JR: To know me is to know I love Mad Men. It’s not even the time period; it really is more the characters and how fucked up they are. Peggy’s mom? Her line about Peggy’s Jewish boyfriend liking ham: “Oh really?” It’s not only about a time, but it speaks to a time when things were way different from now. Peggy is broken. She gave up her love child with Pete like she was changing an outfit. Pete, by the way, is so full-on crazy that any girl, including Don’s lovely daughter, is at risk of being raped by him if she strays too close. Don is no model of morals either, but Season Five, which I’m hopelessly in love with, has Don on the razor’s edge when it comes to keeping his dick in his pants. How many more tumblers of rye would it take for Megan’s mother to climb into the Draper family bed for a threesome?
The real show-off this season is Roger Sterling. When he confronted his secretary, whom he had to share with Don because SCDP is broke, and tried to bribe her with money, he said, “Why don’t you go out and by a hat, or a mask?” I was thrilled when he left that mannequin wife after his LSD trip. Show me a supermodel and I’ll show you a guy that’s tired of screwing her. Watching Roger is like seeing a great character actor move through a series of novels, like Harry Angstrom, and get all the great lines. What really interested me about the most recent episode is how Sally Draper (future call girl with a brain, drug addict, rehab pro) lies about how her fatty babysitter broke her ankle, and then observes Roger getting a french lube from Megan’s mother. Seeing this world through the eyes of a child is so beautiful. It’s like a crystal mirror ball – everywhere and nowhere all at once. If I could bite down on this show, like a fine porterhouse, I would. Short of that, I just want to climb in and work at SCDP.
Over the last year I’ve become friends with a great lady (for now, we will refer to her as Very Unphotogenic) on Goodreads, who has, besides being a great shoulder to cry on, read my boring novel, helped me develop a pilot script for my long languished and miserable washed up CIA agent Richard Wabash, and kept me honest when it comes to cliché and good dialogue. She is a fine critic, and suffers no fool lightly. Especially girls with bad manners. We’ve decided to take our conversation about Mad Men public, and since we’re mid-season 5, it seems like a fine place to start. What strikes me most about this season is how much like a novel it really seems to have become. How does AMC get away with the long takes? The nearly 4-minute scenes where people talk about, I don’t know, spaghetti? I’d love to see this style translate to other boring corners of TV, but can that happen? And should it?
VU: It seems like all the good, critically acclaimed TV dramas are novelistic (The Sopranos, The Wire, and Mad Men), which is great for those of us who like novels. But most people don’t read. Ask the average person, “What’s the last novel you read?” and they’ll cycle through the five stages of grief. Most people are ashamed that they don’t read more. They keep meaning to pick up Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, but they just don’t have time. It’s so much easier to read blogs and magazines. To hit refresh. To enjoy disposable entertainment. After a long day at work, the very last thing they want to do is THINK while watching television. They prefer to just sit back and have the content spoon-fed to them. They’d rather not even chew, so they watch something like Two and a Half Men, which is the equivalent of mashed potatoes. People like you and me prefer something gritty and raw, with a bite. We want rare steak, and we want to tear the flesh from the bone with our bare teeth. But if you look at the ratings of novelistic shows (which are primarily on cable) and the mashed potatoes that are so popular on network TV, we are very much in the minority. Most of the TV-watching public has no interest in solid food.
That’s why it’s so hip to say you love Mad Men or Breaking Bad, to proudly tell some douchebag that The Wire is the best show ever made. Being a fan of these shows is like bragging that you read War and Peace and loved it. In fact, I don’t think it’s crazy to say that these cable shows are the new novels. Maybe you haven’t gotten around to reading Jonathan Franzen’s new book, but you’ve seen every fucking episode of The Wire. And in this day and age, that makes you literate. Watching novelistic shows is like being a member of the biggest hipster book club in the world.
There was a time when everyone went to the theater and then movies came along and changed all that. Will television eventually replace literature? Has it already? I mean, people analyze Mad Men like it’s The Grapes of Wrath.
JR: Has TV become the ’70s cinema of the ’00s? That decade produced some of the most interesting movies made in our lifetimes. I don’t see movies of today coming close to anything that I want to watch. TV has replaced movies, ad hoc. Books. No one really reads. Not in the numbers of those who watch TV and talk about it. If we lived in a fly-over state, we wouldn’t even know who Jonathan Franzen is. Most “readers” take a stab at one book a year, and that’s after 500 of their Facebook friends post something about it. TV is so much more sedately persuasive. Soap operas that sing to the hipster? Will there be a Mad Men backlash? I hope so. Literary TV is the new Thursday night Must See TV of the ’90s. Breaking Bad, The Wire, Mad Men, GoT, all remind me of a novel. Breaking Bad is just badass drug speak, like early Al Pacino movies. The Wire set the standard for all these shows, episodically novelistic. Mad Men is Revolutionary Road, (Weiner even said he would never have written this show it he’d read that first), and when all is said and done and we put our heads on the pillow at night, none of these shows would be a skid mark on our collective shorts without Twin Peaks, let’s be honest. How about the long takes, the miles of dialogue, actors working overtime, and scenes that go on forever. So much for those screenwriters that told me a scene can’t be more than 2 minutes.
GoT might be the only show that really does stand alone, but it too is based on a book. Take away these shows and what do you have for literary entertainment? What is it about TV that people find so attractive? It’s like the Kool-Aid you get at a compound. Everyone’s doing it, and that’s how it goes? Mad Men is good enough to be a novel, but take Don out, and what do you have? Besides the new show Girls, could there be a Mad Women? A show about how all women are perceived as crazy by men? Or could there be a sitcom called Pushed to the Curb, about a single father restarting his life after divorce. What’s on the horizon for TV, or is this our peak?
VU: A show about a single father restarting his life after divorce is a great idea, and it’s called Louie. The second season featured some of the best, most painful, most heartbreaking comedy I’ve ever seen in my life. I think TV is so attractive because you really get to know the characters week by week. Every Sunday, I have dinner with Don Draper, and he’s always there for me. If I’m home alone and I turn the TV on, suddenly I’m not alone anymore. It’s warm; it talks to me, and it asks for nothing in return. I can just lie there. And isn’t that everyone’s fantasy? To have your lover do all the heavy lifting while you just sit back and enjoy it? TV is the ultimate mistress. That said, I don’t know what’s on the horizon. To be honest, I’m worried that there is no horizon. Maybe Mad Men and The Wire are as good as it gets. Or do we just need some fresh blood? There are plenty of movie stars willing to embrace the small screen, but wouldn’t it be great if a few movie directors got into the mix? I’d love to watch a series created by Wes Anderson or Tarantino. We need to be pushed out of our comfort zone. No more shows about cops, lawyers, doctors, or vampires. We’ve seen enough of the idle rich. Had our fill of serial killers and sex crimes. I’m tired of being bored or grossed out by what I see on television. I want to be intrigued and taken off guard. I’m ready to fall in love again.
