In a sense, this show doesn’t belong here.

Overthinking It proclaims its niche as “subjecting popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn’t deserve.” Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men definitely deserves scrutiny.  (We’ve already got some here, in a special podcast supplement.) Everything, from its stylistic choices to its minimalist presentation to its historical grounding, communicates meaning on multiple levels.

(In fact, I wonder if there’s an audience out there that underthinks this show, that just takes it at face value. “Gee, Joan sure seems unhappy with her husband. I wonder why she doesn’t just leave him?” Ah, well. I’m glad you’re not one of those lightweights. Good thing we’re deep intellectuals, eh, Overthinking It readers? *clinks martini glass*)

Several quality weblogs exist to recap and delve into the references sprinkled throughout each episode. We won’t be challenging that hill. But now that season 3 of the most intriguing show on television has wrapped, with this past Sunday’s season finale, we can delve into the season, and the series, as a whole.

So shut the door, have a seat, and settle in for some Overthink.

(Warning: the following post will contain substantial spoilers for Season 3 of Mad Men)

It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want To

For the newbies, Mad Men is an AMC original series depicting an advertising agency in New York in the 1960s. It follows the lives of Don Draper (Jon Hamm), his wife Betty (January Jones), his clients and his subordinates. Extramarital affairs are frequent, sexism and racism are rampant and nobody tells anybody the truth.

Season 3 began in the spring of 1963. The ad agency of Sterling Cooper has been bought up by a British advertising firm and the transition still seems rocky. Two young go-getters, Pete Campbell and Ken Cosgrove, are made competing account managers, with the presumption being that one of them will ultimately claim the sole title. Roger Sterling, having divorced his wife and married his secretary last season, grows further removed from the company he supposedly owns. Joan gracefully retires from her secretarial role, only to find that her husband isn’t as competent a breadwinner as she’d believed. Salvatore Romano’s homosexuality becomes less of a secret and Peggy’s ambitious career climb starts to earn her some enemies – as well as some romantic attention.

Don Draper’s wife, Betty, begins to take a more active role in her own life. Her senile father moves into the Drapers’ spare room for a few months before his death, awakening a sense of learning and pride in his granddaughter Sally. After a rough pregnancy, Betty gives birth to a son: the family’s third child. She makes small steps in defining a life for herself outside of housewifery, pursuing an affair with Henry, a campaign chair for Governor Rockefeller. Though she’s still a child in many ways, we start seeing a semblance of maturity in her.

But Don Draper remains the enigmatic center around which Mad Men revolves. Through luck and charisma, he bags Sterling Cooper’s most prestigious client yet, Hilton Hotels, after a chance meeting with the eccentric Conrad Hilton. Connie proves too demanding, even for the work-obsessed Draper, and he falls back into habits that he promised Betty he’d left behind. Chief among these is skirt-chasing: he begins a passionate affair with his daughter Sally’s teacher. But a bit of carelessness leads Betty to discover Don’s darkest secret: that he was born Dick Whitman, the poor son of a prostitute; that “Don Draper” was a sergeant in the Korean War whose dog tags he swiped after a mortar raid; and that he’d had a wife in California under that name whom he divorced.

All this and the Kennedy assassination, too.

In the roller coaster season finale, Draper, Cooper and Sterling stage a coup when they learn that the agency is being sold yet again. Don pulls out every trick in his arsenal and calls in every favor he has to continue working for himself. He doesn’t display that level of passion for his own marriage, though, letting his wife and family slip further away from him. Don completes the arc that his father aborted in his childhood, doing whatever it takes to save the family farm.

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Tell us what you think! Leave a comment, use the contact form, email us or call 20-EAT-LOG-01—that’s (203) 285-6401.

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Cowboy Bebop and I have something of a troubled past.  I had been hearing great things about the show pretty much since it came out (and I mean, like, freaking rapturous things), but I somehow managed to avoid watching it until the summer of 2008.  Even then, all that I saw was the credits sequence.  But what a credits sequence it is:

Judging from that credits sequence, Coyboy Bebop was some kind of hundred-year-storm combination of things I think are awesome.  Jazz!  Kung Fu! Animation! Spaceships! Pop Art! -- and while I prefer an interesting female character to a pin-up any day of the week, I am not immune to the attractions of -- Cheesecake! My appetite was whetted.  Scratch that:  my appetite was honed down to razor sharp keenness in one of those Williams-Sonoma electric home knife sharpener dealies, to the point where I could use it to do all the fancy tricks like chopping a can of tomatoes in half or slicing really thin and perfect slices of bread.  Based on the strength of the credits alone, I was damn near ready to buy the DVD box set one day when I came across it on sale.  But since I don’t have a lot of disposable income (buy a shirt, dammit!), I just decided to Netflix it, one DVD at a time.  And at first, I was glad I did, because when I started watching the series, I was distinctly underwhelmed.

I’ll get into why in a little bit (and also why I, underwhelmed, kept on watching).  For now I’ll skip ahead to the happy ending:  it gets better.  Lots better.  To the point where if I find those DVDs on sale again, I’m buying them first and worrying about how to pay for it later.   To the point where -- about ten episodes in -- I decided to loop back to the beginning again and subject the show to a full on, close-read Overthink, the results of which I’ll be sharing with you every two weeks or so for the next couple of months.

The episode by episode analysis is going to start on November 23rd, and each installment will work through one DVD’s worth of episodes. If you haven’t watched the series yet -- or if you have, and want to refresh your memory -- I encourage you to fire up your Netflix and watch along with me.  Today, I’ll just give you a general introduction and a rundown of the cast of characters, so that next week we can dive right into the analysis.

First, the setup.  The show is set in a distant future where humanity has colonized the solar system. In its treatment of spaceflight, the show’s sci-fi is semi-hard (like a nice Emmentaler):  although there are some handwavey “warp gates” involved, interplanetary flight still takes a loooong time, and running out of fuel can be an issue.  And this is crucial to the basic premise:  because none of the planetary governments have the resources to pursue criminals between planets, interplanetary law enforcement is basically the province of bounty hunters.  (This -- although not much else -- is sort of like the situation depicted in a lot of Westerns and might explain the titular “Cowboy.”)  Cowboy Bebop chronicles the adventures and (mostly) misadventures of a particular bounty-hunting team, who I’ll introduce to you at this juncture right here.

Spike Spiegel: the main character, to the extent that there is one.  Visually, a combination of Lupin III (his general visual aesthetic and oversized feet), Bruce Lee (his fight choreography), and Quadrophenia-era Keith Moon (his wardrobe and hair, although that might also be Sid Vicious), which is awesome.  Unfortunately his personality -- at least as it appears at the very start of the series -- is pretty deeply annoying.  He is petulant and ungrateful, and rude in a way that is probably meant to be refreshingly direct but in fact comes across as straight-up rude.  He only ever cracks a smile when he’s getting to kick some kind of ass.  This in itself is fine, and indeed some of the bright spots in the first few episodes are the moments in which ass is kicked…but often he seems to be treating the ass-kicking as a lark, which comes across as smug and condescending. At least he never starts a fight for the fun of it.  I have fairly little experience with anime shows in general, but I will say that in many ways Spike’s character reminds me of a more petulant version of Gohan in the early stages of Dragon Ball Z, or even moreso of Ranma Saotome (but again more petulant).  I can’t think of an American exemplar of this character type which makes me wonder if it’s somehow particularly Japanese… but odds are that they exist, and I just can’t think of them.  In any case, these characters didn’t irk me the way that Spike does, which I think is probably down to the fact that they are children, which means that they have a license to act childish.  Spike has no such excuse (although I suppose Cowboy Bebop was probably intended for pretty much the same audience).  If all of this was played for comic effect, I would have found him a lot easier to take.  But I think he’s supposed to be an honest-to-goodness hero, or at least an admirable antihero, and I always just find myself wanting to slap him.  Ah well… like I say, it really does get better.

Oh, and in addition to all of this, Spike also has a Mysterious Tragic Past, which seems to be shaping up as the main mystery of the overarching plot.  Please leave this unspoiled in the comment threads.

Jet Black: Spike’s partner and/or boss and/or surrogate father (it’s a little unclear, but he owns the spaceship they live in, and tends to make the executive decisions).  To a degree, he is the brains to Spike’s brawn:  Spike usually does the actual apprehending of the bounty-of-the-week, but Jet tells him where to look.  Jet is everything that Spike isn’t.  He is endearing, serious, warm, peace-loving, and -- alas -- he is NOT the character that gets the most screen time.  He also has an awesome beard, which may be coloring my sympathies somewhat.  It’s not quite clear at this point whether Jet has a tragic past, but considering that he has a prosthetic arm and a rivet holding his face together, it is not unlikely.  Oh, and by the way, Mr. Black? (Can I call you Jet?) I’m putting you and your alliteratively named friend Spike there on notice for having the most ridiculously and self-consciously “awesome” TV character names ever.  Jet Black.  Honestly.

Faye Valentine: Faye show up a couple of episodes in, and feels like a one-shot character at first, but winds up becoming the third major character on the show. As (basically) the only woman, she has to carry a lot of weight.  She’s the femme fatale.  She’s the tomboy.  She’s the love interest.  She’s the action girl.  She’s the damsel in distress.  She’s the cheesecake. (Exhibit A.  Faye seems to have had a strong effect on certain segments of the target demographic:  trying to find an image to show you, I actually had to turn on safesearch in order to convince google that when I typed “Faye Valentine” I was just searching for a picture of Faye Valentine, and not a crudely drawn picture of Faye Valentine having sex with, like, twenty dudes.) Like Spike, she gets on my nerves a lot in the early going.  She’s meant to be a tough-as-nails broad with a heart of gold, which can work well when done right.  But they make two missteps here.  First, the crusty exterior is a little too crusty.  Standoffish is one thing, but Faye comes across as -- again! -- petulant, and what’s more she flat out double-crosses and robs the other crewmembers on a semi-regular basis, which makes it hard for me to accept that they’d let her keep sticking around.  Second, they telegraph the “heart of gold” aspect a little too broadly.  At no time did I ever expect Faye to turn out to be anything other than an innocent at heart.  Maybe this was necessary, since it does makes her more likable when she’s in her abrasive mode, but it makes the innocent moments feel a little forced.  Like Spike and probably Jet, she has a Mysterious Tragic Past, and in her case it has caused her to owe a catastrophic amount of money to some shady and dangerous people, which motivates a lot of her behavior. Beyond that, let’s leave this one unspoiled.

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Some Oscar-bait opening this weekend: Precious, a film about a black teenager who rises up from crippling poverty, and The Men Who Stare at Goats, a film about a secret Army program to develop psychic powers and the hilarity that ensues. The former feels true but is adapted from a novel; the latter feels like a comedy but is based on a true story.

Question: if your life, education or job were made into an Oscar-season motion picture, what’s the one scene that audiences would think was too ridiculous to be true?

Activision’s new game DJ Hero has been out for a week now. Reviews have been largely positive, proving that gamers will buy a large expensive peripheral for just about anything. Except Steel Battalion.

Although if you played Guitar Hero with this, it'd be pretty badass.

Question: what profession, entertainment or otherwise, do you want to see emulated in a “Hero”-style video game?

And the New York Yankees won another World Series, which makes, what, 27 for them? Something like that. As surprising as it is that the highest payroll in professional baseball managed to net a championship, what’s even more surprising is how infrequently they pull it off. So the food’s no good and the portions are too small. I’m just being bitter. Fenzel’s a Yankees fan; I should let him say some nice things.

Question: should I let Fenzel say some nice things about the Yankees?

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You're GODDAMNED RIGHT I ordered the Code Red, and it was delicious!

Galloway (Demi Moore): This past February you received a cautionary memo from the Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, warning that the practice of enlisted men disciplining their own wasn’t to be condoned by officers.

Jessep (Jack Nicholson): Well, I submit to you that whoever wrote that memo has never faced the working end of a Soviet-made Cuban AK-47 assault rifle.

This is A Few Good Men in a nutshell. Colonel Jessep feels that the rules do not apply to him, because of the extraordinary danger his soldiers face.

But do you want the truth? Can you HANDLE the truth?

As far as I can tell, no Cuban soldier has attacked an American soldier in more than 50 years. In fact, Guantanamo Naval Base is considered so safe that families are allowed to live there. According to the Navy’s website, Gitmo has a child development center, a youth center, two schools, a Sunday school, a Boy Scout camp, and a Girl Scout camp. It’s probably a much safer place to raise a kid than my neighborhood.

Militaries families enjoy a cookout at Gitmo, in 1960.

Earlier this year, Navy Commander Jeffrey Johnston, who has served at Gitmo for 20 years, answered some of the most common A Few Good Men queries for the “Stuck in the ’80s” blog. He said that Jessep’s famous statement that, “I eat my breakfast 300 yards from 4,000 Cubans trained to kill me” is a little misleading. Yes, there are Cuban soldiers on the other side of that fence. And technically they are trained to kill Americans, in the same way that Americans are technically trained to kill Cubans. But Jessep makes it sound like they’re actively trying to kill him, and Johnston says that’s just not the case. There aren’t any snipers waiting for a clean shot. Even if you put on an officer’s uniform and marched in front of the fence, Johnston says the Cubans would probably just laugh at you, since Gitmo is “a very casual place.” (I’m assuming his idea of “a very casual place” differs from mine. I’m thinking Chuck E. Cheese.)

Gitmo not only has a high school, it has a PROM. Here are Josh Blood and Eryn McCarthy, the King and Queen.

I certainly don’t mean to say that Guantanamo is completely safe. Cuba and the United States have never had a great relationship, and that part of the world has never been entirely stable. In 1991 (when they were shooting the movie), the base became the makeshift home to 34,000 Haitian refugees fleeing a coup. In 1994, families and civilians were forced to leave when the refugee population swelled towards 60,000. And I don’t want to shortchange the strain of living in a 27 square mile enclave completely surrounded by enemy forces. Jessep’s statement about facing the working end of an AK-47 may be misleading, since nobody is actually getting shot at. But it IS accurate, in that the Marines are facing down Cuban troops 24/7. Jessep is certainly fair in saying, “I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom.”

Let me be clear–I am not criticizing the seriousness with which Jessep takes his job. Whether or not we expect the Cubans to attack at any moment, those Marines should (and do) maintain the highest levels of discipline and readiness. But Jessep isn’t just demanding; he’s delusional.

At the end of the movie, Jessep thunders that “Santiago’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives.” This seems like a tough claim to defend. Even if Santiago was the worst Marine in the world, I don’t see how he could get people killed in a unit that hasn’t seen combat in the lifetimes of any of its members. Perhaps he felt that Santiago was such a train wreck that he might single-handedly provoke Cuba into a full-frontal assault.

Then he goes one step further: “My existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives.” With all due respect, what, exactly, is he talking about? I realize that he’s speaking somewhat in general here: “College boys like you look down on military men like me, but you need us.” But how does running Guantanamo like his own private fiefdom save lives? What does he think would happen if he didn’t order that Code Red?

Jessep repeats the claim after he’s arrested: “I saved lives. That boy was–there was a weak link. I saved lives, you hear me?” And then he turns to Tom Cruise’s character with his most dire warning: “You put people in danger. Sweet dreams, son.” It’s unclear whether Jessep means that the Marines are now in danger because the Code Red has been taken off the table, or the entire United States is in danger from Cuban invasion, Red Dawn-style.

Even his famous statement that “you need me on that wall” is misleading. There IS no wall – it’s just a big-ass fence. “There are precious few portions of the base [the Cubans] can’t see,” Commander Johnston writes, “and we just assume everything we do is being photographed.” If these Marines really felt they were in danger from guys trying to shoot them, don’t you think they’d build an actual wall?

And it’s important to remember that the movie gives us no reason to think that Jessep is exaggerating. When I first saw A Few Good Men, I certainly got the sense that Guantanamo was a place where Marines were killed all the time. “Ever put your life in another man’s hands, ask him to put his life in yours?” asks Jessep. “We follow orders, or people die.” There are a lot of lines like that, and nobody ever says, “C’mon, do people really die?”

This is the cover to an album called "Code Red," by a band called Sodom. And you're GODDAMNED RIGHT I just ordered it on Amazon.

Of course, A Few Good Men is less clear-cut than one guy out to defend America at any cost, and another fighting for the rule of law. We have good cause to believe that Jessep isn’t being completely honest about his motives. Santiago first comes to Jessep’s attention when he tries to break the chain of command and rat out a fellow Marine for a supposed fenceline shooting. In other words, he’s making Jessep look bad. And we’re also told that “Jessep’s star is on the rise.” It seems likely that the Colonel had the guy hazed to protect his own career. Don’t forget, Jessep could have had the kid transferred off the base, but he refused. If he really thought Santiago’s poor performance put the other Marines in danger, it seems like it would be his duty to get him a nice desk job at some recruiting post in Idaho. But Jessep wanted to keep the kid close, where he could haze him into keeping his mouth shut.

This is the fascinating thing about Jessep’s big monologue–I don’t think even he believes what he’s saying. It’s a beautiful defense of the military, when taken on its own. But in context, it’s complete bullshit, and everyone in the audience understands this on some level. That’s why we all want to see Jessep go down. At the finale of A Few Good Men, the Colonel is put in handcuffs and Cruise growls, “You’re under arrest, you son of a bitch.” This feel satisfying, and it wouldn’t work if we thought the Colonel was a man of honor. The “truth” that Jessep says we can’t handle boils down to, “What I did was necessary for the safety of the nation.” But we clearly don’t believe it, because we’re happy to see the guy get dragged away. (It also helps, of course, that Jessep is an asshole. My friend Jordan points out Jack’s almost subliminally anti-Semitic sneer of “Lt. Weinberg.”)

These boots are also called "Code Red." If somebody in the military were to order them, I'm sure hilarious misunderstandings would ensue. Suggested slogan: "You can't handle the truth. But you CAN handle our 90-day return policy!" I'll keep working on it.

But I’m going a little far afield. My point here is to explore the gap between how safe the actual Guantanamo is, and how Colonel Jessep portrays it as a place where death could come at any second. But maybe Colonel Jessep isn’t exaggerating… writer Aaron Sorkin is. What if within the world of the film, fictional Guantanamo is just a more dangerous place than its real-world counterpart. It’s not a coincidence that the movie never shows us all the children who live on the real base (much less the Boy Scout Camp). The more dangerous Sorkin makes the place seem, the more interesting the moral conflict at the center of the story is. The audience is a lot more inclined to forgive the Code Red (or at least understand it) if we believe that one solider who can’t hack it can easily get his whole unit killed. If the story was set at Fort Bragg, it wouldn’t quite work.

Sorkin was inspired to write the play by his sister, a military lawyer who really did defend Marines at Guantanamo accused of almost killing someone in a hazing that had been ordered by a superior officer. But even if he’d wanted to move the story to a more dangerous place, he didn’t have a whole lot of options in 1989. The cold war was over, and the Gulf War hadn’t begun. Guantanamo was about the tensest situation a soldier could face at that point.

But I’m wondering–if Sorkin wrote the play today, would he have set it somewhere else? And if he had, how would that have change things?

For instance, what if the Code Red happened out in Afghanistan? Let’s say Jessep was the leader of a unit that was out there hunting the Taliban on the daily basis. A unit that was actually taking enemy fire and heavy casualties. I’d feel uncomfortable about Tom Cruise’s pampered Harvard lawyer passing judgement on the way he maintains discipline and morale in the field. And if this version of Jessep was eventually sent off to jail for ordering a hazing that he thought would save the lives of his boys, it wouldn’t seem like a happy ending; it would seem like a tragic one. Maybe in this case, Tom Cruise’s character would eventually decide to let Jessep off the hook. THAT Jessep would have done it for the right reasons.

But for better or for worse, A Few Good Men is not a story about the unsettling things that true patriots have to do to keep the rest of us safe. (I’m sure the next movie that gets made about Gitmo will handle that nicely.) A Few Good Men is about an officer who accidentally gets a subordinate killed in an attempt to project his own reputation. All that “you can’t handle the truth” stuff is completely irrelevant. Whether or not you believe Guantanamo is a dangerous place within the world of the film, Santiago wasn’t hazed because he was a danger to anybody. He was hazed because, in Jessep’s own words, he “f@#$ed with the wrong Marine.” And whatever the Colonel may claim after the fact, that’s the truth.

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I’m glad we’ve got that out of the way, because it’s time to turn on the floodgates.

Today, we talk about why memories make people sad, the narrativization of loss, advances in clinical psychology, and why everything you think you know about therapeutic art may be wrong. Oh, and there are references to Star Trek V and Wing Commander. You know, to get everybody in the mood.

The Wrestler, Wild Things, Up, and the secret to happiness, after the jump.

The three big moments

No, that's not Spoilers. That's Rayquaza. Throw it back.

Spoilers spoilers spoilers. (Is there a pokemon named spoilers? Because if there is, Overthinking It should catch one to do this part for us. Then we should catch all the others, because we’ve gotta catch ‘em all.)

Each of the big 2009 tearjerkers had a main moment that prompted my tears -- and from conversations I’ve had and things I’ve read, these moments are pretty well-chosen, even if they’re not exhaustive.

1. The end of The Wrestler, when Randy performs his signature Ram Jam leap from the turnbuckle, which probably kills him (the movie ends before we find out for sure, but we know he has a heart condition and will probably die if he tries this. To an extent, it doesn’t matter whether he actually dies, but he probably does.).

2. The expositionary time-lapse montage from Up, where we watch Carl and Ellie grow up and get married under idyllic circumstances, only to suffer a miscarriage (and subsequent inability to have children) and Ellie’ sudden illness and death just as Carl was about to give her the tickets to Venezuela.

The wage of sin and death they must pay for eating of the forbidden fruit of adventure -- for daring to find and love each other.

3. The farewell from the island in Where the Wild Things Are, when Carol realizes that Max loves him and recognizes the consequences of the anger he has, until this point, struggled to understand.

These aren’t groundbreaking moments -- in each case, the audience and the characters come to understand something really tragic about their lives. It’s basic Aristotelian catharsis.

Tragic fall.

Except I saw a LOT of movies with Aristotelian catharsis in them this year. Heck, Terminator Salvation had Aristotelian catharsis (I think it came out of the legs of one of the larger robots) -- but these three very specifically made this grown man cry. They have something else in common.

A few things, actually. But before we understand that, we need to talk about why memories make people sad.

I gotta feelin’

Most of us, Care Bear intervention notwithstanding, have the freedom to do what we choose to do with our emotions. Their purposes are open-ended, even mysterious, as are, often, their origins. We don’t have to deal with them in any one way, and they don’t come from any one place. There are three main exceptions:

Children -- Children have to learn from their emotions. When you have no previous frame of reference, you have no other choice but to learn.

Therapists -- Therapists have to help you deal with your emotions to prevent or treat health problems.

Middle school girls -- Middle school girls have to use your emotions to destroy you and take away all your friends.

I’ll refrain from taking on middle school girls for fear of their reprisal and the intervention of law enforcement.

And of course there are others (people who design the Evony ads and the single mom who learned one simple trick to turn yellow teeth white have certain plans), but let’s just consider the first two. Emotions serve an important role in learning, and emotions can be dangerous to your health to the point where you may require medical attention.

Maverick! Amygdala on your tail!

One major reason for both of these phenomena is the function of the amygdala, a part of the brain that is involved in memory and emotion. (I know I’ve written about it before, but it has to do with memory, so I’m going to write about it again -- or maybe that was the hippocampus.) The amydala sorts out what it thinks it is important for you to remember based on how strongly you feel about it when you encounter it. The more emotional your response, the more likely to are to store that away, the more likely you are to have that memory or emotional response return unbidden in response to certain stimuli.

If you like to narrativize evolution, as fatuous as that can be (and you know I love narrativizing), think of early humanity as Link from the Legend of Zelda, brute forcing reality by trial and error. Between trips to the fairy for refills, Link wanders around the Overworld until

OH, CRAP,  I touch this statue and it comes to life and hits me!

OH, CRAP, I touch this gravestone and an invincible ghost comes and hits me!

OH, CRAP, I touch this blue lion dude who throws swords at me, and it hits me! (why did I do that, don’t I ever learn?)

IT CHASES ME IN MY NIGHTMARES!

You sure do learn not to go around touching random crap, right? Diamonds may be “forever,” but nothing says “I’ll remember this tomorrow” quite like a swift kick in the nuts.

These strong emotional reactions are good, and they have saved a lot of lives. The stronger your emotional reaction, the more thoroughly you learn about something and the more it will shape your future behavior. I once stuck my finger in the light bulb socket of my family’s living room lamp when the bulb was out. ONCE.

And then Link gets a blue candle and attempts to set fire to every tree in the forest, walking back and forth into each screen between shots, looking for a subterranean moblins with a secret to everybody. When he gets to the second quest, he gets to push against every wall in every dungeon to find out which ones you can pass through.

Remembering every tree in the forest is unreasonable (although I could probably draw some screens from memory). So, the amygdala uses emotion to screen what to remember. When the candle doesn’t reveal a hidden staircase, there is no emotional response. But when it does work, there’s a big intenal “Yipee!” and you’ve learned a little something about the world.

When you come across the tree again, you feel the “Yipee!” again, and you remember what happened.

When you come across the lion dude again, you feel the “OH CRAP!” again, and you remember what happened.

When you come across the statues again, well, you probably touch them anyway and run around like a crazy person – but hey, Power Bracelets don’t find themselves.

The problem with this kind of learning arises when you have a really strong emotional reaction to something that is problematic or thoroughly overwhelming – like, say, a multiple fatality car crash, an up-close-and-personal assault or the Freddie Prinze Jr. / Matthew Lillard Wing Commander movie (too soon). The emotional “OH CRAP!” that goes along with it gets processed by your amygdala, and the memory of it can be burned in your memory for keeps, real serious-like.

This is a big part of what trauma is.

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The reaction from the idiot savants on the internet was almost universally negative. Then came the October 16th debut of the “Family Guy Presents: Seth & Alex’s Almost Live Comedy Show.” According to media reports, it wasn’t until the airing of this episode that someone at Microsoft realized that their new flagship product was going to share air time with fart jokes and racial stereotypes and subsequently pulled the plug on the special episode. “Not a fit with the Windows brand” was the official line from corporate.

There’s so much fail going on here, but neither should have been particularly surprising. Both “Family Guy” and Microsoft’s respective fails were in fact years in the making.

FAIL #1: “Family Guy” officially cedes any claim to edginess or subversiveness

Did *anybody* think this was funny?

Not that it had a whole lot to begin with, but much of the appeal of “Family Guy” rested with its subversive reputation: “Family Guy” was supposed to be the show that blew past conventional norms and pushed edgy content where no others would dare. This may have been true years ago, during the show’s original three seasons, but this is no longer the case. We’ve grown accustomed to the crass humor, non sequitur cut-aways, and gratuitous racial innuendo that used to shock and surprise us. “Family Guy” may deserve some credit for this change in taste, but nevertheless, it  fails to do anything other than dole out the same crap it’s been serving for years on end in the same predictable manner.

“Family Guy” was no longer original, edgy, or subversive by the time the Windows 7 fiasco broke, so it should have come as no surprise that the show sold itself out to the epitome of corporate dominance and the polar opposite of subsersiveness, Microsoft.

FAIL #2: Microsoft shows yet again that it doesn’t have a clue.

But Microsoft’s status as a corporate behemoth isn’t the focus of this fail. Instead, it’s the company’s repeated misreadings and miscalculations of the popular culture.

Exhibit A: the world’s first “cyber sitcom,” an excruciating attempt at associating Windows 95 with the coolest of cool at the time, “Friends”:

Exhibit B:Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld at the shoe store, only the first of a series of utterly incomprehensible ads:

And lastly, Exhibit C: The Windows 7 Launch Party promo campaign, and its accompanying painful “how to” video that went on a one way trip to YouTube infamy:

Ouch. It’s no wonder that Microsoft always seems to come with a healthy dose of uncool in the pop culture zeitgeist.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF FAIL: Adding Insult to Injury

As if these missteps weren’t embarrassing enough on their own, both “Family Guy” and Microsoft have bitter rivals that they are loathe to lose face to.

I'm not saying that South Park is without fault, but I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have sold an entire episode to promoting Windows 7.

I am of course referring to “South Park” and Apple. Many regard “South Park” as far superior to “Family Guy,” both in terms of comedic and satirical value. That may be up for debate, but I doubt few would argue that “South Park” and its creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, would have made a similar deal with a corporate behemoth sponsor.

Likewise, few could imagine Apple launching an abortive tie-in campaign with an awkward TV show combination. A special Snow Leopard edition of “Dancing with the Stars” that gets pulled at the last minute for “not being a fit with the Apple brand”? I think not. Apple has far better understanding and control of their brand. They create their own sense of “cool” without having to rely on awkward tie-ins with “Friends,” “Seinfeld,” or “Family Guy.”

Doesn't shoe shop with Seinfeld.

Now, I want to be clear on what it is exactly that I’m criticizing and what I’m doing when I compare and contrast these two pairs. I’m not necessarily saying that “Family Guy” should be the same satirical and subversive force that “South Park” is. And I’m not necessarily saying that Windows 7 is worse than Snow Leopard due to Microsoft’s lack of marketing and pop culture savvy.

What I am trying to criticize, however, is the clusterf@#$ of bad decisions on both sides that led to this unholy matrimony of Fail. I’m criticizing Fox and McFarlane’s shameless grab at whatever marketing dollars came their way, and I’m criticizing Microsoft’s baffling ignorance and miscalculation on this and its previous strategies. There are smart people at Fox and Microsoft. They should know better.

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So, let’s overthink this.  Is Mr. Suatz the Most Interesting Man in the World or not?

First I think we must come to a consensus on what the word “interesting” even means.  Is a Nobel laureate interesting?  Well, yes.  He or she is probably more interesting than, say, a random person you meet on the street.  The question is, if a person is an expert in one field at the detriment of all others, is he as interesting as he can be?

The answer must be no.  An expert in astrophysics is interesting, but not nearly as interesting as someone who is an expert in astrophysics and horse training.  And that person won’t be as interesting as someone who is an expert in astrophysics, horse training, and motorcycle repair.  And so on.

On the flip side, a person who is a jack-of-all trades but master of none cannot be the most interesting person in the world.  A person like that can speak superficially about many topics but never as an expert.  That means he would be left out of the highest levels of conversation and thus seem less interesting in comparison to those around him.

It seems to me, then, that the Most Interesting Man in the World would have to be a jack-of-all trades and master of all.  In other words, he would have to have breadth and depth of knowledge in more fields than anyone else on the planet.

Is this true of Mr. Suatz?  Using my powers of Overthinking, I have broken down this series of Dos Equis commercials into parts based on Howard Gardner’s theories of multiple intelligences.  If Mr. Suatz is truly the most interesting man in the world with the best breadth and depth of knowledge, we would expect him to be an expert in each of the multiple intelligences: bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, naturalistic, intrapersonal, visual-spatial, and musical.  Let’s deconstruct Mr. Suatz’s interesting-ness by field:

The bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.

An expert (or genius) of the bodily-kinesthetic intelligence would be extremely skilled at physical tasks.

Evidence:

-Mr. Suatz plays jai alai.
-Mr. Suatz competes in kendo competitions.
-Mr. Suatz enjoys spelunking at night with soldiers, attractive women, and a black man wearing a fez.
-Mr. Suatz is able to bench press two giggling Asian women at once.
-Mr. Suatz regularly beats Communist leaders in arm wrestling competitions.
-Mr. Suatz enjoys surfing.
-“His beard alone has experienced more than a lesser man’s entire body.”
-He enjoys snorkeling.
-“He can disarm you with his looks or his hands.”
-He was an astronaut.
-He carries his husky through a raging blizzard.
-He likes to catch enormous swordfish with beautiful women.

Probable level of intelligence: Near expert.  Mr. Suatz’s biggest asset in this field is his strength, but his love of surfing and spelunking shows that he has good balance, as well.  His time as an astronaut shows his stamina and endurance.  The one athletic skill he does not seem to have is the ability to use his fine motor skills.  I, for one, would like to see him sew a ruptured artery or dance a subtle ballet before I call him a full expert.

The interpersonal intelligence.

An interpersonal genius would easily get along with many people from many different walks of life.

Evidence:

-“His reputation is expanding faster than the Universe.”
-He always seems to be in bars with incredibly attractive women.
-“The police often question him just because they find him interesting.”
-“His personality is so magnetic, he’s unable to carry credit cards.”
-“Even his enemies list him as their emergency contact number.”
-He gets along with Pacific Islanders, Amazon villagers, and Asian people.
-“He could disarm you with his looks.”
-He once punched a magician.
-He returns to a prison every week to play canasta with the guards.
-He easily sways the other members of the UN to vote with him.
-“His charm is so contagious, vaccines have been created for it.”
-He was approached by Dos Equis to be their “Most Interesting Man in the World.”

Probable level of intelligence: Expert.  Mr. Suatz, I would bet, placed many points in his charisma skill.  He gets along with everyone, even his enemies.  Certainly you can argue that an expert in interpersonal intelligence would not have enemies, but I get the impression that Mr. Suatz only has them because it would be less interesting if he did not.

I do wonder, however, why he punched a magician.

The verbal-linguistic intelligence.

Geniuses in this intelligence speak and write exceptionally well.

Evidence:

-“He never says something tastes like chicken, not even chicken.”
-“People hang on his every word, even the prepositions.”
-“He can speak French in Russian.”
-“I don’t always drink beer, but, when I do, I prefer Dos Equis.”

Probable level of intelligence: Good.  Part of Mr. Suatz charisma undoubtedly comes from his ability to communicate well with others.  However, I’m loath to say that he is an expert in this intelligence, because most of these items are not directly and completely related to his verbal skill.  When he refuses to say something tastes like chicken even when it is chicken, I wonder if it is because his verbal skill is so high he doesn’t need to use clichés, or if he is just being contradictory for the sake of being contradictory.  Likewise, people hang on his prepositions, but is this because he uses very ones or because he has interesting stories to tell, regardless of what words he uses?  (Or is it simply because he has a very sexy accent?)

And what does it even mean that he can speak French in Russian?

Interestingly, the one direct piece of evidence we can use to determine his verbal-linguistic skill is Mr. Suatz’s catchphrase.  Unlike other commercial spokesmen, Mr. Suatz does not speak in firm, black-or-white terms.  A less skilled spokesman, for instance, would say, “Dos Equis is number one!  If you want to be like me, drink Dos Equis!”

Mr. Suatz, however, understands something that was recently proven in a psychological study.  When a person is perceived as an expert (as Mr. Suatz is), his words are more convincing when they are hedging.  For example, someone who is perceived as an expert in economics would be more convincing if he said, “The invisible hand sometimes works but sometimes does not, depending on the situation” than “The invisible hand of the market always works, and anyone who believes otherwise is stupid.”  Mr. Suatz’s catchphrase is, therefore, incredibly convincing, not only because the man is so charismatic, but because he speaks contingently and tentatively.  He suggests but does not push.

We can infer from Mr. Suatz’s catchphrase and expert-level interpersonal intelligence that his verbal-linguistic skill is quite high.  But, until I have more direct proof of his facility with words, I cannot dub him a true expert.

The logical-mathematical intelligence.

Experts in this intelligence are good at reasoning, particularly in scientific and mathematical subjects.

Evidence:

-Years ago, he built a city out of blocks.

Probable level of intelligence: Almost impossible to tell.  Building a city out of blocks might take some math skills, but he also could have had underlings do the necessary calculations.

It seems that the writers and directors of these Dos Equis spots have decided that logical and mathematic skills are not “interesting” enough to be included in the commercials.  To me, this is a shame.  A truly interesting man would be charismatic and good at sports, sure, but why can he not also be skilled in computers and chess?  The anti-geek bias in these commercials is astounding.

The naturalistic intelligence.

This most controversial of the intelligences involves a person’s ability to get along with and control nature.  The ability to categorize objects, such as herbs and types of species, is important to this intelligence.

Evidence:

-He has a pet owl.
-Whenever he swims, dolphins follow him.
-He goes out of his way to protect animals such as husky dogs, foxes, and bears.
-He taught a horse to read his e-mails for him.

Probable skill level: Good.  He has natural abilities with animals, who also seem to appreciate his charisma (or maybe they smell the cologne in his blood).  A true naturalistic genius, however, would also be adept with the non-animal species.  Does Mr. Suatz keep a garden, for instance?  Does he know how to find edible mushrooms in the forest?  Can he tell the difference between poison ivy and regular ivy?  We do not know.

The intrapersonal intelligence.

An intrapersonal genius knows himself through and through.  These are people who continually self-analyze to discover their true goals and how to reach them.

Evidence:

-“He once had an awkward moment just to see how it feels.”
-“He lives vicariously through himself.”
-He saves bears from bear traps and foxes from stereotypical British hunters.
-He finds sunken treasures just to hand them out to poor natives.
-“It is never too early to start building up your obituary.”
-On careers: “Figure out what in life you do not do so well, and then… don’t do that thing.”
-“He is the only man to ever ace a Rorschach test.”
-He believes himself to be the Most Interesting Man in the World.

Probable skill level: Expert.  In my opinion, the real reason Mr. Suatz is one of the most interesting people in the world is that he actively and constantly tries to better himself.  He is always trying new things to broaden his already broad horizons.  Yet, at the same time, he knows himself, too.  He has a firm moral compass: he loves and protects animals, and he redistributes wealth to members of poor tribes in third-world countries.  He also has experienced enough to know what he should try (e.g. lifeboating with Miss Universe contestants; eating bar nuts) and what he should not (wearing too-tight pants; rollerblading).

The only thing that worries me slightly is that he is so quick to call himself the Most Interesting Man in the World.  Is this because he knows himself so well that he feels comfortable enough making this claim, or is it because his ego is unnaturally and unhealthily large?  It is good to have confidence, but does he have too much confidence?  Personally, I think he should be a little more humble and say, “People call me the Most Interesting Man in the World.  Whether or not it is true is up to you to decide.”  A little bit of modesty would go a long way for me.

The visual-spatial intelligence.

Someone with strong visual-spatial intelligence is good at visualizing and mentally-manipulating objects.  Artists, architects, and people with a good sense of direction use this intelligence often.

Evidence:

-He is good at sports that require visual-spatial abilities.
-He built a city out of blocks.
-“If he were to give you directions, you’d never get lost, and you’d arrive at least five minutes early.”

Probable level of skill: Unclear.  We have no idea if his city made out of blocks is artistically pleasing.  He is good at directing people to their destinations, which does suggest that he has a good natural sense of direction.

But what about the arts?  One would think that the Most Interesting Man in the World would have some artistic ability, and yet we have no real evidence that this is the case for Mr. Suatz.  Perhaps he does have very good visual-spatial ability but lacks the time to devote to artistic pursuits.  Personally, though, it looks to me like he has plenty of time on his hands.  Take a figure drawing class, Most Interesting Man in the World.  It’ll be good for you.

The musical intelligence.

Someone with a high level of musical intelligence has good rhythm, pitch, and hearing.

Evidence:

-He helicoptered into a desert to play a grand piano.

Probable level of skill: Low.  It is interesting, is it not, that one commercial showed Mr. Suatz being airlifted to a piano in the middle of a desert, yet we do not see him playing it at all.  It seems to me that he put the piano in the desert for show, not to be played.  A true musician would not play in the desert, anyway.  What kind of acoustics would you have in a desert?  Not very good ones, I’d imagine.   Plus sand would get in the wires.

As we can see, Mr. Suatz is a genius in two of the eight intelligences, very good in three others, and untested in the remaining three.  Clearly, he is not a jack-of-all trades and master of all, so he is not the Most Interesting Man there could ever be.  Even if he is the Most Interesting Man we earthlings currently have, he still has a long way to go to reach his full potential.  And when he does, I’ll be there to watch… with a Dos Equis in hand.

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