Tag: Television

Five Great Moments of Dramatic Irony in MAD MEN

Five Great Moments of Dramatic Irony in MAD MEN

Before postmodernist self-reference, there was dramatic irony: a little wink from the writer that acknowledges the audience. It's not just that we know something the characters don't. It's that the writer knows we know. This common soap-operatic device lets the audience in on secrets bound for explosion: adultery, murder plots, or the revelation of a child's real parents. Mad Men is more subtle in its use of dramatic irony. Because the show is arguably one long character study, it's not as interested in plots that go boom. Instead, dramatic irony often helps to flesh out the characters involved by demonstrating how they react to situations and adding texture to a scene. Don's real identity, for example, is something that we and certain other characters know about. But his reasons for keeping the secret are treated with more significance than the possibility that anyone else might find out. When the truth is occasionally exposed, the reactions are restrained. Case in point, Bert doesn't even care. Even the scene with Betty lacks melodrama. After five seasons of solid storytelling, here are five of Mad Men's greatest moments in dramatic irony. There were many to choose from, so if your favorite isn't here, tell us about it in the comments.

He's from Europe – "The Jet Set" (S. 02)

The set-up: In the break room, Sal, Joan, Harry and Ken tease Kurt and Peggy about their pending "date" to the Bob Dylan show. To clarify things, Kurt casually tells everyone he's gay. The room goes silent.

Why it's great: There's a bit of a Kuleshov effect that pits Sal's reactions against everyone else's. Peggy brushes off the news, hiding her disappointment. Ken's face literally falls. Joan blushes. Harry serves up slapstick stupor with a piece of donut still lodged in his cheek. And closeted Sal cautiously holds back, waiting to see how disgusted his colleagues will be, or perhaps how much they can tolerate. Piercing the quiet shock, Kurt looks to Peggy, tells her "eight," and pours himself a coffee. Sal is incensed, then dejected. What he works so hard to conceal is something Kurt can put bluntly without breaking a sweat. Kurt and Peggy leave, and the remaining colleagues let their homophobia loose while Sal forces himself to smirk and chuckle in all the right places. This short scene goes from funny to tragic so quickly.

Who would've liked to be there: Kitty Romano, poor thing.

The Promotion(s) – "Out of Town" (S. 03)

The set-up: Having just laid off Burt Peterson, Sterling Cooper's Head of Accounts, Lane Pryce first tells Pete he's been promoted to the position, then tells Ken the same thing, separately. Neither immediately knows they've just gotten the same promotion. Believing they're about to be the other's boss, they exchange loaded pleasantries on the elevator as they head home.

Why it's great: Pete and Ken have been neck and neck for years. On the surface, this conversation has all the trappings of a ceasefire, with a few notes of relief. They commend each other on their strengths, but you have to wonder if there are actually no hard feelings or if the cordial banter covers up each man's plans to fire the other. After all, these niceties are challenged only a few scenes later when Pete and Ken realize they're co-heads.

Who would've liked to be there: The usually impotent Lane would have enjoyed the power this scene attributed to him. Roger would have appreciated its humor. Bert (Cooper) would have relished this prelude to a good old Randian bloodbath.

Betty Knows Dick – "The Gypsy and the Hobo" (S. 03)

The set-up: At the time that this episode aired, viewers had had a good week to process Betty's discovery that Don was really Dick Whitman, and that he'd been married before. She does nothing about it until 25 minutes into "The Gypsy and the Hobo." During that time, she's played the dutiful wife at Sterling Cooper's anniversary party, endured nights alone which she suspected Don was spending with a new mistress, and had a fruitless conversation with her family lawyer. When Betty confronts Don about his past, the conversation takes hours in their narrative, and 14 minutes in real time.

Why it's great: What really cements the tension in this lengthy scene is the fact that Suzanne, Sally's teacher, is waiting for Don in his car the whole time. They're planning a romantic getaway, and she's crouched down in the seat to avoid being seen. While we're thoroughly immersed in the Don and Betty showdown, we can't help but remember the Suzanne loose end, and it makes us uncomfortable while watching the scene. Don demonstrates the depth of his disregard for others. He never considered how Betty might react if she discovered he'd hidden his true identity from her for so long, he's defensive when she calls him on it, and he completely forgets about the mistress in the car. When Don and Betty are done, he doesn't check up on Suzanne. He puts on his pajamas, brushes his teeth and goes to sleep. Come to think of it, that sort of negligence is what got him here.

Who would've liked to be there: It would make pragmatic sense to say Suzanne. But for sentimental reasons, I vote for Adam Whitman.

They Were On a Break – "Chinese Wall" & "Blowing Smoke" (S. 04)

The set-up: On the heels of losing Lucky Strike, Don begs his girlfriend and SCDP psychological consultant Faye Miller to help him poach clients. Furious that he would cross that line, she storms out. A few days later, Don has a tryst with his secretary Megan. Immediately afterwards, he goes home to find Faye waiting for him, ready to give some names.

Why it's great: It seems Don thought things were over with Faye, but if he were more skilled at relationships, he would have known it was just a fight. When he thanks Faye for eventually ceding, you can tell he feels some guilt, an emotion he never reserved for Betty. That audience-only awkwardness returns in the next episode when Faye and Don are discussing cigarette companies in the boardroom, and Megan is framed between them. You almost expect her to stop working, look up and yearn. Later, when they make a dinner date, Faye says to Don pointedly, "tell your girl to make reservations." She's an observant lady. Has she noticed any inappropriate lash-fluttering?

Who would've liked to be there: Let Peggy have this one.

Business At a High Level – "The Other Woman" (S. 05)

The set-up: Jaguar dealer Herb Rennet says he'll happily support SCDP's pitch if Ken and Pete arrange to have Joan spend a night with him. Ken assumes it's the end of the road with Jaguar. Pete thinks it's just the beginning, propositioning Joan and then the partners.

Why it's great: There are so many converging motives in this story, and no one completely comes clean, all to Joan's detriment. Pete uses Joan's open-ended refusal ("you couldn't afford it") to make it sound like she wants to negotiate pricing. Roger begrudgingly agrees to the dirty deed so long as he doesn't have to pay for it, still bitter that Joan snubbed any financial aid towards their son. Lane convinces Joan to ask for a partnership with a 5% stake instead of a lump sum, cleverly covering up his embezzlement. And Bert wants Pete to tell Joan she can still say no, but that information never gets to her. Though Don eventually tells her not to go through with it, when we revisit that heartbreaking scene, we realize it's too late. Pete orchestrates this whole affair with well-timed half-truths, and it works because he banks on everyone else prioritizing their own agendas over Joan's.

Who would've liked to be there: Ken, who even told Peggy that Jaguar was a lost cause.

Honorable mention – Love Among the Ruins (S. 03) Roger settles on the date of his daughter's wedding: November 23, 1963.

Olivia Collette is a writer based in Montreal, which means she knows (someone who knows) Jessica Paré! She's contributed to Roger Ebert's Far-Flung Correspondents, The Spectator Arts Blog, Sparksheet and others. Olivia blogs at Livvy Jams and The Scrawn.

VIDEO ESSAY: A Death Foretold: Foreshadowing in MAD MEN

VIDEO ESSAY: A Death Foretold: Foreshadowing in MAD MEN

This video essay and its accompanying text also appear today on Vulture, the blog of New York Magazine; the staff of Vulture asked Press Play's editors to contribute a piece on Mad Men, and this was the result.

[Editor's note: this article and the accompanying video contain spoilers for all of season five of Mad Men. Read or click at your own risk.]

Now that Mad Men has drawn to a close and we prepare to spend the rest of the summer looking back on a particularly dense season, we can reflect on all the clues that led to one of this year’s biggest plot turns — Lane Pryce’s suicide. The show’s death obsession dominated recaps and comments threads throughout the last twelve weeks, and with good reason. Every episode contained one or more hints that a major character would die. Indeed, more so than any other season of Mad Men, this one earns the adjective novelistic. No single episode can be considered wholly apart from any other; each chapter replenishes the death/mortality motif in imaginative, sometimes playful ways.

This video essay, titled "A Death Foretold," collects a few of the more obvious and subtle predictors from season five. The piece is a joint effort by me; writer Deborah Lipp, who recaps the show for my IndieWire blog Press Play and co-publishes the Mad Men–centric blog Basket of Kisses; and Kevin B. Lee, the site's editor-in-chief and in-house cutter. It's not meant to be comprehensive; we originally compiled a three-page list of death references, then realized if we put them all in one video it would have been as long as a Mad Men episode! But we hope it'll offer the show's fans another pretext (as if we need any) to pick apart the show’s narrative architecture and argue about whether a cigar is just a cigar.

A critic, journalist and filmmaker, Matt Zoller Seitz is the staff TV columnist for New York Magazine and a finalist for the Pulitzer prize in criticism. He has worked as a movie critic for The New York Times, New York Press, and New Times Newspapers, and as a TV critic for The Star-Ledger of Newark. His video essays about Terrence Malick, Oliver Stone, Kathryn Bigelow, Budd Boetticher, Wes Anderson, Clint Eastwood, Michael Mann and other directors can be viewed at the The Museum of the Moving Image web site. Seitz is the founder of The House Next Door, a website devoted to critical writing about popular culture. His book-length conversation with Wes Anderson about his films, titled The Wes Anderson Collection, will be published in fall 2012 by Abrams Books.

Deborah Lipp is the co-owner of Basket of Kisses, whose motto is "smart discussion about smart television." She is the author of six books, including "The Ultimate James Bond Fan Book."

Kevin B. Lee is Editor in Chief of IndieWire’s PressPlay Video Blog, Video Essayist for Fandor Keyframe, and contributor to Roger Ebert.com. Follow him on Twitter.

LONGMIRE RECAP 1: THE LONG ROAD

LONGMIRE RECAP 1: THE LONG ROAD

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While a mystery procedural isn’t the most revolutionary premise for a television series, there were several aspects of the Longmire pilot that indicated that it might be particularly interesting. First, it had a distinct visual style. The opening scene of the pilot, with Longmire in the shower, the camera bouncing around, and messages left on the answering machine conveys character and tone superbly—and simply—through style.

The show’s setting is also compelling, though not in such a positive way. The rural county in Wyoming is not a common location for a TV show, and Longmire effectively conveys how small and interconnected Absaroka County is. The placement of a Cheyenne reservation nearby also adds specificity, but tensions between the reservation police and the protagonist create an uncomfortable dynamic. The heroic white man, unfairly vilified for exposing native corruption, ends up a hero after reuniting a lost Cheyenne girl with her mother. It’s very White-Man’s-Burden, and quite awkward because of it. I’m hopeful that the show will grow more nuanced in its portrayal of the Cheyenne. Given its competence elsewhere, this seems likely, but the focus on the whites as the primary cast members is less promising.

The show’s use of an election as its main hook for long-form serialization mosyt appealed to the part of me that enjoys analyzing structure. Walt Longmire is the show’s hero, the character it’s named for, but he’s a mess. Branch Connally, his deputy, has recognized that Longmire is a mess, and decided to run against him. Connally’s reasons seem entirely valid—Longmire’s been an absentee sherriff since his wife died, a year ago, and has left the running of the station to the deputies. Had you framed most of the scenes from Connally’s perspective, he would have looked like the hero of this story. “Quality television” is often based on male anti-heroes, but Longmire’s not quite there. He’s more of a broken hero, teetering on the edge of failure. And his failure comes from inaction, not from making the wrong choices—at least, that's the show’s premise.

For better or mostly worse, not many of these qualities are on display in the second episode, “The Dark Road.” Second episodes of dramas are usually weak, to be fair. They’re produced well after the pilot, and they generally serve to reintroduce the characters and world for people who are theoretically tuning in based on word-of-mouth after the first episode. This tends to make second episodes feel watered-down, which describes “The Dark Road.”

The biggest component of the pilot missing here is any mention of the election. Branch Connally is shown as a somewhat cocky member of the department; the only visible tension between him and Longmire is a slight young pup-old dog dynamic. This makes the revelation at the end of the episode—that Connally is sleeping with Walt’s daughter Cady—lose most of its impact.

Instead,  a flashback represents the show’s serialization. Walt is having a scar on his back sewn up, as he talks to his friend Henry, saying that his daughter must never know. That’s the entirety of the scene. This is far less auspicious than the election as a hook for viewers. I tend to be quite wary about overarching mysteries like these. Here, the characters have information that the audience lacks. By not allowing us to see it, the show is essentially taunting us, and that’s not a great way to start a relationship.

This episode also doesn’t deal with the Cheyenne, either, choosing instead to focus on another group of people more common in the rural west than most other places in America: Mennonites. One of their teenagers, a girl on her “rumspringa” outside of the community, has ended up dead. She’s also a stripper, which Sheriff Longmire figures out because the show uses the TV shorthand of saying she’s covered in glitter (because as everyone knows, married men who go to strip clubs love coming home with glitter on them, as it spares them even needing to bother discussing where they’ve been).

The Mennonites come across worse here than the Cheyenne did. The only family we see in any detail is ruled by a patriarchal iron fist, which ends up being the cause of the girl’s death. Her father, knowing she was a stripper, doesn’t care about her death. Her mother is more sympathetic, but paralyzed by the fear of the patriarch. And the mystery’s resolution is that the girl’s brother accidentally killed her while chasing her, because he saw her drifting away from the culture by becoming a stripper, and he had been told that he couldn’t go back unless he returned her as well. This is also a traditionally American argument—that secular laws allowing freedom are superior to religious fundamentalism. The show strongly implies that this is intentional, showing the state flag immediately after the scene where the Mennonite mother admits she wanted her daughter to escape the household tyranny.

There’s an essential conservatism to mystery shows, especially those based around law enforcement. Longmire’s focus on “lost girls” as the victims of the first two episodes—helpless, threatened, needing rescue, or dying—instead of telling their stories shows a fear of girls doing sex work. This may be an entirely valid anxiety, but the decision to talk about the sex workers in both episodes, without actually letting them tell their story, says a lot about Longmire. It’s too early to see if that conservatism is a core feature, and I’m not sure if Longmire intends for it to be. But where the pilot involved an examination of those concepts through the struggles of the characters, “The Dark Road” plays it entirely straight, which is a shame.

Rowan Kaiser is a freelance pop culture critic currently living in the Bay Area. He is a staff writer at The A.V. Club, covering television and literature. He also writes about video games for several different publications, including Joystiq and Paste Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @rowankaiser for unimportant musings on media and extremely important kitten photographs.

GIRLS RECAP 9: LEAVE ME ALONE

GIRLS RECAP 9: LEAVE ME ALONE

The climactic argument between Marnie and Hannah in "Leave Me Alone" is soooo satisfying—and it's not merely because Marnie is acting as the viewer's proxy in calling Hannah fully and completely on her bullshit. That's fun, but Marnie isn't even alone in that this week, because Hannah's finally gotten a semi-, sort-of, part-time coffee-shop job . . . and her manager is Ray. Ray not only sends Hannah home to change when she shows up in a stain-tempting white dress, ordering her to "forget all the BBC you watch at home with your cats" and put on something appropriate; he also advises her on what to buy at American Apparel, complete with hand gestures ("slim leg! slim leg!") (not for nothing, but a skinny jean is about the only thing that would be less flattering to Lena Dunham's figure than the dresses Hannah already wears).

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Ray also gives explicit voice to the anxieties of young writers about their material—specifically, whether it's "serious enough." I had to accept years ago that I'd never make that cut, because when I was Hannah's age, the internet was considered the JV, at best, never mind writing about television on the internet, or telling funny stories about karate class or doing your laundry. I didn't have an agent, I didn't write literary fiction, and it didn't really matter, at all, but back then, if a guy like Ray had blown off my subject matter as frivolous—"How about divorce? How about death?  . . . How about death?"—I would have taken it to heart, and I would have tried to write a somber, well-researched, mindful, high-fiber piece about municipal politics, and it would have bombed, just like it does for Hannah at her reading. Hannah's former writing prof is very encouraging throughout, and seems to understand what Hannah's writing strength is, whether it's one that Hannah wants to own or not. (He's also played by Michael "Christopher Moltisanti" Imperioli. Imperioli has other, more recent credits, but I have to think the casting is meant to recall "Christophuh"'s struggles with the written word over the run of The Sopranos.)

But Hannah feels that snarky essays about dating a hoarder and spending the night on a stack of flattened Chinese-food cartons won't get you onto "Fresh Air." Of course, that very sort of observation by Dunham has gotten Dunham herself onto "Fresh Air," via "Girls"; the episode really nails the insecurity and toxic envy of starting out as a writer, although I'm not sure it's something Dunham has really experienced in that way. Maybe episode co-writer (and New Yorker cartoonist) Bruce Eric Kaplan helped shape the bits with Tally Schifrin, Hannah's creative-writing program-mate who already has a memoir out. Tally's a perfectly drawn cartoon of the non-fiction classmate we all despised, the well-connected mediocrity just clever enough to leverage a single incident or tagline into a hardcover deal. If you thought Hannah snarking that Tally's "lucky" to have a boyfriend who killed himself so she could write about it was too over the top, even for Hannah, you haven't spent that much time around writers. (And you shouldn't start. We are ruthless.)

Professor Imperioli is comforting, telling Hannah the thing every struggling, lost essayist wants to hear from someone in authority—that Tally's a "shitty" writer, and Hannah is good. It's more than Marnie has mustered; asked her opinion of the hoarder-date essay earlier, Marnie deemed it "a little bit, like, whiny." But when Hannah whines that Marnie could be a bit more supportive, Marnie sighs, "Hannah, I support you. Literally."

And when Hannah comes home from the reading and bags on Marnie for throwing clothes away instead of donating them to Goodwill, it sets off a very rewarding showdown. As I said before, it's partly because Marnie is ranking on Hannah for all her friendship sins: Hannah's selfish; she uses her self-loathing as an excuse to be a narcissist; she has no other subject but herself. Hannah gets a few good shots of her own off—Marnie is too focused on achievement and comparing herself to others; her woe-is-single-me routine is getting old (we haven't really seen that, but I'm fine with inferring it from Marnie's sad-sackishness last week); this is about Hannah having a boyfriend and Marnie not having one, because it throws off the balance of power. Now, Hannah doesn't use exactly those words, and it's a topic so nuclear that most women friends would never go near it out loud—but Marnie is used to having the boyfriend, feeling the pity instead of needing it, fitting into the size 6 (a fact she makes glancing reference to by saying that one of her old dresses might fit Hannah a bit snugly—exactly the right tone and wording for that kind of slight).

It's possible that Hannah isn't only selfish and lacking in empathy for Marnie; it's possible that, as the one who's feeling more settled emotionally for a change, she doesn't know how to support Marnie. But . . . it's more likely that, just as she herself says, being a good friend "isn't a priority for" her right now. Marnie's icy "thank you" when Hannah admits this echoes of the audience—because no shit, first of all, and second of all, it's not just Hannah. It's Marnie; it was me, I think, at that age. I'm not sure I had "friends," exactly, so much as "people I stood next to while holding a beer, in order to hate myself outside my apartment now and then."

All of Hannah's scenes, and the post-collegiate writing-competition stuff, totally resonated with me—and pretty much made up for a baffling plot "development" for Jessa in which Kathryn Lavoyt shows up at her apartment to ask her to come back as her daughters' nanny in spite of everything. It's unclear what Kathryn thinks happened, or how she found out about it—Jeff could have confessed, but it seems like something Jessa would do to quit and explain exactly why—but she takes the opportunity to share a very on-the-nose dream she keeps having about stabbing Jessa and eating her body while her mother is breastfeeding her husband. Kathryn gets a speech about how Jessa causes dramas like this, to distract herself from becoming who she is. Jessa looks intrigued by that possibility, and asks who she's becoming, then; Kathryn's response is more speechifying about how that person might not have a cool job or hair "like a mermaid," but might be happier than Jessa is now. Or . . . something. I really can't tell whether we're meant to hope that Jessa hears something for herself in these Now The Married Lady Will Tell You Your Life pearls of wisdom, or to think that Kathryn's condescending and out of touch. I have to go with the latter, although I don't think the scene came out the way it may have been intended.

And speaking of things that perhaps weren't intended . . . is that a jar of mayonnaise next to Hannah's bed? And do I want to know either way?

Sarah D. Bunting co-founded TelevisionWithoutPity.com, and has written for Seventeen, New York Magazine, MSNBC.com, Salon, Yahoo!, and others. She's the chief cook and bottle-washer at TomatoNation.com.

MAD MEN RECAP 12: THE PHANTOM

MAD MEN RECAP 12: THE PHANTOM

Most nights I watch Mad Men on my living room couch with a computer in my lap. Tonight I watched at a terrific New York City bar, at the Basket of Kisses Season Finale Party, sitting next to Rich Sommer. It was a fantastic experience: Cheers, applause, shock—there's truly nothing like sharing the show with a large, respectful, enthusiastic audience. Respectful, because they're quiet enough that no dialogue is missed, but enthusiastic enough to burst into cheers when Pete gets punched out, and then punched out again—at which point I said, "Joan was right—everybody does want to take a pop at Pete Campbell." Watch the clip:

When Don was watching Megan's screen test, I whispered to Rich, "Do you need to leave the room crying?" Obviously, that scene was meant to remind us of Don's famous "Carousel" speech in the Season 1 finale, The Wheel, in which Don looks with love and longing at a slideshow of his family, including his then-wife Betty. Now he looks at his second wife, and his longing and love are again visible.

nullThis episode was filled with doubles and references, doublings back and reboots. Just as the screen test revisits the slideshow from the Season 1 finale, the meeting with Topaz Pantyhose revisits the finale of Season 4, Tomorrowland. In that episode, Peggy won the Topaz account, saving the then-desperate SCDP. Now, SCDP is in great shape, but they might lose Topaz because Peggy is no longer there. "We've never had problems with this client before," Ginsberg says, but they have to start from scratch. Ginsberg is also a double—for Peggy. He is Don's new whipping boy/protégé and junior genius.

Adam Whitman is a revisit, a "phantom" from the title, and Lane's suicide by hanging is the second such suicide of the series. Adam did it first, in Season 1, and Don is haunted by the memory. Phantoms are not just the ghosts of the dead, of course. As Megan's mother, Marie, so cruelly notes, they are the ghosts of our dreams as well. We believe there is a thing that will make us happy, but it is a phantom. When we grasp for it, it eludes us, as Beth eludes Pete. Pete's monologue to Beth is itself haunting, and too beautiful to leave unwatched:

There are three interwoven motifs in The Phantom, that of depression, that of restarting, and that of doubling. Obviously they connect to each other; Beth's cure for depression is a restart, a literal wiping out of her memories so she can start fresh without knowing what caused her pain last time, while Roger's cure for it (or for the fear it will come) is a doubling: He wants to do LSD a second time. Megan drinks wine at home during the day like Betty did, and Rebecca's remarkable, angry slap-down of Don and his check reminded me (and my sister) of Anna Draper's sister in Season 4, who called Don "just a man in a room with a check." Neither woman felt like Don's money gave him any right to access a family's private grief.

I pretty much told everyone that Matt Weiner inserted the James Bond references as a personal gift to me. That may not be accurate (it's fun to say, though), but we share our love of 007. There were two James Bond references in The Phantom–the movie Don and Peggy are seeing is Casino Royale (the comedy starring David Niven). 1967 was a year with two Bond movies, which kind of doubles down on the double identity theme. The second reference is the closing song: You Only Live Twice (considered by many to be the greatest Bond melody), which references doubling not only in the name but in the theme, which addresses rebirth after a faked death (Dick Whitman, anyone?).

So, everything reverts, returns, and wipes out. Everyone is in shock therapy. Partly, there's a lot of real human grief here. Roger wants to see Marie so he can find life again after death came so close. Don wants to give something to Rebecca that will make him feel some closure. Pete sees death everywhere he looks, and even though he verbally rejects suicide, the swimming pool he wanted suddenly looks like a drowning pool. Joan wants to know why, and, after prostituting herself to become a partner, she finds a way to believe she should have done so for Lane. Joan struggles in two ways to find value after what happened to Lane and to her: First, by proving herself as a partner, from her mannish suit to her assiduous assessment of numbers, and second, by believing, nonetheless, that her only value is sexual. The only way to have saved Lane, she thinks, would have been to sleep with him. Poor Joanie!

An awesome crew of two was at our Finale Party, filming people naming their favorite quotes and characters, as part of the DVD extras for Season 5. I had to say, much to my own surprise, that Joan Harris is my favorite. Her extraordinary vulnerability and need to please sits in such strange and beautiful contrast to her competence and brains. I never thought, in Season 1, that I would come to love her so.

So, tonight was a beautiful experience for me. An excellent episode, an exciting party among a hundred or more excited fans, and a whirlwind of emotions to chronicle. It was not, I have to say, exactly conducive to writing a careful episode review, since I took no notes and started writing a good forty minutes later than usual. I hope you'll forgive a slightly choppy review in exchange for sharing some of that experience with you. Tonight is also the wrap-up of my first season of writing for Press Play. It's been exhausting and gratifying, and I hope I'll be able to continue my contributions about Mad Men and possibly other media.

Some additional thoughts:

  • I had a dentist in the spire of the Chrysler Building, this is the truth, my hand to God.
  • Please don't ask me about two dogs fucking. I have no idea.
  • John Slattery has a much nicer ass than I would have anticipated. Also, I never imagined I'd have the chance to write that sentence.
  • Quote of the week is tough without my usual meticulous note-taking, so I'll go with "What is Regina?" because it's funny and a little smutty and I remember it (thanks again, Roger Sterling, who wins this and every season with the most quotes of the week).

Deborah Lipp is the co-owner of Basket of Kisses, whose motto is "smart discussion about smart television." She is the author of six books, including "The Ultimate James Bond Fan Book."

Watch Mad Men Moments, a series of videos on Mad Men, produced by Indiewire Press Play.

TRUE BLOOD RECAP 1: TURN! TURN! TURN!

TRUE BLOOD RECAP 1: TURN! TURN! TURN!

I love True Blood, and I pray this is the end of it. The tea leaves all read "buh-bye," but in this first episode, we’re mainly talking mop-up from last season’s remarkably messy—even by Blood  standards—finale. But before we get into the particulars, some thoughts from this devoted Trubie.

I know there are people who feel the show was great when it was an elegant, fleet, and witty anti-intolerance fable. And feel that, as early as Season Two, when Maryanne the cannibalistic Maenad (Michelle Forbes) started having psychedelic Southern-style Burning Man-ish parties on Sookie's impeccably well-maintained lawn, the chronicles of everyone’s favorite fairy telepath—Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin)—had already fallen into their shark-jumping phase.

Me? I always said that, like that lawn or the improbably ever-fresh pitcher of lemonade in Sookie’s fridge, there were things about True Blood you just accepted. I said, “Cannibalistic Burning Man run by a Mad Maenad? I’ve waited my whole life for this!”

And then when Seasons Three and Four gave us the batty-beyond-belief Russell Edgington (Denis O'Hare), Vampire King of Mississippi, a white trash were-panther named Crystal Beth, the lounging vampire Queen Sophie-Anne Leclerq (Evan Rachel Wood), who loved nothing more than to play Yahtzee (!), the revelation that Sookie was a fairy, that Jesus (Kevin Alejandro), the love of darling Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis), was in fact a powerful Mexican bruja, and a curse caused Pam (Kristin Bauer) to embark on the holy grail of finding the right foundation—Smashbox? MAC? Maybelline?—to cover her rotting face, some called foul.

But me, I was in seventh heaven as the show gave up even the slightest lip service to realism on the road to becoming the most faux Southern fried nü-Hammer, blood-Romantic, were-vamp gore-show, splat-palooza of all time,and it became clear that Blood creator Alan Ball would not drive 55, and the only way he’d stop was if he were six feet under.

And now it must end. It must not be allowed to become an undead parody of a parody of itself, like Dexter.

My sense of Season Five, from its tagline—“Everything is at Stake”—onwards points towards end games from which the show will not be able to renew itself without becoming a faint Xerox of past bloody wonders.

So with the prayer of “I love you—now die,” some highlights:

The episode opens one minute before the very end of last season’s finale, whipsawing from Sookie accidentally shooting Tara—whose fate will have to remain a secret for a spell, sorry—to a hilarious frenzy of tidying as, a few miles away, Bill (Stephen Moyer) and Eric (Alexander Skarsgård) clean up the sticky remains of Nan Flanagan (Jessica Tuck) who’d just outed herself as anti-Authority before meeting the True Death at Bill’s hands when he learned she desired some of Sookie’s fairy power.  

Alas, a pack of ninjas (or is that a flock, a murder or a bushel?) bag them in silver netting and stick them in a limo trunk. Eric’s shout of “That’s the Authority we’re up against!” not only IDs their attackers, it suggests a more epic storyline that would render any little tales from humble Bon Temps, LA passé.

Meanwhile, the Rev. Steve Newlin (Michael McMillian), ex-head of the Fellowship of the Sun, shows up gay and glamouring himself into Jason’s apartment, availing himself of that law of physics that says for every standing body of flesh there is a correlative moment when that body WILL fuck Jason Stackhouse (Ryan Kwanten).

But then the door slams open, Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) declares herself “the progeny of the king of Louisiana!” and Newlin’s old news for now, as Jessica mounts Jason.

Shock cut to: A spy-movie-style male and female pair listening to Paul McCartney’s “Silly Love Songs” in a limousine. In the trunk, Bill and Eric are bound in silver netting (take note, slash fiction folks—this will be a good year for you).

One of the show’s more casually ridiculous escapes transpires: Bill finds an umbrella and stabs the car’s gas tank, which, after he asks Eric for some fire, blows up. Seriously. Bite this, believable solutions!

Crawling from the wreckage, the McCartney fan, whose name is Nora (Lucy Griffiths) finds Eric, and the two embrace and smooch deeply.

Nora is Eric’s sister and yeah—more TV incest. Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones, Bored to Death, Dexter, Supernatural, WTF?

At first I had no idea. But then a seeming cop-out, Eric’s revelation to Bill that he and Nora are “only connected through our maker” had me thinking. Because their “maker” is Godric (Allan Hyde), who died, or ascended heavenwards in a swirl of light and ecstatic disintegration season two’s “I Will Rise Up”.

With “everything at stake,” why would the show bring on someone who is Eric’s only living connection to the person he loved more than anyone or anything in his life, Godric?

Okay, before I mull myself into a coma, back to what Nora was actually doing. She’d planned to save Bill and Nora before their umbrella-gas-tank maneuver because, hot taboo sex aside, she’s a ruling member of the Authority working to tear the damned thing down from the inside.

So, Vive la révolution! Except Nora, Bill and Eric get caught by more Authority ninjas and there’s something about the way one of them bullhorns “Do not fucking move!” that makes me think Bill and Eric are screwed for quite a while.

Otherwise, here are the updates you need:

Captain Andy. An APD to all you Wire fans desirous of Chris Bauer nudity—your prayers are answered. Captain Andy is seen consorting with witch Holly (Lauren Bowles). Nice butt, Chris—who knew?

Terry. Terry (Todd Lowe) is now playing guest to his old Iraq war pal Patrick (Scott Foley). Flashbacks, fistfights, hallucinations occur—within, like, five minutes of screen time. How do you ratchet things up from there? A: Terry has kids, a wife, a life, oh dear.

Lafayette. Is this horrible? I want him to die so he can be with Jesus (boyfriend Jesus). Of everyone on True Blood, nobody has suffered more and gained less than Lafayette. So when he and Sook look for Jesus’ body and it’s not there, I’m thinking that if my end game theorem is true, maybe there’s a way Lafayette can peaceably slip this mortal coil and be forever with his beloved Jesus.

Right.

Jason. This whole episode is like a Stations of the Cross redemption trip for Sookie's older brother.

He tries to apologize to Hoyt (Jim Parrack), but Hoyt just calls him a girlfriend-fucker, accurate but hardly sporting.

He goes to Bill’s house, where Jessica is having a party with college kids her own age in a kind of adorable/pitiful simulation of what her life would have been like if the whole vampire thing hadn’t happened. After Rock Banding The Runaway’s “Cherry Bomb” (one of those True Blood moments sure to become a viral animated GIF), Jason leaves with some hottie but gives her an impassioned speech on how he wants be a better man instead of having sex with her, and still the space/time continuum did not collapse. Which leaves . . .

Alcide (Joe Manganiello). Who saves Sam (Sam Trammell)—whose problems with Luna (Janina Gavankar) are just confusing at this point—from becoming puppy chow for the werewolf pack that thinks he killed Marcus (Dan Buran). Alcide tells the pack that he’s a lone wolf now, and then he hightails it to Sookie’s to offer his protection from Russell, who, despite being buried under a few thousand tons of concrete the last time we saw him, is somehow back!

Russell. The only American vampire willing and able to punch his fist through someone’s chest on national TV and gloat about it. Russell (Denis O'Hare)—the one-vamp/one-man guarantor of True Blood quality!

Me, I’m going out on a limb here and predicting a terrific, apocalyptically satisfying season of over-the-topper-most True Blood. May it be its last.

Ian Grey has written, co-written or been a contributor to books on cinema, fine art, fashion, identity politics, music and tragedy. Magazines and newspapers that have his articles include Detroit Metro Times, gothic.net, Icon Magazine, International Musician and Recording World, Lacanian Ink, MusicFilmWeb, New York Post, The Perfect Sound, Salon, Smart Money Magazine, Teeth of the Divine, Venuszine, and Time Out/New York.

AUDIOVISUALCY – MAD MEN Redefined by Online Video: a Roundtable Chat

AUDIOVISUALCY – MAD MEN Redefined by Online Video: a Roundtable Chat

Part of Audiovisualcy, a column exploring the art and technique of the online video essay.

KEVIN B. LEE: Jim, your latest Mad Men video "The Other Woman & the Long Walk" (watch it above) really got my attention. On a design level, it seems pretty straightforward. Watching it, at first it seems like I'm just watching clips from the show, one after another. But very soon I realize that the video – and you, as its editor – are doing much more than this.

As one clip cuts to another, I feel a conversation beginning to emerge between them, which you are orchestrating. I start to feel like I am watching the show through another set of eyes. To do this without any explicit commentary, text, elaborate editing or effects, is remarkable.

In fact, I think it's because of this non-invasive approach that the viewer can have a special experience. It gives the viewer room to piece together the connections you are making without being told what they are. It's like playing a puzzle with one's eyes – a quality that distinguishes Mad Men from most other shows in that it leaves a lot of subtexts for the viewer to piece together on their own. Your video compresses and intensifies that experience.

Among the things I got from watching your video:

– I LOVE how it reorients the show around the women. One of my gripes with Mad Men for a while has been how it seemed at times to talk from both corners of its mouth, poking holes at the patriarchy while retaining its male-centric hold on the narrative (for all its rich female characters, it still often amounted to The Don Draper Show). Season Five has been a satisfying redress of this imbalance, with Don seeming to slip into the sidelines of a world spinning beyond his control, especially in regards to women – but watching your video is in some ways even better.

– How far the show has come from its first episode. That dialogue with Joan walking Peggy through the office from the series pilot is so expository; I don't think the writers would be caught dead being that on the nose today. Nor do they have to be – after five seasons so many layers of narrative and character subtext have accumulated, that even a simple moment like watching Don Draper teach a boy how to drive resonates on multiple levels and past episodes.

– I noticed how Joan addresses "Mr. Draper" in the pilot and realized how much her relationship with him and the other men in the office has evolved, just as much as Peggy's has. Their parallel trajectories are something you bring out vividly.

Anyway, your video got me thinking about the other videos you've made, as well as the series of videos Press Play produced at the start of the season by myself and Deborah Lipp, with a team of contributors – most notably Serena Bramble, who created "It's a Mad World," a dazzling tribute montage that understandably went viral. I thought the four of us could have a conversation about our experience making these videos and what they taught us about the show and about video essays. For now, over to you Deborah.

DEBORAH LIPP: Mad Men Moments (MMM) were the first video essays I worked on, and it was, for me, an exercise in using images to express verbal ideas, and using words to describe visual ideas. I'm a word person: My life has been spent as a writer. Working with Kevin I got to see how a visual person, someone who expresses himself through visual media, works. The thing I love about our MMM is that each approaches the subject matter very differently. "Season 1: The Carousel" was almost non-verbal, using only words from the episode. "Season 2: The Sad Clown Dress" was about images, but essentially used images to talk about something that could easily have been written. "Season 3: The Lawnmower" illustrated a remarkable written essay, and "Season 4: The Fight" was essentially a dialogue between subtext and image.

So the thing that leaps out at me in your essays, Jim, is the lack of words. You're communicating entirely through visuals. In fact, the essay titles tend to be the only thing that tells, in words, what your essays are about. Yet they're still easy to "read" and they say a lot about the topic.

I almost wish "The Long Walk" had been more strictly chronological, because I cannot get enough of the narrative arc of Peggy's remarkable changes from pony-tail wearing Brooklyn secretary all the way to copy chief at Cutler, Gleason & Chaough. I disagree with Kevin that the series gives lip service to the women. I think Season 4, if anything, was the most powerful in regard to women's issues, and I think "The Beautiful Girls" is one of the standout episodes of five seasons of Mad Men.

So, my question is about how you approach the material visually. How you select images and decide on a topic inside a non-verbal framework. I'd like to ask that same question to you, Serena. How pre-designed and how intuitive was your process in assembling clips from all the seasons? Whatever the case, it worked!

JIM EMERSON: First, thanks for your comments and for inviting me to participate in this discussion. I'm with you, Deborah, about the women on the show — in 2010 (after the Slattery-directed "The Rejected," which ended with the exchange of looks between Peggy and Pete through the SCDP glass lobby doors), I referred to "Mad Men" as "The Peggy Olson Show Featuring Don Draper" — and the four MM video essays I've done for seasons 4 and 5 ("Modern Compartments," "Beautiful Girls [and Mad Men]: Ghosts of the 37th Floor," "The Ladies in the Boxes," "The Other Women") have all focused on the women, because I think they're the most fascinating, complex and deeply mysterious characters on the show: Peggy, Joan and Megan, of course, but also Sally (the heart and soul of Season 4, in my opinion) and Betty.

And thank you, Deborah and Roberta and Kevin, for "The Sad Clown Dress," one of the most insightful and moving pieces I've seen about Betty. (I'd love to do a piece devoted entirely to the fainting couch…) BTW, I've never understood the criticism of January Jones in this role; whenever she comes across as wooden or phony or robotic it's because that's the way Betty often is! Like when she spews talking points she's learned at Weight Watchers, or talks to Sally about her period. Betty's not a bad person in these scenes, and Jones is not a bad actress. Betty just, fundamentally, lacks empathy — almost as if she's emotionally autistic. She has no idea who she is, and she's not comfortable in her own skin, so she goes on auto-pilot a lot, and you capture that in "The Sad Clown Dress." (Poor Betty is so clueless about other people that she just latches on to the suspicions saboteur Jimmy Barrett implants in her head, without really understanding why. But my theory all along has been that she sensed her husband was not who he said he was, but she can't explain why, and that pretty much drives her insane. Don's deceptions make her borderline schizophrenic.)

The first video essay I ever did (called "close up" was in 2007 for the House Next Door "Close-Up Blogathon" and it was images and music (and a lot of sound mixing) without any titles or dialog or narration, mainly because I did it over the weekend and had to teach myself to use iMovie at the same time. So, I had to keep it fairly simple (even though there are multiple layers of sound under the images). It was just a stream-of-consciousness thing, as most of mine are. My intention, as Kevin points out, is to convey what was going through my head — memories, motifs — while I was watching the episode/movie. Critical writing has to be both descriptive and analytical, and what I love most about video is its ability to create new contexts for the patterns I notice, using pieces of the original itself.

So, briefly (I hope), the idea for "The Long Walk" began with a desire to shuffle between the key conversations in "The Other Woman," because they are all strikingly similar, and all about the women declaring "no negotiation." So, I started with the two exchanges between Joan and Pete (in her office, then in his), the "Little Murders" flare-up between Don and Megan in their bedroom, and the final talk between Don and Peggy. Then it seemed they could be made to reverberate a little more by including Lane and Joan in her office, Peggy and Ted Chaough at the diner, and Don and Joan in Joan's apartment.

The way Peggy went in to collect her stuff (notice the three pieces of technology in the corner of her office: the typewriter, the phone, the speaker box — same as the "technology even women could use") reminded me of Joan's "orientation" in Episode 1, when Peggy first carried a box of stuff into the original Sterling-Cooper offices. And then it grew from there. The first thing I thought of was the sound of high heels on linoleum, because it seemed to me that the whole episode centered on the idea of Peggy walking away, so I searched around for the sound I wanted (bought it for five bucks from an online sound effects place) and layered it under the existing sound at the beginning and the end. I wanted to use it in a disembodied way, like the sound of the ringing phone at the beginning of "Once Upon a Time in America," combined with the dislocated walking scenes interspersed throughout "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie." Anyway, that's where the idea came from, I think!

(Just now, as I was writing this, I got a comment from somebody on Vimeo saying he would never have made the connection between Joan's "men love scarves" in S01E01 and Peggy's scarf in her meeting with Ted Chaough in S05E11 if he hadn't seen "The Long Walk." That's the kind of thing you hope to accomplish with these pieces!)

The elevator stuff at the end seemed natural, but I wanted those last two false endings to echo the repeat of Don's visit to Joan's apartment in the episode itself. Also like "Discreet Charm" (in which people wake from dreams into other dreams), Peggy breaks the spell of the final shot of "The Beautiful Girls" by pushing the elevator button again, and then Don interrupts "You Really Got Me" by pushing the same button… and then peering into the empty elevator shaft. For me, that's the void Peggy's leaving behind. Then there's "She's a Lady," which I started singing after I'd finished dancing around the room (with tears in my eyes) after "You Really Got Me," the first time I saw the episode. It's anachronistic (1971), but I didn't start it until the end credits. I considered doing a music video for the song using images of Peggy, Joan and Megan from this episode (lyrics by Paul "My Way"/"Having My Baby" Anka; lead guitar by Jimmy Page!).

Serena, "It's a Mad World" is absolutely beautiful and haunting — a dazzling example of my personal-favorite kind of video "essay" (sans narration). I love the way it's thematically organized into sections/songs on various subjects: the city, "Who is Don Draper?," advertising, booze and smokes, "What do women want?"… Can you tell us a little about how you went about organizing and putting all this together?

SERENA BRAMBLE: Well, luckily I was already a big fan of Mad Men before I created the montage, so I already had a grasp on the myriad of themes Weiner and co. spin in the series, but doing the montage I scraped just an inch more underneath the surface of who Don Draper is–or rather, the conflict between the man Don wants to be (which to me birthed his rush engagement to Megan and seems to be haunting him into their marriage), the very imperfect man, husband and father he really is, the image of perfect masculinity he sells with the same soothing reassurance as he sells products that people do not need, and above all, the man he is running away from, Dick Whitman. That is the heart of Mad Men: the secrets that pain us versus the lies we tell ourselves to keep face. Five seasons in, we are no closer to truly understanding who Don Draper really is, because he himself doesn't even know how to answer that question. I don't know if this is true or not, but I've heard a rumor that in every single episode, there is a line of dialogue that is a variation on the line, "What do you want me to say?" I really, really wanted to include a clip of Don saying that to Betty in "The Inheritance" (the episode where Gene is conceived in a moment of desperation), because it encapsulates the heart of that: that the Don Draper persona is a projection of what Dick Whitman thinks people want him to be: the debonair professional, the loving husband and father, the man who says what you need him to say. Essentially, the man who can be whatever we want him to be–the man who is whatever room he walks into, according to Bert.

I knew that I wanted to construct my montage so it would start on the surface–establishing the setting, time and place because it's so different from what we understand from modern times, yet as Rachel says, is the place too perfect to be true, and then work my way inward as best as I could. I was also influenced by the opening of Midnight in Paris with my opening montage, so I found public domain footage of Greenwitch Village from the late 60s, as a way of showing life as it really was, then cross-fading to the old New York of Mad Men, the place too good to be true, and the secondary characters trying to pinpoint Don, to no avail. Of course another major facet of Don's life is his work–in the season 4 opener and later in "The Suitcase," he uses his work as a shield for his crumbling personal life, so I segued into a work montage since most of the series' best moments take place at the office. I feel it's impossible to talk about Mad Men without mentioning the drinking, which is frequently covered up with a sly, Nick-and-Nora-like playfulness and slightness, and I also didn't want my montage to get too heavy with existentialism, so it was a fun part to put together.

I feel inferior talking about this when Jim did such a lovely, perceptive job at depicting the same theme in his essay "The Other Woman & The Long Walk," but I also felt it was important to at least note the treatment of women on the show in my montage–namely, how men perceive them, and what they're actually going through. The pitch of Belle Jolie lipstick as a woman "marking her man" is comically ironic, first for the way Don weaves female territorialism into something romantic (Peggy does the same thing later with the ham publicity stunt in Season 4), and secondly because it's impossible to believe that anybody in the real world would find lipstick on a man's cheek as anything other than a nuisance.

Betty Draper gets a lot of hate on the show, but I don't see her role as an initially vacant housewife a detraction from the series; after all, like Newton's law of motion, if you believe there is a girl like Peggy who is so progressive she eventually becomes Don's professional equal, you have to believe there is an equal and opposite reaction–in this case, a woman who remains stuck in the past of traditional values. And it's too easy to forget Betty's past, her love/hate relationship with her mother that also seeps into her relationship with her own daughter Sally, though I imagine the generational gap of the 60s will drive a deeper wedge into their relationship. The mother who wanted her daughter to be beautiful "so I could find a man," only to denounce Betty's modeling career by calling her a prostitute–in retrospect, Betty's current weight problems were hinted at in season 1, with Betty telling her therapist, "My mother was very concerned about looks and weight. And I've always eaten a lot. And I like hot dogs. My mother used to say, 'You're going to get stout.'" Which begs the question: Is Betty's current dramatic weight gain a side effect of another unsatisfying marriage, or a form of freedom from her mother's restrictions just as Sally's friendship with Glen is from Betty's curtailment? Finally, is it really fair to blame Betty when all her life the only value placed on her was her beauty, and then she had the bad luck to fall in love with a man who personifies whatever people want him to say?

Don can sleep with as many women as he wants–13, according to James Lipton–but the most healthy relationship he will ever have with a woman is his deep professional and personal friendship with Peggy, who has had the most growth on the show than any other character, from the girl who didn't know how to say no to her male co-worker's gaze to the only woman to truly stand up to Don. Their argument in "The Suitcase", wonderfully broken down in Kevin and Deborah's video essay, encapsulates their differences, yes, but also how comfortable they are with each other that they *can* shout at each other as a way of communicating. I felt it was a perfect way to segue from the women's issues to the existential gaze on the ruins of one's life that Frank O'Hara's poem Mayakovsky. I knew I wanted to use it because it so beautifully states the thing Don is always trying to do, which he nearly accomplishes in season 4: to find himself, or at least the honest, better man he aspires to be. Season 4 is so much about Don's rebirth from the ashes of "the catastrophe of my personality," yet self-defeat is inevitable, and maybe another reason why Don's controversial decision to marry Megan instead of Faye makes so much sense, if only from a screenwriter's standpoint: Once Don finds happiness and realizes who Don Draper actually is, the show will no longer have a purpose.

Because of my previous love for the show, the montage was exceptionally easy to make–once I had all the clips imported, it took me about 5-6 days to create an 8-minute rough cut, which repeated itself on a True Blood montage I'm currently working on. Whenever I do a montage, the first thing I do is look for the perfect music, because once you have the right music, everything will write itself and the wheels will turn so easily. (This is a good lesson that is being lost in the conversion from film to digital movie-making: always have a pre-production outline instead of winging it; editing is indeed a process of trial and error, but even that process is greatly aided by a map). There are still things I wish I could have included, clips I should have changed up, and even weeks after the fact I recently went back to delete a cross-dissolve. But the greatest gift, and in some ways the greatest curse the montage gave me is the realization that Mad Men is the greatest show on television right now, to which nothing can compare. It personifies patience, showing not telling, and audience gratification. It is not a show designed for the narrative cliffhanger hooks shows like Lost or Christopher Nolan movies have conditioned us to expect. It fills the screen with so much information that even on numerous re-watches, there are still subtle jokes to be discovered in the background of a shot. It's the patience of the audience that is rewarded handsomely by Weiner's utter trust in us to discover the breadcrumbs he leaves for us. People complain that nothing much happens on Mad Men. Everything happens–it's just up to the audience to discover the changes better than the characters themselves realize.

JIM EMERSON: Kevin, your piece on "The Carousel" (I used only one little snippet from Don's Kodak presentation leading into a similar line from his Jaguar presentation) is exquisite, with bizarre Lynchian moments, as well. I would never have put the maypole together with the carousel (and other circular motifs) without having seen this. (I wish I'd used something from "The Carousel" when I used the merry-go-round-like loop I made from "I've Got You Babe" — final song in "Tomorrowland" — in "The Ladies and the Boxes.") A lot of narrated video essays strike me as simply written pieces with audio-visual accompaniment; there's very little meaningful give-and-take between the images and the commentary. It's like the images are just there to give somebody the opportunity to talk over them. And in "The Carousel," you were working with a pre-existing written essay, and yet you integrated it with the images perfectly. Can you talk about how you approached composing this one?

KEVIN B. LEE: Jim, whatever the circumstances that necessitated it, it's remarkable that you caught on to a non-narration oriented approach to video essays right out of the gate. Same with Serena, who's always been skillful at speaking through montage. It took me years to catch on, and now it's what I am most interested in exploring: to have a film comment on itself rather than rely on the more conventional mediators of voice and text. What I like about this approach is that it isn't as locked into one particular meaning as what you typically find with a narrated commentary. There's more room for the viewer to engage with the footage and extract multiple insights.

"The Carousel" video was a major opportunity to shift my approach. Tommaso Toci wrote a great piece on the Carousel scene that was to serve as the video script, but as I tried to adapt it I had trouble visualizing how the narration would flow with the scene. I kept playing the scene over and over trying to figure it out. And then it dawned on me that the scene itself provided the perfect structure: Don Draper selling us an idealized version of his life, from one perfect image and sentiment to the next, just asking to be torn into given everything to the contrary that we've witnessed of him. The clicking of the slidewheel and the momentary lapses of darkness between images suggest holes in his projection of perfection, so I thought: why not make those holes the portals into the dark reality under the projected surface? The clicking sound also reminded me of a soldier stepping on a landmine, bringing the war flashback scene to mind, which of course is the "big bang" event that gave birth to "Don Draper." 

From there it was just a matter of going through every episode of the first four seasons, gathering all the memorable scenes, images and bits of dialogue around Don, and weaving them together around motifs and patterns. I'd recently seen a cool video by Gina Telaroli that does a lot with superimpositions and slow motion, so I played with those techniques, which kind of give a David Lynch quality to the footage, especially the domestic suburbia scenes. The slow motion also has a doting, fetishistic quality to it, slowing images down as if trying to get at their essence.

With Season Five mostly in the can, I have to say that this video works out with Season Four as the endpoint. The proposal scene to Megan from the Season Four finale really brings it full circle with the final image from Don and Betty's wedding in the slide show.

As I mentioned before, I've long held reservations about the degree of centrality Don has in the world of Mad Men, when the women characters are as richly developed but have gotten significantly less screen time. So it's ironic that the most intense and time-consuming video I did for the Mad Men series was on the guy I felt was already overexposed. At the same time I loved the challenge of trying to piece together a coherent picture of who Don Draper is. Working with all the available footage was like playing with the biggest puzzle set of any of the Mad Men characters. Though perhaps with a piece left missing by the show. As Serena says, even Don Draper doesn't know who he is, but of course we keep trying to figure him out. And the finely crafted surfaces, images and lines have everything to do with our being seduced as viewers – in a sense the video is as much about those elements as it is about Don.

JIM EMERSON: Kevin: Yes! It's that idea of getting inside the work itself, and inside your own experience with it, that I find so exciting about this approach, too. And Mad Men is ideal for it because it's so rich and layered. Most shows have a "bible" with all the details about the stories and characters in one place so the writers can consult it. I wonder what form the Mad Men bible is in. Do they have cross-referenced video clips with certain spoken and visual motifs (boxes, hands, doors, hats, etc.)? Tom & Lorenzo (a site I learned that Deborah is familiar with, though I just discovered it a few days ago) noticed that the fur coat Joan wears to her assignation with Herb is the very one Roger gave her back in 1954:

the one that caused her to coo “When I wear it, I’ll always remember the night I got it.” Well, fuck you, Roger Sterling. That’s EXACTLY what this outfit is saying. “You ruined what we had by letting me do this, so I’m ruining what you gave me.” We’d be surprised if she ever wore it again. It’s one of those beautiful costuming moments that takes a sad, horrifying scene and makes it even more so once you realize what she’s wearing.

That's the level of resonant emotional and thematic detail on which this show operates. It repays the closest readings we can give it. I'm also glad to hear that, for you and Deborah and Serena, your process may by necessity be somewhat systematic (so much to keep track of!), but the creative aspect is more instinctual. I love diving in with a few ideas and then seeing where the show takes me.

nullI'd like to return to one thing Kevin mentioned earlier, about Joan's famous "orientation tour" for Peggy — which is also our introduction to the world of Sterling Cooper and "Mad Men." The series has been criticized from the beginning for trying to score modern feminist points by overplaying the sexism, but I don't see it that way at all. What may seem "over the top" to 21st century sensibilities was just taken for granted in the 1950s and 1960s. When Joan says, "Don't be intimidated by all this technology. The men who designed it made it so simple that even a woman can use it," she's echoing any number of popular advertising campaigns from the '40s and '50s. This kind of thinking (in the era when "women drivers" were routinely ridiculed on television, for example) was so common that it spawned parody ad campaigns — including the recent one for a British oven cleaning product, Oven Pride," that was accused of reverse-sexism: "So easy, even a man can do it." And by 1968, Virginia Slims cigarettes were marketed to women with the slogan: "You've come a long way, baby" — which, in some ways, is just as condescending as "even a woman can do it."

But about Peggy in the first season: Deborah is quite perceptive about her response to the post-party garbage in the office, and we've seen how she's grown, gained confidence, loosened up (especially in Season 4, when she broadened her social circle to include Village pals like Joyce and Abe). She was so eerie (Elisabeth Moss has talked about how deeply strange Peggy was at first, which is what she found so compelling about the role) that I actually wondered if maybe she was mentally ill when we first met her. Maybe the show should really be called "Mad Women" — because the men tend to drive them mad, one way or another.) She was almost zombie-like at times (not unlike Betty). And that added to the suspense when she put her trembling hand on Don's after her first day. Look at her eyes, unfocused and blank. Now we know that she was terrified, unsure of who she was and what was expected of her, and she did wind up institutionalized for a while. And I've always loved that about Peggy. You can never be entirely sure you're reading her correctly or completely, because there's such a gap between how she sees herself and how others see her and how she presents herself. Which makes her the perfect counterpoint to both Betty and Don. None of them are who they seem, but for different reasons.

Serena: Your extensive knowledge and grasp of the show are absolutely evident in your work. I hadn't heard that about "What do you want me to say?" but I think you get to the heart of it. I found an interview with Matthew Weiner on the AMC web site, and he said:

A: Well, when Don says, "What do you want to hear?" or "What do you want me to say?", that's on purpose. I feel like that's the ultimate thing for Don to say. But Peggy saying "Maybe this is my time" is the kind of line that should only happen once. Q: Why is that the ultimate Don line? A: Because he's being kind, but still being honest. I think it's a great way of dissolving a conflict in a powerful way. He's basically maintaining control, but at the same time submitting.

As you say, so much of the show centers around the differences between the internal person and the external person. It's all about what we now call "spin" — which is essentially what advertising is, too. And everything is a performance, from your job to your most intimate relationships to your clothes and your apartment. The integrity and authenticity of the performance varies from situation to situation, moment to moment, but there's always a (self-)awareness that it is a performance. As Weiner said in the same interview, he thinks Don is basically a "good person" (whatever that means), and echoes what Megan told him in bed in "Tomorrowland": "I feel like the theme of the show, when it's over, is that it's hard to be a person. You should try to be a good person, but you will fail, all of the time."

Now that two of the major characters are gone (one obviously for good), I really hope the series will develop Dawn more fully. You recall that Season 5 was delayed because of costs, and there was talk about cutting some prominent characters to keep costs down (good god, who's next? Ken? Pete?), but it seems downright odd that they've done so little with Dawn. In some cases they actually seem to be shooting around her. You know where she sits, but they don't show her. Surely the actress Teyonah Parris is not that expensive! The scene in Peggy's apartment was perfectly played (with Peggy hesitating over her purse just long enough to realize how it must look to Dawn; and Dawn, who'd been sleeping in the office, noticing Peggy's awkward hesitation) — and there's got to be somewhere to go with that. MLK was killed in 1968, so maybe the show will use that, as it used the Cuban Missile Crisis and the deaths of JFK and Marilyn Monroe. I think Dawn has great possibilities…

Jim Emerson is the founding editor-in-chief of RogerEbert.com and runs the Scanners blog.

Serena Bramble is a film editor currently pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Teledramatic Arts and Technology from Cal State Monterey Bay. In addition to editing, she also writes on her blog Brief Encounters of the Cinematic Kind.

Deborah Lipp is the co-owner of Basket of Kisses, whose motto is "smart discussion about smart television." She is the author of six books, including "The Ultimate James Bond Fan Book."

Kevin B. Lee is Editor in Chief of IndieWire’s PressPlay Video Blog and contributor to Roger Ebert.com. Follow him on Twitter.

GAME OF THRONES RECAP 10: VALAR MORGHULIS

GAME OF THRONES RECAP 10: VALAR MORGHULIS

nullOne of the key questions facing Game Of Thrones the series, as well as its source material, is: “What’s this about?” And by this I mean: “What is this story? How is it being told? Where is this leading?” Certainly there’s drama, and characters change, grow, collapse, or die, but it’s difficult to see a clear structure at times. “Valar Morghulis,” as a season finale, did provide appropriate resolutions for most of the characters’ stories this season. But it struggled to collect them—it’s just a bunch of stuff that happens, in the words of Homer Simpson. Still, it’s a compelling bunch of stuff that happens.

nullThe Hero’s Journey is the default reading of most fantasy stories, and Game Of Thrones gives that opportunity with two of its characters: Jon Snow and Danaerys Targaryen. Both are born of noble blood, but are also outsiders. Both are young, and they are undergoing journeys of self-improvement as well as quests of external improvements. Both are also dealing with the most magic of any of the characters. Dany has her dragons, and Jon has fought one of the White Walkers, while the threat of more wraiths hangs over the Night’s Watch.

I’m not sold on this interpretation—Game Of Thrones seems too delighted to subvert fantasy tropes to fully follow through on the monomyth—but each character continues their journey in “Valar Morghulis.” Danaerys has had a bad season, sounding increasingly shrill over the course of her time in the unfriendly city of Qarth, but the climax of the episode finally justifies the time spent on her this year. Heading into the home of the warlocks led by Pyat Pree, she finally has the chance to demonstrate in action what she’s been shouting about all season, burning the magician and regaining her power. Yet her most important action isn’t her connection with her dragons, inciting them to violence. It’s rejecting the illusion of her dead husband and child. Her more youthful dream of a happy life with Khal Drogo is gone, and the steely Emilia Clarke realizes this quickly, giving her agency over her life again.

On the other hand, Jon Snow’s climactic act, a duel with the veteran ranger Qhorin Halfhand, represents arguably Game Of Thrones biggest failure this entire season. There is a reason for the duel—Qhorin mentioned it in a quick whisper two episodes ago—but if you can’t remember and extrapolate from “I hope you can do what you need to do” followed by a series of louder insults, I can’t blame you. We’re supposed to understand that Qhorin is doing this so that the wildlings will accept Jon, which will make him a more effective spy. But that relies on a single whispered line from two episodes ago. So, for all appearances, Jon is just a dupe, on multiple levels. For a character who could easily be described as the most traditional hero in the series, this is a serious problem.

A second interpretation of the overall story of Game Of Thrones is that it’s the story of the Stark family in a complicated civil war. Our main characters, after all, are Cat, Jon, Arya, Sansa, Bran, Robb, and formerly Ned (also little Rickon, attached to Bran). Dany and Tyrion are major as well, but under this theory, they exist largely to flesh out the story.

Sansa, for example, is our Stark gateway in King’s Landing. We see the new alliance between the Tyrells and the Lannisters both as the political intrigue that won the biggest battle of the civil war so far, but we also see it through Sansa’s eyes. Sophie Turner demonstrates her embarrassment at being publicly humiliated, yes, but also her joy at being free of her betrothal to the sociopathic Joffrey (though this is negated when the increasingly creepy Littlefinger promises to “help” her).

Her older brother Robb has a simpler story—he’s in love with Talisa, and decides to marry her. Cat, still under arrest for freeing Jaime Lannister, tries to talk him out of doing anything foolish, but she has no ground to stand on. Robb both follows his heart and his honor, marrying the woman he had sex with. It’s a sweet scene, and it parallels other loving scenes the episode surrounds it with, but it lacks depth.

Arya Stark has a similar issue, resolving her story with Jaqen H’ghar, but little else. I’ve complimented the child actors on the show before, but there are some issues here. Jaqen invites Arya to learn his killing strengths, but Arya says no, remembering her family. This is all good, but the struggle to remember her sister Sansa is a bit too obvious. It’s still amusing from a character perspective, but it’s quite transparently “television” in a way that Game Of Thrones, and HBO house style, tend to avoid.

A third response to the “What does it mean?” question is the most complex, subtle, and in my opinion rewarding: Game Of Thrones is about war and its effects. One of the things that has disappointed me about this season of the series, compared to the novels, is the lack of portrayal of the war’s effects. The best scene of “Valar Morghulis” finally depicts the brutality of the war, as well as the complexity of morality during civil war: Brienne of Tarth is still escorting the ever-snarky/charming Jaime Lannister to the capital, when she comes across a set of corpses.

They’re three women, hung with a sign saying that “They lay with lions.” The single image conveys brutality: we’re supposed to believe the Starks are good and the Lannister (lions) are evil. Yet here are three women killed for the crime of supposedly having slept with members of the Lannister army. The men who show up to confront Brienne—and explain the deaths—show the issues of civil war. They don’t take initial credit for the killings. They’re not dressed in uniform. They ask Brienne who she serves, but only after mocking her. And they are cruel men, quickly and violently dispatched.

Despite the initial thrill of seeing Brienne—the insulted woman—succeed in her violence, the scene is still discomfiting. The northerners are supposed to be, at the least, more heroic than their southern counterparts. These men are rapists and murderers. But worse than that: Are they even evil than Jaime Lannister, the charmingly sarcastic prisoner being saved by Brienne? Jaime is handsome, clever, and in the main credits, but he’s also Ned Stark’s rival, a man who tried to kill a 10-year-old boy, and he's conducting an incestuous, adulterous affair with the queen. Jaime survives because he’s important. These men die because they’re not. This is the war of Game Of Thrones, and it’s a difficult and bloody war at that.

The episode’s other most powerful scenes also avoid the heroes and Starks. Tyrion Lannister is surviving his wounds from the battle of Blackwater, yes. But his exploits in the battle have been ignored. His father Tywin receives the accolades while Tyrion gets moved to more modest quarters. His only ally is Lord Varys, the eunuch whom the show depicts as having been outmanuevered by Littlefinger’s successful arrangement of the Tyrell-Lannister alliance. Varys brings Tyrion his mistress Shae, leading the to the most affecting scene of the episode, wherein Shae professes her loyalty to the scarred Imp. Both Kekilli and especially Dinklage act the hell out of this scene, providing a stellar emotional core to “Valar Morghulis.”

Finally, the most complete part of the episode occurs in Winterfell. Theon Greyjoy is surrounded by the Bastard of Bolton and his troops, with 500 men against 20. Maester Luwin provides Theon with council, and Theon (and Alfie Allen) lay his entire life, his motivations, and his insecurities out for the viewers and the Maester to see. Here, Theon turns from a ridiculous figure into a tragic one. He has no home and no one to trust, so he relies on his masculinity and ambition to give his pathetic life some meaning. This urge manifests itself in a speech he gives to his men, wonderful both for its position within Theon’s narrative and because it's a joke: he's cut short by his men, who just want to use Theon’s body as leverage to get home. At every point, Theon has been given chances to be better. He has wasted them, trying to gain the respect of men who never would have respected him anyway. This may be Game Of Thrones at its smartest: Theon is trapped by his attempts to be as masculine and powerful as possible. He’s not. Maybe he never has been. Everyone, including him, recognizes this. But he feels that he has no choice but to continue.

Add these stories all up, and what is the sum? I don’t think there is one, other than that the third season, ten months away, can’t arrive soon enough in plot terms. The final two episodes have demonstrated the dynamism that Game Of Thrones’ tight serialization can provide, like no other show on television right now. On the other hand, there are serious issues with Game Of Thrones’ structure. They can certainly be masked by momentum, but the connection—or lack thereof—of the myriad of stories has to be a constant concern for the series’ fans and creators.

Adaptation:

Most of the stories portrayed in “Valar Morghulis” are significantly different from those in the book, yet most of these still point to an endpoint of the later books, used as major reference. The Bastard Of Bolton may not have made his appearance here, but the ambiguity about the sack of Winterfell leaves room for interpretation. Likewise, Jon Snow’s arc as an idiot may have been painful, but it leaves him in a position to be less terrible in the future.

My biggest disappointment with the episode—apart from the lack of redemption for Arya’s story mistakes two weeks ago—comes from the Cat—Robb interaction. In the novels, both Cat and Robb discover each others’ crimes at the same time. Robb gets married in the west, then returns to discover that Cat has freed Jaime. His forgiveness for her act based on love is a defense of his own act of love, a manipulation which both impresses and frightens Cat. We only get a tiny part of that in a conversation where an ineffectual Cat attempts to persuade Robb of the virtue of arranged marriage, which Robb can dismiss thanks to her release of the Kingslayer. It’s good—but the scene in the book was great.

A final word has to be given to the cliffhanger at the end of “Valar Morghulis.” The White Walkers have been an ominous threat since the cold open of Game Of Thrones’  first episode, but have rarely been physically threatening. Now, we see an army. And while in story terms, the army of wraiths attacking the Night’s Watch is certainly ominous, the CGI used to depict the supernatural threat just can’t quite manage it. The pseudo-zombies shown are just a bit too cartoonish, and some of the horde that follows are all too obviously just topless actors’ backs staggering in front of a bluescreen. But this is the way the novels’ story goes, so some depiction is necessary. We have to see the undead threat, even if that threat, treated literally on-screen, is insufficient compared to the danger on the page. The episode’s other most powerful scenes also avoid the heroes and Starks, focusing instead on the effects of the war on two of this season's most dynamic characters, Tyrion and Theon.

Rowan Kaiser is a freelance pop culture critic currently living in the Bay Area. He is a staff writer at The A.V. Club, covering television and literature. He also writes about video games for several different publications, including Joystiq and Paste Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @rowankaiser for unimportant musings on media and extremely important kitten photographs.

MAD MEN RECAP 11: COMMISSIONS AND FEES

MAD MEN RECAP ELEVEN: COMMISSIONS AND FEES

"Everything you think’s going to make you happy just turns to crap."

nullLast week, Megan was annoyed with the Jaguar ad campaign. A wife is a Buick in the garage, she said with a touch of bitterness, but a mistress is an exotic and temperamental Jaguar. I don't know what kind of car Don Draper drives these days, but it's not a Jaguar, and at the end of Commissions and Fees, the person driving that ordinary car was the only one who was happy.

Rest in peace, Lane Pryce.

I've been doing this recap dance long enough to know that even when I imagine I have nothing to say, there are plenty of words to come. Yet I am in the strange position of feeling that the very act of writing is disrespectful to what I have just seen. Lane felt, tonight, like a person, not a character. A person we lost. A person Don tried desperately to treat with dignity. A person who deserves, not a recap, but a eulogy.

Rest in peace, Lane Pryce.

The things we want, the magical, out-of-reach things, they just don't work. Glen knew it, in the end, as quoted above. Don pitched the living shit out of Dow Corning. He pitched desire. He pitched never being happy enough as a net positive, as a sign of life. McManus (the current agency) is just bringing them happiness, just bringing them success, but Don insists that's not enough.

In Episode 5.01, A Little Kiss Part 1, Trudy said to Pete, "Dissatisfaction is a symptom of ambition." This is, essentially, Don's pitch: "What is happiness? It’s a moment before you need more happiness."

The magical, impossible, unmanageable thing, the thing we think we want but which cannot satisfy us, is clearly represented by Jaguar. That's the pitch. Remember last week: "If they weren’t temperamental, if they weren’t beyond our reach and a little out of our control"? Jaguar is so fundamentally unsatisfying you can't even kill yourself in it. Poor Lane, so desperate, and relying on such notoriously shoddy engineering. Watch the failed attempt:

The clip is funny, and its bona fides have been fully established, with the two prior episodes making sure we understand that Jaguars just don't start. It's also tragic, since lousy English technology won't stop Lane, who loves the U.S. and weeps that he will lose his visa—he kills himself instead in an office lavishly decorated in Americana. The position in which he hung himself meant that one of his last sights was his replica of the Statue of Liberty. Ah, Lane, the American Dream failed you, and you didn't even enjoy that moment before you needed more happiness.

Don will blame himself, you can already see that. He has shame and remorse all over his face when he hears the news. Last week, Joan touched him kindly and said, "You're a good one." It's likely he married Megan because she believed he was good, but it's the one thing he never believes of himself. He often does terrible things, but Megan was right in Tomorrowland, he always tries to do better.

How impotent his efforts to do good must feel to him now; that much is obvious in the bitter way he condemned the partners for voting last week without him: "Should I leave so you all can do whatever you want?" he pointedly asks.

He couldn't save Joan from Herb. He couldn't save Lane from himself. In the back of his mind, always, is that he couldn't save Adam (his brother, who hung himself in Season 1), and probably that he couldn't save the real Don Draper (whose death can be blamed on Dick Whitman). The only one he could save was Glen Bishop, for whom he could fulfill a simple wish. "We’re worried about you," he said of young people in Episode 5.03, Tea Leaves. He can't prevent Sally from becoming a woman (and "spreading her legs to fly away" as Emile Calvet would have it), or save lives that should be saved. But he can take Glen driving. Sometimes we can only do little things.

Megan, too, is intensely protective of children, protecting Glen, she says, because she wasn't able to protect Sally. Substituting a lesser form of protection for a more necessary one is a motif this episode.

But instead of talking about themes or motifs, I would rather describe streams: two directions in which this episode flows. One is towards dissatisfaction, dissolution, and death, the other is towards life, rebirth, and becoming. Creation and destruction, momentum and inertia: the two great forces of life. Don tried to talk to Lane about starting over, and in fact, I think Don was as kind as humanly possible. When he says, "I’m doing the most decent thing I could possibly do," he is telling the truth. But Lane is not flowing towards rebirth as Don advises, he is unwinding, and the only kind thing Don can do is lay Lane gently to rest on the couch.

Sally, on the other hand, flows towards rebirth as a woman. Her first "date" with Glen may not have been very romantic, but it was very satisfying for her (until it became too much, physically and metaphorically). Her movement towards sexuality, innocent as it is, is life-affirming, just as Roger's boredom with sex is life-denying. Roger, whose enlightenment "wore off," is in the stream of dissolution with Lane.

There are a lot of ways to talk to a young girl about her first period. What Betty said was lovely, and also important; she talked about babies, and about a healthy body, and about Sally joining in the grand cycle: the stream of becoming that will come around to Sally's someday being in the mother role that Betty is in today. Ask any mother—when we have children of our own, our relationships with our own mothers are transformed. Betty, with her arms around Sally, sees Sally becoming herself, sees her own mother and her future granddaughter in a stream as circular as Betty's arms when they envelop her daughter.

Easter is mentioned several times, and Lane specifically talks about resurrection to Joan—all this while snow is visible through the window. Winter and spring. Death and rebirth.

Rest in peace, Lane Pryce.

Some additional thoughts:

  • Suicide has been foreshadowed heavily all season. In this episode, it was Betty's turn: "I wanted to know if you would have any problem with me strangling Sally." Sally, of course, is not the one who ends up strangled.
  • Betty's could be the quote of the week, but instead I'm giving it to Kenny: "I don’t mind waiting 20 minutes for an unspecified meeting with my boss. I mean, it’s not like your imagination would run wild."
  • For her museum date, Sally wore the go-go boots Megan had bought her in At the Codfish Ball: the boots that Don made her take off because they were too mature.
  • The drive from Park Avenue to Hotchkiss Academy in Lakeville, Connecticut is just about 100 miles each way.

Deborah Lipp is the co-owner of Basket of Kisses, whose motto is "smart discussion about smart television." She is the author of six books, including "The Ultimate James Bond Fan Book."

Watch Mad Men Moments, a series of videos on Mad Men, produced by Indiewire Press Play.

GAME OF THRONES RECAP 9: BLACKWATER

GAME OF THRONES RECAP 9: BLACKWATER

We know what we’re getting when we watch a Game Of Thrones episode, right? We’re getting some beautifully shot scenes, certainly; this has been one of the best-looking shows on television since its premiere. We know that the actors will be good, if not great. We know that we’ll see a wide variety of different, possibly intersecting plots, divided by geography. And we know that while there might be some action, it’ll be parceled out for more drama, more cliffhangers, but probably not catharsis. It’s a decent structure. It’s served the show well, as well as working for other HBO shows like The Wire, Treme, and Boardwalk Empire.

Except that’s not what happened in “Blackwater.”

It takes confidence to alter the formal structure of a television show, but it’s also often the best thing a show can do. Shows like The Sopranos and Buffy The Vampire Slayer changed television dramatically while relying on a series of formal experiments: “College” and “Pine Barrens” from The Sopranos, or “Band Candy” and “The Body” from Buffy. The way you think the show should work, the way television normally works? That’s not what happens. If done competently, these experiments can be fun episodes. If done well? They’re among the best television can do.

“Blackwater” was an experiment done well.

I was partially wrong about last week’s episode. I assumed that everything was leading up to a climactic ninth episode of the season. We’d see Theon defending Winterfell; we’d see Dany chasing her dragons; we’d see a culmination of Robb’s romance; we’d see Jon trying to survive his capture by the wildlings; we’d see Arya, having escaped into the wilderness; we’d see the battle of Blackwater, with Stannis’ forces attacking Tyrion and the Lannisters at King’s Landing.

What we got was only the last of those. The climactic battle of the season turned out to be the entirety of the episode. Stannis attacks King’s Landing, and Tyrion defends it. Nothing else happens this episode. It is, unlike any other of the 18 episodes preceding it, entirely focused on a single story, focused only on the characters in one specific locale.

And that’s just what Game Of Thrones needed.

There are still issues. My complaints about Arya and Cat losing agency last week are still valid. There’s still a great deal of ground to cover next week. I don’t know that there’s going to be enough time left to tie it all together. The season has had issues of thematic coherence roughly equivalent to the difficulties with coherence in the novel A Clash Of Kings. Yet, while those things can be argued about the season as a whole, they don’t take away from the achievement of “Blackwater.”

“Blackwater” derives its power from its relative simplicity. It removes the extra plots, focusing on the overarching climax of the Clash Of Kings that gave the story its name in book form. Stannis, with the former Targaryen lands plus the Baratheon vassals, attacks King Joffrey in King’s Landing, with the power of the capital and the Lannisters behind him. As presented, these are the two most powerful forces in the southlands (with Robb Stark leading an equally powerful army from the north).

Yet while that simplicity increases the drama of the episode for the characters we care about—Tyrion primarily—it also demonstrates one of the biggest problems of the season: in the Stannis versus Joffrey confrontation, we have many reasons to cheer against Joff, but no particular reason to cheer for Stannis. That makes it necessary for “Blackwater” to build that drama via the few characters who will be affected. This means Davos and his son, preparing for the battle. This means the Hound and Bronn, whose stress makes them competitors, while battle makes them friends. This means Tyrion with Varys, with Sansa, with Joffrey, and with Shae. This means Sansa Stark, who finally gets the chance to shine, first by sarcastically undermining Joffrey, then by cleaning up the mess left by a drunken Cersei Lannister.

The action in “Blackwater” is very good. It’s fantastic, given the constraints of television. I, along with many other online commenters, compared it to the attack on Helm’s Deep from Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers. Some of the individual pieces of action aren’t quite film-level, but in terms of building then releasing tension, the episode is great.

First, Stannis has an overwhelming advantage in numbers, which Tyrion lessens with his wildfire attack. This is a loaded sequence for a variety of reasons. First, there’s the simple technology of it: this is what HBO has been saving their CGI for, and it’s worth it. The green fire and the explosion look great. Beyond that, the number of extras involved in the action sequences give an epic feeling beyond the computer technology.

Tyrion’s surprise fire attack also links him to great strategists in literary history as well. His plan, to me, is reminiscent of the Zhou Yu/Zhuge Liang plot in the Three Kingdoms novel, most recently portrayed visually in John Woo’s uneven but fascinating 2008 film Red Cliff. The idea that a lone brilliant man can use surprise and the elements, particularly fire, in order to even out incredibly uneven odds is a common conceit of literature. Tyrion here is Odysseus, creating the Trojan Horse, or Caesar at Pharsalus, surprising Pompey’s cavalry, as well as Zhuge Liang, the near-deified strategist of the Three Kingdoms. Lord Varys even makes this clear early in the episode, saying that Stannis has allied with dark forces, and Tyrion is “the only man who can stop him.” There’s also the straightforward historical precedent of Byzantine “Greek fire,” the secret weapon of that famous fleet.

Yet Tyrion’s (and Peter Dinklage’s) greatest triumph isn’t his strategy, it’s that when the battle hangs in the balance, he builds his courage and makes a speech to save King’s Landing. His speech isn’t an appeal to the ideals of the Seven Kingdoms. Instead, it’s an appeal to the darkness of the series. He specifically tells his men not to fight for honor. He tells them to fight for their own survival, and for the survival of the people they care about. I don’t know that there’s a better encapsulation of the series’ themes than this speech.

Who is the bad guy here? Tyrion is defending Cersei and Joffrey, the biggest villains of the show so far, but we want him to survive. We want his people to survive. We want King’s Landing to avoid being sacked; we want the noble ladies not to be raped. We want Westeros to not go to hell, despite the “honorable” intentions of its leaders. There’s no good resolution here. There’s only survival. Tyrion gets that. And Dinklage nails the speech where he demonstrates that. “Those are brave men knocking on our door. Let’s go kill them!”

Yet all this doesn’t work without the formal changes of the episode. Only a handful of cast members are present, but almost every single one of them has some of their best moments. Sophie Turner gets many of her best moments as the rapidly maturing Sansa Stark, yes, but she’s matched by Sibel Kekilli, as Shae, whose fiery personality has been increasingly prominent recently. Lena Headey is also making a strong claim for “most improved” actress—her increasing desperation, combined with her rigid control over her emotions, makes her scenes some of the best of an already fantastic episode. Finally Sandor Clegane, Joffrey’s Hound, has been a background character for so long that his scenes here are something of a surprise, and a welcome one at that. It’s an odd thing for Joffrey’s right hand to say, straight up, “fuck the king,” but Rory McCann takes this, his most important line, and makes it sting.

Because Game Of Thrones focuses on the climactic event of the season, it can do this. It can make most of the characters at their most interesting. It can slowly build up the battle, and then get the battle right. I worry that this intense focus on the battle of the Blackwater will make the finale too busy. But for now, I think it’s worth basking in the glory that a single change in structure can achieve. There are many great moments to come in Game Of Thrones. An intense focus on them can break up the show’s rhythm in a remarkably positive way.

Adaptation:

George R.R. Martin wrote this episode, so even if I wanted to, it would be hard to say that “Blackwater” got anything in particular wrong. The lack of specificity to the Tyrell army's inclusion in the Lannister reinforcements is a bit of an issue—Loras in Tywin’s entourage could be missed easily, in part because it’s a surprise—but I assume this will be cleared up next week. While this season has had many issues of adaptation, “Blackwater”  is as ideal as any fan could expect.

Rowan Kaiser is a freelance pop culture critic currently living in the Bay Area. He is a staff writer at The A.V. Club, covering television and literature. He also writes about video games for several different publications, including Joystiq and Paste Magazine. Follow him on Twitter @rowankaiser for unimportant musings on media and extremely important kitten photographs.