I just listened to the Conan episode of Jeff Garlin's podcast, "By the Way: In Conversation with Jeff Garlin," and there's a bit where he sums this up pretty astutely: It's like when people complain about having 200 channels and there being nothing good on.
There was hardly anything good on when you had ten channels, why would there suddenly be tons of worthwhile programming just because you now have more bandwidth? The ratio of bad to good is still about 90/10.
That's how I feel about the internet. We still have the same ratio of good stuff to shitty stuff, but it's just much easier to find all the shitty stuff now that you would have never bothered to seek out before. It's also easier to find niche good stuff that you would have never found before..
There's already an Encyclopedia Brown tv series and it's actually pretty bitchin'. It was directed by "Savage" Steve Holland of Eek The Cat/Better Off Dead fame. It also includes the first instance I recall of anyone ever saying "bitchin'," which blew my tiny mind at the time.
Also: I've seen the exact chopstick packaging Gabe is referring to many times and it is always hilarious to me:
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a253/tbirdofparadise/chopstick3.jpg
Whoops! I'd go back and edit, but I can't. In my defense, there was an episode called Phoenix, though obviously you're right and the vast majority of the show takes place in ABQ and I am dumb.
It reminds me a little of people getting pissed at girls who would post about how "hot" The Joker was when The Dark Knight came out. Yes, he's a violent psychopath, and you probably don't really want him anywhere near you in real life. But he was played by a handsome actor. You don't get to decide whether someone else found a character in a thing attractive, or whether they think it's a comedy or a tragedy, or whatever.
There's definitely some authorial intent in Breaking Bad to make Walt appear badass when he's getting his Heisenberg on, and there's definitely intentional comedy within the show. Is he also a tragic figure whose humanity is eroding away and basically a monster at this point? Sure - but it's hard to fit all that onto a poster. The poster's purpose is to make you go "Wow, some crazy shit must be going to happen this season! I better tune in," not to articulate every subtlety of the show's thesis.
Also: the blue meth candy and bath salts are dumb, yes. They're also not really affiliated with the show in any way -- it's just attempts by local business owners who live in Arizona to make a few bucks off of tourists who are visiting Breaking Bad locations. They're just trying to put food on their families.
I won't argue with you that they're trivializing a real problem, which is pretty gross, but what they're doing isn't really that new, or strictly an internet thing.
Visit New Zealand and they will sell you swords and bows and Lord of the Rings stuff, or visit the town of Woodstock, Illinois, which has kept its entire downtown the way it was made to look when they filmed Groundhog day there, and will happily sell you vaguely related merchandise.
The whole idea, as Vince Gilligan has stated in countless interviews, is to turn Walt into Scarface by the end of the series. That means he's going to be considered a badass, and dumb guys will have posters of him doing a badass thing on their dorm room walls.
The fact that a subsection of the show's audience doesn't necessarily jibe with the ultimate statement the show is trying to make (which I think has more to do with how greed, money and drugs will all destroy your soul and ruin your life than with how badass someone can look in a pork-pie hat or whatever) doesn't really detract from the show itself.
Those guys who think Mad Men is great because of the subjugation of women and the suits and the daytime drinking and the casual racism (and they are out there) are totally missing the point. I don't think it's the fault of "the internet" (other than exposing them to the world at large and giving them a place to congregate), and I think they're missing the point of the show. I don't think it means the show is bad because of that, however.
It's great how, the dumber the offensive thing that was said is, the more sanctimonious and martyred the person who said it will act when defending themselves.
To elaborate, I think the Don Draper persona he had created is what enabled him to get away with murder -- everyone believes he is someone he's not, so why not continue piling on lie after lie?
He needed to pull out that bottom wobbly Jenga piece. It knocked everything that was balancing on it over, but now he can start to rebuild from the more solid foundation of his real personal history. "Don Draper" is the empty elevator shaft, the rotten tooth that needed to be extracted.
His advice to Peggy regarding her pregnancy ("Move forward. You'll be shocked at how much it didn't happen.") has been revealed to be false. No matter how much he denied his past, it was still there, he's constantly reminded of it by everyday things, and the need to keep up the lie was killing him.
Earlier this season, Pete told Don he was "Tarzan, swinging from vine to vine," which was true. His plan to steal Stan's idea to run away to L.A. would have been just another escape hatch to carry him away from his problems. For the first time, he came clean on what was bothering him, accepted responsibility for his behavior ("It got out of control. I was out of control.") and, rather than run away, accepted the consequences and opened up to his children.
I don't know that he has to necessarily leave the business entirely (he is still preternaturally gifted at it, in the world of the show at least), but I think he did need to drop the "Don Draper" persona in order to save his own soul. He also needs to take a page from Ted's pre-merger days and go home every day.
Yeah, my wife and I jokingly say "Can't wait for Don to be a huge asshole to everyone with no consequences!" each time we sat down to watch an episode this season. It was very cathartic to see him finally get some comeuppance.
Whoops, that was supposed to be a reply to doolittle's post above. I think it was also prompted by him feeling super guilty about failing Sally and a hundred other things that weren't just whether he was or wasn't drunk at the time.
Yeah I thought it was pretty clear that the death the season was so clearly foreshadowing was going to be the death of the Don Draper persona. As you said, not that he has to start going by the name Dick Whitman again, but he revealed his true identity and basically blew up the image of "Don Draper" he had so carefully constructed.
His pitch about "losing yourself" that everyone thought was about suicide, hallucinating himself dead in the pool at that party, etc. - it was all pointing to the *death* of Don Draper. I thought it might be more dramatic in that he might actually fake his own death after committing a felony or something and return to being Dick Whitman, but what we got worked as a more psychological death rather than a physical one.
Does anybody else constantly see these BlueTax commercials featuring "Max," the spokescharacter who is apparently animated with the same software that Tim & Eric used for "Grum"?
There's one that airs constantly during baseball games that manages to both imply that Obama's taxation is unfair and yet appeal to people who owe over $100,000 in back taxes.
http://www.youtube.com/user/BlueTaxU/videos?view=0
I don't think there's anything wrong with that, though. It's the same reason you get into bullshit political discussions with your dorm-mate at 1am. Sometimes, stuff is interesting to reason out and think about and I think commenting on stuff (as I am doing now) is a good way to work through your own ideas on a topic.
Obviously, if you're just trolling for the sake of riling everyone up or flaming people for no reason you're probably kind of an asshole and/or 14, but there's value in discussion, even if it's kind of ephemeral or abstract.
Not saying that Man of Steel is super awesome or anything, just saying that there are definitely still tons of instances of male role models portrayed in popular culture. Do not weep for the lack of powerful white men in popular culture, Argentina.
Yeah, I would say an actual male role model is someone like Tom Hanks. He's smart, funny, likeable, and manages to retain his dignity even when appearing in dreck.
Tony Soprano is not a role model, he's a power fantasy. We wish we could punch people in the face when they make us mad, but we know we can't, so we watch Tony do it and vicariously experience the brief thrill and then watch as he lives with the consequences will our own lives remain intact.
Sure, Gary Cooper and Gregory Peck are dead. They were great at portraying male role models, but they are not the only ones. I haven't seen Man of Steel, but from everything I've read, both Kevin Costner and Russel Crow play strong, stoic, classical father figure archetypes.
I always thought Johnny Bench was the "You're gonna like the way you look, I guarantee it" guy, but apparently he did S&K ads, not Mens Warehouse ads. Huh.
It's pretty much the last franchise where caring about continuity would matter at all, but can't they all co-exist? Dumb and Dumber-er was a prequel, and this one is going to be a sequel, with Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels and everything (although it's probably never going to actually get made so it's a moot point, but whatevs).
Did they also realize that nobody cares about this incarnation of the Spider-Man franchise and it doesn't matter, like how none of this ever matters, but to a an even greater degree?
They should just film everything with a stand-in and then green screen Sheen in after the fact. That way the rest of the cast wouldn't have to deal with him. Plus, watching everyone's eyelines not line up quite right might actually introduce some entertainment value into the show.
It is kind of unavoidable with the character, to a certain extent- he's a lone superhuman who is wrestling with his obligation to save everyone. Which is ironic considering the character was created by a couple of Jewish guys as a kind of fuck you response to aryanism.
They definitely overplayed the Ted and Peggy flirting stuff this week, I don't know if they could have possibly underlined that any harder, short of having them yell ISN'T IT INAPPROPRIATE HOW MUCH WE'RE FLIRTING RIGHT NOW? LOL.
I also thought the "You're a monster" line and Don getting into the fetal position was weird and didn't have nearly the impact the show wanted it to have. Don was actually kind of right this time? Like, Ted was acting like a numbskull and he straightened him out and NOW is when Peggy decides to tell him he's a monster? We get it, Don is the villain.
Also: I call bullshit on adult males going fetal position. That's such a dumb, writerly armchair psychologist thing and not something that happens IRL.
"We made that Bachellorette movie, which was exactly like Bridesmaids except mean spirited and not good and it didn't make as much money as Bridesmaids so this is basically your fault, America." - The Movie Industry
I like how they used "inspired by Matt Damon" to mean "not inspired by Matt Damon, but rather we thought about doing a completely different fantasy scene featuring 'a Matt Damon type' but then decided against it and went with food poisoning."
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