dad, an aging rock musician who owns an art gallery in Brooklyn. 

 The richest kid on Friday Night Lights -- Lyla Garrity? -- wouldn't be allowed within a mile of most of GG's denizens.

 This was a show whose first season I absolutely loved when I saw it a few years ago, and then dropped during the disappointing second season.

 I decided to start from the beginning of season two again, and was disappointed yet again. The acting was still among the best on TV, and these were still the same characters I'd come to cherish in season one. As many, many people have said before, Coach and Mrs. Taylor (Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton) are among the best written/portrayed married couples on TV, ever, and I'd be happy if the show fired its younger actors and spent whole episodes with the Taylors as they flirted and fought.

 But...what happened the the almost documentary-like show about the effects of high school football on a small Texas town? Season two was far more soapy, with characters covering up murders and ripping off meth dealers. One episode even had a "good-kid-being-lured-back-into-a-life-of-crime" plotline that would've seemed dated 20 years ago. By all accounts, seasons three and four returned the show to its stronger roots, so I'm willing to ride this out.

 Tom Coombe

Mad Men: Bad Santa

  Given the nature of my TV watching habits -- a lot of marathon viewing, either through DVD, the Internet or On Demand -- I find myself watching the designated Christmas episodes of quite a few shows well outside the Christmas season.

 It's always a little off-putting: it's 90 degrees outside, and here's this show with a version of, say, "Let It Snow" playing on the soundtrack.

 Let's give thanks then to Mad Men, for airing a supremely uncomfortable, out-of-season Christmas episode, timed not to get us into the holiday spirit, but to have its characters end 1964 in unpleasant spirits.