I was going to start Elmore Leonard’s new novel, Djibouti, next, but I decided to breeze through the new Spenser novel by Robert B. Parker first, Painted Ladies. I have it on my Kindle and read the first 1/3 of it in about half an hour. At this rate, I should be done with it by end of day. It has to do with Dutch art stolen by the Nazis and people who are so desperate to keep Spenser from pursuing his line of inquiry that they bomb his bed. Oh, and Pearl has a couple of dates with a dog named Otto.
I felt really bad for the father/son team on The Amazing Race. They’re so good together, and they’ve fared reasonably well to date. Thankfully they got a bit of a reprieve. It’s funny that only one team managed to find the decoder key. Not a single one of the others looked back over his shoulder to see it while bugging out to the other option. I wonder if they’ll get to see it the next day when they spend time working on the schools, which is a nice touch by the way.
Finally, someone on Rubicon uttered the word “Rubicon,” and even explained the reference. Of course it was Kale Ingram, probably the only guy who knows everything about everything on the show. I knew Catherine Rhumer was going to leave the safe house the minute Maggie left her alone. Don’t these people watch television at all? And finally something got to Spangler. He was all a-jitter while trying to sneak a smoke in his office. He issued another one of those heavy-handed thank-you speeches that usually means “I’m going to send someone to kill you.”
I think it’s hilarious that Don Draper wrote a letter-ad to the NY Times on Mad Men, summarizing his reasons for giving up tobacco. Clearly he didn’t mean the consumption of tobacco, because Stirling, Cooper, Draper, etc. is still smokier than Chicago during the great fire. Rather, as Megan so astutely put it, he dumped them instead of them dumping him. No more advertising a product that kills people. More irony as they all sit around the boardroom table smoking and discussing whether or not to do a public service ad for the American Cancer Society. Was Don inspired to kick his company’s addiction to cigarette companies by staring at Midge’s heroin-influenced painting? (And, boy, hasn’t she tumbled since her days as Don’s #1 mistress in season 1?)
Then it was on to the layoffs, which Roger prefaced by saying he had to go learn a bunch of people’s names so he could fire them. I got a great kick out of the reaction to Bert Cooper’s departure (the subject line of today’s post). What does Cooper do for the firm except lend it his name? So maybe Peggy will get her way after all: retool the company’s name without Cooper (and they could drop Stirling, too, for all he does for them these days).
And isn’t it funny that Betty Draper gets her best comfort out of a child psychologist? And Sally is getting dual treatment: professional therapy from the same psychologist and her free-wheeling philosophical discussions with Glen.
