Letters to the Editor
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I like to read.
Please watch this show, then die. LMAO!
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Mad Men's Heart of Darkness
I agree about the dark undertones of Mad Men. It is redolent with a kind of bleak, almost surreal or dreamlike quality. Perhaps nostalgia, but in my case for a time I never knew, and wouldn't want to live in. But it's more than that. There's a heavy melancholic undertow. Draper is living a lie, powering through the only life he's got, running on booze and smokes, (albeit blessed a streak of creative genius), but without any of the tools for connecting with others that you only get from forming family bonds early in life. Wendy lives in a nightmarish half-light, cooking, cleaning, decorating, looking good, all for an audience of two, both of whom are prepubescent. Shame, boredom, dissatisfaction, jadedness all simmering under the crisp pageantry and jingoistic hopefulness of the post-war but pre-sexual revolution years.
I love this show so much.
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Three Things I Love Right Now
1) Your mom's ability to smell danger.
2) 30 Rock, which is so funny it will probably be canceled by the time I finish writing this.
3) That you called "Emperor's New Clothes" on Californication.
Rock on, Heather Havrilesky. Rock on.
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Californication
Thanks for registering what I have been feeling about "Californication" for some time now. While I had high hopes in the beginning, I am loathe to watch it any more. Every character is a sad cliche (the charming cad? the one who got away? shallow Hollywood types?) -- and is there any bigger cliche than writer's block? More problematically, lately I find the show to be downright misogynistic. Thumbs way down.
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Californication
What I have wondered since the first episode is this: do they have to pay a licensing fee the the people that own the "Emily the Strange" character for the daughter? I mean really, the swipe is ridiculous.
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I don't think Nancy Botwin's decisions are the worst ones being made
Look, we've got ethnic cleansing in LA. This is where the War on Drugs has led us. Racially segregated prisons and ethnic cleansing in LA.
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30 Rock
"Me Want Food!"
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Out of the Office
It's interesting reading your take on recent episodes of "The Office." I have found them to be boring, aimless, mostly unfunny and at points, just simply preposterous--Michael driving his car into a lake, Michael wandering off to be a hobo, the rise of Ryan out of nowhere, no one apparently capable of having a relationship with anyone OUTSIDE the office environment. Seriously, how on earth are Michael and Jan an actual couple? Sitcom convenience, that's how! Too many characters, too many characters not doing anything.
I am hoping that now that they're back to 1/2 hour episodes, some of the funny will return. I am not holding my breath.
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So THIS show made you realize Duchovny was a Hollow Man?
(To borrow the title of the only good biography of Bing Crosby ever written.)
Duchovny has always been hollow. On The X Files he was supposedly an impassioned True Believer determined to find the Truth That Is Out There? Where was his passion, his anger? I couldn't even buy into the character trait that was supposed to "humanize" him, having a traditional Bachelor Porn Pile next to his bed. For God's sake, he was an FBI Special Agent, and he never got enthusiastic enough about his job to draw his gun very much. I suspect his version of FBI performance was the real reason September 11 happened.
Or his other "star" performance, as the narrator of Showtime's softcore porn show Red Shoe Diaries. He read these supposed slut confessionals in the same tone as an airport baggage clerk asking if you packed your own bags. Oh, and the stock footage of him walking his dog along the docks in coastal Canada...or maybe the dog was walking him, since that was about Duchovny's enthusiasm level.
As for The Office, it bears the curse of most workplace comedies, only it wears it a lot worse. That curse is, there's nothing about these shows that carry much of the atmosphere of the real workspaces. WKRP in Cincinnati only occasionally gave the atmosphere or the feel of a TV station. Sanford and Son had nothing about the junk/salvage business. When has anything in that sitcom referenced anything about the paper business that mattered? Either the workplace matters or these shows should be called The Generic Company.
It almost makes me wish the paper firm in The Office was bought out by Primatech Paper in a hostile takeover, and those wusses were forced to go into the business of hunting down and killing Heroes. Seeing them get their brains eaten by Sylar would be one of the few times I might enjoy gore on TV, only Sylar would probably suffer under-nourishment.
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Talking TV
Reading Heather on Sunday is like talking about your favorite TV show with your best friend!
Sometimes you have exactly the same taste, sometimes opposite, but you always make each other laugh.
Pity it's only once a week...
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Making the temporary permanent?
Either way, "The Office" is consistently weird and hilarious, which is really the only fitting tribute to the deeply disturbed freaks and lunatics most of us work with day in and day out.
Ms. Havrilesky, that's no way to talk about your fellow Salon writers, now is it?
This season of "The Office" worries me. They're coasting, and the moments of actual funny are being undercut by slabs of zany filler to try to make up the difference, in hopes that the audience won't notice. But zany isn't the same as funny, unfortunately; it just isn't, and I know it when I see it. The hour-long format isn't doing them any favors; they need to cut back to a half-hour and quickly, to make it all lean and mean.
Maybe part of the problem is that they're trying to ride it into oblivion, dragging it out far longer than the UK original. You are right in pointing out the feel-good aspects of the US show, contrasted with the weight of the UK original -- but a prime-time American comedy can't really afford to drag the audience across comedic razorblades; it makes people too uncomfortable, makes them switch to something more reassuring. But sacrificing funny (even brutally funny) for the tropes of comforting wackiness, that's not so good. And I fear that "The Office" is doing that more and more.
And speaking of not the same as funny, Ryan's rise is alarming, threatening the delicate balance of the show. For the good of "The Office," he's got to go; he's a lead weight. There's just way too much of him for what little he actually brings by way of funny. The signal-to-noise ratio is not at all favorable to Ryan, but I'm afraid that B.J. Novak's apparent clout on the show will ensure that we get more, and not less, of him. Making Ryan the boss was a serious misstep.