TV Galore: Mad Men, True Blood, Curb
We’ve been catching up on can’t miss/must watch/highly acclaimed TV. Or in reality, shows that are supposed to be good, or we had seen a few episodes or snippets of before…
Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 7 has hardly lost a beat. Larry David should get a humanitarian award for making people laugh. We know the Seinfeld plots inside out, having watched so many episodes, again and again, and although Curb doesn’t match up well, it is still a wonderfully silly if somewhat uncomfortable show to watch. Social awkwardness and inappropriate honesty can make you squirm. The appearance by Seinfeld The Jerry on Curb explains why Seinfeld the series worked so well. They are Astaire and Rogers those two. Larry brings the edge. Jerry delivers the warmth. Larry can be annoying by himself and Jerry can be vanilla alone. (Larry was George.)
True Blood, both seasons: TB is a fine, layered show, carrying forward where Buffy left off. It lacks some of the humor but makes up for it by slowly dishing out the rules of the depraved gothic universe of Sam and Sookie. It doesn’t hurt that the writers pull in Greek mythology along with folk traditions. If you check out the Wikipedia Maenad entry you realize how small a step TB is from those stories.
Their name literally translates as “raving ones”. Often the maenads were portrayed as inspired by [Dionysus] into a state of ecstatic frenzy, through a combination of dancing and drunken intoxication. In this state, they would lose all self-control, begin shouting excitedly, engage in uncontrolled sexual behavior, and ritualistically hunt down and tear animals (and sometimes men and children) to pieces, devouring the raw flesh.
Wow. Sounds like the Democratic Convention. As filtered by the partisan Right. Poor souls of TB. Poor souless souls. TB is better than most movies. One thing about a lot of media lately — TV and movies — they are astonishingly depressing. I thought that during the Depression the movies provided escapist Heaven fantasies, such as Busby Berkeley and Fred Astaire (the name appears again!). True Blood is filmed in so dark a manner you can hardly see it. Turn on the lights vampires — come to the light; check out CSI Miami for color and light. Kubrick knew that horror works interestingly when presented against form, cf. The Shining.
Mad Men, just the first season viewed so far. Speaking of depressing… The show leaves you with the impression that the partisan Left is giving its take on the partisan Right. That is, these ad executives are depressed, forlorn, energyless, unhealthy, smoke a lot, are sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, and all in all, don’t have much fun when they aren’t screwing around with someone else’s wife, which even then doesn’t look like much fun. They are Republicans as seen through a partisan filter, but present as the Lost Generation.
