Mad Men,”The Rejected”

Peggy, to Allison: “My problem is not your problem.”

Well, it looks like Allison did not take Don’s rejection as well as it appeared last week, or even at the beginning of this episode. On the conference call, it’s clear how good Allison is at her job — she even gives Don a little bit of attitude. “Why is this empty?” he asks, holding up a bottle of booze. “Because you drank it all,” she quickly shoots back. But when Don gets a Polaroid of himself with Anna from his recent trip to California, Allison notices and it obviously upsets her. The Polaroid is displayed on his desk, he describes her as a dear friend, and Allison feels like nothing to Don.

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Mad Men, “The Good News”

Stephanie: “Nobody knows what’s wrong with themselves, but everybody else can see it right away.”

Despite finding themselves in a precarious financial position as New Year’s approaches, 1964 was a good year for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. It has not been a great year for most of our characters’ personal lives, however. The episode focuses mainly on Don, Joan, and Lane — each of them dealing with the loss or potential loss of someone they love. Don discovers that his best friend, Anna Draper, the one person who knows absolutely everything about Don and still loves him, is dying of cancer. Joan is living a life of waiting, not knowing exactly when Greg will be sent to Vietnam. Lane’s wife, who never liked New York City, has returned to London for the holidays and made him feel alienated from his colleagues. Obviously, 1965 is not looking too bright for these three.

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Mad Men, “Christmas Comes But Once a Year”

Don: “I don’t hate Christmas. I hate this Christmas.”

I hope everyone was excited about the return of Glen, or Creepy Glen, as I like to call him. As the Draper-Francis family picks out a Christmas tree, Glen emerges from the shadows to talk to Sally. His mother got re-married, he explains, and he heard about what happened with Sally’s parents. Bobby Draper seems to be adjusting well to their new life, he and Henry putting their arms around each other as they walk away. Sally is the one who truly feels the loss of Don, especially given the strained relationship she’s always had with Betty. Glen is her new ally; he understands what it’s like to be part of a divorced family, and he can finally get revenge against Betty for the way she dropped their inappropriate friendship. When he later calls looking for Sally, he introduces himself as Stanley and Sally is totally unfazed by his secrecy. “I hate it here. I really do,” she tells him. He assures her that one day, her family will wake up and not want to live in that house anymore. At night when the house is empty, Glen and his friend break in, dumping food all over the kitchen and making a mess. When the family arrives home later, Sally’s room is undisturbed and Glen has left a present for her: the little homemade key chain that he showed off earlier. Betty glances into Sally’s room and walks away, and I wonder if she’ll suspect that Sally had something to do with the prank.

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Mad Men, “Public Relations”

“Who is Don Draper?”

With the season finale of Doctor Who conveniently falling on the same weekend as the premiere of Mad Men season 4, I’ve been recruited to add it to the Arts & Culture rotation. First, here’s a link to a quick recap of seasons 1-3 courtesy of Gawker TV.

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Doctor Who, “The Big Bang”

Doctor: “We’re all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?”

“The Big Bang” opens not where we left off last week, but rather on a scene repeated from the season’s first episode: Amelia Pond praying for someone to come and close the crack in her bedroom wall. This time, however, there is no Doctor. In a therapy session, Amelia paints a picture of the night sky, the moon surrounded by stars — her own version of van Gogh’s The Starry Night. When asked what she’s drawn, Amelia calmly explains that they’re stars. “Oh, Amelia,” her Aunt Sharon says, tired of the same old fairy tale. There are no stars in this universe.

Later, a figure appears at the front door and slips a brochure for the National Museum through the mail slot. Amelia picks it up and finds a message scrawled across a picture of the Pandorica: “Come along, Pond.” She drags her aunt to the museum and quickly ditches her, finding another note attached to the Pandorica itself: “Stick around, Pond.” She hides all day and emerges when the museum has closed. Placing her hand on the Pandorica, the box begins to glow and open. The prisoner inside is not the Doctor at all, but the version of Amy Pond that was shot by Rory last week. “Okay, kid, this is where it gets complicated,” she tells herself.

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Doctor Who, “The Lodger” and “The Pandorica Opens”

Craig: “Has anyone ever told you you’re a bit weird?”

Doctor: “They never really stop.”

So. I’m a little behind on these Doctor Who posts, and I apologize. It’s been a bit of a week for the Viola household. The season is finishing on a strong note, however, as we’ve had three great episodes in a row if we include “Vincent and the Doctor” from a few weeks ago. Let’s start with “The Lodger,” shall we?

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Doctor Who, “Vincent and the Doctor”

Doctor: “Is this how time normally passes? Really slowly, and in the proper order?”

“Vincent and the Doctor” was a lovely episode, full of great moments, and the tone felt appropriate after last week’s loss of Rory. Amy is in mourning though she doesn’t even realize it, and she finally makes a human connection with Vincent that I think has been lacking for her all season. As the Doctor joked, a child produced by Amy and Vincent would have been the ultimate ginger…

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Doctor Who, “Cold Blood”

Doctor, to Ambrose: “You are so much less than the best of humanity!”

While I enjoyed “Cold Blood” much more than part one, “The Hungry Earth,” I don’t have much to say about it save for the final scene. After Ambrose kills Alaya, negotiations between the Silurians and the humans fall apart. The Doctor forces the Silurians to go back into hibernation for another 1,000 years and hopes that when they wake, the humans will be ready to make peace. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory rush back to the surface to escape in the TARDIS, but when they arrive, the mysterious crack in the universe is there as well. The Doctor puts his hand into it (of course he does) and pulls out something wrapped in his handkerchief. Before he can look at it, though, Restac (Alaya’s equally angry twin sister) arrives seeking revenge.

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Doctor Who, “The Hungry Earth”

Rory: “Can’t you sonic it?”

Doctor: “It doesn’t do wood.”

Rory: “That is rubbish!”

Doctor: “Oi! Don’t dis the sonic!”

“The Hungry Earth” felt very much like a setup for next week’s conclusion, “Cold Blood,” but there were some great moments and suspenseful scenes to enjoy. Intending to take Amy and Rory to Rio, the Doctor triumphantly throws open the TARDIS door…and discovers the landscape of Cwmtaff, Wales in the year 2020. Oops.

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Doctor Who, “Amy’s Choice”

Doctor: “This is going to be a tricky one.”

Doctor Who returned this weekend after a short break with a strong episode that I’m late reviewing because my laptop was in the laptop hospital for most of the weekend. “Amy’s Choice” was an exploration of one of the major ongoing conflicts this season: will Amy choose a life of adventure with the Doctor or settle down for a quiet country life with Rory?

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Doctor Who, “The Vampires of Venice”

Rory: “You have no idea how dangerous you make people to themselves  when you’re around.”

First off, apologies to any readers (cue the sound of crickets) for the late recap. The alien story this week was mostly forgettable, save for the wonderful performance from Helen McCrory as Rosanna, but the interaction between the Doctor and Rory was a highlight. I was expecting the Doctor-Amy-Rory triangle to be a retread of the Doctor-Rose-Mickey situation, but Rory is much more of a Jackie Tyler than a Mickey Smith. Rory calls the Doctor out on exactly what makes him so dangerous to his companions; he doesn’t ask them to take risks, to put their lives in danger, but he offers them a life in the TARDIS and it’s irresistible. When the Doctor makes you feel brilliant, there’s nothing you won’t do to prove him right.

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Doctor Who, “Flesh and Stone”

Doctor: “I’ll be back for you as soon as I can, I promise.”
Amy: “You always say that.”
Doctor: “I always come back.”

We’re five episodes into this season, and I feel like I need some sort of flow chart to keep track of what’s going on. This was a great conclusion to the new chapter of the Weeping Angels story, but many other questions were brought up in this hour that we likely won’t get an answer to until the season finale.

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Doctor Who, “The Time of Angels”

The Doctor: “The writing. The graffiti. Old High Gallifreyan! The lost language of the Time Lords. There were days—there were many days—these words could burn stars, and raise up empires, and topple gods.”
Amy: “What does this say?”
The Doctor: “‘Hello, Sweetie.’”

Well, that was perhaps the best intro to a Doctor Who episode that I’ve ever seen. From the first moment she’s onscreen, River Song is clearly a brilliant, fearless woman who can hold her own against the Doctor. I’m sure even those who had never seen “Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead” were intrigued by her. And that escape from the starliner to the TARDIS? It was both beautiful and surprising – I initially missed the line about the air corridor, and thought, How is she doing that?!

More discussion after the jump…

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Are you in Boston? See this.

Ivy: “We’re all just people, some of us accidentally connected by genetics, a random selection of cells. Nothing more.”

Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County, which won the Tony for Best Play in 2008, is currently playing at Boston’s Colonial Theatre. The play centers around the Weston family, who come together when their patriarch, Beverly, goes missing. The matriarch, Violet, is played by Estelle Parsons (who is 82 years old, please note) and she is fantastic. Violet is addicted to prescription drugs and is barely coherent in several scenes, slurring her words and stumbling around the house. A two-story staircase is the focus of the set, and Violet barrels her way down in the classic move that everyone has tried when they’re inebriated; she’s on the verge of losing complete control of her limbs, but if she just moves fast enough, maybe she’ll make it to the bottom in one piece. Actually, that’s a great way to think of every character in this play.

This show is around 3 hours, 30 minutes (with two intermissions). It’s dark and vicious and extremely funny. The entire cast is wonderful. Do yourself a favor and see it, because it’s only here until Sunday. Tickets are available through ArtsBoston.

Tony Award Nominations

The 2010 Tony Award nominations were announced this morning. Quick thoughts:

• It’s nice to see a female playwright get a nomination for Best Play (Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room, or the Vibrator Play).
• I’m a little surprised that Kristin Chenoweth didn’t get a nod for Promises, Promises despite the fact that I haven’t seen her performance.
• Lots of Hollywood folks got nominations: Jude Law, Alfred Molina, Liev Schreiber, Christopher Walken, Denzel Washington, Laura Linney, Kelsey Grammer, Sean Hayes, Catherine Zeta-Jones, David Alan Grier, Angela Lansbury, Scarlett Johansson. Actually, every actor in the Best Leading Actor in a Play category is a celebrity. Huh.

For a complete list of nominations, see Playbill.

Doctor Who, “Victory of the Daleks”

Amy: “Ever fancied someone you knew you shouldn’t? Hurts, doesn’t it? But kind of a good hurt.”

This was by far my least favorite of the three new episodes we’ve seen so far this season. I’ll skip going into detail about the plot this week because basically it revolves around the Daleks coming back (yet again) and the Doctor being forced to choose between saving humans or destroying his oldest enemies. Was there really any doubt about what he would do? More discussion after the jump.

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Doctor Who, “The Beast Below”

Amy: So there are other Time Lords, yeah?

Doctor: No. There were, but there aren’t… Just me now. Long story. It was a bad day. Bad stuff happened. And you know what, I’d love to forget it all, every last bit of it. But I don’t. Not ever.

We got a strong introduction to both the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond last week, and this week we got to see more of the Doctor from Amy’s point of view. By now, the audience basically knows the Doctor’s history, and we see bits of Eleven’s personality taking over where Ten left off. Amy, however, knows nothing about the Doctor outside of the brief but intense encounters she’s had with him since childhood. How odd it must be to feel you know someone and then realize you’re missing huge pieces of the puzzle; Amy knows nothing about the Time Lords or their war, that he’s had many traveling companions before her, that they’ve all broken his heart. Eleven seems much more reluctant at this point to reveal much about his past to Amy (notice how he avoids answering when she asks if he’s a father). Is this because their relationship is so new or because the Doctor knows he always, inevitably, loses his companion?

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Doctor Who, “The Eleventh Hour”

“I’m the Doctor. I’m worse than everybody’s aunt…and that’s not how I’m introducing myself.”

It took almost the full hour for me to adjust to the new Doctor Who, but it did happen. The episode opened with Eleven crashing to Earth in the TARDIS, and while it was an exciting opening shot, I wish they had backed up a few minutes to cover what happened during the final moments of “The End of Time,” because I am forgetful and easily confused, apparently. We also get new opening credits, theme song, title logo, and, as we see later, a new TARDIS interior. I miss the old theme, but on the second listen, the new song wasn’t as bad as I initially thought.

The Doctor lands outside the home of young Amelia Pond, who is home alone and scared of a crack in her bedroom wall. The Doctor is still recovering from his regeneration and Matt Smith gets a chance to show off some great slapstick skills. He’s having cravings, but can’t figure out what he wants, so Amelia makes all sorts of dishes for him. He takes one bite of everything and spits it out. I kept expecting either a cup of tea or a banana to be the solution, but turns out it was fish fingers dipped in custard. Disgusting and surprising, so well done, Doctor Who.

Amelia immediately bonds with the Doctor, who manages to be both childlike and reassuring at the same time. He investigates the mysterious crack in her bedroom wall and discovers that it’s a crack in time and space. An Atraxi prison is on the other side, and they’re looking for Prisoner Zero, who is hiding somewhere in Amelia’s home. They get interrupted by a TARDIS emergency and the Doctor runs off, promising to return in five minutes. Amelia packs her little suitcase and waits for the Doctor, but as we’ve seen before, traveling in the TARDIS can be unreliable. Twelve years pass for Amelia, while just minutes pass for the Doctor.

Amelia has become Amy Pond (Karen Gillan), and she’s spent years trying to convince people that she met a “raggedy Doctor” in her garden one night. She has drawn pictures of him, made her friends dress up like him, waited for him; the Doctor has become an obsession, just as he was for Elton in “Love & Monsters.” Amy has lost her sense of wonder and become cynical, and now the Doctor must work to win back her trust.

The aliens were not the focus of the episode, but they were sufficiently scary. The barking man was particularly disturbing, and I really enjoyed the little girl speaking in her mother’s voice. The true form of the alien (a slithering, snake-like thing) was created with CGI that did not look remotely real, and I loved that. One of the best things about Doctor Who is that the aliens always look slightly cheesy, which allows us to take a step back and think about what we’re watching, to consider how the characters are reacting in these situations. It may be sci-fi, but at its heart Doctor Who is about brilliant characters.

The Doctor, being extremely clever, figures out how to stop Prisoner Zero. Some fancy camera work allows the audience to see how the Doctor’s mind works, but I prefer not to know. The Doctor is usually smarter than everyone in the room, and when he makes his crazy deductions, I want to be taken along for the ride without really knowing where he’s going. It’s what I imagine life is probably like for the Doctor’s Companion.

The end of the episode cemented Matt Smith as the new Doctor. He changes out of the remnants of Ten’s outfit just before facing off with the Atraxi. He warns them that he is protecting the Earth, and through a very Dalek-like lens, we see the enemies from the Doctor’s past, and then the faces of the previous Doctors flicker on the screen. We work up to Eccleston, then Tennant, and then Smith walks through the image in his new jacket and bow-tie and says, “Hello, I’m the Doctor. Basically…run.” That’s perfect.

After one more side trip in the TARDIS causes him to miss two more years of Amy’s life, the Doctor decides that she has waited long enough; she gets the invite to take a trip in the time machine. She says she will, but has to be back in the morning. (Ha! We all know that’s never going to happen.) The camera pans over Amelia’s childhood drawings and dolls, all images of herself and the Doctor, and we see a wedding dress hanging in Amy’s room.

So, we’re left with several things to think about:

• Who is Amy supposed to marry in the morning?
• What did Prisoner Zero mean by “the Pandorica will open, silence will fall”? It does not sound good.
• The same pattern from the crack in the wall in Amy’s bedroom appeared on the screen in the TARDIS. Did the Doctor notice this? Is there something he’s not saying?

I still miss David Tennant and the previous Companions, but I like Smith and Gillan and think this is a promising start. Next week, Steven Moffat continues his plan to terrify us all when the Doctor & Amy face the Smilers in “The Beast Below.”

Romeo, Juliet, and Twitter. Wait…what?

This all could have been avoided if those kids had cell phones.

Mudlark and the Royal Shakespeare Company have joined forces to present Such Tweet Sorrow, a modern adaptation of Romeo and Juliet that takes place in real time on Twitter. Actors are given a scripted outline and character diaries, and they generate original tweets based on what the character would be thinking or feeling at any given moment.

I assume that the goal of this project is to use social media to attract younger audiences, and I applaud them for that. If students become interested in Shakespeare after seeing these tweets and pick up a copy of Romeo and Juliet or make an effort to go to the theater, that’s a wonderful thing. However, because the actors are not using the original text and they’re dealing with the 14o character limit on Twitter, we end up with tweets like this: “Just seen Jules’ vid. She’s too worried; too young. I want there 2b things 4her 2 look 4ward to. Time 4me 2plan the best 16th Birthday ever!” I can barely even read that sentence, but then again, I’m not the target audience.

My main issue with this project is the decision to change some of the history and relationships between the characters. In the original text, the Capulets and the Montagues have been feuding for generations; it’s not even really clear why they hate each other so much, and I don’t think the characters truly understand it anymore either. They continue the feud because it’s what they know, and there’s a stubborn sense of pride that will eventually make the conclusion of the play all the more tragic. In Such Tweet Sorrow, the feud begins in 2000 when Montague causes a car accident that kills Lady Capulet. In this version, Tybalt is Juliet’s brother and the Nurse is actually her older sister, and they are stuck with an awful stepmother when Capulet remarries. Is any of that really necessary? I am always in favor of the adaptation of classic plays, but why change something that’s already great if you can’t make it better? This project would have worked just as well had they kept to the original structure.

“This is my timey-wimey detector. It goes ding when there’s stuff.”

David Tennant as the 10th Doctor

In honor of the upcoming premiere of Doctor Who‘s fifth season (Saturday, April 17 @ 9PM on BBC America), I thought I’d up the nerd quotient on this blog with my first Arts & Culture post. I’m a fairly new fan of the show, and I must admit, I haven’t seen a single episode of the classic series, which ran from 1963 to 1989. What I’ve seen from the new series, however, is unlike any TV show we have in America.

The story follows the Doctor, who is the only survivor of a race called the Time Lords. He travels through time and space in his TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimension in Space, if you’re wondering), which looks like a blue police box from the 1960s on the outside and is actually much bigger on the inside. He almost always travels with a Companion, and they fly around saving the world, chasing danger, and being witty. This also usually involves robots, aliens, or various combinations of robots and aliens.

What I love about this show is that, on the surface, it’s campy and fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously. But when you look a little closer, for a show that’s generally suitable for children to watch, it’s surprisingly dark, and creepy, and intensely emotional. The Doctor is a character who lives with the fact that he was unable to save his race from destruction; he has been alive for 900+ years and inevitably loses everyone he cares about because they’re human and he’s not. He saves the world, but sometimes horrible things happen simply because he stumbled onto the scene and danger follows him everywhere. It’s a very lonely existence.

Take, for example, one of my favorite episodes: season 2′s “Doomsday.” Spoilers will follow, so you may want to skip this paragraph if you’ve never seen it. In an episode that features a showdown between the Daleks and the Cybermen, the Doctor running around wearing 3-D glasses, and use of the phrase “void stuff” to explain the science behind the Doctor’s plan, we also get the loss of the Doctor’s companion, Rose (Billie Piper). Now, I’ll have you know that it’s not easy to make me cry, and I shed many tears at the end of this episode. After getting stuck in a parallel universe, Rose travels hundreds of miles because she hears the Doctor calling her in a dream, and they stand on a beach to say goodbye. They can’t even touch each other because he’s just a projection; he’s burning up a sun to get the power to send this transmission to her. Rose stands there, weeping, and tells the Doctor that she loves him. He’s just about to say it back, and the transmission cuts out; he’s gone from the beach, back on the TARDIS, and even he’s crying now. Honestly, I defy you to watch this episode and not fall in love with this show. If you can do it, YOU HAVE A HEART OF STONE.

The acting on this series is generally brilliant, and David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor is consistently wonderful to watch. It’s also worth starting from the beginning of the new series to catch Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor. The fifth season ushers in the Eleventh Doctor, played by Matt Smith, and I’ve heard good things so far. I’ll most likely be doing weekly recaps for the new season, so check back next week for discussion of the first episode, “The Eleventh Hour.”

If I’ve convinced you to watch and you want to catch up before the new season, here’s a list of my favorite episodes. I’d also recommend the recaps over at The House Next Door.

Season 1

Rose – The introduction of the Ninth Doctor and Rose Tyler.

Father’s Day – Rose goes back in time and tries to save her father’s life. Chaos ensues. Be warned: this is another tearjerker.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances – A two-part episode that features a creepy child wearing a gas mask, relentlessly asking, “Are you my Mummy?” Also, as the title implies, some dancing from the doctor.

Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways – The two-part season finale. We finally learn what Bad Wolf means, a phrase that pops up all throughout this season.

Season 2

The Christmas Invasion – The introduction of David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor. He saves the world while wearing pajamas.

The Girl in the Fireplace – Time windows on an abandoned spacecraft allow androids to stalk Madame de Pompadour in 18th century France. The Doctor tries to figure out why, and he falls in love with her in the process.

The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit – The Doctor & Rose are stranded on a planet orbiting a black hole, and the Devil lurks below them. Check out the scene when the Doctor is about to drop into the pit; it’s beautifully shot and very well-acted by Tennant.

Army of Ghosts/Doomsday – The two-part season finale. Bring tissues.

Season 3

The Shakespeare Code – The Doctor & Martha Jones meet Shakespeare while he’s writing the missing play, Love’s Labour’s Won, and fight the witch-like Carrionites. A fun episode, and interesting to see the Doctor’s attitude towards Martha.

Human Nature/The Family of Blood – The Doctors transforms himself into a human living in 1913 England in order to hide from the alien Family. His Time Lord memories are stored in a watch, and it’s up to Martha to convince him to open it and and turn back into the Doctor.

Blink – Possibly my favorite episode of the entire series. It stars Carey Mulligan as Sally Sparrow, who receives strange messages from the Doctor, stuck in 1969. You will likely be creeped out by statues after this one.

Season 4

This season leads to David Tennant’s final episode as Ten, so they’re all worth watching if you can.