At just about the same time as he was accepting an Emmy award, John Hamm’s alter ego, Don Draper (or Dick Whitman, if you prefer) was getting a Clio award for the best floor polish commercial. Nice piece of synchronicity. I didn’t watch much of the Emmy’s. Saw the opening sketch on YouTube and thought it was pretty clever and well done. (Where did Hurley come from all of a sudden?!) It’s a kick to see Hamm doing something different, and Betty White is sure getting a lot of mileage out of her rediscovery. Kudos to Kate for letting herself be the butt of the joke.
The Twitter idea might have sounded good on the drawing board, but it was lame in execution. I don’t really know much about Fallon, have never watched his show, but I thought he did okay. The “tribute” sketch for three shows we’ve lost this season was funny. Ricky Gervais can be both funny and lame in the same sentence.
I wonder how far they’re going to let Don Draper fall before he rebounds. He’s getting worse and worse. This week he had a lost weekend, where he went to bed on Friday night with one woman he’d just met and woke up on Sunday morning with another he didn’t recall meeting, presumably the waitress at a greasy spoon who served him french fries. He didn’t remember ordering Peggy to camp out for the weekend and he most certainly didn’t remember cribbing someone else’s slogan at a drunken pitch meeting for Life cereal. That scene, where he was scrambling to come up with ideas, was almost painful to watch. I wonder if Roger Stirling actually did hire him (while drunk) or if Don just used his knowledge of drunken behavior to convince him he had.
Eureka was like old home week, with the return of several characters from past years. Thankfully, their return was only temporary and, for the most part, hallucinatory.
Reviewed the page proofs for one forthcoming short story and the contract for another. Beyond that I didn’t get a whole lot of writing done this weekend. I’m tinkering with a Cemetery Dance column (though I don’t have a deadline for it yet) and cogitating over a couple of short story commitments.
We watched The Return of the King (the four hour version) yesterday afternoon. I didn’t know who John Noble was when I first saw the movie, so I didn’t make the connection between Denethor and Walter Bishop of Fringe until now. Frodo is a passive protagonist for most of the adventure. He makes a few concerted decisions–like the decision to be the ring-bearer and the decision to part from the fellowship after Boromir’s meltdown–but for much of the long journey he’s listless and unimpressive. If not for Gollum, he would have failed. If not for Sam, certainly, too.
I finished Martin Cruz Smith’s Three Stations this weekend. A gritty, dark portrait of Moscow. A few gibes at Putin. Arkady Renko has to be suspended or dismissed once every book, like Inspector Rebus. A relatively brief book with two major storylines that are unrelated. Full review to come. Next, I picked up Star Island by Carl Hiaasen. A good opening, in which a paparazzo is misled into following the wrong ambulance when a celebrity named Cherry Pye overdoses on vodka, Red Bull, hydrocodone, birdseed and stool softener. I’ve only read a few of his books, but I like a light crime story every now and then.
