COME ON YOU POET, YOU PIPER, YOU PRISONER

- I've been re-watching Season 2 of Mad Men over the past few days and I still really like that show. I realize that most people (especially people my age) would be bored out of their skulls by it but, if you get the chance, watch at least the first episode and just see if it interests you. What's not to love about a show where admen in the early 60's dressed in impeccably tailored suits stand around and talk about things?

Well, actually, a lot could go wrong with that premise (and the show borders on soap opera at its lower points), but the thing I really love about the show is that it works on different levels. If you don't want to put a lot of effort into watching it, it's simply a really well-done costume drama with impeccable production design. If you go further, it's a great character piece that imbues well-worn stereotypes (the plucky working girl, the flirty secretary, the oily businessman, the long-suffering housewife) with all sorts of interesting quirks and ambiguities, And, should you so choose, the show provides a really interesting examination of the changing social forces of a time that, in many ways, is ground-zero for modern North American life and, somewhat shockingly, a lot of these things are still relevant. For example, a single-episode subplot where the ad team try to come up with a marketing campaign for a bra, deciding on an approach that sells the item via a campaign which categorizes all women as either a "Jackie Kennedy" (prim, upright, proper, "the kind of girl you take home to meet the folks") or a "Marylin Monroe" (flirty, fun, sexually available), with the marketing hook that the brand of bra being sold will make the woman buying it both a "Jackie" and a "Marylin". The importance of this? Well, as one of the shows characters mentions "bras are there for the man" and the campaign is formed out of the idea that men want the girl they're with to be both the Jackie and the Marylin, the housewife and the party girl. In show, it's interesting and clever and leads to some funny dialogue exchanges but as I thought about it more, I realized that maybe the expressed idea (men wanting two, contradictory, things out of their partners) still means a lot, you see a lot of behavior that speaks to attitudes like that, even today. It made me think about my attitudes towards relationships, and the things I want out of them, as well. I saw a bit of myself in the attitudes of the show's characters, and, as scary as that was, it brings up an interesting point: Have we truly advanced in our thinking as relative to the time in which Mad Men takes place or has our discourse simply gotten better about working around it? I don't really have an answer, but it's interesting to think about. If anybody would like to comment about this, I'd really appreciate it, it's something I'd like to discuss.

And, really, if a TV show can get me to that level of introspection, it must be doing something right.

(Disclaimer: I might just like Mad Men because it is the only show on TV with women in 60's office lady outfits, and there's nothing more sexy than that)

- It's been a weekend of made-up holidays with both Family Day and Valentine's Day. My Valentine's Day was better than last year, but last year I spent Valentine's Day seeing Jumper in theatres, so, yeah.

Anyways, I'll hit you with 24-related content on the 'morrow. For now, I'd really like some comments about that stuff up there.