Streak Broken

No, Brett Favre started tonight.  I'm referring to my month plus hiatus from updating.  I blame it partially on the start of law school; I guess torts and property and contract law really use up a lot of thinking power so I don't have the neural juice to crank out a post every week.  I also really want to write about AMC's new show Rubicon, but it's all so up in the veiled that I can't really figure it out yet.  I will say this, James Badge Dale is a phenomenal actor.  His two roles (HBO's Pacific) this year where he did so much acting without saying a word have really swung me firmly in his camp.  Also, last week's bottle episode of API on lock-down trying to find a leak was the best yet.  The parallels of Will's team taking lie detectors and Will trying to figure out the lies he was living/working under was fascinating.

Courtesy of chicago-now.com

Rubicon is good, but I have to say a few words on Mad Men.  If Jon Hamm and Elizabeth Moss don't win Emmy's for their performances on this week's "The Suitcase," I don't know if they ever will (especially since fellow AMC show Breaking Bad won't be eligible for next year's awards).  The full range of emotions and interplay between Peggy and Don is some of the best work of the series.  Like the lead in show, this was more or less a bottle episode, so the plot of the episode was really driven by the actions and emotions of Peggy and Don, alone, in the office.

There are two really important strands I pulled out of this episode that I think are really worth mentioning.  The first is Peggy is clearly now Don's new Anna.  Anna was so pivotal to Don because she knew Don as Dick, who he really was.  Peggy, although she doesn't know his real name, does know Don as more than just the creative genius that drinks, carouses, and wows Madison Avenue.  They kept bringing up Peggy's baby because that seemingly meaningless moment at the end of season one, where Don showed up to visit Peggy in the hospital (her only visitor not related to her) he showed the caring, thoughtful, sympathetic man at his core.  Through this episode Don and Peggy realized what they always knew: they are kindred spirits.  They are both trying to make a life they never seemed destined to have, yet still fit into the boxes society wants for them.  Because of this their work is their only real joy.  Now hopefully Peggy can do what Anna did in season 2 and bring Don out of his funk.

Courtesy of amc.com

The other strand that seems insignificant right now, but has been touched on a few times this season.  Don does not believe in self-promotion.  We have seen this in episode 1 where he flops in the trade magazine interview and then in last week's where he bashes Muhammad Ali for being a braggart.  This could cause some problems pretty soon.  Very soon we will begin to see just how important being your own spokesman is to our society.  The question is can Don adjust or will he be passed by?  I don't think he'll let that happen, he's too strong, too much of a survivor.  But this will bring up an interesting conflict within him.  Can a man who is not really who he says he is, who doesn't want his past to be know, who wants his face to be his work, really become comfortable in the spotlight?