It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad Recap: MAD MEN Episode 403

August 10, 2010

California knows how to party.

Another week, another episode of “Mad Men” to sink our teeth into. (Was that metaphor to vampire-y?) (Or am I hungry?) (Yes to both. Always.)

Don is headed to Acapulco for New Year’s, but he has a one-day stopover in Los Angeles– to visit Anna Draper. Back in New York, Joan and Lane Pryce and Lane Pryce and Joan and Dr. Greg. And also prostitutes.

Let’s do that thing where we talk about characters old and new. I liked doing that, last week. And now it’s tradition!

-THE GYNECOLOGIST! We haven’t seen this guy since the pilot! (It’s the same actor– I do the imdb footwork so you don’t have to.)

Remember how he was such a dick to Peggy and wouldn’t prescribe birth control, and then she GOT PREGNANT but pulled that didn’t-know-I-was-pregnant denial thing and had the baby in the Season 1 finale? Yeah, you probably remember that.

But for some reason this gyno is BFF with Joan. Like, BFFFF. And he gave her an abortion! (Is that the correct way to say that? He performed her abortion… on her?) And she had another abortion before that one, from a “midwife.” I’m wondering if Roger Sterling was the father. TIMES TWO.

(So I guess as BFF as this gyno is with Joan, apparently he wasn’t giving her the pill until she was married… or she was really bad at using it.) (Doubtful.)

Obviously Betty went to the WRONG place when she wanted her abortion. Because times have changed since… whatever, a year ago. But Joan’s abortions seem to predate Betty’s attempted abortion.

Whatever, Betty loves baby Gene now. She loooooves him. (Cue creepy music.)

And also: Dear Joan, Please don’t have babies with your creepy husband. Love, Everybody. (Of course, the doctor makes some remark about Joan being too old to wait.) (How old is she? 34? Back then 34 was old, I guess. They didn’t have all the fertility options we have now.)

And also also: the gyno thinks Greg is a crazy for joining the Army in wartime, with a wife and potentially-soon-a-kid. He’s like, what’s up with THAT? And later Joan asks Greg the same question, and they fight. Duh.

-ANNA DRAPER! AKA The REAL (dead) Don Draper’s ex-wife. (Only ex because the FAKE Don needed to divorce her so that he could legally marry Betty.) (That went well.)

Anna has a broken leg and a stain on her wall/ceiling from a leak, so of course she’s dying of cancer (it’s in her bones– eeeek). You have to put two-and-two together here. Decay=dying. It’s really sad because Don is losing the most important woman in his life. He almost never sees Anna in person, but she’s kind of his mother, sister, and wife all rolled into one. And (SHOCK?), I don’t think he’s ever had sex with her.

And he was going to introduce her to his kids in the spring. Wah wah wah wah wahhh. (For EASTER, which is a death/rebirth holiday.) (Yeah, I know enough New Testament stuff to be dangerous.)

But I’ll talk more about Anna later. Let’s not get bogged down in the cancer all at once. (Don doesn’t get bogged down by it until he finds out. I kinda brought it up early.) I want to talk about new people. Namely, Anna’s (judgy, conservative) sister and her (grass-toting) niece. Mostly about the niece.

-Stephanie. When we meet her she’s wearing a bikini top. (That’s a good indicator that Don will want to sleep with her.) She’s approximately 21 years old, and is a student at Berkeley. She’s a little bit political, but she isn’t going to the anti-Vietnam sit-ins. As she puts it: Somebody has to go to class!

I was taking notes on my phone as I watched the episode, and the first two lines I wrote about the California scenes were, “Don/Dick knows these randoms?” and “Please don’t fuck the Berkeley girl.”

I was weirded out because Stephanie and her mother KNEW Don, and they knew him as Dick. (Everybody in California calls Don by his real name.) It’s the “Mad Men” way of not filling in the whole picture for us.

Anna got rid of her sister and went to dinner with just Don and Stephanie. I was thinking, nooo Don, do NOT sleep with that girl. Noooo. (I know your name is Dick in California, but that’s no excuse.)

So Don’s driving Stephanie home, and Stephanie asks Don if he’s married or divorced. (I think Stephanie would know about the Betty situation, but whatever.) Don asks why he can’t just be single, and Stephanie’s like… yeah, no. She proves to be wise beyond her years.

This goes back to last week’s observation, about how Don seems to flounder without a woman around. Stephanie picks up on Don’s inability to successfully exist as a single guy.

Re: dating, Stephanie says, “Nobody knows what’s wrong with themselves. Everyone else can see it right away.”

I think we THINK we know what’s wrong with ourselves, but whatever we stress over is rarely what other people would pick as the worst trait. See: women who think they are really fat, but are in fact incredibly neurotic and/or vain.

Don tries to put the moves on Stephanie, but she pulls a Sassy Gay Friend line on him. (“What are you doing? What, what, WHAT are you doing??”) (That’s how Sassy Gay Friend says it, not Stephanie.) Thank GOD she stops him. Whew. But Don shouldn’t be trying, to begin with. (I REALLY like watching women turn him down.)

Then Stephanie kills the mood for SURE (MEGA SURE) by telling Don a big secret that has been weighing on her: Anna has cancer. But that’s not all: Anna doesn’t KNOW she has cancer. Stephanie didn’t want Don to leave town without knowing about it. Because Stephanie is my favorite.

Anna and Stephanie hold a meeting of the haven't-slept-with-Don/Dick club. Very small club. Also: the "not telling you about your cancer" club.

This is how I put it in the notes: “Anna has cancer. Oh snap! And she doesn’t know? Double snap!”

There are some major ethical issues at play, here.

I guess we should finish the Anna discussion first, so that we can end on a happier note. Which note is happier: New Year’s with a prostitute because your wife left you, or a medical emergency/spousal’s refusal to drive you to the hospital? This show is HILARIOUS.

Don drops Stephanie off SANS SEX (WHEW), and returns to Anna’s house. She’s sleeping on the couch, and Don carries her into her bedroom.

We probably never know, but do you get the feeling that MAYBE Anna knows about her cancer? When Don found out that she was sick, he indicated that it was very Anna, not to burden him with her problems. So maybe she knows that she’s sick, but doesn’t want her family to KNOW that she knows? I mean, she doesn’t want to paint over the water stain on her wall. That seems very… fuck it, I’m dying anyway.

When Don carried Anna to bed, the visual reminded me of  a page from a picture book that my mom used to read to me when I was a kid. The book was very much like that song “The Circle Game,” but actually MORE depressing. In short: An adorable little baby is born, and his mom takes care of him. Then one day the baby is a man, and he has to take care of his mom. And then she DIES.

The image I’m recalling is the old mom all curled up in her son’s lap while he spoon-feeds her. I want to describe it more, but I am crying at my desk. And if you’ve read this book, you’re probably crying too. SO depressing. Too depressing for children.

Looks adorable, but beware.

Seriously, if you read this book as a kid, I defy you to read this and NOT cry: “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living my baby you’ll be.”

According to Wikipedia, the story ends with the dad having a baby of his own. So it’s like… renewal. (EASTER?) But I don’t remember that part. I just remember the depressing death part. Thanks a lot, Robert Munsch. (Your name is hilarious. That helps a little bit.)

Anyway, Don tries to fight death (or just be nice?) by painting over the water stain on the wall. He’s wearing a T-shirt and boxers, and they’re white-on-white, which is the color of death in many cultures. And the color of hospitals in America. So… make of THAT what you will. I would argue that the painting is symbolic, is all I’m saying. (It’s “Mad Men.” Everything is symbolic.)

Anna sits on the couch watching Don. I can’t remember the exact context or if it comes out of nowhere, but she says to him, “I know everything about you, and I still love you.” At dinner the night before, Don told Anna about Betty’s reaction to his truth. He said that he realized that the lie wasn’t THAT bad, but he always knew that Betty would react badly to it.

What Anna says to Don is so beautiful because I think universally we hope that a deep, true love will be the state of being accepted unconditionally. I don’t think anybody can ever fully be known by himself or others, but imagine being fully known and fully loved, despite your flaws. (And we all know that Don has MANY.) This is a pretty romantic line, but it’s a totally platonic love.

I don’t know, sometimes it’s hard to be super-articulate about things that resonate, but that line was awesome.

Then Anna asks Don if he’s only going to paint over the stained part of the wall. “A patch of new paint’s just as bad as the stain.” Ooh, another packed line. I could see it being about Don’s superficialities– calling yourself Don won’t cover up Dick. But I could also see it being Anna’s way of saying that she KNOWS about the cancer. Like, you can cover it up but I can SEE the cover-up.

The judgy sister arrives and freaks out about how Don could be arrested? For painting in his boxers indoors? For wanting to sleep with Stephanie? Or– I guess there’s pot. I didn’t see it. And I didn’t smell it, because I don’t have smell-o-vision. Missing out! (Also–the sister seemed really scandalized to hear that Don was staying at Anna’s house.) (I mean, she’s not totally off-base about Don’s proclivities… but Anna’s an adult.) (An adult who has seen UFOs…? )

Don goes outside to confront the sister. He wants to take Anna to experts! But the sister already showed Anna’s x-rays to experts. And Anna contracted polio when she was eight years old. (I can’t remember if that was an issue last time he saw her, or if it was strictly a childhood thing…) I don’t exactly remember what that has to do with this… she’s had enough of medicine blah blah blah?

Don goes inside, and you think he’s going to tell Anna about the cancer, but… he doesn’t. Post-cancer revelation he had decided to stay with Anna for longer (this was just a one-day stopover on his way to Acapulco), but now he tells her that he’d better be on his way. Anna says something else that’s wise and maybe-she-knows-she’s-dying-esque… something along the lines of, I want you to do everything that makes you happy. Don promises to bring the kids in the spring… when Anna is dead. (He doesn’t say that.)

And then Don gets on a plane… back to New York. He’s not in the mood to stay and lie to Anna, nor is he in the mood to go to paradise. But he IS in the mood for hookers! More on that in a moment.

Back to Joan. She wants to get a few days off right after the holiday vacation, because Dr. Greg’s vacation schedule isn’t flexible. Joan tries to use her feminine wiles and fried chicken (breasts and thighs) to soften Lane Pryce into granting her those vacation days. But Lane is not amused. He’s like, you can use your wiles and chicken on me, Joan! (He actually says that, more or less.) He’s stressed about money. And… something else.

Alert the media! Someone is immune to Joan!

Hey, Peggy’s here! She looks great. Peggy brings Joan a big gold box (isn’t that beneath Peggy’s duties?). It’s a dozen red roses. Aww. (Too much.) Peggy and says something about how great it is to see an example of loving marriage. Joan’s like, if only you knew.

Also: Moment of catty-ness. Joan assumes that Peggy’s spending New Year’s with the girls, and acts kind of pity-nice to her. But Peggy corrects her– she’s actually spending it with boyfriend-Mark! (But we don’t see it… awww.) Joan huffs away, because she’s losing her groove… and because the flowers are NOT from Dr. Greg. (But they should be, because he and Joan had a fight… because she doesn’t want him to go to ‘Nam. Duh.)

Don’s secretary IS spending New Year’s with her girls. They’re going to Times Square, and Don’s reaction is kind of hilarious. Paraphrase: “So YOU’RE the people who do that.”

Anyway, Joan goes into Lane’s office to yell at him for sending her this Big Fucking Bouquet. Turns out Lane sent flowers to his wife AND to Joan? But his stupid secretary mixed up the orders. So Joan stops being mad at Lane and they band together and yell at/fire his secretary. Bonding moment! All is forgiven. (But she still doesn’t get the vacation days.)

Joan goes home to Dr. Greg and creates a luau New Year’s spread, because it’s still January 1st (or December 31st or Christmas or whatever) in Hawaii (so… it’s the weeee hours in NYC). Dr. Greg’s exhausted, and already ate. Ugh.

Seriously, what are we doing together?

Joan goes to cut… something? And ends up slicing her finger? It happened so abruptly, I almost thought she did it on purpose. But I guess it’s one of those TV things– we only see the dinners where crazy things happen. If Joan’s not slicing her finger or being forced to play the accordion, why show it?

Of course Joan wants to go to the hospital. But Dr. Greg has his bag of medical tricks, and is like, Stitches? I got this, babe. “Isn’t there some medical ethical law against operating on your wife?” Joan asks, and there really should be. Dr. Greg actually doesn’t have the worst bedside manner. He distracts her and jabs a shot into her arm (kiiinda creepy, but I guess it’s a doctor thing), and tells a joke while he fixes her up. (I can’t tell if he works with kids or what, because he’s acting like you would with a child, but I think the joke is dirty… I wasn’t fully following it.)

Guess what? Dr. Greg is maybe a shitty surgeon, but he’s pretty good at stitches, and bedside-mannering. Joan has been living under the assumption that he’s the worst of the worst (she REALLY wants to go to the ER), but he’s… y’know… a doctor. For real. I mean, I think we can all understand why Joan has no faith in him. But seeing her realize that he’s actually kind of okay… it’s interesting. And sad. It’s a side of him that he doesn’t really show at home. You know… the good side.

“I can’t fix anything else,” Dr. Greg says. “But I can fix this.” It’s kind of our first insight into the fact that they both know that things are shitty. Er… it’s Dr. Greg acknowledging that he’s not the best? And Joan cries.

So Don skips Acapulco and returns to NYC. But does he go home? No. He goes to Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. And guess who’s there, when he ought to be with his family in London? That’s right: Lane Pryce.

What follows is an awesome buddy montage. Don and Lane drink. Don and Lane try to figure out which movie to go see. (I love the reading aloud of the movie listings. So lifey.) (I think one of the movies they consider is It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, hence the title of this blog.)

In maybe the funniest scene ever on “Mad Men,” Don and Lane sit in the movie theater, drunk. (I think it’s Godzilla.) (Er, it’s Godzilla, but the film is called Gojira.) (Thanks, Wikipedia.)

“You know what’s going on here, don’t you?” Don asks Lane, as if he knows about a legit conspiracy. “…Hand jobs.”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. You have to see it. Just trust me.

(And conspiracies don’t happen on AMC until the next hour. “Rubicon” shout-out!) (I haven’t watched it… yet.)

But they aren’t even in a porn theater. Just a normal theater. A middle-aged woman in a had turns around and shushes them, and Lane goes Japanese on her. (My biggest clue that it was Godzilla… other than seeing Godzilla on the screen.)

Don and Lane go to dinner. Lane tells Don that he reminds him of a popular guy at his school. Everybody used to follow that guy around, but he never noticed them. Eventually, that guy died in a motorcycle crash.

These little stories aren’t just random. I think this is our hint that Don is going to crash and burn, before the series is over. And maybe, die. (I kind of thought he might die last season, because… this show likes to do the unexpected.)

Lane reveals that his wife left him, and also pretends that his steak is a Texan belt buckle. But I guess he’s allowed. It’s an emotional night. And he’s super drunk. And when Don offers some prostitute-y action, he’s like… okay.

Don and Lane go to see a stand-up comedian, and get called out as a gay couple. “We’re not homosexuals,” Lane yells. “We’re divorced!” In the comedian’s defense, they make a great couple.

Bring on the prostitutes!

Don’s prostitute shows up (with a friend for Lane, too). The girls are both wearing green dresses. Is that a prostitute thing? Or a… sickness and decay-theme thing? (In that case, should the dresses be yellow?)

Feels as though Don is corrupting Lane, but… whatever. I feel sorry for Lane. I even feel sorry that he got a dim-witted prostitute. He probably had sad sex. Like, I don’t think he’s NOT missing his wife.

The next morning Lane exits his sex-room and wants to pay him back for the prostitute. Don asks for $25, and I think he’s just being nice? Because if that prostitute made $25 for the night… that BLOWS. (Ha.) I mean, she got all dressed up, she went to that stupid comedy show, she may or may not have spent the night. I mean, I don’t know what $25 was worth back then, but Sally’s Christmas necklace from Macy’s (last week) was $30.

I’m looking out for the prostitutes. Although on the plus side… at least Lane and Don are nice, attractive guys. Maybe they get the attractive-guy discount. (I don’t know how it works.)

I kind of wonder if Don is going to marry the prostitute. She knows everything about him… and is still willing to have sex with him. Kind of the opposite of the Betty sitch, eh? (And Don’s mother was a prostitute, so…)

Lane tells Don that despite all his kvetching about the finances (he doesn’t actually say kvetching), it’s been a great year for the business. (I don’t remember exactly WHEN he says this, but it happens.) So… yeah. Yay. It has definitely been a momentous year. I mean, last Christmas they were at Sterling Cooper. And here they are, with their names on the header.

It’s also interesting to see two men unmoored by the loss of their ladies. Who’s next? Looks like Pete, from the previews. This season is (apparently) about what happens when you’re stripped of everything and forced to start over. (Maybe I’ll actually locate an interview with Matt Weiner and link it… he said that in several interviews, so we can assume that he’s not kidding.)

Um… this was a little disjointed, because I wrote it over 2 days. Probably forgot some thematic stuff and just wrote too much about the plot. I’m going to meditate on this for a moment…

Oh yeah, so the episode ends on a wide shot of everybody sitting at a meeting together on the first day back at work, and everyone’s back to business. And everybody seems miserable. They’re all like, Happy 1965. Yay. Not.

They don’t really know each other at all. It’s funny. I mean, some of them have their secret this-and-that’s. (Like… Don helped Peggy with her baby, she bailed him out of jail once), but it’s… work. They’re colleagues. Are people more open now? I guess it depends on the job.

Oh also, I totally thought that Don’s CA-driving stuff was process/green-screen, but apparently not entirely because he’s a still of it…

Cruisin'.

And now I must be off, because I’ve got food from the Dim Sum Truck under my nose. Don’t worry– there WILL be a post about it. Duh.

But yeah, good episode. Lots to chew on. As always, looking forward to next Sunday night… but also sad that the seasons are so short. We’re 1/4 of the way through!

xoxo…

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Mad-Cap: MAD MEN Episode 402

August 2, 2010

This is how I look right now, writing this recap.

I know this is crazy, because my recap days seemed to be behind me. But “Mad Men” is one of those shows that I love talking about. I just need to get my feelings out! And people have actually been ASKING me to write about “Mad Men.” So I must give the people what they want!

Okay, that paragraph was actually a total ruse. When I post these to Facebook, the first paragraph is visible. I wanted to avoid spoilering anybody. So ignore that first paragraph, if you’re ready to be spoilered. (Sorry– you probably read it already.)

But I guess a ruse is thematically appropriate, because the Christmas party in last night’s episode was basically a big, expensive fake, pulled together to make Sterling Cooper Draper Price’s one big client (Lucky Strike… haha, isn’t it?) think that the firm was DOING GREAT.

Last night marked the return of many seemingly long-gone characters. [Except for Sal. :( ] It was like Christmas for loyal viewers! (Appropriate.)

-Glen, the divorced neighbor’s son. If memory serves, he declared his creepy love for Betty.

I can’t remember if Glen was a season 1 or season 2 character, but he was definitely not in season 3. (He’s played by Matt Weiner’s son, FYI-zers.) I don’t think the character is supposed to be Jewish, but he is always doing the Jewiest things. Example: He left a LANYARD on Sally’s pillow. Lanyards make me think of summer camp.  Jewish summer camp. (I made some INTENSE lanyards.)

Mine were better.

I think they actually have a different name, but at Camp Sholom we called them lanyards. And I was OB-SESSED. I think I still have some of my finer pieces in my desk drawer at home. (I was actually an arts & crafts counselor one summer. Because for me, camp was all about doing crafts, avoiding the sun, and requesting plain peanut butter sandwiches on Shabbat because I didn’t like jelly at the time. Oh, and singing.)

Also: Of course Sally is attracted to a creepy, evil kid. And of course he’s attracted to Betty’s daughter. I hope he doesn’t rape anybody.

-Fred Rumsen, fired from Sterling Cooper because he was a disorderly alcoholic. I totally thought he was dead. :(

But a bunch of other blogs kept guessing that he would return, so I guess I should have known better.

I think Duck’s dog is dead, too. :(

But now I guess I should have hope.

Anyway, Freddy is sober and in AA, and MAN is it hard to stay sober in “Mad Men” times, when everybody is drinking ALL THE TIME. But he manages it, by skipping the party. He doesn’t stereotypically fall off the wagon just because Peggy is mean to him. And Peggy’s like, thanks for that.

-Lou Gossett, Jr.

UGHHH, this guy. Not only is he Big Tobacco and the guy responsible for Sal’s firing (because he tried to proposition Sal, and Sal was not having it), but he’s just… yuck. Spoiled. A big jerk. I thought it was funny that they gave him a Polaroid camera as his big special gift. A Polaroid camera for the man who has everything? Were Polaroids the iPads of Christmas 1964?

Don was almost as gross as Lou last night. He was trying to get into everybody’s pants. I was really mad at him by the end. NOT THE SECRETARY, DON! And then he basically made her feel like a prostitute with the $40 bonus and the card with the impersonal message, obviously sealed before The Incident. DOUBLE FAIL.

Lou and Don: The Naughty List.

But instead of getting lumps of coal for being The Worst on Christmas, they got… you know, whatever. I loved the scene where Lou was making everybody pose for Polaroids in Santa Roger’s lap (and wasn’t THAT a weird power play, the “you better be Santa” thing?), and Harry Crane was all apologetic because he’s heavier than Roger. (That might be the gayest action that Lou witnesses this Christmas, unless he hires a man-stitute.)

There were also some notable New (or new-ish) Characters…

-The nurse neighbor with the short brown hair.

At first I was just like, great, another woman for Don to charm into bed. But when he tried to pull her into bed with him, she went into No-Nonsense Nurse mode. She also said that she likes working in a hospital because everything happens there– people coming into the world and people leaving it. Color me intrigued. I think she’d be good for Don. (How long before they sleep together?)

-The blonde ad-psychology lady.

I didn’t recognize her when she reappeared at the party– until she called Don out for skipping her presentation. He thought she came to flirt, but she came to fight. Feisty. She’s obviously very smart– Don was actually surprised when he realized that he agreed with her theories. And she predicted that Don will be remarried within a year. (More on that in a sec.) (And… how long before they sleep together?)

-Peggy’s boyfriend, Mark.

We met Mark really briefly last week, when he and Peggy showed up at Don’s apartment and he introduced himself as Peggy’s “fiance,” much to her chagrin. This week we found out that he works at a “station,” which means he’s either in TV… or law enforcement… or trains? There are lots of types of stations.

Anyway, Peggy told Mark that she is a virgin, and she doesn’t want to sleep with him. But we can’t write it off as trauma over the whole Pete/baby thing, because we’ve seen her sleep with people before. We even saw her sleeping with Duck, in the previously-on. And she is probably on birth control now, and/or condoms exist. So… it’s kind of puzzling.

I am a little bit obsessed with Mark. (For one thing, I think he looks perfectly period. That hair!) I’m not sure if we’re supposed to love him or hate him. I mean, on one hand he’s pressuring Peggy to have sex. But on the other hand he’s human, and Peggy is being devious. I think we’re supposed to feel at least a little bit sorry for Mark, because Peggy is lying to him, and he seems to be the male equivalent of a puppy dog. Peggy is… turning into a Don? Or a Duck? Bad influences!

Did you notice how she didn’t really introduce him to anybody at the party? Red flag, Mark. Red flag.

The prodigy, his protege and her puppy dog.

Fred Rumsen tells Peggy that she ought to wait until… marriage (?) to sleep with Mark if she’s serious. But if she’s NOT serious, she should sleep with him NOW so she’s not just leading him on? There’s some very pretzel-y logic going on there. And Peggy isn’t sure how she feels. But at the end of the episode Peggy sleeps with Mark, so… she’s just leading him on? Unclear.

I get what Peggy’s going through. I think most of us have been in situations where we’re dating a guy and in theory everything’s cool but in practice it’s very meh. But the lying-about-being-a-virgin thing is… I don’t know, Peggy’s all over the place. And what does this mean about her willingness to sleep with Duck? Did she have feelings for him? Was she doing it to get ahead?

I want to know how Peggy and Mark met. It definitely wasn’t match.com.

I liked the way Mark kissed Peggy goodbye when she asked him to leave and said, “You think about THAT!” He’s so adorable– and a gentleman, compared to Don and Duck. We saw how Don behaved when his secretary didn’t want to kiss him… he just kept going. (And yeah, she joined in… but she kinda had no choice.)

Ah well, Mark. Nice guys finish last? (Okay, total double entendre– because THEY DID IT.)

I’m also wondering if we’re going see Duck again. (And his dog! Please don’t be dead, Duck’s dog. Sad face.)

Okay, that section is done. Segue time. Official segue here.

Don seems to be encountering two types of women this season– ones who get pulled in by his shtick, and ones who don’t (the nurse, the ad-lady, and– maybe–Bethany).  The ad-lady told Don that he’s a “type”– and I think his type is… needs a woman in his life? He seems unmoored without one. (In this episode alone– the nurse had to help him open his door, the secretary had to bring his keys… ooh, door/lock/key metaphors. And also… drunken bad decisions.) But you know if he met a nice woman, he’d make her miserable. Because I can’t see him NOT cheating, keeping secrets… you know, being Don Draper.

The ad-lady predicted that Don will be married in a year, which I think means he WILL be remarried in a year? She basically put the gun on the wall. Someone’s going to get shot. BUT– WHO will Don marry? Bethany seems like a Betty-in-ten-years. Going through Don’s wringer would destroy her. The nurse seems like she could handle him, but… yuck. And how long until his secretary is moved to somebody else’s desk? (PS I adored the way she read Sally’s letter. Good acting.)

And now for some fashion…

Did anybody notice that the outfits at the party stuck to the red, green, and white family? No blue, no yellow. Just pure Christmas. I bet the Menken’s Dept Store (season 1 throwback!) is having an awesome Hanukkah party, somewhere.

I thought Pete’s red blazer was kind of perfect. Not sure how I felt about Trudy’s salmon dress. I guess they couldn’t BOTH wear red?

Campbells!

I was really happy to see Trudy. (Sadly, they didn’t have a big dance number prepared.) And… Pete has been kinda backburnered lately, hasn’t he? I thought that they might even bring on Ken Cosgrove to handle the Pond’s account… and maybe they will? I’ve seen him in promo pictures.

And Joan… I liked her red Christmas party outfit (she is a sexy dancer! I want lessons!), but I was NOT feeling this full-body pink wetsuit thing.

It looked even weirder on the show.

Sorry Joan, you know I love you. And we found out that her husband is “saving lives.” Is he in Vietnam, or not? (I think not yet, I saw him in a promo picture, too.)

My DVR cut off the “next week on,” but since it’s a bunch of out-of-context one-liners, I probably didn’t miss much. But I was still mad (men).

And just to prove that I’m still watching True Blood… three recurring characters died. And fairies happened. And… Bill in the sun. And HOSPITAL?! Something real-ish? I’m climbing back on the wagon.

xoxo…

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High Stakes: VAMPIRE DIARIES Episode 107

October 30, 2009
THE VAMPIRE DIARIES

Hellooo, Nurse.

Episode 107 “Haunted” Air Date: 10/29/09

Hey guys. I’m being “haunted” by the common cold (aka my nose is running and I soub like dis), and I’m also dressed like a “Mad Men” character (group costumes are kind of awesome, btw) and at work, so this is hopefully going to be short, sweet, and full of pictures.

Vicki attacks ex-boyfriend and mayor’s-son Tyler Lockwood, but Stefan & Damon swoop in like a couple of vampire hunters (kind of ironic) and subdue her, and Damon erases Tyler’s memory.

Elena comes over to Stefan’s house to see how Vicki is, even though at the end of last episode she acted like she was DONE. I get the distinct feeling that every even episode Elena’s going to tell Stefan that she’s DONE, and every odd episode she’s going to tell him that she can’t ignore her FEELINGS for Stefan (see: end of this recap).

With Elena by his side, Stefan teaches Vicki some vampire lessons. For example: Vampires drink coffee because something about caffeine making their blood flow, and because it helps them feel warm to the touch. (THANK YOU for explaining that one.) (How much coffee would you have to drink, for that to work out? Constant coffee? Like an IV drip of coffee?)

Wait, wouldn’t caffeine constrict your veins? And make you feel cold to the touch? I’m not a scientist or anything. I took biology a while ago. All I know is, caffeine makes my heart beat like a hummingbird’s. But… vampires are dead. They don’t have heartbeats. And they’re made up. Why am I trying to logick this?

Stefan says, “Coffee is our friend,” which is kind of a nerdy way of saying it. Nerd! Vicki flounces out because she has to pee, and why does she have to pee if she’s dead? It’s a funny moment. Having to pee is so pedestrian, and such an inconvenience. One of the perks of the afterlife ought to be not having to pee. Sorry, I was about to suck your blood, but I REALLY GOTTA PEE.

Then again, if vampires drink coffee all the time, they WOULD have to pee. Coffee is a major diuretic. (But the pee thing is a false alarm, so… where is all the built-up coffee going?) (Every answer just brings about more questions!)

Vicki asks Stefan if he ever drank human blood, and he’s very awk awk/not now, in front of Elena. She’s totally the human/elephant in the room. (And a lovely elephant, at that.)

Oh yeah, and Vicki threatens Elena, and grabs her throat, and is like, “You broke my brother’s [Matt's] heart, bitch!” And Stefan tells Elena to keep Jeremy away from Vicki, because vampires often confuse love and lust with hunger. I think it’s awkward for Stefan to tell this stuff to Elena, given that… it all applies to him, too.

Vicki called Matt to tell him that she was okay, and Jeremy was part of some sort of Vicki search party. Damon showed Vicki that she could run really fast, so Vicki ran home to Matt. Jeremy and Elena were at home, too, and no parents or guardians were anywhere, and then they were all at the high school’s Halloween haunted house. And everyone explained Vicki’s weirdness by saying, She’s high. Because that’s a good excuse for everything.

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES

Talk to the severed hand.

It was all last-minute, so Matt and Elena both wore last year’s costume, from when they were dating. Awkward! (Also awkward because… it’s like sexy ironic bloody hospital wear, and in the year since last Halloween both Elena and Matt have been logging hours at the hospital due to fatal car accidents/sister attacks).

Matt re: Vicki’s costume: “You can’t miss her. She’s a vampire.” GET IT!?!

And Stefan was there, to try to subdue Vicki. Because she’s an addictive personality, and also a blood-thirsty vampire. But Vicki didn’t want to be subdued. She wanted to make out with Jeremy. Jeremy’s costume was his emo, grandson of Steve McQueen self.

So emo right now.

So emo right now.

Vicki kept trying to indicate that Stefan was a creeper, so that Matt would keep him away from her. But Stefan was just trying to help, so he had to do a little bit of Regulating.

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES

You can't handle the truth!

Over at Mystic Grill, the Lockwoods were slummin’ it in their usual booth, looking all 1920s-style, worrying about whether the vampires knew what was Up. Of course, Damon was there listening. The Lockwoods were not so hot on each other, so Mayor L left his wife with her martini and took off for some Halloween party where all of the absentee parents and guardians of Mystic Falls must be trapped, HOCUS POCUS-style. Nice husband.

Damon flirted with Mayor Lockwood’s desperate housewife, who was appropriately dressed as The Great Gatsby‘s Daisy Buchanan, minus the very-important blonde hair. Maybe that was a wink to the fact that Elena was blonde in the novels, and people apparently flipped over brunette Elena? I don’t know. All I know is that my blonde dog is named Daisy, as in Daisy Buchanan. That’s right. Somebody get her a drink. And don’t let her get behind the wheel. (Mabel!)

Sorry. Literature.

So Damon drinks (alcohol’s another major diuretic– somebody get on this do-they-really-pee? situation) and flirts with Lady Lockwood to get info on “The Council” and what they know about vampires. He tells her that he’s a Salvatore, and we find out that nobody knows that Zach is dead. (He’s “out of town.” What a nice euphemism.) (And he was on The Council.)

Damon reveals that he knows about the vervain. (And he realizes that Lady L is wearing a vervain-filled bracelet.) “I’m a Salvatore,” he says jauntily, when Lady L looks surprised that he knows about vervain. I like Damon’s human impression almost as much as Vampire Eric’s.

Apparently The Council is comprised of dumb-dumb-heads, because… Stefan and Damon Salvatore, lady! Look at the original Founder’s Day scroll! But no, because everyone who went to the Founder’s Party was ruled non-vampire, because it happened during the day.

So Vicki took Jeremy out near some school buses and tried to suck some of his mouth blood, and ended up tossing Elena around and sucking some of her shoulder-blood.

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES

Ow.

I read that they filmed this scene two ways, and originally Jeremy staked Vicki and she turned to dust. But in the aired version, Stefan stakes Vicki, then removes the stake, and she just sits there like a normal corpse. But either way, Vicki done got staked! Which is good, because… too much Vicki. Sorry, Vicki. It was good to learn some vampire rules, though. Thanks for that.

In hindsight it makes perfect sense that Vicki would get staked. But in the moment it was like, WHOA. Shock. But I wish she would have turned to dust or exploded or something. Just lying there like a regular dead person was kind of anticlimactic.

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES

Ding dong, the Vic is dead.

Damon comes to dispose of the body, and Elena tries to start a fist fight or something. She doesn’t seem to fault Stefan for staking Vicki, but she’s definitely pissed at Damon for turning her into a vampire who needed a staking. She pushes him, and slaps him in the face (AGAIN). What’s up with people punching and slapping each other on the face on vampire shows? “True Blood” season two was like a punch-in-the-face a-thon.

Damon tells Elena to get out of there with her bleedy bloody wounds (yum) before he loses his temper, and she runs into Matt, who is looking for Vicki. AWK. “You’re a good brother,” Elena says, and SOB. “Maybe Vicki went home,” Matt guesses, and he’s right if we’re being euphemistic again.

Oh yeah, Caroline makes witch-Bonnie dress as a witch, complete with Damon’s amber jewel. He tries to take it back from Bonnie, but the jewel BURNS his hand. Intense. Bonnie and her firepower. Witch-Grandma (who teaches Occult at the local university, LOL), reveals that the jewel used to belong to Bonnie’s witch ancestors, and now it’s back. (For now.)

Also, Bonnie wore a blonde wig as part of her witch costume, which was tres weird. The one time I tried to dress witchy for Halloween (basically like a generic Morticia), I died my hair BLACK. Not blonde. Bonnie should give that wig to Lady Lockwood, so she can be a better Daisy Buchanan. Just sayin’.

Elena asks Stefan to erase Jeremy’s memories about Vicki’s death. Between the parents and Vicki, Jeremy’s rightfully saying, “Is EVERYONE I love going to die?” I still don’t get why he loved Vicki, other than the hot bod and the drugs, but I guess that’s enough for some people. Damon steps up to do the memory-erasing.

Elena and Stefan wait outside, and Elena says that she wishes she could have her memory erased, too. But NO, because she still has has feelings for Stefan. Awww. It looks like they’re finally going to kiss again, but Damon interruptus at the last second. Jeremy just thinks that Vicki ran away, never to return. Because that’s not traumatizing? I guess it’s LESS traumatizing.

And that’s that. Once again, we leave Stefan pining. (Also… he didn’t have a problem with Elena’s bloody wounds?) (In the pilot she had a tiny cut on her leg, and he had to run away.) (Maybe he’s just used to her by now?) (No, he’s got it bad for her… whatevs.) (Sex drive + vampire= blood drive?)

Next week: Stefan’s birthday? His vampire friend comes to town, and something about how she’s his rebound? And they play pool.

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES

Happy birthday to me.

And I also saw a preview scene where Elena tells Stefan to stay away from her. Again. But there’s a scene in the promo where HE walks away from HER?

And there are also a bunch of Damon-and-Elena pictures. Curious!

THE VAMPIRE DIARIES

Truce?

Final thought: The Mystic Falls High School mascot is the Timberwolves. Does that mean that we’re going to have some sort of werewolf action going on? Because I can’t handle anymore werewolf vs. vampire drama right now. It’s getting out of hand. (I’m looking at you, NEW MOON.) (And also at you, “True Blood.” I know it’s coming.)

xoxo…

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What’s in a Name?: MAD MEN Episode 311

October 26, 2009
This is just the tip of the iceberg of Don's sad faces.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of Don's sad faces.

Episode 311, “The Gypsy and the Hobo” Air Date: 10/25/09

This week “Mad Men” had a Halloween episode, which actually (almost) coincided with Halloween. It also coincided with the fact that everyone on this show is hiding behind a facade, which masks all of the Sadness within.

But you’ll notice that the title of this recap focuses on the idea of names, because this episode was chock full of the idea of names and labels. I’ll enumerate some examples later on in the recap.

Betty and the kids headed to Philadelphia to deal with Grandpa Gene’s will, leaving Don to dally with little miss Suzanne Farrell, teacher of children.

In Philly, Betty told her family’s lawyer about what she saw in Don’s Box of Secrets, and it was basically a replay of what happened when Betty tried to get the abortion last season. The lawyer said that in order to get divorced in New York, Betty would have to prove in court that Don had committed adultery. Which… probably not that hard. But the lawyer said that Don could take the kids. (Would he want to?) Conclusion: If Don’s a good provider, you’re stuck with him. Sad face.

At Sterling Cooper, a woman named Annabelle Mathis came to call on Roger Sterling, Cooper, and Don. Her father and husband had died, leaving the family dog food company to her. Unfortunately the company hit a little snafu when the Clark Gable movie THE MISFITS exposed that all of the dog food was made of horse meat.

Now that’s a horse of a different color!

Roger has a pretty good burn on Annabelle. When she laments that the film hit her company the hardest, he says (paraphrase), “Well, you do own a horse farm that makes dog food.” Don mentions in conversation that he’s eaten horse meat, which (I think) is a testament to how poor he was, growing up. Annabelle has (not surprisingly) eaten it, too, and says it taste like venison. How upper-crust of her. So… horse meat is the poor man’s venison.

It’s obvious that Annabelle and Roger have history, and we find out over their French “business dinner” that they were lovers in WWII-era Paris. Annabelle says that their love was just like CASABLANCA, and Roger’s like, Just because you left me for another man doesn’t make it CASABLANCA. Snap! (Isn’t it true, that we always have the best OH SNAPS! for our exes?)

As I suspected based on last week’s slip that Roger is not the original Sterling in Sterling Cooper, turns out that he was totally shiftless in his early twenties. And THAT’S why Annabelle left him. But now she’s a widow, and he’s the new Sterling in Sterling Cooper (name stuff), and she really really wants to DO him. But Roger demurs, and goes home to Jane.

The Sterling Cooper Worker Bees set up a dog food taste test, which Annabelle, Don, Peggy, etc watch through a two-way mirror. (One-way mirror? I don’t know… it’s the thing where you see them but they can’t see you.) The dogs are happy to chow down, but as soon as the owners hear that it’s Caldecott Farms, one dog owner (male) goes, OH GOD, BINGO, YOU’RE GOING TO DIE! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO USSS?!!! I BOYCOTT CALDECOTT!!!

Annabelle asks them to “turn it off,” and Peggy hilariously says, “I can’t turn it off. It’s really happening!” (Don tells her to turn off the SOUND.) “I can’t turn it off. It’s really happening!” is one of my new favorite quotes. Haven’t we all had those moments?

Don tells Annabelle that she needs to change the name or the product (which are the two things she said she would not do). He tries to reason that the name is just what people see on the label. As Fred Armisen-as-Joy Behar would say, “So what? Who cares?”

"So what? Who cares?"

"So what? Who cares?"

But Annabelle refuses to change the name of her horse meat dog food, and that’s that. Don can’t help her, because the Caldecott Farms name is “poisoned.” NAMES. LABELS.

Hilariously, that scene ends with the test-leader in the test-room, screaming, “Are we ready for the next group of subjects?!” Of course, the people on the Annabelle-Don-Peggy side of the glass were completely engrossed in their discussion. (And Peggy had turned the sound off). (You’ll see a bit of a mirror of this later, when Don gets so caught up in a discussion that he forgets about someone.)

In the World of Joan, she helps Greg prepare for some sort of psychiatry interview. She tells him that it’s a talking profession and he needs to be open about his answers, and he reveals that his father had a nervous breakdown. “I can’t believe I never told you that,” Greg says. I see this as a sort of model for how Don COULD have told Betty about his past. Joan actually seemed pleased that Greg confided in her.

Joan calls Roger and asks if he can help her find a job. She used all sorts of insider subterfuge to call him when she knew his secretary would be out. Re: Greg, Joan fibs that he’s decided to pursue his dream of being a psychiatrist. (As opposed to, He’s a failed surgeon.) Roger offers to take her back at Sterling Cooper, but Joan says they can’t afford her. Also… she and Roger still love each other. Awkward. Roger says that he’s really glad she was thinking about him.

Later Roger calls a friend and recommends Joan, and calls her “Joan Holloway” before correcting himself… it’s Joan HARRIS now. NAMES.

Speaking of Harris, Greg blows his interview, and he’s really unhappy because he doesn’t even want to be a psychiatrist. He wants to be a surgeon, and he did everything he needed to do, and now all of his dreams are NOT coming true. Greg snipes at Joan that she doesn’t know what it’s like, to dream of something her whole life and have it NOT come true. Joan gets this WTF look on her face, because she dreamed of an Awesome Husband, and Greg is a Failed-Surgeon Alcoholic-in-the-Making.

So Joan does the most logical thing to do when you realize that your husband is The Worst, and smashes a vase of roses on the back of his neck.

Oh yeah, and back to Annabelle for a minute, she wants to get back with Roger so very very badly because she realizes now… “You were the one.” “You weren’t,” Roger replies. JOAN WAS THE ONE. Not Jane. Screw Jane. (And maybe he loves Jane enough to not cheat on her with Annabelle, but I think Roger’s love for Jane is at best his misplaced love for Joan. I mean, look how similar their names are. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.)

But… that’s shitty, to realize that the person you always loved doesn’t love you back, even with all that history. You always want what you can’t have. And it’s equally shitty to realize that the person you got is… The Worst.

Later Greg goes out and joins the Army without consulting Joan, because the Army needs surgeons, and apparently they don’t care that he is a shitty one. It’s funny because when Greg was lamenting his fate earlier in the episode, I was thinking that he could join the Army. He apologizing for being shitty and gives Joan new roses, and promises to buy her a new vase, and takes her out to dinner, because he’s a Captain now!

Hey, Greg? Maybe not the best idea to buy Joan EXACTLY what she just smashed over your head. She may be feigning happiness now, but… I don’t know, it feels like everything’s back to normal, in a not-good way? (What are the odds of Greg dying in Vietnam, thus freeing Joan from her shitty Greg-related life? Should we start a pool?)

Oh well, at least Dr. Greg is trying. It’s not enough, but he’s trying.

Since Betty’s supposedly out of town all week, Don clears his schedule so that he and Suzanne can take a trip, because she’s very very sad that they can’t go out together, like a real couple. (Suzanne: You are not a real couple. Got it? No? Okay.) Don offers to take Suzanne to Mystic, Connecticut. I have been there twice, and I have also been to Mystic Pizza twice, because of my parents and Julia Roberts and the 1980s.

So much awaits you in Mystic!

So much awaits you in Mystic!

I seem to recall that a married man had an affair with a baby-sitter in that movie, which isn’t too far off from having an affair with an elementary school teacher. If Joan gets a job at a pizza shop, we’re all going to realize that “Mad Men” is loosely based on MYSTIC PIZZA.

Whatever, it’s all moot, because they end up deciding to go to Norwich, Connecticut. (I almost studied abroad in Norwich, England, which is really irrelevant but so is Norwich, Connecticut because–spoiler alert!– THEY NEVER GET THERE.)

Don needs to make a quick stop at his supposedly-vacant house, and he leaves Suzanne waiting in the car. The following still was actually posted on the “Mad Men” website. That’s how significant the quick stop at the house is to the episode:

Bye Bye Donnie.

Bye Bye Donnie.

Is it just me, or is that a near-identical shot to the one in the movie BIG where Tom Hanks goes back to his kid-life as his adult-girlfriend watches from the car? Don’t you expect Don to start shrinking out of his clothes? (And… yet another 1980s movie.) That becomes a fairly apt parallel in 54321…

So Don enters his house, and immediately the kids go, “Daddy! Daddy!” UH OH. Don tries to dash back to his car because he “forgot” his “hat” (is that what he’s calling them now?), but Betty’s like, “Now is not the time to retrieve your hat and/or relieve your mistress from waiting in the car. Now is the time for me to confront you.”

Betty takes Don into his study, and asks him to open his desk drawer. Don reminds her that it’s his WORK desk, which makes me think of all of those radio call-ins (Ryan’s Roses, if you know what I’m talking about) where the man’s like, I’m not cheating, I lock my Blackberry because WORK. It’s an age-old trick.

Betty plops Don’s secret keys down on the desk. It’s ON. Betty gets increasingly fierce and Don gets increasingly vulnerable. Don’s in a No-Spin zone, which is kind of an interesting parallel to his inability to find a good spin for the Caldecott horse-killers.

Don finally admits everything to Betty, starting with the whole name-change thing. I’m still in semi-shock when he admits that his name is Dick Whitman, because… I just figured Betty would never know. We went through all of first and second season knowing that Don is great at secrets, so the whole Dick Whitman thing came out of nowhere. And yet it didn’t. That’s the beauty of “Mad Men.”

Don tries to reason with Betty that it’s not so strange to change one’s name. “You changed your name,” he says. Betty fumes, “I took yours.” (NAMES!) She feels like Don is a stranger, but Don’s like, You know me! I’m the guy you’ve been living with for the past decade or so. It’s a really interesting question– What constitutes KNOWING someone? (See: Greg and Joan, Roger and Annabelle, etc etc.)

Don tells Betty about how he switched places with Don Draper so that he could go home from the Korean War, and about how it was easier to be Don than to start fresh. Tying it in with the advertising story of the week, Dick Whitman was a horse meat dog food of a name to bear. Don Draper is what Caldecott Farms would be if they changed their name and put “real beef” on the label. And beef is cow (as Annabelle points out), and Don is Dick, but whatever! LABELS. (Sorry, I realized that writing that whole analogy out to its conclusion would take too long, so I half-assed it. But you get it.)

Betty points out that Don divorced Anna Draper three months before they got married. Why didn’t Don tell Betty what was going on? “When was I supposed to tell you?” Don asks. “On our wedding night?” It all boils down to: Don was afraid. Deep down, he’s scared little abused little Dick Whitman.

Under Don’s veneer of unflappable self-esteem, he’s so insecure. “What would you do if you were me? Would you love you?” Betty asks Don. “I was surprised that you ever loved me,” he replies. Hmm, methinks that young inner-Don is collecting love from every lady who offers it because… he grew up without any? (And because Betty is generally cold as ice.) (But is she cold because he cheats? It’s a chicken-egg situation, for sure.)

Later they go upstairs, and Don convinces Betty to sit down next to him. (Betty’s reluctance to even sit next to him kind of reminds me of how Elena reacted to Stefan’s vampire-outing on “The Vampire Diaries.”)

At least I'm not a vampire.

At least I'm not a vampire.

Betty knew that Don grew up poor, and figured that he was some football hero who hated his father. But Don finally tells her EVERYTHING– about how his mother was a prostitute, and his father was an ass, etc etc. Don says that they’re all dead now. “What about Adam?” Betty asks. She saw all of the pictures of Dick and Adam.

Throughout the confession Don makes sad and pained faces (give this man an Emmy, I’m serious… and Betty too), but the mention of Adam gets the waterworks going, for Don and for me. As you’ll recall, (in Season 1) Don turned Adam away because he was afraid that Betty might find out about him. And now Betty KNOWS and she seems concerned about Adam, and Adam is dead. From suicide. Because he was all alone in the world. SOB.

“I turned him away,” Don cries. “He just wanted to be part of my life and I couldn’t risk all of this.” Ugh, this Adam situation is the sadness that keeps on sadding. I need a Kleenex.

Don and Betty travel all over the house, and the whole time there’s the added horror-movie anxiety of what Suzanne might do at any moment. Is she going to knock on the door? Sneak into the house? Peer through the windows? But no, she waits for… seemingly hours… and then finally abandons Don’s car and walks home, suitcase in hand.

The forgotten.

The forgotten.

I still think she’s a little crazy, for waiting that long. But… sad.

The weird thing is, Don never has that OMG moment of Suzanne-is-still-in-the-car. Maybe he figured that she got the hint. But… haven’t we all had that OMG-I-forgot! moment? I know I have. The water’s on the stove, there’s an important meeting in Beverly Hills in 30 minutes and you totally forgot, whatever. Don puts on a little-boy pair of pajamas (BIG!) and brushes his teeth and goes to bed, and never seems to think twice about Suzanne.

Don wakes up and sees that Betty’s not in bed. Her suitcases from Philadelphia are still sitting next to the bed. Don finds his family photos on the nightstand, goes to put them back in the Box of Secrets, and realizes… I don’t have to do that. It’s the morning after something terrible, and he’s still processing it. In a way, he’s reborn.

Also– interesting that the fantasy of Don was football hero, and the reality was… the opposite, right? He switched identities to flee the war. Isn’t that the opposite of a hero, in war terms? I think Betty realizes that Don’s a disappointment, but also that Don’s not as perfect– not as strong– as she thought he was. Betty sees that she can sort of fill that space with her own strength. In this episode, Betty seems more forceful with Don than we’ve seen her in a while, if ever. Knowledge is power, or something like that. (The More You Know!) (Shooting star.)

Downstairs, the whole family is eating breakfast. Betty hasn’t left Don. The Earth is still rotating. Betty asks Don if he wants anything to eat. He goes to work. He comes home from work. Betty asks Don if he wants anything to eat. He doesn’t, and so the family heads out to Trick or Treat. (Don tells Betty that she can stay home with the baby, but Betty insists of coming with.) Sally’s dressed as a Gypsy (their words, not mine) and Bobby is dressed as a hobo. Ouch! Too close to Don’s hobo-esque youth.

Give Sally some candy or she will cut you.

Give Sally some candy or she will cut you.

I love Bobby’s hobo-cigar. Nice touch. (As if a hobo could afford a cigar.)

“And who are you supposed to be?” A neighbor asks Don, who is dressed as… himself. DEEP.

The song that plays over the credits is “Where is Love?” from OLIVER. Because Don is a sad orphan looking for love? Because we are all a sad orphan looking for love? More sobs commence NOW.

Oh, and Don had a quick phone conversation with Suzanne, telling her that it’s over (for now, at least). She acted surprisingly not-crazy, and was first and foremost worried that she might lose her teaching job. I’m glad she’s gone, because I was worried that she was going to get “accidentally” pregnant and make Don’s life even more miserable.

So… I’m not sure if this whole “I’m Dick Whitman” thing has brought Don and Betty closer together, but at least she knows the truth. This whole episode speaks to one of life’s Universal Themes (in my opinion), which is that the bulk of our sadnesses (middle class ones, at least) stem from a lack of communication with the people around us, particularly the people we (are supposed to) love.

There are TWO more episodes left this season. Where’s Sal-do? How can the reveals top this week’s REVEALS? Will the finale end on the day that Kennedy is shot? Stay tuned…

PS Was that not funny enough? Wat it supposed to be funny? Should I talk about horse meat dog food some more? Is horse meat dog food funny? When did dog food stopped being made of horse meat? (Or is it STILL horse meat?)

You know what? Whatever. It’s time to go eat lunch. I heard that there are hot dogs on set. If they taste like venison (what does venison taste like?!), I’ll know what’s REALLY in them. And then I’ll eat some pudding and glue some sad faces on my “Mad Men” Sad Face Meter.

Just kidding. I don’t eat gelatin. Or dog food. Or glue. (Or DO I?)

xoxo…

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MAD MEN Recap: In Which Betty Finds Don’s “Dick Pics”

October 19, 2009
Sterling & Cooper, partying it up.

Sterling & Cooper: Are we having fun yet?

Episode 310, “The Color Blue” Air Date: 10/18/09

First of all, I’m not 100% sure why this episode is called “The Color Blue.” I’d have to go back and do some deep, English-major analysis. Don’s robe-of-secrets was blue, so there’s that. And most of the characters were in their usual malaise.

[Edit: I remember now-- Don and Suzanne discussed the idea that it's hard to know that everyone is agreeing that blue is blue, since we could all be seeing colors differently. In a related note, the other day when I exited a movie theater, the sky looked white for several minutes until my eyes adjusted. It was TRIPPY.]

This week we found out that Teacher-Suzanne (Don’s new f-buddy) is… complicated. And maybe crazy. First of all, her epileptic 25-year-old brother visited mid-sex, and Suzanne forced Don to meet him. The Brother (I don’t remember his name) reminded me of a young Steve Zahn. (But a highbrow, “Mad Men” version of Steve Zahn.)

Later on, Suzanne got her brother (okay, I feel lazy… I looked it up: Danny) a job as a janitor at a hospital in Bedford, Mass. Don offered to drive Danny up there, because it’s a long drive, and sexism and sex and whatever else. I Google Mapped it, for those of us who care. (This is “Mad Men.” Attention must be paid!)

Ossining, NY to Bedford, MA - Google Maps_1255976696034

According to Google, that’s three hours at least. It’s crazy to my California mind that you can drive through the entire state of Connecticut in… what? Two hours? Less? I could get in my car and drive for two hours right now, and end up in… nope, still in Los Angeles.

Twenty miles outside of Framingham, Danny tells Don that he has no intention to work at this hospital in Bedford, and Don lets him out. In the middle of NOWHERE. In fact, it’s worse than nowhere. It looks like the opening shot of any movie or TV show where somebody’s about to get attacked in the woods. You could have at least driven Danny to a train station, Don. Or, you know… somewhere with streetlights. Jeebus.

Cole and I wondered how Don was going to explain his early return to Suzanne, but turns out that Framingham’s not that far from Bedford, so… whew. You may wonder why Danny waited so long to ask for Don to pull over and let him out… he was hoping to give Don the slip at a rest stop, action-hero style. Poor Danny. He didn’t even get that moment of glory.

It’s a sad story because Danny’s epilepsy is (supposedly) what’s keeping him down in life, and it goes back to that same uncomfortable feeling that I got when Guy lost everything when he lost his foot. Anyone with a handicap in those days might as well have had REJECT stamped on their forehead. Poor Danny. Poor Guy. (But also, Danny had a huge chip on his shoulder, and I had to wonder how much of his unhappy life was a result of his attitude… it’s a “what came first?” situation.)

Don made mention of wanting to do it right “this time,” and gave his number to Danny, in case he needed help. I’m assuming that this has to do with his own brother. You’ll recall that in Season 1, Don rejected his little Whitman brother, and said brother committed suicide, just before Don decided to reconcile. Oops.

Oh yeah, and Suzanne stalked Don on his train to work, which creeped me out. She’s going to be THAT mistress. Don secretly held her hand for a moment, and that was sweet. But… run, Don. RUN! And Don likes Suzanne’s long curly hair, because nobody has that anymore in 1963. (I have long-ish curly hair, so… I don’t know. Data inconclusive.)

Earlier in the season, Don looked at his Box of Family Mementos (I try not to call it simply “the box,” because that’s gross… well, depending on your Codes of Slang), and I said to Thomas, “Why does he keep them in such a find-able place? What if Betty saw them? Drama!” (I thought they were in a bedroom drawer.) “Nah,” Thomas said. “It’s just photos. Nothing incriminating.” But it turns out that he keeps that box in his Locked Desk Drawer of Secrets (which also contains… wads of cash). And it’s more than photos…

Don had the keys in the pocket of his robe, and Betty happened upon them while doing laundry. (Honestly, I’m surprised she never found them before.) While everything was confusing (for example… photos of Don and his little brother captioned with the name “Dick”) (Dick pics! HAHA!), the most shocking discovery was Don’s divorce papers.

It was a total Holy Shit! moment, especially because… it wasn’t like Peggy’s I-had-Pete’s-baby secret, where we were waiting for that bomb to drop. This bomb dropped out of NOWHERE, because… it’s just kind of a given that Don’s secret are secret secrets.

I mean, those of us who watched Season 2 know that… this is all a result of Don’s identity-switching, and that Anna Draper was more of a mom-friend to Don. Of course, Betty doesn’t realize that Anna Draper is the REAL Don Draper’s wife, and that the divorce was just a technicality. To Betty, this divorce news is like WHOA. But the bombshell for US is that Betty just hit the tip of an iceberg of lies. Women and children first!

Betty knocked Don’s documents on the floor, then sent Clara away with the kids until dinnertime. She sat with the Box of Secrets, waiting for Don to come home, waiting to confront him. But Don’s busy driving to Bedford, Mass. By the middle of the night it becomes painfully apparent that Don’s not coming home, and Betty locks the Box of Secrets back into the drawer and puts the keys back in Don’s robe. (OMG, the Box of Secrets is actually a WHITMAN’S SAMPLER. Get it? Dick Whitman??) (Or we could call it Pandora’s Box. Either way.)

(OMG: DICK IN A BOX!)

So now there are secrets on top of secrets. You know, the usual. And I totally called Betty finding those pictures and WTF-ing over them, so I win a free… nothing. I win nothing.

Speaking of secrets, young Sally answered the phone and got a hang-up, and Don and Betty both thought it was a secret call for them. Betty called Henry Francis to check and got a “You don’t need to make up excuses to call me,” so I’m guessing it was Suzanne, who denied it, but is showing stalking tendencies. (Or maybe it was Anna Draper. Wild card!) (Or maybe… just a wrong number.)

Clara-the-maid (and de facto mother to Sally & Bobby) is the omniscient observer at the Draper residence, and she must be a champion behind-your-back eye-roller, because Betty and Don are so… secrets and lies. Also: Clara goes to church every Sunday. Sally’s like, “Why don’t we go to church every Sunday?” and Betty says, “Because we’re all too busy having secret dalliances, and also God loves white people the most.” (She doesn’t say any of that, but I think the latter is implied.)

Meanwhile at Sterling Cooper: The company is preparing for its huge 40th Anniversary Banquet (at Connie Hilton’s Waldorf-Astoria, of course), at which Don will be receiving an award and giving the keynote speech.

Lane Pryce’s wife hates NYC and wants to go back to London, and maybe she will: St. John (MR. SHEFFIELD!) tells Pryce that the Brits are selling Sterling Cooper. He tells his wife, and in my book wins the best award possible: Nicest and Most Honest Spouse. (Earlier, when Mrs. Pryce shows up at the office in tears and out of cash after a terrible taxi ride, Pryce does his best to comfort her, and even asks to see her gown. Awww.) (Oh, and Mrs. Pryce hates Pryce’s assistant, smarmy Mr. Hooker. Points for her! When Pryce rehearsed his speech, Hooker called it “rousing.” GROSS!)

Other Sterling Cooper news: Don’s contract is finalized, and he gets a $5000 bonus. He’s probably going to stuff that into the Drawer of Secrets, too.

Oh yeah, totally thematic storyline: Peggy and Paul Kinsey work on a Western Union campaign. For telegrams. (Do telegrams even exist anymore?) (It’s Peggy and Paul’s fault!) Paul is mad at Peggy for being a woman, and for doing an awesome job on her feet of thinking up a better idea than Paul’s during Paul’s improv-skit presentation of an Aqua Net commercial (ha!). (My aunt claims to have met a woman named Aquanetta, which is… amazing.)

So Peggy and Paul stay late to work separately (but equally?) on Western Union ideas. Peggy burps into her dictaphone (whatever that thing’s called) and apologizes to her secretary. Paul drinks a whole bottle of… who knows? Hard liquor. He exits his office in the wee morning, hollering for Peggy, and I’m REALLY glad she already left, because… he took off his belt. Anything you can imagine him doing next with/to Peggy is creepy.

Instead Paul finds a late-night janitor named Achilles. (As in, heel? Thematic!) He inquires about the strange name, and Achilles starts telling a story about how it’s a family name, and whenever anybody says, “Achilles!” at a family party, all the men turn around. Paul, self-centered dick that he is, cuts off the story and goes back to his office to stomp his feet in joy because he just thought of the BEST IDEA EVER.

Of course the next day his secretary shakes him awake on his couch, and he has no record of his Great Idea, other than… it was Great. I’m willing to bet major money that it was only great because he was craaaaaazy drunk. A couple of times I’ve woken up from a “brilliant” dream, jotted it down, and when I wake up in the morning and read it… whaaat? It usually says something like, “Love is difficult, strange. Golf, hamsters– metaphor.”

Paul retraces his steps, to no avail. He ends up bringing zilch to the table with Peggy and Don, and Peggy convinces him to tell Don what happened. Of course, “I should have written it down” leads to a brilliant idea (from Don & Peggy, because Paul… whatever), because telegrams are all about writing something down and keeping it (Don mentions that a significant telegram could be “framed”… interesting, if you think of the other meaning of “framed” vis a vis Don’s secret documents), vs. a telephone conversation, which can be forgotten. (And now we have emails and IMs and all that… I guess that’s your modern telegram.)

They build off of a Chinese proverb that Paul quotes: “The faintest ink is better than the best memory.”

So, given that storyline, it’s fascinating how much of this week’s episode has to do with phone calls (the anxiety-inducing hang-up at the Drapers, Betty’s call with Henry, Pryce’s phone conversation with London) and with written documents (Don’s contract and the evidence in his locked drawer… the photos, the divorce papers, etc).

The write it down vs. remember it theme goes even further, because Cooper is looking at old pictures of the men of Sterling Cooper, and we see that Sterling’s mother is losing her memory. In the car to the gala, she forgets that Sterling is married to Jane now. “Does Mona know?” she asks, concerned.

PS Does anyone remember how sweet Paul seemed in Season 1? When he was trying to romance Peggy? (Although in retrospect, that was kind of creepy.) He turned out to be a dick-and-a-half, even if he does support progressive ideas. Too pretentious! Shield your eyes!

I didn’t remember Pete being at the episode at all, but apparently he was at the gala. What a cute couple! I love Trudy.

Lookin' good, Campbells.

Lookin' good, Campbells.

Betty tried to get out of going to the gala (feigned illness), but Don wanted to show her off. (Some websites are saying that Betty’s dress was blue, but I saw it as primarily green. Which goes back to that whole “is blue blue” question. It all ties together!) It’s funny because she doesn’t even understand what she found. But she knows that she knows less about Don than she realized. Who IS this man that she’s sharing her life with? Who was he before? (Also, divorce was more taboo back then, so there’s that, too.)

Betty is not feeling the love.

Betty is not feeling the love.

Sterling introduces Don to the crowd, and it must be killing him. Earlier in the episode he expressed his annoyance in celebrating Don, pointing out that he plucked Don from the obscurity of fur sales. He refers (again?) to the idea that Don and Betty look like the wax figures on a wedding cake. (Metaphor!) Also, we find out that Sterling’s FATHER is the Sterling in Sterling Cooper. That explains a LOT, from Sterling’s relative youth (compared to Cooper) to why the Brits see him as inconsequential. He’s the prince, not the king.

Don and Sterling do a good job pretending to be friends, because everybody in this world is pretending everything, anyway. It’s easy for them to fake it. (Except for Pryce and his wife. Foreigners!) (Ironic that the Brits are more demonstrative than the Americans, don’t you think?)

Cooties.

Cooties.

Oh yeah, and Pryce convinced Cooper to go to the gala by appealing to Cooper’s vanity. Which surprised me a little, because Cooper’s so crazy (like a fox!), I didn’t realize that he cared what other people think. I mean, he walks around in socks and hangs tentacle-rape pictures in his office. But… people are complicated. So… there you go.

Next week: Joan and Dr. Greg. When oh when will we see Big Gay Sal again? Is he licking his wounds on Fire Island, or what?

Also… what’s going to happen in the finale? It was mid-October this week (so… our real-life calendar was in sync with “Mad Men”… like two ships passing in the night). It would make sense that the finale would be Sterling’s daughter’s wedding and the Kennedy assassination.

Will Betty confront Don about his secrets by the end of the season? Or will she just lock them into the Secret Drawer of her SOUL, and have a “tawdry” affair with Henry Francis?

xoxo…

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The More You Know: VAMPIRE DIARIES, Episode 6

October 16, 2009
Welcome to the Civil War Era, bitches.

Welcome to the Civil War Era, bitches.

Episode 106, “Lost Girls” Air Date 10/15/09

Looking back, I should have known that Elena would know about the whole Stefan’s-a-vampire thing within the first five or six episodes. Thing is, if the show had been a bust, it wouldn’t have gotten a pick up, and it would have sucked (ha) to be canceled before the big secret even dropped.

Anyway, this week’s episode starts with the end of last week’s episode, in case you missed it. Elena’s writing in her diary and looking in her mirror and realizing that Stefan is a vampire. Stefan’s fixin’ to stake Damon. Elena wavers outside of the Ye Olde Salvatore Boarding House, steeling up her courage. Stefan runs to the front door and into a bright light…

FLASHBACK: Stefan’s exiting the front door of Ye Olde Salvatore Estate, clad in his 1864 garb. Guess who’s coming to dinner?

It's me, Katherine.

It's me, Katherine.

It’s “Miss Pierce.” That name’s going to be really hilarious when you find out that she’s a vampire. Get it? Get it?? (Settle down, it’s not a spoiler because it was in the books, and I’ve been talking about it all along.) (I didn’t read the books, but I read Wikipedia. You know this.)

I don’t really understand why Katherine comes to stay with the Salvatores. Is she their cousin, or what? (Close your mouth. Back then, cousins dated all the time.) Even in 1864, the parents of Mystic Falls were super-permissive/absent, because we don’t see any parents/aunts/uncles/whatevers in any of the flashbacks.

You can’t really see it in these pictures, but Katherine has an unwieldy amount of hair. I don’t know if it’s a wig or extensions or what, but I’m surprised that poor Nina Dobrev could stand up straight. Also, after Stefan and Damon’s major build-up of her, Katherine was… just okay. I don’t blame Nina Dobrev, because she was killing it as Elena this week. Elena is fierce. But Kathering was kind of a cipher. And she had a few clunkaroo lines, like referring to S&D to their faces as “the smart and kind Salvatore brothers.” I wasn’t feeling it.

But hey, they do more right than wrong on this show. I give props to the powers that be for showing us how it was that Stefan played football: Damon brought it back from his Confederate training camp. He learned about football from a Harvard man. Works for me!

Wait! I need to go get my lucky jockstrap.

Wait! I need to go get my lucky jockstrap.

Turns out that Katherine is to Damon/Stefan as Damon was to Caroline: She’s sleeping with them, drinking their blood, and using “mind compulsion” to keep them from telling each other what’s going on. All while wearing a very tight corset (which she doesn’t really need, since she’s really thin and her dresses look oddly baggy).

Can I just say that every time I hear “mind compulsion,” I want to giggle? For some reason calling it “glamouring” (that’s the “True Blood” equivalent) feels more organic to me. “Compulsion” is a funny word. (Is “compulse” a word? I don’t think so. English is so weird.)

Back in today-world, Elena confronts Stefan and he admits that he’s a vampire. Elena tries to run away from him, but finally he can use his cool vampire tricks in front of her, like moving really fast and flying up into her bedroom window. It’s hard not to pity Stefan, since he’s making sad faces and saying things like, “Please don’t be afraid of me,” and, “I’d never hurt you,” and Elena’s basic attitude is, Stay away from me, you scary lying monster.

Meanwhile, Damon wants his ring back. He calls Stefan, who says that he needs time to get it back. “Did you ship it to Rome?” Damon asks (maybe a nod to the fact that the Salvatore brothers were from the Italian Renaissance, in the books). It makes me wonder: What’s in Rome? (Or: Who?)

Damon drank all of Vicki’s vagrant friends (and also, alcohol) and is burning them. (“I’m at the Sizzler,” Damon quips.) Alcohol: multi-purposeful. He’s about to burn Vicki but she’s not dead yet, so he takes her back to the Boarding House. Why not, right? She’s hot, and she has a pulse.

Next day: Stefan meets up with Elena at a neutral, public cafe (actually, it’s the outdoor seating at the Mystic Grill… perhaps the only eatery in Mystic Falls). He explains that he’s immune to crucifixes, garlic, holy water, and that he can be seen in a mirror. Add the ring that lets him walk in the sun and… he’s not a particularly vampire-y vampire, is he? I still don’t know if he can eat, since I haven’t SEEN him eat. The jury’s out.

(Right now Stefan’s stance is that he only drinks animal blood, but Damon has alluded to a rough-and-tumble human-drinking past. Can’t wait until Elena hears about THAT.)

Stefan asks Elena to give him the rest of the day to explain things and make her decision about… whatever. Everything. They drive out to the “middle of nowhere” (Elena’s words), which turns out to be the site of Stefan’s boyhood home.

Welcome to my cribz.

Welcome to my cribz.

Oh yeah, at the cafe Stefan mentioned that there used to be a lot more vampires in Mystic Falls, and the humans used to be very aware of them. So… I’m guessing that his house was torn apart by an angry, pitchfork-wielding mob. We’ll find out, I guess.

Seeing Stefan’s destroyed home, Elena’s first thought is that it’s really… “Old?” Stefan supplies, sounding sad. (The non-evil vampires are always the saddest ones.) “I’ve been seventeen since 1864.” I know Vampire Diaries came before Twilight and all, but I wish they’d used any other age, or any other line. Because “I’ve been seventeen since xyz” feels so Twilight, especially in this out-in-the-forest scene. (Also, maybe he should be nineteen. Isn’t Paul Wesley, like, twenty-seven?)

Oh, and Stefan was hiding Damon’s ring at their old house. So he retrieves it. IS ANYBODY EVER GOING TO EXPLAIN HOW THE RINGS WORK?! Or where they came from? I hope so. (Also: I couldn’t see if Katherine was wearing a ring. If not, how was she surviving in the sun?)

Stefan may be old, but he hasn’t forgotten his genteel upbringing. He opens Elena’s car door for her.

Chivalry is undead.

Chivalry is undead.

Stefan tells Elena about the vervain necklace, and how it will keep vampires from getting into her mind. He gave it to her to keep her safe from Damon, but also to keep her safe from… him.  He urges her always to wear the necklace, so that “no matter what happens, you’ll know that you were free to make your own choice.” Aww, Stefan. You’re so Edward right now, but in a much more earnest and less creepy way.

Meanwhile, Vicki and Damon are back at the Salvatore house that’s not in ruins. Damon wants company and Vicki’s not being very fun (aka, her neck is bleeding and she’s passed out), so Damon forces her to drink some of his restorative blood. (That’s another commonality with “True Blood.”) Then Vicki’s all amped up, and she tells Damon her life story a-mile-a-minute as they have a destructive half-naked dance party. At the end of her life story, Vicki gets sad about her shitty life prospects, and Damon snaps her neck. He’s fickle like that. (Or helpful?)

In case you’re wondering… even without his ring, Damon can be in sunlit rooms. He just can’t stand in direct sunlight. And the sun doesn’t turn him to dust. In fact, he keeps putting his hand into the light and watching it start to singe. It’s the equivalent of holding your hand over a candle just to see how long it takes to get too hot to bear.

Oh yeah, while I’m thinking of it, we were missing a lot of the usual cast members this week. Bonnie, Caroline, Aunt Jenna, Tyler… all of them were MIA.

Speaking of… back in the past, we found out that Damon decided not to go back to his Confederate (eek) training camp, because he wanted to be around Katherine. I’m pretty sure that makes him a deserter, which is a major crime, but Stefan was just like, Hugs! Glad to have you around.

He ain't AWOL-- he's my brother.

He ain't AWOL-- he's my brother.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Caroline’s-Mom, Reporter-Logan and Mayor Lockwood get together and switch some parts out of Elena’s-brother-Jeremy’s pocket watch, and suddenly it’s a compass that points at vampires? Right. (Does that mean that Elena’s ancestors were vampire hunters?)

So Vicki wakes up from being dead, because she’d imbibed some of Damon’s blood pre-death. Damon being Damon, he sends her straight over to Elena & Jeremy’s house. The last step to being a vampire is to drink some human blood, so… uh oh.

Jeremy’s home alone, and Vicki shows up super-ravenous and wearing sunglasses. Also: Acting crazy. Jeremy calls Vicki’s-brother-Matt (Elena’s ex), and by the time Matt shows up, Vicki is crying that her gums are killing her. (Just a guess: Her fangs are growing in. She’s teething! Just give her a neck to chew on.) I’m actually starting to like her.

Stefan and Elena arrive, and right away Stefan knows what’s up. He calms Vicki down and sends her upstairs to rest, and tells Elena what’s going on. Vicki’s “transitioning,” which I’ve only ever heard people say in reference to someone switching genders.

Vicki runs away, and Stefan goes off to “track” her, and Damon shows up at Elena’s house looking for Stefan. Elena is super-freaked by Damon, but he tells her that he’s not out to kill her (yet), because it wouldn’t serve his greater agenda. (Which is… to steal her away from Stefan, and then kill her? I don’t know.)

Stefan finds Vicki, and tells her that she has a choice: Die, or finish becoming a vampire by drinking human blood. It’s actually a nice scene, especially for Stefan, because… he had to make this choice once. (Although we don’t see any flashbacks of Katherine turning him, so… maybe later?)

In the middle of all that nice-timesy-ness… Reporter-Logan shoots Stefan with a wooden bullet! Owowowow. Logan’s poised to stake Stefan, and I’m rooting for Vicki to rip Logan’s neck out. But guess who comes to the rescue? Damon! Aw, brotherly love. Of course, Damon claims that he wants to be the one to kill Stefan, but… whatever. Actions speak louder than words. As the brothers bond (sorta), Vicki drinks some of Logan’s blood. And runs away. Again.

Vamp on the loose!

I’m not sure if Reporter-Logan’s dead, but he’s definitely a dick. He shot a teenager in the back, because a magic compass told him to? I’m sure that would hold up in court. (Oh, I forgot to mention this– Earlier in the episode, the police found Vicki’s purse near Damon’s dead-body BBQ… and she had a Virginia drivers’ license. So… that’s where we are.)

Damon pockets the vampire-finding pocket watch. So… he has that, and Caroline has his jewel. (His… family jewel? Haha.) (Has he even realized that it’s missing?) And Stefan gives Damon his ring back. Yessss.

Is Vicki going to get a ring? (Is that even possible? Is there a ring-maker?) Or is she just going to be a boarded-up house-vamp during the day?

Stefan returns to Elena’s house and tells her that Vicki is now a Vamp-on-the-Loose. (V is for Vicki and Vampire, it’s convenient.) Elena is really mad, but what was Stefan supposed to do? Kill Vicki? He can’t win with Elena. She’s mad about that, she’s mad that Stefan made the choice to drink human blood and be a vampire in 1864, she’s mad that mad mad mad. Elena says that she gave Stefan the day, and she’ll keep his secret, but… go away.

So Stefan stands outside being hurt-sad, and Elena goes inside, slides down to the floor, and cries. I thought that maybe they’d have a last-minute smooch-a-roo, but nope. That’s all, folks.

I kind of wanted more, but I already knew a lot of spoilers, and I’d already seen three sneak-preview scenes. So… it was good. Good times. And I’m confident that most of my questions will be answered, over time. They can’t give away the farm in episode six, right?

The next new episode is in TWO WEEKS, to coincide with Halloween. (Or, as the kids call it: Slut-o-ween.) Vicki’s going as a Vampire. Get it? Got it? Good.

I think that Elena and Stefan will make up (hopefully kiss and make up), because check out this body language.

Talk to the hand.

Talk to the hand.

Wow, Nina Dobrev’s waist is crazy-tiny, isn’t it? And where’s Stefan’s costume? I will LOL until I cry if he’s going as Edward from Twilight. (Also: See the epaulets on his jacket? Vampire Rule #53: Whenever possible, wear epaulets. ESPECIALLY if you hail from the Civil War Era. Just ask Vampire Bill.)

In case you’re wondering about the title, I’m guessing that our Lost Girls are Elena (Stefan lost her tonight… for now), Katherine (however she died… or not– at any rate, she’s lost in the past, I guess), and Vicki (’cause she’s a vamp now… and lost in the woods). I thought it was going to refer to some specific mystery, but… this ain’t “CSI,” and I’m FINE with that.

Speaking of Katherine and Elena… knowing that Katherine was a vampire, and that Elena’s parents had vampire-finding apparatus– doesn’t that make you EXTRA curious about the Katherine-Elena looking-exactly-like-each-other connection? Inquiring minds want to know!

And that’s all I have to say about that. (For now.)

xoxo…

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What Are You??: VAMPIRE DIARIES Episode 5

October 9, 2009
I figured it out!

I figured it out!

Episode 105: “You’re Undead to Me” Air Date: 10/8/09

Last night, Elena figured out that Stefan is a vampire. FINALLY. She literally stood in front of the mirror, thought about all the facts, and then realized, OH FUCK, my boyfriend is a vampire. At the end of the episode, Elena asked Stefan that time-honored question: “What ARE you?!”

Unlike “Twilight” or “True Blood,” where the girlfriend requires zero time to process the news, it looks like Elena’s going to have a more appropriate response. Next week’s preview shows her angry, scared, shouting, and crying. I can’t wait! (I’ll post the promo closer to next Thursday… right now, only the official website’s embedded version starts with Stefan definitively saying, “I’m a vampire.”)

So… that ending eclipsed the episode, but here are some things that happened:

(Skip to the end of this entry for some of next week’s photos…)

-Stefan disappeared for several days while he was dealing with Damon. Elena didn’t want to call him, because she didn’t want to be one of those girls whose world revolves around whether or not a guy calls. Sure, nobody wants to BE that girl, but everyone IS that girl, when the guy doesn’t call.

-Stefan returned and told Caroline that Damon was gone… forever. (Aka he was languishing in the dungeon.) Caroline put Damon’s amber crystal on a chain and hung it in her room. (When the light hits it, it makes one of those Pagan star symbols, but Caroline doesn’t know that yet.)

-Stefan tried to make up for his disappearance and closed-up-ness (“If you’re gonna dump me, you should at least know who you’re dumping,” he said) by cooking a surprise Italian dinner for Elena, really playing up his Italian roots. (I’m not a vampire! I’m just really Italian!) He said “mootzarella,” which made me laugh. He also chopped up a garlic clove. Huh. I guess he’s not garlic-averse. (Neither is Vampire Bill.)

-Elena made Stefan promise to eat his garlic bread if she ate his garlic bread, and he said, “I love garlic.” This is one of the many Unwritten Rules of Kissing Conduct: If kissing is going to occur in the near future, it’s okay to eat a breath-altering food, if the other person does too. This brings up the whole, Does Stefan Eat? question, but we don’t see the answer.

-Stefan told Elena some stuff about Katerine, but mostly he told her about his favorite music, etc. He even likes “that one Miley song,” which is funny because they probably had a different one in mind when they wrote it. But by now, it’s totally “Party in the USA.” Also funny because Damon said that girls love him because he tolerates Taylor Swift. And Stefan’s favorite movie is TAXI DRIVER. Violent. (Also: complicated. I haven’t seen it, but you can see from Wikipedia that there might be some parallels…)

-Other Stefan faves: The Great Gatsby (makes total sense… all about someone trying to be someone he’s not, pursuing a girl– oh wait, not too far off from TAXI DRIVER, huh?), “Seinfeld” (ha… vampires and Jews), and “I Love Lucy” (his fave episode: “Lucy and the Loving Cup”). He’s leaving out anything pre-1950s… like banjo music and Mark Twain.

-Elena cut her finger while chopping garlic, and somehow Stefan got some of her blood on his hand. He vamped out big time, with scary eyes and fangs, and Elena saw it all reflected in a glass cabinet. But he managed to dodge her long enough to get back to normal before she could see him face-to-face. She chalked it all up to a hallucination.

-We heard the Howie Day song (“Be There”) that was the free video of the week on iTunes last week. And an Imogen Heap song from “Ellipse” (love that CD). And “Don’t Trust Me” by 3OH!3. This show is full of music that is on my iTunes. Seriously. I’m so CW and I didn’t even know it. (How do they afford so much music? Or is it free, and later they’ll have a fight when they try to issue the DVDs?)

-The students held a car wash in memory of Coach Tanner (Dick). Remember how he died of an “animal attack?” Caroline made it a rule that everyone had to wear a bikini. (HA.) Stefan adorably helped Elena remove her sweater, which got all tangled up in her elbows and hair (and Stefan was the only non-shirtless guy… what up with that?). Elena offered to stow Stefan’s “lapus lazuli” ring (he said “latzooli” in his newly-very-Italian way), but he wouldn’t part with it. Because… without it, he’s toast. (Also, lapus lazuli was my Jewish sorority’s jewel… Jews and vampires, you guys.)

-Elena kept running into this old man who turned out to be her classmate’s grandpa (and the classmate’s name was Tiki!), and he said that he knew Stefan and Damon… in 1953. And that their Uncle Joseph died of an animal attack. Reporter-Logan let Elena use the local news archives, and she found footage of Stefan in 1953. (UGH, they should have changed their names.)

-Damon was locked in the vervain-filled dungeon, and used his mind powers to lure Caroline to the house to open the basement door. So Caroline saw a well-dressed Damon phantom popping up and saying “help me,” which was cool. Also, when Caroline said, “You bit me,” to Damon, he replied, “You liked it.” Heh. So “True Blood.”

-Zach tried to stop Caroline from unlocking the dungeon, but he was too late. (Um, maybe it wasn’t secure enough, if Caroline could just open it.) Damon couldn’t drink Zach– he had been drinking vervain tea for sixteen years. So he killed Zach, and chased Caroline in his weak, stumbly state. BUT he didn’t have his ring on, so when Caroline opened the door, he got an intense sunburn (it healed quickly) and stayed inside.

-I was right about Caroline’s dad. He has a boyfriend. I guess it makes sense that he married Caroline’s mom, because she’s the butchiest woman in town. (She’s really not that butch, other than the police uniform and the short hair, but it’s the CW.)

-Bonnie made a bunch of crazy witch stuff happen. She made a car burst into flames. Stefan knocked her out of her car-torching trance, and totally knows that she’s a witch. Supernatural creatures always recognize each other like that!

-Elena’s druggie-little-bro Jeremy dated Vicki “in the light,” and Aunt Jenna didn’t seem to care that her freshman nephew was having sleepovers with the town’s most promiscuous high schooler? Vicki stole Elena’s leftover pain medication from the whole car-accident-where-the-parents-died, and Jeremy was NOT cool with that, or with getting high any more, or with Vicki’s weird graveyard friends. So… they broke up.

-But then, in the dark, Damon attacked Vicki. For– what?– the third time? I thought she was dead, but previews tell me that she lives, but something crazy happens… maybe Damon turns her into a vampire? Ugh. Third time’s the charm. She should be dead already.

-And Reporter-Logan stole Jeremy’s magical pocket watch.

-Speaking of Reporter-Logan, he and Caroline’s mom talked about how they’re searching for the vampires in caves, and looking for people who are only out at night (you know, vampire stuff). Or they could just, you know… see if any of the original founders of Mystic Falls (c. long long time ago, should be dead) happen to be attending the high school. I hope they figure this all out when they see Stefan on the football roster! (SHOULD HAVE USED AN ALIAS.)

-Elena stood in front of a mirror piecing together everything she knew about Stefan and Damon, and grabbing her hair. Bites. Weird reflections. Blood sucking attacks. Magic healing. Matt telling her that Vicki said she was bit by a vampire. (HA.) UH OH. Just as Stefan was heading to stake Damon for killing Zach (why stake him over Uncle Zach, and not poor Uncle Joseph?), Elena showed up at his doorstep with the big, “Who are you?!”

It looks like things are going to get a little bit TWILIGHT in next week’s episode, “Lost Girls.”

Say it. You're a vampire.

Say it. You're a vampire.

In case you’re wondering what I’m talking about:

Vampires love clearings and blue shirts. And hair product.

Vampires love forests and blue shirts. And hair product.

But I’m wondering if those stills were decoys or promotional pictures. (Or maybe he tells her about the flashbacks while standing in a clearing? Or maybe they are looking for some Lost Girls?) After last night’s episode, the CW website added tons of new pics from “Lost Girls,” and they are FLASHBACKS! With Nina Dobrev (who plays Elena) as Katherine.

Check out Mr. Mustachio over there.

Check out Mr. Mustachio over there.

We know she’s supposed to be worse than Elena, because she owned slaves. (But she was apparently a Union sympathizer, so… maybe they’re just servants.)

Also: Where is Mystic Falls? West Virginia? (Er… regular Virginia? Sides!) Looks like Damon was a Confederate. Brother against brother! (I can see Stefan as a Pacifist.) Here’s the written preview, and a pic…

Check out the Olde-Timey Salvatore brothers.

Look at the Olde-Timey Salvatore brothers.

Until next week! (I’m so excited and I just can’t hide it.)

xoxo…

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Roman Holiday: MAD MEN Episode 8

October 5, 2009
Enchantee, Mrs. Draper.

Enchantee, Mrs. Draper.

Episode 308, “Souvenir” Air Date: 10/4/09

Just a short little “Mad Men” talk-up, lest you think that I’ve abandoned the Binge.

This week’s episode happened almost entirely outside of the office, other than the first scene, which established that many of the leads were “out of town” (Sterling, Cooper, etc). Also, Pete’s wife Trudy was out of town, but until she got back I thought that she had left him. Oops.

Betty and her Junior Leagers of Tarrytown (even though I thought Tarrytown was far away, and the Drapers live in Ossining?) go to a City Council meeting re: the Pleasantville Dam blah blah. The women at the meeting use their husbands’ names, as in, “I’m Mrs. Davy Joneslocker.” Eek. Sexism at work.

When Henry Francis gets there (just in the nick of time!), he uses his Man Card to swipe in and speak on behalf of the ladies. And… he says something about maybe the water is drinkable, and the project is halted, and everyone is Saved! For now.

After the meeting, Henry Francis leans into Grandpa Gene’s Good Luck Cadillac and kisses Betty. (Need a father figure much, Betty?)

MILF Alert!

MILF Alert!

Pete is lost without a woman in his life. He doesn’t even seem to know how to remove his shirt. The moment he enters his apartment, he pulls it off over his head. But it’s a button-up shirt, with cuffs and all. Haha Pete, you are a funny guy. But you aren’t trying to be funny. :(

Pete meets a German au pair in his building’s hallway. She borrowed her boss’ dress and spilled wine on it. Now she’s trying to throw the dress down the trash chute, but it’s stuck. (Apparently, she’s unlucky at EVERYTHING.) (Just wait.) The dress has a tag that says “Bonwit Teller.” My very helpful mother, who lived through the 1960s and hails from NY area, informed me that Bonwit Teller was a very upscale department store.

Pete goes to said department store, and asks to speak to the manager. Turns out… the manager is Joan! She claims that she’s just helping out temporarily. I’m kind of impressed that she was hired straight into a manager position. I guess that’s what happens when you’ve got Queen of all Secretaries on your resume.

Joan’s wearing a lovely purple dress. As usual, the dress seems to be very expensive, and also fits her dimensions perfectly. Sigh.

Return to us, Joan.

Return to us, Joan.

Also, we see Hermes again, in a display in the background, with a big HERMES sign over it. They must have some sort of product placement deal with the “Mad Men” peeps.

Joan tells Pete that Dr. Greg is thinking about changing his specialty to psychiatry. Ha. No cutting necessary, which is good because Dr. Greg ain’t got no brains in his fingers.

Pete tells Joan that he would appreciate her discretion about the matter. (Because he said that it’s Trudi’s dress, but it’s not… because she’s not a size 10. Also: that dress does not look like a 10. Sizes have changed!) Joan’s like, Duh, I worked at Sterling Cooper. I know the drill.

Okay, now that Pete knows that Joan is working at the department store… how long until she’s back in the Sterling Cooper universe? I miss her!

Don and Betty go to Rome for Conrad Hilton. The lobby of the hotel in Rome is actually the lobby of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, which was the home of the Oscars back when I was a young kiddo. I recognized it because I once worked there (sort of) for about two days (sort of). Long enough to get a grand tour and find out that the gold dome thing in the lobby is crazy echo-y, if you talk whilst standing beneath it.

And the outdoor cafe/fountain was… you guessed it… the exterior of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion (aka the Music Center). If you’ve ever been to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Disney Concert Hall, the Mark Taper Forum, or the Ahmanson Theater, you’ll probably recognize this:

Hey, it's Rome. (Not.)

Hey, it's Rome. (Not.)

So… Rome wasn’t built in a day, but this Rome stuff might have been shot in a day. Nice work, locations. Because nobody knows what that hotel in Rome looks like, anyway. (And my dad once called that Music Center fountain an upside-down uterus, or something like that.)

(When and why was he there? At the end of my freshman year of college, my parents drove me all the way from OC to the Ahmanson in rush hour traffic to see Matthew Bourne’s “Play Without Words,” because my car was in the shop and I was nursing my psychological wounds at home. And my parents sat outside the whole time and did crossword puzzles, and little did they know that they were in what would someday be fake-Rome on TV.) (Romantic.) (My parents are awesome.)

Who knew? Betty speaks Italian… and gets a crazy twirly beehive, which contains more hair than she seems to possess (the magic of TV!). Don pretends he’s not Betty’s husband, and picks her up in front of some Italians. They call Don old and ugly. Ha.

The MILF of Rome.

MILF Alert!

(PS In that photo, what is up with the guy on the Vespa? I think he’s a crew member, because he doesn’t look period at all.)

Don has an “affair” with Betty, who looks amazing considering that she just had a kid… and at the very end of the scene, we get to hear a European ambulance. I love those. WEE ooh WEE ooh.

It’s crazy that if Betty wasn’t here, he’d probably be doing this with some other girl. It’s also… probably the most romantic scene yet between Don & Betty. There’s all sorts of strange subtext.

Sally tries to kiss the neighbor boy (Ernie), while Bobby watches like the young voyeur he is. But he can’t keep his mouth shut, and when Sally sees him, she pummels him. These kids are going to turn out FINE. (Or not.)

Peter brings the au pair the replacement BT dress, and wants to hang out, but the au pair has a boyfriend. He gets drunk and goes back to the au pair, basically demands to see the dress on her… uh oh, he’s being rapey. We only see kissing, but… yeah.

Don and Betty wake up in Rome, and it’s almost time to go home. But Rome was so invigorating!

Don: I like sleeping on this side of the bed.

They are so cute and randy on vacation. When I was in Rome, I stayed on a small cot in a tent at a hostel that was a dirty bus ride away from the actually city of Rome. And I shared that tent with another girl. And it was not romantic. In fact, the most action I got in Rome was when a pickpocket stuck his hand into the pocket of my convertible short-pants on the aforementioned dirty bus, and I glared at him and said, “NO.”

Don’t get me wrong, the hostel was cool, in a backpacking way. But it was no Hilton hotel.

(PS GASP! Remember how Grandpa Gene and Sally were reading that Roman Empire book? Everything’s coming up ROME!)

So the Drapers get home and share furtive we-had-a-good-time-on-our-sex-getaway looks, and Carla (the Draper’s maid/replacement mom) tells Betty about Sally’s temper.

Pete lives in 14G. Ed Lawrence of 14C, aka the au pair’s boss, comes to Pete and is uber-annoyed, because the au pair is crying, and do you have any idea how hard it is to find a good au pair? He’s not mad at Pete for sleeping with the au pair so much as he’s mad that Pete had to sleep with HIS au pair. Okay, I’m sick of saying “au pair.”

Okay, I LOVE Betty’s dress the next day, when she makes Sally apologize for beating poor Bobby.

Behold, the 1960s.

Behold, the 1960s.

Betty regards her fainting couch, and maybe realizes that it was a terrible decorating choice? But it’s a symbol! (And remember, Henry Francis told her to buy it.) Betty sits Sally down and says a few words of motherly wisdom, including, “I don’t want you running around just kissing boys,” and, “You don’t kiss boys, they kiss you.”

Sally laments that her first kiss has already passed her by.

Betty: You are going to have a lot of first kisses. You are going to want it to be special, so you remember. That’s where you go from being a stranger to knowing someone. And every kiss with them after that is a shadow of that kiss.

Aww. And: So much subtext.

Trudy comes back to the apartment from wherever she was, and meets the au pair in the elevator. Peter won’t have day-sex with Trudy because he supposedly doesn’t want to mess up his suit right before work. Trudy thinks it has to do with her inability to have babies, and Pete makes an I-did-a-bad-thing face and cries, and Trudy walks out. Uh oh.

So, to recap… Pete needs a mother figure and happens to have a wife who is unable to be a mother, and he turns to an (inept, it seems) au pair, who is essentially a replacement mother for hire? Oh brother, mommy and daddy issues abound this week.

But then Pete comes home to Trudy for dinner, and things are chilly yet okay. Pete cuts off Trudy’s long, prepared speech about fruits and vegetables, which makes me a little bit sad, because… fruit salad! My favorite topic.

Pete: I don’t want you to go away anymore without me.

Trudy: (long pause) Good. I won’t.

Betty has also made a decision. She tells her friend that she’s done with going to Henry for help. (Aka, she’s done kissing Henry in Gene’s car… but I have my doubts.)

Even though Don tries sleeping on the Rome side of the bed, and jumps to light Betty’s cigarette like the Roman men did, Betty decides that she hates this place, and their friends. Don bought her a charm in Rome, for her bracelet, and even that nice gesture makes Betty go, UGH.

Going to Rome just made her realize what a desperate housewife she is, and now she is back to being an ice queen. Meanwhile, Don has been trying to be a good man. He plays outside with the kids! He’s trying to make every day a little bit vacation-y. But… Betty hates the suburbs.

She’s so REVOLUTIONARY ROAD and she doesn’t even know it.

And I think she’s probably going to sleep with Henry Francis, after all, because… I think Betty feels dead, in Ossining, with kids, etc. She liked playing a young Italian coquette. Methinks she wants to be a little girl again. Daddy issues galore!

That’s all there is. There isn’t any more.

Until next week.

xoxo…

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Founders, Keepers: VAMPIRE DIARIES Episode 104

October 2, 2009
Ah, to be young and fancy-free.

Ah, to be young and fancy-free.

Episode 104, “Family Ties” Air Date 10/1/09

I like it when characters on a TV show are very self-aware and real world-savvy. They practically do all the snarking for me! I think that’s why I love Damon so much. Damon was full of great comments in last night’s episode.

But before he was quipping his quippies, Damon was making Stefan have a nightmare about Elena. In the ‘mare, Damon attacked Elena. But wouldn’t it be scarier to make Stefan dream that HE attacked Elena? Since Stefan is all about repressing his vampire urges? Whatever, Damon is great at jokes. (And sexy makeout nightmares.) He can’t be a master of all trades.

Damon reminds Stefan that drinking human blood would “even the playing field,” and then re: the football joke, asks, “Too soon?” Because Damon killed Coach Dick last week.

Stefan takes out his anger by… stabbing Damon with a dagger? Ouchies. (Tetanus-ies.) But Damon’s more annoyed about the hole in his shirt (which… is something I totally would have brought up, if Damon hadn’t done it for me). “This is John Varvatos, dude,” he says to Stefan. “Dick move.” And then he stabs Stefan with the dagger, which hurts worse for Stefan because of… lack of human blood.

Two thoughts: Why are you wearing a John Varvatos T-shirt, Damon? You could get that exact shirt at Target, Fancy Pants. Also, this scene is full of ab-revelations. Which, as we’ve already discussed, is a very important element of this show.

Stefan turns to his diary, where he muses, “How do I stop a monster without becoming one myself?” (PS Doesn’t Damon read Stefan’s diary? Be careful what you write, Stefan!)

Meanwhile, Damon framed a mountain lion, so the news reports that the beast has been captured. The weasel-esque TV reporter guy is named Logan, and he’s the reason why Elena’s Aunt Jenna left Mystic Falls, so many years ago. Yawn.

Stefan pays a morning makeout-call to Elena’s house. They kiss on her bed, until Stefan sees himself vamping out in the mirror. (Way to be narcissistic and look at yourself in the mirror while making out, Stefan.) (Also, vamping when angry or aroused? Same rule as “True Blood.” Makes sense, just sayin’.)

Elena invites Stefan to the Founders’ Party, which is a big thing in the town, and her mom was on the Heritage committee, blah blah old people stuff. Stefan says, “Salvatores don’t get invited anymore.” Oooh, why not? Intrigue. But he agrees to accompany Elena, as her date.

Damon is chillin’ on Caroline’s bed, flipping through a book as she gets dressed. (Do the girls of Mystic Falls have the most permissive/absentee parents and/or legal guardians ever, or what?) Caroline is trying on dresses for the Founders’ Party, and Damon tells her to wear the blue, because yellow is “jaundice.” Wow, Damon’s Mr. Fashion this week. He’s the Tim Gunn of vampires. Make it work! Add a scarf.

Caroline doesn’t want to invite Damon to the Founders’ Day party, because her mother is “a proud gun owner” (it will all make sense soon), but Damon uses his vampire-eyes to compel her to bring him.

Guess what’s Damon’s reading: “What’s so special about this Bella girl? Edward’s so whipped.” One of the Twilight books! Laugh out loud! But not the first one, because Caroline chastises him that he’s reading it out of order. “I miss Anne Rice,” Damon laments. “She was so on it.” (She pulled a Kirk Cameron, and is now too religious to write vampire books, or something.)

GASP. Caroline knows that Damon is a vampire! “How come you don’t sparkle?” Caroline asks him. (She WOULD ask that.)

Damon: Because I live in the real world, where vampires burn in the sun.

Ha! The real world. That’s a complicated statement, on a fictional TV show about vampires that is making fun of other fictional depictions of vampires. But… I’m all about making fun of Twilight. Carry on, Damon. (There’s something else I want to say about this, but Caroline’s about to do it for me.)

Caroline: Yeah, but you go in the sun.

Damon: I have a ring. It protects me. Long story.

Ugh, when is somebody going to tell the story? I want to know the deal with this ring!

Caroline asks if Damon’s bites are going to turn her into a vampire, as is the Twilight way. Damon tells her that to become a vampire, she’d have to feed on a vampire, die, and then feed on a human. “It’s a whole ordeal,” he tells her, rolling his eyes. “This book, by the way, has it all wrong.”

Suck on THAT, Twilight.

Sparkle-critical-analysis-of-twilight-7164540-300-344

But we just touched on some mythology that’s different than “True Blood.” In that world (and it most mythologies, I think), the process starts with the vampire biting the human. But in “Vampire Diaries,” the human has to feed from the vampire first? I guess that means the vampire has to be complicit with the turning, or else… good luck biting a vampire, feeble humans.

Damon pulls Caroline onto the bed and kisses her. “You can be very sweet when you want to be,” Caroline says. True story. Caroline asks Damon if he’s going to kill her, and he says, “Mm hm.” From this angle and with that tone of voice, he reminds me of Michael Ian Black. Ha. But first, “…there’s something I need you to do for me.”

At the Mystic Grill (not to be confused with Mystic Pizza), we find out that jerk-jock Tyler’s dad is the mayor of Mystic Falls. And Tyler hasn’t told his parents that he’s dating Vicki-the-Supposed-Slut. Etc.

At a nearby table, Bonnie is upset that Caroline is taking Damon to the Founders’ Party. Now Bonnie is the odd-witch out. (Again.) Bonnie calls Damon, “Older Sexy Danger Guy.” Caroline snarks, “Is that an official witch Twitter tweet?” I love that phrase. “Twitter-tweet.” It’s going to be all the rage, now. (Probably not.)

Thanks to Damon’s prompting, Caroline tells Bonnie about Stefan… it’s some story about how Katherine chose Damon, and then Stefan was a crazy stalker about the whole thing. Based on all of Damon’s mind games, I have to assume that Caroline only knows that Damon’s a vampire when they’re alone together? The rest of the time, I think he’s wiping her mind. Because… she’s bad at secrets.

Back at Ye Olde Salvatore Boarding House (or something like that), Uncle-But-Actually-Not-Uncle Zach comes across Damon, going through Stefan’s homework. “This country sure has dumbed down in the past hundred years,” Damon notes. THANK YOU, Damon. I’m guessing that he would be at least as appalled as I was by Stefan’s history class’ lack of date-knowledge last week.

Also: Stefan went to Harvard in the ’70s? The 1970s? I don’t know, but I thought he was living in secret. I think that Stefan and I have different definitions of the word “secret.” Maybe he just meant, not-living-in-Mystic-Falls?

Blah blah, Damon threatens Zach, Stefan walks in and saves Zach. Stefan wants to figure out a way to beat Damon without drinking human blood (just drink some human blood, for cryin’ out loud!), and Zach reveals that he’s growing the Magical Anti-Vampire Herb in some dungeon in the basement. (Because… that’s normal.)

It totally looks like Zach is growing pot. Ha. There are heat lamps and everything! So “Weeds” right now. And non-vamp Salvatores have been growing weeds in the basement dungeon for generations? (Even before heat lamp technology existed?) “Blood only goes so deep when you’re related to vampires,” Zach explains. But he’s telling Stefan because… trust? Okay.

Also, the herb is called vervain, and it’s real. It’s used in Druid rituals? Remember when Stefan mentioned that some of the original settlers of Mystic Falls were Celtic Druids? Yeah, I bet that’s not a coincidence. But Damon hasn’t let vervain grow in Mystic Falls since the 1860s. Hence, the hot-house pot-house.

Bonnie tells Elena the whole “Stefan was a stalker ex-boyfriend” story that Caroline told her in the Grill. Apparently Katherine chose Damon, but Stefan manipulated Katherine until she turned against Damon. Elena doesn’t believe it, because… obviously Damon’s side is going to be skewed. But the seed of doubt has been planted. (In the hot-house pot-house of Elena’s mind.)

Damon and Stefan get dressed for the party. Together. In case you’re keeping shirtlessness score, Damon is shirtless, and Stefan is wearing a fairly transparent wife beater-style undershirt. Stefan has some strange symbol tattooed on his shoulder, which I’m guessing is a character thing, and not a Paul Wesley thing. Or it’s both.

Stefan is drinking alcohol? (Later, we find out that it’s Scotch.) Um, can vampires drink alcohol? It’s definitely a no-go on “True Blood. In the pilot Bill ordered red wine just to have a reason to sit in Merlotte’s. (Sad.) But he couldn’t drink it. (Sadder.) The vampires drank in “Moonlight,” but that show was like a reckless Wild West town, lacking in vampire laws.

Damon: My goodness, I’ve driven you to drink.

Stefan: I can’t seem to rid myself of you. What else am I supposed to do, besides go about living my life?

Damon: “Go about living my life.” Therein lies your eternal struggle. You’re dead, dude. Get over it.

There’s another vampire rule. It might even be Rule #1. You’re dead. Get over it.

Something that Twilight, “True Blood” and “Vampire Diaries” all have is common is that the main love-interest vampire is really not a fan of being a vampire. I wish I was a human, wah wah wah. And the human girl is always lonely and isolated, and somehow different from the other girls of the town. (And, to quote last night’s “Parks & Recreation,” the girl is usually “classically hot.”)

So Elena donated a big box of family heirlooms to the Founders’ Party peeps, and Tyler’s mom calls up, all stressed out because a pocket watch is missing. Elena figures out that her little brother, druggie-head Jeremy, stole the watch. She slaps Jeremy in the face, which is really setting up a face-slapping precedent. (Last week she face-slapped Damon.)

Elena thinks that Jeremy wants to sell the watch on Ebay for drug money (didn’t that happen on some other show?), but it turns out that Jeremy was supposed to inherit it. It’s a first-born son thing. So Elena gives the watch to Jeremy, and later tells Tyler’s mom (who turns out to be a cold bitch) that she couldn’t find it.

Back to Damon and Stefan, who apparently take a girlishly long amount of time to get ready. Damon (now wearing a shirt) is admiring himself in the mirror.

Damon: It’s cool not growing old. I like being the eternal stud.

Stefan: Yes, being a 150-year-old teenager has been the height of my happiness.

The brothers talk about a long-ago Founders’ Day party, where Stefan danced with Katherine and dropped her off at home… where Damon was waiting to bang her. Damon hopes that history repeats itself this year. He toasts Stefan with a glass of the vervain-laced Scotch, then pours the contents of his glass onto the floor. That’s gonna warp the hardwood! (I know from experience.) (With water, not Scotch.)

In case you’re wondering how Stefan didn’t poison himself (“Inconceivable!”), Stefan poured himself a drink before he spiked the bottle.

Damon: I’m not some drunk sorority chick. You can’t roofie me.

Roofalin! (Actually, Rohypnol.) Now I just want to make THE HANGOVER jokes. You’re out of the wolfpack, Stefan!

I guess Damon doesn’t know where the vervain came from, or else Zach would be… dead.

Long pan across the mailbox of the Founders’ Day house. The address is 2129. What does it mean?! (Probably nothing.) Also, I think Tyler and his mayor-dad and bitch-mom live at the giant history house? Because Stefan and Damon need to be invited in, and later Tyler makes some sort of reference to living in a museum. Odd times.

Stefan, Damon, and Zach also live in a giant-home museum-esque setup, but I guess it’s in the family and they own it outright, because Zach doesn’t seem to work (other than herb-harvesting… try to say that out loud, I bet you drop the second “h”), and nobody boards in Ye Olde Boarding House. Maybe because… vampires.

Stefan tells Zach that he didn’t expect Damon to fall for the vervain. But Damon probably won’t expect Stefan to try again in the same night, which is Stefan’s plan. Lower Damon’s guard. Expect the unexpected, etc. Zach gives Stefan a double-potent vial of liquid vervain. Is Zach a scientist, or what? And who’s the Wizard of the Magic Rings?

Vicki wears yellow to the party, which… come on, jaundice! Also, Tyler’s mom wears yellow. Damon’s gonna be so pissed. Damon and Stefan are wearing the darkest colors there, because… vampires. A lot of people are wearing white after Labor Day. I thought that was way uncool, on the East Coast.

Caroline’s mom is at the party, and she’s a proud gun owner because she’s a cop. I think she’s the Sheriff, even. She comments that Damon is a little old for Caroline, which is haha because… TV teens are always old. But I think Damon’s supposed to look like he’s in his 20s, so… whatever, still funny.

Caroline’s Mom: Where’s your dad?

Caroline: Memphis. With Stephen.

I’m getting the vibe that Caroline lives with her dad. Which totally explains the unsupervised sex-romps she’s been having with Damon. Also… is Caroline’s dad gay? She’s totally the Blair Waldorf of this show!

There’s a room in the Founders’ house where a bunch of artifacts are just sitting on display? That seems kind of unsafe. I mean, Elena’s family heirloom wedding rings are just sitting there, ready to be stolen. And Caroline’s cop-mom is nowhere to be seen. Too trusting, Mystic Falls!

Blah blah, Aunt Jenna agrees to go on a date with weasel-esque Reporter Logan after several scenes of back-and-forth blah blah it’s-been-a-long-time-and-people-change banter.

There’s a sort of Declaration of Mystic Falls on the wall, with a registry of the original guests at the original Founders’ Day celebration. Guess who’s on the list? Stefan and Damon. (Duh.) Maybe they should have changed their names, because… welcome to obvious-ville, population everybody-except-Elena.

Exhibit A.

Exhibit A.

Then again, all of the names on that list are the same. The original mayor was Lockwood… and the current mayor is Lockwood?! What is this town, a monarchy??

Anyway, Stefan is saved-by-the-Damon, who says that the names on the list are “the original Salvatore brothers.” Original, and extra crispy. And extra-coincidence-y. (Also, who would name their sons after two ancestral brothers who feuded terribly? That’s like naming one kid Hatfield and the other McCoy.)

Per Damon’s instructions, Caroline asks Stefan to dance with her. Stefan tries to demur that he doesn’t dance, but Damon says, “Waltz, jitterbug, moonwalk– he does it all.” Wow, live through several historic dance crazes much? (VERY much.)

(That’s a reference to an episode that I didn’t recap, where Caroline says, “Cocky much?” and Damon replies, “VERY much.”) (And then they do it.) (That was Episode 102, “Night of the Comet.”)

So Stefan has to go dance-off pants-off, and Elena is left behind with Damon, in the Room of Artifacts. Damon apologizes to Elena for being a “world-class jerk” the other night when he tried to kiss her. “My therapist says I’m acting out, trying to punish Stefan.” First of all, laugh out loud that Damon pretends that he’s going to therapy. Even more laughs if he is!

The whole therapist thing is a good tactic, because A) Would a vampire go to therapy? Nice way to humanize yourself, Damon! B) There’s something kind of hot about a guy who’s trying to work on his shit and be a better person. (Maybe that’s just me, and maybe I have issues.) (I mean, let’s be real: I do. But so do you!)

“Let’s just say that the men in the Salvatore family have been cursed with sibling rivalry,” Damon says. “It all started with the original Salvatore brothers.” (AKA the current Salvatore brothers.) I’d like for you to speak more about that, says my inner therapist. Also: Is there really a curse? What’s up with the RINGS?!

Meanwizzle, Stefan and Caroline dance. He offers her some champagne, and (IMPORTANT PLOT POINT ALERT) she drinks it.

Glug glug, Caroline hearts champagne.

Glug glug, Caroline hearts champagne.

Stefan just looks at his champagne and smiles. Okay, so NOW he can’t drink alcohol? Or did he (spoiler alert) spike all of the champagne with vervain?

Damon gives Elena a little history lesson. (HIS STORY, get it?)

Damon: The Salvatore name was practically royalty in this town. ‘Til the war. There was a battle here.

Elena: Battle of Willow Creek.

Why not “Battle of Mystic Falls?” Anyway, Damon looks surprised.

Elena: I know, we talked about it in class. Confederate soldiers fired on a church with civilians inside.

Actually, and this was in the pilot, Stefan corrected the teacher (Mr. Tanner, aka Mr. Dick) and made him aware of the civilian casualties. So… she learned about it in school, via Stefan.

Damon: What the history books left out was that the people who were killed… they weren’t there by accident. They were believed to be Union sympathizers, so some of the Founders on the Confederacy side back then wanted them rounded up and burned alive. Stefan and Damon had someone they loved very much in that church. And when they went to rescue them they were shot, murdered in cold blood.

Elena: Who was in the church that they wanted to save?

Damon: A woman, I guess. Doesn’t it always come down to the love of a woman?

Okay, this should raise a lot of questions for all of us. First of all, if you have to drink a vampire’s blood and then die to become a vampire… whose blood did Stefan and Damon drink? (Wikipedia of the books tells me that it’s Katherine’s. Let’s see if that pans out in the series.) (It could be different, since the books started in Renaissance Italy, and obviously on the TV show Stefan and Damon have Civil War origins.) (Another commonality with “True Blood.”)

My second thought is… way to spill the beans, Damon. I mean, come on, how similar do the “original” Salvatore brothers have to get to the current Salvatore brothers before Elena figures out that they’re the same? She already knows that Katherine died in a fire, and that Stefan and Damon both loved her.

Based on this story, Elena tells Damon that she can’t get in the middle of whatever’s going on between Stefan and Damon. She ought to be thisclose to figuring everything out, right? I mean, I guess I can’t be objective, since I already know what she doesn’t know.

Elena: I hope you two can work it out.

Damon: I hope so, too.

Lies. He just wants to win.

Oh, and can we talk about the way that Stefan is pronounced on this show? They all say “Steffin,” and my inclination would be to say, “Stefaahn,” as in, Stefan Urquelle. That’s all.

And Bonnie makes some witch-progress, walking around the party and making candles ignite. Spooky, scary. (When’s the Halloween episode? Which character is going to dress like a vampire? I hope it’s one of the vampires!)

Damon and Elena join Stefan and Caroline on the dance floor, and Stefan and Elena dance to Matt Nathanson’s “All We Are.” (I own it on iTunes now. Don’t judge me!) (Whatever, I am just asking to be judged, blogging and all.)

Caroline: They look so cute together.

Damon: Don’t talk, please.

So, history is repeating itself, but not the part that Damon wanted to repeat (the having-sex-with-Stefan’s-girlfriend part).

Dancing R Us.

Dancing R Us.

While Stefan and Elena dance, she asks him to tell her his side of the whole Katherine story. Elena rubs Stefan’s shoulder in a very I’m-there-for-you way. “I burden you with all of my drama,” she says. “I want you to do the same.” (A very similar conversation happened on “True Blood.” I’m not faulting this show for it, just sayin’. In both shows, it was a good scene.)

Elena is frustrated that Stefan won’t “open up” to her. She doesn’t know that much about him!

Stefan blames this all on whatever Damon must have said to Elena.

Elena: This isn’t about Damon, it’s about me trying to get to know you. Look, you’re the Mystery Guy. And I like that. But with mystery comes secrets, and this thing with Katherine.

Stefan: Let it go. I don’t want to talk about it.

Elena: Well then say something about yourself. Anything. Otherwise I’m left with nothing but what other people tell me.

Stefan toes the Damon’s-turning-you-against-me line, and Elena says, “I guess it’s working” and exits the dance floor. Come on, Stefan! Elena has a good point. You need to throw her some sort of bone (HA) that makes her feel like she’s getting to know you. Or else… it’s not really a relationship.

The creepy thing is… does Stefan care about getting to know Elena? Or is he just content to know that she looks like Katherine, and that’s that?

Elena debriefs with Bonnie in the Founders’ House. “This is my fault,” Bonnie says. “I planted doubt. I’m a doubt-planter.” Elena feels terrible because she said she wouldn’t get in the middle of the Stefan-Damon feud, and then… she did. “I got all snotty,” she sighs. (Actually… I think you were right on the money, Elena.)

Now that the museum part of the house seems to be closed, Damon has Caroline guard the door as he steals a big amber crystal out of an old box. It’s a “very important crystal,” and Damon put it in the box “a long time ago.” Caroline seems clueless enough in this scene that I think Damon wiped her brain clear of the knowledge that he’s a vampire. (For now, at least.)

“Tonight I’m taking it back, thanks to you,” Damon says. Uh oh, I think that was Caroline’s purpose. Time to (maybe) die.

Caroline and Elena retouch their makeup in the bathroom, and Elena finally looks under Caroline’s scarf and sees the bite marks. Not only on her neck, but on her back. (And probably a few other places that Elena doesn’t see.) Of course, Caroline gets agitated and leaves the bathroom with a “leave me alone!” Leave Caroline Alone!

Elena finds Damon outside, and gives him a shove. “There is something seriously wrong with you,” she tells him. “You stay away from Caroline or I will go straight to her mother. The Sheriff.” Leave Caroline Alone! Ooh, coming from anyone other than Elena, Damon would NOT tolerate this treatment. He’d just bite her… or worse.

Of course, Elena’s lecture is the nail in Caroline’s coffin (maybe). Damon heads off, looking for her.

Elena finds Stefan contemplating some big pond/fountain thing. She tells him that she takes it all back about Damon–he’s messed up. Elena tells Stefan about Caroline’s bite marks, bruises, and general confusion.

Elena: You don’t look surprised.

Stefan: Um… I’m handling it.

Elena: Handling it? Stefan, you should be having him arrested.

COME ON, ELENA. You live in a world where Twilight exists. Put two and two together, here.

Stefan says that there are things that he wants to tell Elena, but he can’t. Can’t or won’t, Stefan? CAN’T OR WON’T?? He says he may never be able to tell her what’s going on. WHAT? That better not be true. There’s only so long that the secret-identity can be secret before it’s just redonk.

Stefan asks Elena to trust him. “Trust is earned,” she says. “I can’t just magically hand it over.” You go, girl! Stefan sees Damon leading Caroline away from the party, and rushes to stop whatever’s about to happen over there. It’s all very “Super-Man.” Sorry Lois, gotta fly!

Oh yeah, Vicki felt judged at the party, so she walked away in her jaundice-yellow dress, all the way to Elena’s house, where she makes out with Jeremy. Apparently Jeremy was the only person in the whole town who didn’t attend the Founders’ Party. Good thing, too, or he wouldn’t have been on makeout stand-by.

Damon is none too happy with Caroline. Maybe he didn’t clear her mind, after all. “I swear, I didn’t tell her,” Caroline says. “I just told her that you didn’t mean to hurt me.” Damon calms down, and walks behind Caroline, so she can’t see him. He hugs her, and smells her.

“You drive me crazy, you know that,” Damon says, kissing her neck and shoulders. “It’s okay. I forgive you.” It’s all very wonderfully creepy, and the music sets exactly the right headbanging-ish, eerie tone. (It’s “Believer” by Viva Voice, from an album very appropriately titled, “Get Yr Blood Sucked Out.”)

Damon puts his hand over Caroline’s heart, briefly. I like it when vampires take note of heartbeats. That’s something they don’t have!

“Unfortunately…” Damon says, still kissing Caroline’s neck. “I am so over you now.” And he bites her! Rawr! As he drinks her blood, he lowers her to the ground. And then… Damon falls back. CHOKE!

Yeah, because Caroline drank a glass full of vervain-champagne. Stefan steps out of the shadows and spirits Damon away. Caroline sees Damon’s amber crystal on the ground, and picks it up.

Somehow Damon managed to drink Caroline’s blood without spilling any of it, because his face isn’t messy. AND a few seconds later when Elena finds Caroline, Caroline’s white frock-thing is blood-free. Now, I can suspend my disbelief to a certain extent, but this is crazy-pants. Blood is messy stuff!

But whatever, that whole sequence was awesome. I could watch it over and over. (And I have, in the name of blogging.)

Elena asks Caroline what happened, and she says, “I’m fine,” over and over. But it’s not very convincing, because Caroline is hyperventilating. Elena gives her a comforting hug, which is what Stefan did for Elena at the end of last week’s episode. Pay it forward!

Stefan and Zach lock Damon up in the dungeon-basement vervain hot-house pot-house.

But wait, here comes the TWIST:

Mayor Lockwood, his bitch-wife, Caroline’s Sheriff-Mama and Reporter Logan all sit in the Founders’ House. They need Elena’s dad’s pocket watch because… Caroline’s mom knows that the “five bodies all drained of blood” were vampire victims. “They’ve come back,” Reporter-Logan intones. He’s also going to retrieve the watch, because… bow chicka wow wow with Aunt Jenna.

But wait… if they know about vampires, wouldn’t they also know that Stefan and Damon are… the original Salvatore brothers?

Those guys are REALLY going to wish that they’d thought of aliases.

Okay, that was it. Good times. Much to ponder. Namely… WHEN is Stefan going to drink some human blood? And WHEN is Elena going to find out that the Salvatore brothers are vampires? Sooner rather than later, I hope. On both fronts. Because I feel like we’re still waiting for something to HAPPEN here. But I’m enjoying the ride, so I can’t complain.

xoxo…

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A Very MAD MEN Yom Kippur

September 30, 2009
Pretty Betty.

Pretty Betty.

Episode 307 “Seven Twenty Three,” Air Date 9/27/09

Okay, same deal with the “Glee” recap. I had the best of intentions, but it kind of fell apart. Especially because I was fasting, and tired, and spoilered. But I started the recap, so… why not publish it? Right? So you’ve been warned. This starts out slow, and ends up with a two-sentence string trying to tie it all up. (Sort of.)

I have about 15 episodes of various shows to catch up on, and I’m jumping into “Mad Men” first because already two people have accidentally spoiled me. (I’m looking at you, Mom and Thomas.) Apparently last night’s episode was a doozy. (“Doozy?” Who says that anymore?) (I do? I guess.)

Oh wow, from the Previously On alone, I can tell that this is going to be a meaty episode. There’s the clip of the guy who hit on pregnant Betty (“I’m from the governor’s office”). And look, there’s the Maypole-loving teacher who called Don. And a whole bunch of business stuff.

Can we talk about “Mad Men’s” amazing opening titles? Can you think about this show without that amazing RJD2 song getting stuck in your head?

Peggy is asleep in some man’s bed. And that’s all we see! (Also… jealous.) (Or not.)

Good times?

Good times for Peggy?

Cut to… Betty, lounging on a couch or divan. It could be a therapist’s couch, but I don’t think so. She’s wearing a nice dress, and she’s… luxuriating.

Cut to… Uh oh, is that Don? Is he dead?

Bad times for Don.

Bad times for Don.

No, he’s not. Don wakes up face-down in what looks like a motel room, maybe. There are twin beds (or maybe two full beds?) with red comforters. Don’s face is all bloody!

He holds his sore neck, and… now it’s the day before, I guess. Don’s tying his die. He’s getting ready for work. So dapper and efficient, that Don.

Downstairs, and older woman is helping Betty redecorate. Don says it all looks fine, but Betty isn’t satisfied.

Betty: All you do all day at work is evaluate objects. I would like the benefit of your eye.

Wow, what a loaded statement. And objects=women, right? That’s one interpretation. Don tells Betty where they ought to move the end-table and the lamp, and he’s right. Future interior decorator? Nah, probably not.

Don and Sterling enter the elevator at work.

Sterling: I watched the sunrise today.

Don: How was it?

Sterling: Average.

Ha. Sterling tells Don that Ogilvy wrote a book called “Confessions of an Ad Man.” “It’s the book everybody writes,” Sterling says. “Only he got it published. It should be called, ‘A Thousand Reasons I’m So Great.’” (Jealous much?) (Very much.) (That’s a rip on a quote from “Vampire Diaries,” and I love it.) (The original was Caroline saying, “Cocky much?” and Damon answering, “VERY much.”)

Don is 15 minutes late, and when he gets to his office, the Fab Four (Pete, Harry, Sal, and Paul) are waiting. Don’s like, I told you guys not to hover! C’mon, guys. But they’re hovering because… Conrad Hilton is sitting in Don’s office. Don tells the guys to come back in twenty minutes. “You look great,” the secretary whispers to Don. Go get him, Tiger!

Paul: Take an hour if you need it.

Harry (angry, to Paul): He wants to look busy!

Is it just me, or does Harry seem kind of stupid this season? Maybe just naive. And the secretary’s name is Allison, because Don tells her to hold his calls. She cocks her head to one side, as if to say, “Duh.” I love her yellow dress.

“Connie” sits at Don’s desk. When you’re as rich as Conrad Hilton, you can do whatever you want! And you have to wake up pretty early in the morning to be as rich as Connie. “Nine-thirty?” Connie says, when Don comments that seeing Connie is a nice way to start the day. “It’s practically lunch.”

Connie has come to discuss a personal matter with Don, and Don sits down across from Connie, who remains in Don’s chair. “I don’t know what I’m more disturbed by,” Connie says. “The fact that you don’t have a Bible, or that there’s not a single family photo.” “I’m easily distracted,” Don replies, lighting a cigarette.

“You should have those things,” Connie insists. “They’ll make you feel better about what you do.” Connie is very observant, but he doesn’t know Don.

Connie: Start showing up on time.

Don: Maybe I’m late because I was spending time with my family, reading the Bible.

ZING!

Connie: Are you nervous, Don? I’m finding you hard to talk to.

Don: Well you caught me by surprise, Connie. I think you know that.

Connie laughs, and it kind of creeps me out. And then this creeps me out further.

Connie: You’re a married man so you’ll have to use your imagination, but uh, I have this… involvement. I can’t say it’s perfect, and my needs are being met. But I have significant needs, Don. Catch my drift?

What does he need? Prostitutes? Male prostitutes? Higher thread-count sheets? Six-ply toilet paper?

Connie: So what do I do when my eye starts to wander?

Don: Don’t you have a coterie of trusted advisors, friends, kings that might counsel you better?

Ha. True story. Don is a zing factory around Connie. He is pumping out the zings, and Connie apparently likes it. He wants Don to handle the Waldorf Astoria, the New York Hilton, and the Stadler Hilton. “It’s just New York, but my eye has definitely started to wander.” So… what is his eye wandering at? Don? Coded speak: Can get awkward.

As Connie leaves, he says, “Having me in your life is going to change things.” “I look forward to it,” Don replies. Connie says some more about young people, energy, and sharing dreams, and it feels oddly… romantic? Sexual? I think my Yom Kippur fast is making me a little bit giddy. (Maybe that’s not the right word.)

After Connie exits, the office claps for Don.

Betty sits in her new living room with some Ladies Who Lunch. “I cannot believe you just had a baby AND you redid your house,” one woman says. “Are you suicidal?” Oh, so it was a joke. In the Next Week On, they made that line seem serious. (NEVER TRUST PROMOS.) Betty is interested in replacing Francine as secretary of… Pleasantville? (They really refer to a “Pleasantville.” That’s not even snark.) Oh, the Junior League.

The ladies want to appeal to the governor about… something something water. Blah blah blah. “The Rockefellers own half the land here,” one woman says. Ooh, that’s interesting. (Also, Rockefeller is the governor.) “Real estate,” another lady says. “That’s scary.” Really? (Were female real estate agents common back then?)

Guess who knows someone in the governor’s office? Betty does! That guy from the party who hit on pregnant-Betty. Henry Francis. “I know who he is,” one woman says. “He used to be the Republican Party chair for Westchester County. I know him.” But she thinks they have a better chance if Betty calls. Because Betty is the prettiest. Duh.

“It’s not adorable to pretend like you’re not adorable,” says another lady.

There are only three ladies other than Betty, by the by. I just don’t know their names.

Don and the Fab Four are having a meeting about jai alai. Don wants to start in Miami.

Pete: Hoho wants it everywhere. He just bought land in Seattle. It’s an indoor city.

Okay, don’t tell me that “Hoho wants it everywhere” isn’t a little bit dirty.

But really, the guys want to know about Connie. All that Don will say is that he met Connie at a party. Don Draper, Man of Mystery. (As usual.)

Okay guys, sorry to poop out, but let’s speed this up.

Want to know the Drapers’ phone number? It’s Wilson 4, 8038. You don’t need to 555 it when the phone numbers of the period don’t exist anymore. I DARE you to prank call Wilson 4, 8038. Not gonna happen!

I don’t think we knew this before, but the Drapers live in Ossining, NY. It’s a town in Westchester County. (Thanks again, Wikipedia!)

And that’s as far as I got! But here’s a very quick recap of what else happened, off the top of my head…

Um, Betty had lunch with Henry Francis (and Bobby accidentally hung up on Henry when he called the house, which only cemented Betty’s hatred of her children), and he told her to buy an antique fainting couch, and she did. But it looked terrible in her living room! (They are totally going to have sex. They rain-checked a hike to some reservoir. Sex in the woods.)

Don got into an argument with… everybody, because he didn’t want to be tied down by a contract, and ended up driving drunk (and smashing the empty glass out his window) and taking pills while driving and getting grifted by some drifters on their way to Niagara Falls (supposedly, to get married so that the guy could avoid the Vietnam draft).

Don hallucinated that he saw his dad while he was in a motel room with the grifters, but for a moment I wondered whether he was seeing the real Don Draper. Until the hallucination started drinking moonshine. (He lifted it with one hand, and supported it with the crook of his other arm. It was weird, and specific.)

Archie Whitman, drinker-of-moonshine.

Archie Whitman, drinker-of-moonshine.

Also, Sally’s teacher hit on Don HARDCORE during an eclipse, and I think it was a turn-off for him, because he’s all about discretion. But we’ll see. And Don looked at the eclipse with his sunglasses on. No pinhole viewer thingy for Don! (He didn’t go blind, in case you were worried.) (Or has he been blind the whole time? METAPHORS.)

Eventually Don agreed to sign the contract and Cooper sat at Don’s desk (everybody’s sitting at Don’s desk this week!), but Don doesn’t want to deal with Sterling at all. Ooh, all because of Jane? Or because Sterling called the house and tried to get Betty to convince Don to sign the contract? Anyway, Don is not a fan of Sterling right now, probably because Sterling is the opposite of mysterious. Sterling’s transparent philandering makes all secret philanderers’ wives get suspicious! Or something like that.

Peggy and Pete get gifts from Duck. Pete gets cigars (ha, Freudian) and Peggy gets an Hermes scarf, which she LOVES. Pete wants her to give it back, and Peggy goes to a hotel to give it back to the Hermes people (because Duck’s new agency is too ugly to host clients there?), but ends up having sex with Duck.

I can't believe I had sex with a man named Duck. Let's do it again.

I can't believe I had sex with a man named Duck. Let's do it again.

Ha, she’s still wearing her watch? She’s a woman after my own heart. (I am very attached to my watch.) (Not literally) (Yet.)

I think Peggy did it (heh) because Don yelled at her (again), and told her that any full-grown man would love to have her job (sexist) when she tried to ask for a place on the Hilton account.

Oh yeah, Duck is apparently sober again (good for him), but he says, “I can taste the alcohol on your breath” when he kisses Peggy, which is so vampire of him. (Vampire Bill once said to Sookie, “I can smell the sunlight on your skin.”)

Basically, Peggy is totally lonely. Duck is the only person paying any attention to her right now. Sure he’s using her, but at least he’s making her feel special. (SOB.) Seriously, nobody even notices when she wears the same outfit to work the next day. (JOAN would have noticed.) (Where’s Joan?)

And that’s more or less what happened. And we went back to those maybe-flashback scenes several times. But they made more and more sense, as it went along and the mysteries became less mysterious.

xoxo…

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