Odds and Ends

It's the first weekend of school and Emmy weekend, so I'm trying to figure out how to balance all the things I'd like to do. I'm still fighting off a wave of exhaustion that hit me last night, causing me to fall asleep still clad in my clothes from the day, without brushing my teeth or anything, and then hit a combination of snooze buttons (phone and alarm clock) for two hours this morning, finally dragging my ass out of bed around 11. Which is not supposed to happen now that classes have formally begun. Waking up tired is one of those things that doesn't really get substantively better over the course of the day. Like, I had some coffee and I'm upright and all, but I just want to lie back down on the couch and stare at the ceiling for a while, or as my mother would say, "Rest my eyes." I'm debating whether or not to bake something for a barbecue tonight - people are supposed to bring something, but I don't have any fresh eggs and I don't feel like making something because I spent a good chunk of last night making this quiche:

Mmmm, delicious dairy goodness. With a delicious buttery, flaky crust, if I do say so myself. (I'd love to try to make puff pastry, but there isn't even approaching enough space in my kitchen. I thought about asking for a marble pastry slab for my birthday, but I've got enough shit in this apartment without adding mostly useless kitchen tools. Logic is the only thing keeping me from acquiring things like a pasta maker and a butane torch.)

I could make something with pre-fab dough, but that seems so half-assed. Ultimately, I'd rather just hang around my apartment awaiting the things that *fingers crossed* are supposed to be coming in the mail today - the next Sons of Anarchy disc and my copy of Mockingjay - but I'm the social chair for my grad program this year, so I feel like I should be...social.

I might try to do a live-blog on Sunday. It's probably something I won't officially decide until 7:50 that night. I've got another beginning-of-the-school-year event immediately beforehand, so we'll see what happens. Same for a prediction post - I don't feel sufficiently well-versed in all the shows to offer "Should Win" opinions, and I don't have any radical theories that would make "Will Win" predictions dramatically different from any of the other ones that are out there. The Emmys, like any other entertainment academy award, are a mix of talent, quality, familiarity, laziness, and hype; it's difficult to know in any given year which will factor most in any given category. Plus, they don't have a stream of precursor awards like the Oscars - other bodies (Hollywood Foreign Press, SAG and other guilds) give their television awards at the same time as their film awards, around the turn of the calendar year.

Some predictions/opinions from other writers:

Dan Fienberg

Alan Sepinwall (comedy/drama)

Alessandra Stanley (Her point about the Emmys needing to diversify is a good one, but her evidence isn't grounded in points about the specific television season being considered in this particular go-round.)

The Envelope/Gold Derby blog roundup

Finally, I can't tell how much is actually thinking this looks good, and how much is loving the song choice in "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore," but I'm officially psyched about this show:

AMC's got a fairly solid batting average so far, and I like that TV seems to be increasingly recognized as an adaptive medium that offers the potential for more depth than film.

A Sweet Postscript

I totally forgot one!

I love baking and have middling feelings about cooking, so I'm way excited about this new edition of Top Chef. I foresee a lot of late Wednesday nights with some butter, sugar, flour and eggs and Thursday mornings where my friends and classmates get showered with baked goods.

Books Read: July 2010

July 4: How Did You Get This Number by Sloane Crosley

July 5: I Know I Am, But What Are You? by Samantha Bee

July 8: For You, For You I am Trilling These Songs by Kathleen Rooney

A trio of good essay/memoir works. Rooney was more serious than I anticipated, and came across as very much the former English professor (for better or for worse), though I will likely make copies of her excellent professor's lament on plagiarism, "I Will Catch You" for my student-teaching friends. Crosley was somewhat less funny in this work than her first, but also more thoughtful. Bee's candor, perspective and humor regarding her past made her book a standout.

July 11: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

July 24: Scott Pilgrim's Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O'Malley

I may revisit this one after I see the movie, if only because I'm curious to know how the disparate endings compare. I like the closure that O'Malley gives to Knives and Kim, and the return of Envy, but the Gideon/Ramona arc gets too muddled to me in the path from Volume 5 to Volume 6. Gideon comes across as flat when compared with many of the preceding exes, and I'm not sure that Ramona is any less enigmatic upon the story's conclusion.

July 24: The Baby-Sitters Club: The Summer Before by Ann M. Martin

A lovely little bit of nostalgia. Martin's new prequel recaptures the characters of the initial four babysitters in all their tween glory. It reminded me of youthful summers and hours whiled away absorbed in the world of Stoneybrook. If I'd been home when I read it, I'd probably have gone rummaging through the attic looking for the old books for a lost weekend of reminiscing.

Screened: July 2010

Working my way through the backlog!

July 2: The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

Screened: In the theater

As I'm sure is fairly obvious, a lot of my enthusiasm for the Twilight phenomenon has waned, but I can still recognize that this was by far the best film overall and the best adaptation of the three released so far. There's a lot going on in Eclipse, but David Slade and Melissa Rosenberg did a great job of condensing the book, especially the flashbacks focused on Rosalie, Jasper and the Quileutes. It was also Taylor Lautner's best outing so far as Jacob; I'm still skeptical about his chances as far as successfully communicating the whole teenager-in-non-pedophiliac-love-with-a-baby deal, but he does seem to be growing as an actor.

July 6: Remember Me

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

I was spoiled on the "big twist" of Remember Me back when it was out in theaters, so I was anticipating the film's dramatic trump card. I think there's probably a good film to be made around everyday lives interrupted by tragedy, but Remember Me piled so much moody drama on its protagonists prior to the climax that it was hard to appreciate the things that it did well.

July 10: When in Rome

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

There has to be a resurgence on the horizon for romantic comedies, right? Where the powers that be decide to trust the chemistry between a given pair of actors rather than strained contrivances? It would just be too grim if this was a portent of things to come.

July 15: Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Screened: At home, on TCM

July 18: Inception

Screened: In the theater

There's no question that Christopher Nolan is one of the best directors working today at executing intricately designed set pieces. At its best, watching Inception was like watching a complex puzzle putting itself together. It was a nail-biter - I literally chewed off one of my fingernails while the film made its way through the tense segment of layered dreaming. I can't help but wonder whether Inception might have been even better as a second film - I keep wishing that we could have seen more of "extraction" before we got to "inception." A film focused solely on extraction could have established all the exposition that Inception's universe needed and given more depth to the characters, while the themes that shape the idea of inception could have more room to breathe, and the ultimate ending to Inception wouldn't need to be different. This is all purely speculative, of course, just sort of thinking "aloud."

July 22: The Runaways

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

A good movie, but trying to do too much with too little time kept it from being great. The film had a sense of not knowing which of its interesting subjects to follow, which wouldn't have happened if whoever was in charge had decided to focus the film specifically on Cherie Currie rather than "The Runaways." Still, solid performances from Dakota Fanning and Michael Shannon, and probably the one role in her filmography that's best-suited to Kristen Stewart's particular persona.

July 22: The Prestige

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

July 24: I Capture the Castle

Screened: At home, Netflix Instant Watch

I started watching Memento, but found myself dozing off about 45 minutes in, and that's really not the kind of movie that forgives a brief nap in the middle. So I switched to that old reliable standby of drowsy weekend nights, the Brit-lit adaptation. A lovely little movie that shows economy in adaptive storytelling and gets at the heart of Dodie Smith's wonderful novel.

July 27: Good News, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Big Chill

Screened: At home, personal collection

A trio of rewatches perfect for puttering around the apartment, crossing items off my to-do list and knitting gauge swatches. Good News is climbing up my list of favorite musicals - the "jock falls for smart girl" story is one of Hollywood's favorite tropes, but I love that Good News gets resolved without the heroine having to change anything about herself. It's probably as feminist as 1940s MGM musicals ever got.

July 29: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Screened: At home, on HBO

My thoughts haven't changed much since my initial impression, but I will say that Emma Watson's performance improves upon repeat viewing. Hopefully, the degree to which she's tapped into the emotional core of Hermione's relationships with both Ron and Harry will enhance the Deathly Hallows detour into Melodrama In The Woods.

Week in TV: August 15-21

True Blood

- It's time to pull the cord on both the "What is Sookie, really?" story and the "What's the deal with Jason's girlfriend and her weirdo relatives?" story. They passed suspenseful a few weeks ago, and we're heading into "audience impatiently twiddles their thumbs" territory. Having read the books just means that I'm that much less interested in the overplayed mysteriousness of it all. It's answer time.

- I understand why, narratively, there's no incentive for the characters to all go to therapy, no matter how much they may need it, but I was glad to see Tara going to the rape survivors meeting this week. I like that the writers have imbued her with a new sense of perspective in the aftermath of last season and the Franklin debacle. Heaven knows, someone in this story needs to make strides towards consistently embracing logic.

- Denis O'Hare's agent must've clapped their hands with glee upon the conclusion of this episode - that last scene is one for the reel.

Mad Men

- A great episode, well-directed by John Slattery. I particularly liked the way he utilized the show's set to give a sense of layout to the new office - Pete's office, Peggy's office, the setup of the focus group, the shot down the hallway as Allison finally snaps and yells at Don, the hilarious shot of Peggy peeking into Don's office after the fight, the final shot of Peggy and Pete looking at each other through the glass wall. SCDP is finally starting to approach the familiarity of its predecessor. Slattery also got the best tandem performance from Elisabeth Moss and Vincent Kartheiser since "Meditations in an Emergency."

- There's something very satisfying about seeing Peggy make friends with other people her age who work in creative fields. Where it was once a radical step for her just to be a woman copywriter at her firm, now she has to decide whether she wants to become a radical woman in her 1965 milieu. Weiner willing, this will coincide with a decreasing interest in tolerating Don's shifty bullshit. I hope we'll see more of Joyce - I really liked Zosia Mamet in United States of Tara and The Kids are All Right. I'll also say that I loved Joey's "yeah, duh" reaction to Peggy asking if he'd heard about Malcolm X being shot. She's still got a ways to go.

- So, a Gen-X Campbell in the pipeline. I can't be the only one imagining a St. Elmo's Fire-style preppie nightmare, right?

Rubicon

A good episode, in that it stepped back from the conspiracy a bit to tell the audience more about the analyst group - a necessary, but deftly executed expository episode. The discussions among Will's co-workers reminded me a bit of The West Wing in the pure wonky delight of watching a debate play out.

Huge

- After watching the pilot weeks ago, something prompted me to dive back into Huge with a Hulu/On Demand mini-marathon. I'm glad I did - it's in the same camp (no pun intended) as other well-written, well-acted ABC Family shows like Greek and 10 Things I Hate About You. It's refreshing to see a show where the writers understand how teenagers speak and interact with one another, and that features a varied ensemble of characters without valorizing or demonizing any out of proportion.

- One of the best things about the Twilight phenomenon? Satiric fake Twilights in teen shows. The girls-bunk hysteria over "Phantasma" (about a girl who moves to a new town and falls in love with a mysterious boy...who's a ghost from the 1700s. They can never touch! It's so romantic!) was pitch-perfect and completely hilarious.

- I'm pretty sure me as a tween is encapsulated by some combination of Becca from Huge and Alex from Modern Family. As someone who once got called "that girl who reads" by a contemporary, I identify so much with the shy girl who keeps her head in a different book every day. True Confessions of Nerdy Youth: Once upon a time, like Becca, I went through a period where I wrote my journal in runes as an extra privacy safeguard. I know.

Also Watched: The Big C, Top Chef, Degrassi: The Boiling Point

Ongoing:

Deadwood, Season 3, Episodes 8-12

- A good run up to the end, though you could see the effects of the show being written without its creative team initially knowing that they weren't getting a fourth season. However, the episodes did a beautiful job of showing the sense of community that grew around the characters of Deadwood. There was something oddly touching about the scene of Al's men standing sentry in the street as Alma completes her walk to the bank post-shooting in "A Constant Throb," and the sense of grief around Ellsworth's death in "The Catbird Seat" made up for the loose ends remaining in the finale.

- I've got other shows in the pipeline, but I wouldn't be averse to someday taking on John from Cincinnati. Certainly this new acquaintance with the David Milch oeuvre makes me more interested in checking out Luck when it comes along.

Rewatched:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 2, Episode 17, "Passion"

- Now that I've finished my month-and-a-half race through Buffy's entire run, I can pick and choose among the reruns aired daily on Logo. In retrospect, this may be my favorite episode of the series. I had enjoyed the show up until this point, but this was the first one that I watched where at the end I couldn't wait to start the next. The episodes I liked best were the ones that clearly demonstrated the stakes involved in challenging whatever villains were at hand - a necessary part of building tension over a 22-episode season is talking (a lot) about the threat, but the moments where that threat really lands are the best. "Passion" is an exquisitely tense episode - it's clear that the newly de-souled Angel is going to do something terrible, just not where or when. The episode's use of a particular piece of vampire mythology - the need for an invitation into a home - only heightens the sense of creeping menace. (It's in episodes like this that you can really see what Stephenie Meyer lost in discarding traditional vampire mythology for Twilight - if I were doing work on either one, I'd definitely try to remark on the polar opposite ways the whole "vampire boyfriend watching you sleep" thing works in this episode and that universe.) The scene where Giles discovers the horrifying tableau set up at his house is one of the series' best. By adding a familiar face to the list of Angel's terrible deeds, the show dramatically underscored the stakes involved in him losing his soul, which would resonate through both Buffy and Angel.

- I'll probably talk more about Bones once the regular season starts, but I will say that watching Buffy and Angel has made me appreciate Bones more. Bones managed to find the happy medium between David Boreanaz's performances as good Angel and bad Angel - Booth is driven and principled, but also has the joie de vivre that makes Angelus kind of fun, even when he's being evil.

5 New Shows I'm Excited About This Fall

Boardwalk Empire (HBO)

The promos for this show make me want to jump up and down screaming like a teenager who's just spotted her favorite heartthrob. I'm a sucker for lush period detail. It looks like HBO's "Not so fast, AMC! Watch your back, FX!" bid for new original cable programming dominance in the 2010s.

Lone Star (Fox)

I don't think I talk too much about how much I love soaps, but: I Love Soaps and I have a special place in my heart for primetime soaps. This simultaneously looks like a throwback to old-school classics like Dynasty and Dallas, and like its own unique contemporary show.

Undercovers (NBC)

As an Alias fan from back in the day, I'm probably part of the core audience NBC is aiming for in advertising this show as being "from" J.J. Abrams, though he's not the showrunner. Even if he's not that involved, I'm still excited to see a major network throw its support behind a show like this with black leads. And who knows, maybe they can get Carl Lumbly in there somewhere as, like, someone's super-awesome spy uncle or something.

Raising Hope (Fox)

Greg Garcia showed a particular flair for depicting the human capacity for tacky behavior on My Name is Earl, and it looks like he's returning to the well here. (If he wasn't doing this, he'd probably be an ideal writer for Showtime's upcoming remake of Shameless.) Beyond the premise, I'm really intrigued to see Garrett Dillahunt and Martha Plimpton do comedy - I've only ever seen them in dramatic roles (in Dillahunt's case, predominantly killers and/or sociopaths).

Hawaii Five-O (CBS)

I don't really have any interest in CBS's determination to make Alex O'Loughlin happen (he seems likable enough, I guess, but if this tanks too then I think maybe CBS should re-evaluate their strategy), but as a card-carrying nerd I'm super-excited to see Grace Park and Daniel Dae Kim get more work. Plus, while I prefer more serialized shows, I always love to add a good procedural to the mix.

Week in TV: August 8-14

True Blood

Always good to see everyone getting back in Bon Temps - the out-of-town storylines aren't bad, but they make the seasons feel disjointed week-to-week. It'd be nice to see Bill and Sookie decide to spend some time apart and then actually do that for a sustained period of time, but I guess there's always Season Four. Hopefully, Alan Ball and his writers will put a bit more temporal distance between seasons three and four - when you step back and consider that it's maybe two months from the beginning of the first season to now, everything feels kind of crammed together. More space in the pacing could really make the show feel less...frantic.

Mad Men

- I'm sure that this is the kind of episode that a certain contingent of Mad Men fans despise (the kind who think the show would be better with Betty gone entirely) but I kind of loved it, though it was definitely meandering plot-wise. A big factor is the degree to which I love Anna Draper - she's probably my favorite of the show's range of tertiary characters. Don's been acting like such a sleazy lush recently, and Anna represents such a fresh breath of air as the woman who "knows everything about [him] and...still love[s him]."

- A standout episode for Jared Harris; Don and Lane drunkenly watching the Japanese monster movie was one of the funnier things I've seen on TV in recent months. And I'm intrigued to see how the dynamic between Joan and Lane continues to play out; their irritated sniping at one another played like one of those things that becomes significant in retrospect once you reach the end of the season.

Degrassi: The Boiling Point

The new format has worked well, and hit a high point this week with the "My Body is a Cage" two-parter, which featured the show's best-executed storyline in years. (I keep meaning to mention how much I love that they've switched to contemporary song titles.) Utilizing the daily structure well, the writers did a good job in past weeks of slowly integrating Adam as a new student and then focusing episodes on his being transgendered. Jordan Todosey deserves serious acclaim for her performance as Adam - she frequently kept the story emotionally grounded and kept it from veering too deeply into after-school special territory. (Seriously, whatever the Canadian equivalent of an Emmy is, she deserves at least a nomination.)

So You Think You Can Dance

- A satisfying conclusion to an underwhelming season. Though both Kent and Lauren were solid throughout the season, I think Lauren showed just a bit more skill and versatility across the different genres. I won't write too much about what I think the show needs to fix, but I will link to an Entertainment Weekly online piece that clearly addresses some of the show's most pressing problems.

- I didn't comment on it in the relevant week, but as I watched the Top 4 show back again, I was really struck by Adechike's "where I came from" package. The producers behind the show could have pushed his "story" so much more - I mean, "young black urban male finds himself through dance, with assistance from the High School of Performing Arts"? That's, like, 1/6 of the plot of the original Fame - it is literally cinematic. I try not to be a conspiracy theorist, but being the third-best guy in his season puts him in the same company as All-Stars Pasha, Mark and Ade, and it never seemed like he was getting a comparable level of respect or admiration from the judges.

Rewatched:

Pushing Daisies, "Pie-lette" and "Dummy"

From one of those moods where boredom conspires with Netflix Instant Watch - I own the DVDs, but they're on loan to a friend. Things I forgot I missed about this show, in no particular order: Digby, all the pies, the coroner, and the way Jim Dale says, "The facts were these."

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Decided to give it another watch, since The Collected Works of Joss Whedon seems to be the summer's overarching project. It's interesting that there's not really any dancing in Dr. Horrible - it's not absolutely vital to all musicals, but most do have some. I'd love to see the kind of eye he might bring to a feature musical, since the big ones these days seem to be guided by choreographer-directors (Shankman (who choreographed the famous Whedon-directed Buffy episode "Once More with Feeling")/Marshall/Ortega). The part of my heart devoted to wishing fervently for a big-screen take on Company thinks Whedon could do a good job with it - cynical/funny is sort of his sweet spot.

Also Watched: Rubicon, Top Chef

Week in TV: August 1-7

True Blood

More Action Tara - I'm particularly impressed by her dogged refusal to forgive Bill for leaving her at the mercy of Franklin and the Mississippi vamps (in addition, as of this episode, to nearly killing Sookie). This season has dragged a bit with the plot-stretching between the more over-the-top sequences - like this week's detour to wherever Sookie went in her blood-free coma (Fairy Heaven? Fairy Purgatory?) - but I'm optimistic about the coming weeks. It looks like most everybody's returning to Bon Temps and Denis O'Hare is really dishing out some scenery-chewing fabulosity, so hopefully the run up to the finale will be as wonderfully crazed as it was last year.

Mad Men

- Man, even for Mad Men that episode was grim. I love that the episode drew on the show's past - Glen Bishop returns to offer Sally the sympathetic ear she's been craving since even before her parents' divorce, Freddy Rumsen gets back into the game with his former employees, newly sober but feet still firmly planted in the prior decade, and the Christmas party recasts Sal's Lee-Garner-placating firing as establishing a dangerous precedent for the men in charge of SCDP. It makes the show's universe feel more lived-in and cohesive, and respects the audience's ability to engage intelligently with the show without being too "hey, check out our righteous continuity" about it.

- The A.V. Club did a great Q&A recently about distracting actors, a concept to me that is particularly relevant in period television. Some actors just don't blend into the Mad Men milieu - they read as too 21st-century, or I've seen them in too many other things - Nora Zehetner (Don's indulgent neighbor), for whatever reason, is one of those for me.

Rubicon

I'm reserving judgement for a few weeks - right now, it's intriguingly oblique, but that could quickly turn into "frustratingly mysterious" depending on how long it takes for the show's conspiracy to unfold.

Friday Night Lights

If this season finale was any indication, next year I'll be drowning in tears when FNL comes to a close. While I liked the new characters introduced this season, I loved that "Thanksgiving" drew upon some of the show's best-established relationships - Matt and Landry, Tim and Billy, the Taylors - for the grandest emotional beats of the finale.

Ongoing:

Deadwood, Season Three, Episodes 5-7

- It feels like Deadwood added a few too many new characters in the third season (I like Brian Cox, but the theater troupe is not working for me) but I'm a big fan of Cleo King as Aunt Lou and the way that she infuses her performance with subtle code-switching based on Lou's varied interpersonal relationships.

- Speaking of distracting actors in period shows, something about Omar Gooding showing up really threw me. I guess I just watched too much Wild & Crazy Kids back in the day.

Star Trek: The Original Series, Season Two, Episodes 1-4

I watched all of the first season in a week-long binge last year right before the movie came out, and this week finally decided to start back up.

- A lot of the Star Trek 2 speculation seems to have focused on which classic villain might get a reboot with the new movie's altered timeline, but I'd really like to see them give the ass-kicking 21st-century makeover treatment to Christine Chapel. An assertively reimagined Chapel could make a great foil for McCoy and/or Kirk.

Also Watched: Degrassi: The Boiling Point, Covert Affairs, Top Chef, So You Think You Can Dance

Week in TV: July 25-31

True Blood

Fantastically gory, with special merit for the excellent new badassedness of Action Tara. And with shapeshifter dogfighting, Sam's messed-up family finally becomes as interesting as the rest of the active stories. Hopefully the latter half of the season will grant Sookie a degree of perspective and a renewed sense of self-preservation, since she's been behaving as though she doesn't have any sense at all. I don't want to become one of those people who harps on the differences between the books and the show, because I do believe that the show has distinguished itself as its own distinct entity. However, I do think they could introduce some more of the essence and tonal beats (and timeline spacing) of the books alongside the characters they've started to bring in. In the books, especially the later books, Sookie has a very clear "better the devil you know" sense of what her relationship is with the vampires in her life - for all of Sophie-Anne's foibles, Sookie recognizes that she allows her to live her life in Bon Temps where other monarchs would force her into service. There's no sense of a comparable sort of recognition in the show, and I think Sookie's character this season has suffered because of it.

Mad Men

- 1964 and 1965 were such major years for civil rights, this has to be the season the show stops being polite and starts getting real with race, right? It's easy to point to political advancements - the Civil Rights act in 64 and the Voting Rights Act in 65 - but there are also social and cultural shifts happening that would be impossible to ignore, particularly for an agency selling itself as being on the cutting edge. A lot of reviews I've read have wondered if the show will directly acknowledge Beatlemania, but it's also the heyday of Motown - the Beatles frequently traded number ones with the Supremes. Sidney Poitier won his Oscar in 64, and at this point was on his way to becoming a marketable star in his own right in a way a black actor had never been before. Add this to the increasing visibility of the civil rights movement on television - for example, Fannie Lou Hamer's speech for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the Democratic convention the summer before this season starts - and it seems pretty clear that this is the time for Mad Men to venture beyond elevator operators and maids.

Don and Roger specifically cite Pete's recognition of the potential in marketing to a black audience in "Shut the Door. Have a Seat," and it would seem to be a rich well to go to if SCDP continues hurting for clients. What the show really needs, in my opinion, is a black Rachel Menken - it doesn't have to be a woman, though that would be pretty awesome - a client who comes into the agency with a forthright manner, a clear sense of what they want and no illusions about the personnel. The show sketched Conrad Hilton so vividly last season - why not do something similar with, say, the Johnsons (or a New-York-based contemporary)?

- Joan got an office!

- Aaron Staton stays in (though no sight of Ken in the premiere), Michael Gladis and Bryan Batt leave. (While Jared Harris and Kiernan Shipka get bumped up to regular cast member status. It's astonishing how much older she looks, just in a year's time.) With Lucky Strike still a major client of the firm, it's sadly unlikely that we'll be seeing Sal again anytime soon. I'm intrigued to see how Ken comes back into play - I believe he was the highest-ranking person left at Sterling Cooper after the events of the finale, so presumably he stayed there, but I wonder if the creative elements of his character (short story-writing and such) that the show has introduced in the past will come into conflict at all with McCann's allegedly soulless way of conducting advertising.

- It's a small thing, but I love that Don did bring Allison over to SCDP to be his secretary. Compared with, say, Lois and Jane, she was like a shining beacon of competence in the third season.

Degrassi: The Boiling Point

Two favorite characters getting spotlights this week, which is always awesome: Riley, who is such a tormented wayward soul, and Claire, who rocks because a) she's smart, b) she's willing to be a voice of reason where there frequently is none, c) she's way better than her lame, nutty sister, and d) she never lets the opportunity to tell Jenna what a man-stealing ho she is pass her by.

Friday Night Lights

Vince's story got a little too Boyz N The Hood there for me, but Michael B. Jordan and Jurnee Smollett made it work on the emotional side. All in all, a pretty smooth penultimate episode, what with all the piece-moving that needs to happen for the finale.

Ongoing:

Deadwood, Season 3, Episodes 1-4

- As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, there's a lot of shows I'd like to watch or revisit now due to Deadwood. The terrific slow burn Timothy Olyphant does in these episodes made me regret missing Justified when it aired earlier this year. One for the Netflix queue.

- It wasn't as bad as the second season's "Al passes a kidney stone" story, but Alma's pregnancy woes just made the show's depiction of nineteenth-century frontier medicine *that* much ookier.

- Janie Bryant's received a lot of press in the past few years for her work as a costume designer on Mad Men - it makes sense, as the fashions of the 1960s are easier to incorporate into twenty-first century wardrobes than those of the 1870s - but her work on Deadwood is gorgeous too. Joanie's top hat with the long trailing scarf may be one of my favorite accessories on either show.

Also Watched: Intervention, Covert Affairs, Top Chef