Mad Men: Season Two

One of TV's best shows gets even better
Update (1/11/09): MAD MEN just won the Golden Globe for the second straight year for Best Drama. Well deserved.

Frankly, I'm pretty despondent about the future of quality TV on the major four networks. The recent cancellation by ABC of the breathtakingly brilliant PUSHING DAISIES was the first major blow. When a show this great can get cancelled for weak (not genuinely bad, merely weak) ratings, you feel that something has gone wrong with commercial television. For one thing, TV history is resplendent with shows that started off weakly and then succeeded a couple of years into their run. THE X-FILES, SEINFELD, THE OFFICE, and 30 ROCK all started off with weak ratings, only to build an audience later. The second horrific piece of news undermining my confidence in commercial TV was NBC's announcement that starting next year Jay Leno will get FIVE HOURS (!) of prime time for a more politically oriented version of his talk show. First, why would we want Leno when we...

Don't Think Twice (It's Alright)
The second season of this AMC series is in story/character sense a lot like the second season of Sopranos was for itself. This season spends it's thirteen episodes expanding upon what has already been established at the same time as it balances sudden new story devices and taking things to their next logical (or sometimes illiogical based on the character) extensions. I found it very enjoyable and while it may not be a full reflection of life in the sixies it truly shows the aspects that it aspires to quite well and shows flawed characters who are full of unfortunate parallels with people in the world today.

This is a show that is telling a specific story while exploring specific character's in an attempt to disect certain issues within our world today. I look at this show as a reflection of recent times, the issue of never being happy with what you have and looking for happiness in the wrong places and feeling lost and unsure of your place in the world is something I see a...

One of TV's best shows gets even better
Frankly, I'm pretty despondent about the future of quality TV on the major four networks. The recent cancellation by ABC of the breathtakingly brilliant PUSHING DAISIES was the first major blow. When a show this great can get cancelled for weak (not genuinely bad, merely weak) ratings, you feel that something has gone wrong with commercial television. For one thing, TV history is resplendent with shows that started off weakly and then succeeded a couple of years into their run. THE X-FILES, SEINFELD, THE OFFICE, and 30 ROCK all started off with weak ratings, only to build an audience later. The second horrific piece of news undermining my confidence in commercial TV was NBC's announcement that starting next year Jay Leno will get FIVE HOURS (!) of prime time for a more politically oriented version of his talk show. First, why would we want Leno when we already have Stewart and Colbert? Second, this means losing FIVE HOURS (!!!!) of scripted programming on NBC each week. This is a...

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