Guys, seriously, how great was that episode? Pete is a weaselly, slimy character, but he’s oftentimes the most interesting character on the screen after Don. He’s a guy who wants it all, but cannot recognize when he’s got it. More importantly, Pete Campbell can never have it all because he is so aggressively unlikeable.

Driver’s Ed:

Pete has a thing for going after defenseless and possibly naive women. New hire Peggy, the neighbor’s foreign maid, and now high school student Jenny. He always has a sneaky angle in and he’s always just a little too creepily aggressive. I’m thankful for Jenny’s sake that Handsome showed up to be a more age-appropriate suitor. It’s definitely an ego blow to have Handsome mistake Pete for the teacher and to feel so old, but I feel like Pete is probably more insulted by the way that Handsome makes it all seem so effortless like Don or Roger or the other men he’s trying to surpass.

The Bordello:

How hilarious was the part where the prostitute was trying out different personas for Pete? Perfect window into his soul, too. He didn’t want the devoted housewife (Trudy) nor did he want the virginal teen he seemed to crave (and who had recently rejected him in favor of Handsome). No, he wanted to feel powerful like a king. Like I’ve said, Pete constantly wants everything, but he’s never satisfied. How great was that post-club cab where Pete fumed at Don (of all people) for judging him. Don had a perfectly valid point, but Pete couldn’t see how his aping of Don could be met with such hypocritical, self-righteous scorn.

The Party:

Pete’s sycophantic compliments toward Don must have surely stung when Don fixed the sink that he technically broke. I mean, he was completely ineffectual there. Ken covered the spray with a pot while Pete went hunting for his tools and Don got to work quickly remedying the situation. Pete was left just looking useless while all the women fawned over Don. Not even the appearance of the daughter everyone was fawning over could help mask his feelings of inadequacy.

SCDP Offices:

Pretty sure everyone who’s watched all five seasons of this show has been waiting for the moment when Pete would finally end up getting punched in the face. Who would have thought that Lane would be the one to do it? The thing is, Pete and Lane have always had a somewhat genial relationship, season 3′s competition aside, and yet Pete felt the need to belittle and insult Lane. Neither of the men feel like they belong at the office, but Lane could not stomach being relegated to the bottom of the totem pole without a fight. Where does Pete stand in the office? In past seasons Don and Lane have expressed respect for him, but he’s been a rude jerk all of season 5. Insisting meetings be taken in his office, openly feuding with Sterling, calling out Don in the cab, and now this with Lane. Where does a man so thoroughly insulted go from here? I can’t wait to find out.

Other Stuff:

- Ken continues to derive the real joy in his life from his wife and non-work-related activities. Anyone else surprised he took up a different nom de plume once the old one was forcibly exposed?

- Too little for Peggy to do this episode, but Elizabeth Moss is killing it this season. Love it.

- Don and Megan’s marriage continues to be really interesting. She can tell him what to wear! She can tell him to make his own social calls! I think that her “That’s impossible” line about him putting a baby in her perhaps deserves more inspection. What did she mean? Was it a throwaway line that I’m putting too much importance into?

- Trudy is awesome. Alison Brie kills it on Community and she’s killing it here too. Loved her social maneuvering.

- OH YEAH! Lane totally kissed Joan. She was polite enough to let him stop without resisting and then open the door and come sit back down, but how utterly humiliating. I hope their relationship doesn’t sour too much over his gaffe.

- All the men in this episode looked so weak and ineffectual at various points. It’s like their new firm sheen is coming off and their age is starting to show.

- I liked the way that the drip symbol popped in and out of the episode. It’s one of Mad Men‘s more obvious symbols, but it was appropriately used.

Think you know about Vikings, Lady Godiva, or Napoleon? Think again!

Unless you already know about these misconceptions. Then you don’t have to think again.

It looks photoshopped, but I promise it wasn't!

I didn’t do much this week, but cut me some slack, man! I was in Las Vegas!

Movies

Nope

TV

Mad Men – My thoughts on the last episode are here, but it’s a safe bet to say that I love this show and this season has been great so far.

Books

Ha! Nope. Should have on the plane…

Music

This is actually a pretty cool video:

Can’t believe I still haven’t picked up “El Camino”

Video Games

Devil Survivor 2 – Had a dicey moment against the Day 3 bosses where I thought I would have to start over. Pulled through, but then left my DS in the hotel. Thankfully Lee recovered it. Thanks Lee!

Dragon Quest IV – Played this for a half hour on the flight home on Min’s DS. I’m not in love with the accents in the first chapter, but I like the multi-character story structure.

It’s a little too on the money to be hilarious, but I still enjoyed it.

“Shouldn’t the world’s best friends choose the world’s best game?”

I gotta admit, it took me a while to get with The Besties podcast, but now that I recognize how truly ridiculous and hilarious it is I’m all about it. Remember, they’re not really there to have legitimate debate about the merits of the games they bring. In fact, sometimes Justin doesn’t even play his, but they’re fun to listen to and even funnier to watch.

You know what’s my favorite thing about Mad Men? Even when it’s dead serious or surreal it’s not above brilliant jokes. I want to hit on the lighter moments first, because this episode was very dark and violent.

Moment numero uno has to be the scene with Peggy and Sterling. It’s just perfect to see how far Sterling has fallen that he can threaten to fire all he wants, but he can’t intimidate Peggy (or Harry, for that matter). She has his number and she gets her reward while being super cheeky and super funny. I could watch her count cash for hours.

What else? Well, Ginsberg was particularly hilarious in the post-meeting bar. I think it’s telling that I agree with him when he asserted that he wasn’t as close to being fired as Ken thinks he was. Yes, Don means what he says, but I still think Ginsberg’s confidence is well-placed.

Speaking of Ginsberg (and segueing into more serious topics), I think it’s telling that his reluctance to be a crime voyeur and his shaming of his peers was very interestingly juxtaposed with his pitch. I mean, the Speck murders were lurid, violent, sick, twisted, and meaningless, but his pitch…that was stalking and sexual violence, but presented in the sanitized way that horror movies are. I know it’s ridiculous to call a horror movie sanitized, but they are clearly about sexual violence a lot of the time. There’s that erotic tension in there that is personified by your virginal main character trope, for example, or the fact that most protagonists are female while the monsters are male. It’s what makes Alien so subversive.

While we’re on the subject of sexual violence, how about that (kind of annoying) fever dream that Don had? Look, we all knew it was a dream and that it was a little cheesy, but for it to incorporate elements of the Speck murder (women under the bed) and the almost horror-movie ability that Andrea had to appear back in Don’s bedroom…I mean it’s clearly intentional. Like I said, I knew it was a dream, but there was a part of me that was worried that Mad Men might go the way of Friday Night Lights Season 2 until it was officially confirmed a dream. While the symbolism was a little clumsy and obvious, it was an interesting moment to see Don symbolically murdering his adulterous nature. Will it stay dead? It was gone in the morning, but was it because it had survived? Whatever the case, Matt Weiner is doing a stand-up job proving to us that Don and Megan truly care for each other and that Don is at least mostly invested in the relationship. If his adultery count stays at 0 + i (as in one imaginary fling) I wouldn’t be surprised, based on the way he’s being characterized this season.

Peggy and Dawn got to interact after Peggy discovered that Dawn was stuck in the office because she’s black (subways are too dangerous, cops around everywhere, cabbies refuse to take her past 96th…). I thought it was a very telling line that what Peggy was most worried about was the “white person problem” (not really a WPP, but it was also not the racially charged problem) of the Speck murder while Dawn is clearly referencing the race riots erupting in various parts of the country. Despite how much Peggy wants to connect the dots between the feminist and race movements, she ultimately commits a faux pas with the purse gaff at the end of the night and she feels terrible for it. It was a very awkward moment that I thought was beautifully shot and captured. It’s funny how a whole night of, well, one-sided drunken sharing can be erased by a lingering glance.

Sally and Pauline’s scenes together were all captivating as well. I mean, how much sense does it make that Pauline’s father just kicked her to put the fear of him into her. That kind of random violence is precisely in line with the violence of the Speck murders and the terror that women on the whole must feel. There’s a strong undercurrent of fear that men don’t really understand. We tend to be physically larger and we are most commonly the aggressors in society so we don’t understand what it’s like to watch your back or feel threatened when alone among men, but Pauline doesn’t know which direction to take it with Sally. She repeatedly chastises her and treats her like a child while simultaneously asking why she doesn’t act more like a grown-up. Pauline wants Sally to understand what it is to be a woman and she overshares details about the murders and the psychological fear of men with her, but then she grants her the power of temporary ignorance with sleeping pills. Of all the characters on the show, Sally is the one who I fear for the most. What is her life going to be like?

Best thing about the night might have to be Joan finally acknowledging that evil that Pauline alludes to in Greg and his rape of Joan in S2. When she finally says out loud what she already knows, that Greg is a nobody who needs to assert his power to feel strong. That he is a bad man…that is the big moment we’ve all been waiting for since that ugly moment in Season 2. Joan’s scenes play out predictably and I’m glad that the show never let Greg off the hook by killing him off in Vietnam. It was a powerful scene and a powerful moment for Joan who, one would hope, will not rekindle her relationship with Roger, but move on to something healthier. I mean, who doesn’t love Joan? She’s among the most tragic of a cast of many tragic cases and we all want to see better things come to her.

Baseball is BACK! The (Miami) Marlins are headed to Philadelphia for their second/third series of the year.

Baseball. It signals the end of winter. Guess what, guys? Winter is GONE! The Marlins are off to a rocky start (1-3), but they’re still looking pretty good and, in the past two games, playing pretty well too. I really hope this season is better than the last, but, either way, at least baseball has returned.

Movies

The Muppets – It weirdly acknowledges that it’s a movie heightened reality world. What a real nostalgia-fest. Man, this movie moved me to tears once or twice. The Rolf story was awesome, but the actual “show” part of the movie was less fun.

TV

Mad Men – Last week’s episode was not as bombastic as the premiere, what with fat-suit Betty and all that, but this season is still looking promising. Dawn/Don jokes might get old someday, but I’m digging them now.

Happy Endings – Happy Endings has turned into a rapid-fire joke delivery system. I mean, JOKESJOKESJOKESJOKES! It’s pretty awesome. Sleeper hit of the 2011-2012 season for sure!

Community – Holy cow, what an awesome format for an episode! The PBS/Ken Burns style documentary seems like it couldn’t work for a comedy, but it was just perfectly executed. Loved it.

Cupcake Wars – What could be more rock and roll than cupcakes? EVERYTHING. Seriously. “Lightning bolts and flames are so rock and roll.” No…no they’re not.

Chopped – Seems like a short-form Iron Chef. I can see why people dig it over the juggernaut that is Iron Chef, but it’s not as good to me. At least you get more variety from round/course to round/course.

Iron Chef – Canned tuna is a weird ingredient for the competition. Didn’t see how it all turned out, but if there wasn’t tuna ice cream I’m disappointed.

BASEBALL! – So much baseball. Love it.

Music

Jasper Byrne’s Lone Survivor has a chilling and awesome soundtrack. Below is the embed for the album.

Books

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – FINALLY DONE! YES! It’s self-indulgent, wish-fulfilling fiction taken to its most boring extremes.

Video Games

Rayman: Origins – More speed trophies. Min and I have great teamwork even though we sometimes die very stupidly.

Pro Yakyu Spirits 2012 – Only got one match in, but it’s the same great game I love every year and I blanked the Dragons 2-0. Good times.

(Photo courtesy Hot Grill)

This is gonna be a weird update because I don’t think any most of my regular readers contributed to the Double Fine Adventure, but the first episode of their documentary series is out for backers. Watching it…felt good.

I would love to link to the video to prove it, but it’s backers-only (I’m sure you could find it on youtube if you really tried, but that’s really crappy. Don’t do that). The production values are high and the documentary just pulls at all the right heartstrings. I mean, I felt really good about the entire project and that’s why I’m writing this post. This project makes me feel like I’m a part of something big. All I did was toss in $100, but I feel like I’m contributing to the changing face of games and seeing the happiness on Tim Schafer’s face (a man whose work I adore) makes everything feel so right. I’m proud of Double Fine and I hope this project goes really well.

If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.

After I have said all this, I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, “Yes, yes–but it still remains our right and our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be made to read in our community.” This is surely so. But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even your own children are entitled to call you that.

Excerpted from Letters of Note regarding a North Dakota school’s decision to burn all 35 copies of Slaughterhouse Five they had.

Let’s all try and remember this the next time we think something is pure vulgarity and has no worth.

Not every episode can be a bombastic “Zou Bisou”, can it?

A lot of people don’t like Betty, but this episode featured centered around her in a truly bizarre fat suit. Betty has a little bit of a health scare related to a lump found on her thyroid which sends ripples through the Francis and Draper households.

The scene with Henry and Don talking on the phone was pretty interesting in how threatened he seemed by the fact that Betty shared her health scare with Don too. Betty’s scenes in the show (minus the cheesy medium one) were pretty great at illustrating the complications of being her. She’s always been profoundly sad and unable to cope with her life and the cancer scare actually seemed to give her a spark and some meaning. It’s like she doesn’t know how to be and having that made her somewhat special. Her immediate response at finding out it was benign was to dwell on her getting fat instead. More negatives. She’s truly got a sad existence.

Don and Megan’s relationship continues to perplex me. They have scenes that make you think they’re terrible for each other and scenes where they seem to work and click well. I’m interested in seeing where they go, but it was interesting to see Don show restraint at the rock concert and actually act paternal instead of like a skeezy old man.

Harry continues to be funny and useless. He’s the Blankenship of this season so far.

Don’s new secretary Dawn will continue to provide funny word jokes.

Michael Ginsberg as a new character is an interesting one. Able to be insane and self-centered, but also able to reign it in. Will his success threaten Peggy? She seems resilient to changes in the dynamic, but it’s always threatening to have new guys come in when you’re a woman in the 60s.

Sterling and Pete continue to have that simmering conflict. This will have to be resolved this season for sure.