Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress

Mad Men 5.11: Prostitution and Power

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Mon, 28 May 2012 05:14:00 +0000

Masterful Mad Men 5.11 tonight had not one but two blockbuster stories, each about one of the two leading women on the show. In both cases, the results were among the most profound and game-changing we've seen not only this season, but in the entire series.

Advertising as a profession could be considered a kind of prostitution - selling your creative soul to your client - but tonight that becomes literally true as the Jaguar client (or, actually, a major car dealer who is one of three who will make the decision as to what ad company will get the Jaguar campaign) lets Pete and Ken know that he'd be much more inclined to go with our crew if he could spend a night with Joan - in bed. Pete brings this to Joan, who laughs in his face, and rhetorically adds that the company couldn't afford to pay her what she'd want for something like this. That's enough to get Pete to call a partners' meeting.

The response of the partners is a keen tableau of where each man is at. Don, showing again that he has a well of decency in his core, walks out of the meeting, saying their ad proposal will be strong enough to get Jaguar. Roger, showing again how despicable he can be, has no problem with offering Joan to the dealer. It's not, by the way, that Don is always decent and Roger is always despicable. Indeed, it's never knowing for sure where each man will go - with his decent or despicable side - that makes Mad Men so interesting. Morse has no problem with making Joan an offer to do this, as long as it's made clear to her that she doesn't have to do it if she doesn't want to. And Lane, knowing there are no funds to offer Joan any money, cleverly gets her to ask for five-percent of the company - to become a partner.

Mad Men has dealt some great parallels in personal and professional lives this year, and tonight's was especially evocative. The Jaguar tag-line that Ginsberg comes up with and Don pitches is that Jaguar is the one beautiful thing that a man could really own. And owning Joan for a night is the price Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, etc have to pay in order to land Jaguar. Except Draper doesn't want that, but Joan does - or, at least, she wants being a partner enough to spend the significant part of the night with the Jaguar dealer.

And as Joan moves up in the organization, Peggy moves out. Don, decent about Joan, is as insensitive and rude as ever to Peggy. She comes up on no notice with an account winning line for Chevalier cologne - it was Ginsberg's account, but he wasn't around - and seeks some appreciation from Don. What she gets is Don saying Ginsberg can go to Paris, and when she complains, Don literally throws some money in her face and says here, go to Paris.

This sets in motion a short chain of events that leads to Peggy taking an offer with Sterling et al's main competitor. Given Joan's ascension to partnership, Peggy would likely not have been too happy with our company in any case, making this development an especially smooth piece of story line.

A story of two women. Each seizing on opportunity to move up in their world, in which most of the cards are seriously stacked against them. More power to both of them.

See also Mad Men Season 5 Debut: It's Don's Party ... Mad Men 5.3: Heinz Is On My Side ... Mad Men 5.4: Volunteer, Dream, Trust ... Mad Men 5.5: Ben Hargrove ... Mad Men 5.6: LSD Orange ... Mad Men 5.7: People of High Degree ... Mad Men 5.8: Mad Man and Gilmore Girl ... Mad Men 5.9: Don's Creativity ... Mad Men 5.10: "The Negron Complex"

And from Season 4: Mad Men 4.1: Chicken Kiev, Lethal Interview, Ham Fight ... 4.2: "Good Time, Bad Time?" "Yes." ... 4.3: Both Coasts ... 4.4: "The following program contains brief nudity ..." 4.5: Fake Out and Neurosis ... 4.6: Emmys, Clio, Blackout, Flashback ... 4.7: 'No Credits on Commercials' ... 4.8: A Tale of Two Women ... 4.9: "Business of Sadists and Masochists" ... 4.10: Grim Tidings ... 4.11: "Look at that Punim" ... 4.12: No Smoking! ... Mad Men Season 4 Finale: Don and -

And from Season 3: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11 ... Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World in Mad Men ... Mad Men Season 3 Finale: The End of the World

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons ... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ... Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ... Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

20-minute interview with Rich Sommer (Harry Crane) at Light On Light Through

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Mad Men 5.10: "The Negron Complex"

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Mon, 21 May 2012 04:18:00 +0000

Having delved into the meta-realms of unreal science fiction with Ben Hargove some five episodes ago, Mad Men 5.10 continues the enjoyable indulgence with "The Negron Complex," a fictitious spec script written for the real science fiction Star Trek - now known as Star Trek: TOS (the original series), back in 1966 of course just known as Star Trek.

Paul Kinsey, a real fictional character on Mad Men, is the author. I've been wondering what happened to Paul, bearded with pipe in seasons past, a civil rights activist, dating an African-American woman (who leaves him), and to some degree the conscience of the previous firm. He's joined the Hare Krishnas - his luck went from bad to verse - but has penned this script. He was a fan of The Twilight Zone, so this makes sense. (The Twilight Zone and Star Trek are two of my all-time favorite shows.)

Paul asks Harry to get the script to someone at NBC who might get it to Gene Roddenberry. Harry (deftly played by Rich Sommer) still looks a little like Isaac Asimov to me, so this makes sense, too. But the script apparently is a turkey - I have to take Harry's word for this - so what's Harry to do?

All of this serves as nice set-up for Harry to have another round of good sex in the office, as Paul's girl friend shows up to talk Harry out of helping Paul - talk Harry out of this by way of seduction. Her motives are to keep Paul for herself and the Krishna movement. But Harry, in a combination of rare selflessness and more comprehensible not liking to be manipulated, sends Paul out to Los Angeles (gives him $500 for air fare) to sell his script. Alas, we know in our reality that no Star Trek episode titled "The Negron Episode" was ever made, but knows about alternate realities ... wait, no, that's Fringe.

Meanwhile, Lane takes some money from the company on his and Don's forged signature, and Joan gets about as angry in the office as ever we've seen her - justifiably calling a receptionist an "idiot" - and there's a priceless scene (Lane wasn't there either) with Joan and Don in a bar. Good stuff indeed for our people living on the razor's edge.

Hey, check out my essay in this book about Star Trek:

See also Mad Men Season 5 Debut: It's Don's Party ... Mad Men 5.3: Heinz Is On My Side ... Mad Men 5.4: Volunteer, Dream, Trust ... Mad Men 5.5: Ben Hargrove ... Mad Men 5.6: LSD Orange ... Mad Men 5.7: People of High Degree ... Mad Men 5.8: Mad Man and Gilmore Girl ... Mad Men 5.9: Don's Creativity

And from Season 4: Mad Men 4.1: Chicken Kiev, Lethal Interview, Ham Fight ... 4.2: "Good Time, Bad Time?" "Yes." ... 4.3: Both Coasts ... 4.4: "The following program contains brief nudity ..." 4.5: Fake Out and Neurosis ... 4.6: Emmys, Clio, Blackout, Flashback ... 4.7: 'No Credits on Commercials' ... 4.8: A Tale of Two Women ... 4.9: "Business of Sadists and Masochists" ... 4.10: Grim Tidings ... 4.11: "Look at that Punim" ... 4.12: No Smoking! ... Mad Men Season 4 Finale: Don and -

And from Season 3: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11 ... Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World in Mad Men ... Mad Men Season 3 Finale: The End of the World

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons ... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ... Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ... Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

20-minute interview with Rich Sommer (Harry Crane) at Light On Light Through

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

The Beach Boys in White Plains

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Wed, 16 May 2012 23:15:00 +0000

I was driving by the Westchester County Center a couple of months ago, and saw the sign: "The Beach Boys, May 15". The sign was simple and timeless and almost seemed unreal. But its words were true, and so it was that my wife Tina and I were at County Center to see and hear the Beach Boys last night. I was 15 when I first heard The Beach Boys on the radio signing "Surfin' Safari" back in 1962. I loved the song from the first time I heard it. And here I was, 50 years later, on 15 May 2012, hearing The Beach Boys singing the same song and loving it even more.

I've always considered The Beach Boys easily one of top three groups in all of rock music. Second only to The Beatles on most days, third after The Rolling Stones on some days maybe. The thing about the Beach Boys was their harmony - doo wop taken to symphonic, psychedelic heights, music of the spheres that no other group could produce. The Beatles and The Stones usually had it over The Beach Boys on the lyrical front, but no one could touch their harmonies.

WFUV's Dennis Elsas of Fordham University introduced the group last night. Pete Fornatale, a champion of their sound since the beginning, and also a Fordham dj, would no doubt have done those honors had he not left this world way too soon a few weeks ago. Mike Love dedicated a song to Pete during the set - the newest Beach Boy song, "That's Why God Made the Radio," first heard on national radio just this last month.

Mike Love opened the concert with "Do It Again". This was great opening choice. As soon as Mike began singing I knew the evening would be remarkable. And when The Beach Boys joined in with their effervescent popping harmonies, I knew the Beach Boys were truly back on that stage.

Dennis and Carl Wilson are no longer with us and The Beach Boys. The group did two great numbers with each singing lead - from a recording - anyway last night. Carl's rendition of "God Only Knows" with the Beach Boys doing harmony right there on the stage last night was food for the soul.

So The Beach Boys last night consisted of Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Bruce Johnston, and David Marks, and some great back up musicians and vocalists including John Cowsill of the Cowsills.

Brian's voice was amazing in the mid-range. Jeff Foskett, one of the back-up vocalists but in fact standing right up front on the stage with guitar next to Brian on piano, did splendidly on all the high notes and patented Beach Boy falsettos. The high points of the three hour concert were pretty much everything, but among the special delights were Brian's lead and the group's exuberant harmonies on "Heroes and Villains" (a song whose lyrics by Van Dyke Parks equals the lyrical sophistication of The Beatles - "you're under arrest!" - this performance including the "Bicycle Rider" segment), Al Jardine giving a fabulous lead rendition of "Help Me Rhonda" (brought the crowd to its feet singing the chorus), David Marks' crackling sharp guitar work on every song (he was part of the group in the early 60s), the car song set ("Little Honda," "409," "Little Deuce Coupe," and "Shut Down," segueing right into one another), "Be True to Your School," and, like I said, there wasn't a weak performance in the concert, only great performances and even greater.

The crowd was in the aisles half a dozen times - including in the above video - singing and dancing, including nonstop for the last 4 or 5 songs. My wife thought the average age of the audience was about 55 - there were little kids and octogenarians there for sure.

It's a strange, wondrous thing to hear music you've loved all of your life come to life again, right before your eyes and ears. The Beach Boys touring group took the time to get the complex harmonies and musical licks just right - an impressive, even incredible, accomplishment for songs such as "Heroes and Villains" and "Good Vibrations," given the modular way (different sections of the songs in different recording sessions) the songs were first recorded back in the 1960s - and the band performed with even more vitality than I've seen over the years on television and more recently YouTube. I usually tell people that I feel like 17 on a good day and 19 on a not-so-good day. The good vibrations last night - theremin and all - made me feel 15-22 again, and it all felt good.

See also this CNN article about The Beach Boys, in which I'm quoted.

Bones Season 7 Finale: Suspect Bones

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Tue, 15 May 2012 04:43:00 +0000

One of the important things to always bear in mind about Bones is that although Bones is a genius, she's not the only genius in the world. And when an evil genius takes umbrage at Bones, that genius can do a lot of damage.   In the past, the contest between Bones, Booth, and the gang versus the evil genius have made for some of the very best groups of shows. Tonight's episode, which starts a story that will continue beyond this season's finale, seems destined to continue that fine tradition.

This season finale is also the finale, at the same time, for another group of episodes with a very different theme, a theme unique in the series. That theme was Bones and Booth together, married, openly in love, and bringing Christine into the world.   The theme is brought to an important new threshold tonight with the christening of Christine.

And that christening also serves as the conduit to a new kind of life for Bones, as temporary, one hopes, as possible. With the help of the irrepressible Max, Bones elects to go on the run rather than to jail. As Max explains, once the system has you in its clutches, it's very hard to prove your innocence. Bones can do better outside. I agree completely with Max.

The evil genius who is framing Bones can only be beaten if Bones is at least somewhat free to investigate, which she can only do out of prison. But Bones will need more than that - she'll also need the help of her Jeffersonian team. As US Attorney Caroline Julian explains to Angela, who's justifiably angry at Cam for providing evidence that apparently points to Bones' guilt, Cam needed to keep the team operating beyond repute, so they could be of maximum help to Bones.

I've never liked Cam's officiousness, but you have to agree with Caroline's logic. The evil genius Peland - whom we met in an earlier episode - is very good at what he does. Like a master chess player, he systematically sets in motion a series of events that remove Booth, Sweets, and even Caroline from the case, and their official positions which can help Bones.

But Bones still has their counsel, and Max's too, and as she takes on Max's role of being on the lam, she'll have everyone back at work at the Jeffersonian on her side. She and Booth will need all the help they can get to get through this.   I'm hoping it's a short time until the next episode ...

See also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke ... Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington ... Bones 7.4: The Tush on the Xerox ... Bones 7.5: Sexy Vehicle ... Bones 7.6: The Reassembler ... Bones 7.7: Baby! ... Bones 7.8: Parents ... Bones 7.9: Tabitha's Salon ... Bones 7.10: Mobile ... Bones 7.11: Truffles and Max ... Bones 7.12: The Corpse is Hanson

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7: Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ... Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ... Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ... Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ... Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Mad Men 5.9: Don's Creativity

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Mon, 14 May 2012 20:25:00 +0000

The biggest deal in Mad Men 5.9 last night was the pair of ads that our band of merry mad men and woman were working up for another new client, Snoball - the coconut pink marshmallow chocolate cake whipped cream (from outside to inside) concoction that you could bliss you out with on sugar with a just few bites if you weren't careful.

Anyway, Peggy's idea of three men lost in the desert, two dreaming of water, the third dreaming of the dessert, is knocked out in the first meeting. I actually like that better than Ginsberg's idea of throwing a snoball in an authority's face, but that gambit as well as Don's snoball's chance in hell make it to the all-important client presentation.

Or, actually, not. Don deliberately leaves the artwork for both his and Ginsberg's candidates in the taxi. Since Don of course is at the client meeting, but Ginsberg is not, Don's presentation makes the sale. I thought Don's was the best, and Ginsberg's the worst (of the three), but of course Ginsberg doesn't see things that way. He complains to Don, who disses Ginsberg with a retort that Ginsberg and his talent or lack of never even enter Don's thoughts.

The whole incident gives us good insight into Don's current personality: he's still competitive enough that he wants to his creativity to win, and will use any method to so, though I suppose there was some merit to his point to Ginsberg that coming in with more than one candidate is "weak".

Otherwise, Betty's back and as nasty as ever, and Roger continues his destruction of Jane. Roger won't be even a semblance of a human being until he gets together with Joan, and I'd say there's almost no hope for Betty.

Meanwhile, Pete fantasizes about his paramour, and is furious when the New York Times Sunday Magazine section neglects to mention him in a major article after a long interview. Welcome to the club - this happens with interviews all the time. One anachronism alert: my wife, who reads the Times Magazine section more than do I, noticed that the 1966 copy of the magazine depicted on the show sure looked like a more current size and layout. I'm not 100% sure, but she may well be right.

See also Mad Men Season 5 Debut: It's Don's Party ... Mad Men 5.3: Heinz Is On My Side ... Mad Men 5.4: Volunteer, Dream, Trust ... Mad Men 5.5: Ben Hargrove ... Mad Men 5.6: LSD Orange ... Mad Men 5.7: People of High Degree ... Mad Men 5.8: Mad Man and Gilmore Girl

And from Season 4: Mad Men 4.1: Chicken Kiev, Lethal Interview, Ham Fight ... 4.2: "Good Time, Bad Time?" "Yes." ... 4.3: Both Coasts ... 4.4: "The following program contains brief nudity ..." 4.5: Fake Out and Neurosis ... 4.6: Emmys, Clio, Blackout, Flashback ... 4.7: 'No Credits on Commercials' ... 4.8: A Tale of Two Women ... 4.9: "Business of Sadists and Masochists" ... 4.10: Grim Tidings ... 4.11: "Look at that Punim" ... 4.12: No Smoking! ... Mad Men Season 4 Finale: Don and -

And from Season 3: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11 ... Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World in Mad Men ... Mad Men Season 3 Finale: The End of the World

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons ... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ... Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ... Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

20-minute interview with Rich Sommer (Harry Crane) at Light On Light Through

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Fringe Season 4 Finale: Death and Life

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Sat, 12 May 2012 13:32:00 +0000

The Fringe Season 4 finale promised to answer some big questions and it did.   We see how September got shot, and, even more important, that his dire words to Olivia that she dies in all possible futures is true.

But, of course, she doesn't die, and therein resides a couple of problems with this episode. Not that I wanted her to die - quite the opposite - or that something in the story if truly followed obliged her to die. No, it was rather the way she died and then didn't die that didn't work. Shot point blank in the head by Walter - a powerful scene - but Walter is able to bring her back to life by removing the bullet, which allows her Cortexiphan drenched brain to quickly regenerate.   Although this was logical enough, it seemed more like a gimmick that a profound development.   And a one-time gimmick at that - Olivia ends the episode with her Cortexiphan powers depleted.

And there's also this: We knew Olivia had to survive, because we met her daughter in that excellent future episode a few weeks back. If Olivia had died last night, she and Peter could not have had a daughter.

Still, there were some good touches last night. It was great to see Bell and Walter interacting - and, in fact, I liked this Bell better than the one who took his leave of us a few seasons back. He seemed more vibrant. He walks out of our reality on the assumption that Olivia is dead - I assumed to over there, in the alternate reality?

I was glad that Astrid did not die, and the set up for next season was good. Broyles promoted to General, Nina working in Fringe, and the nice increase in funding that Fringe received. These elements almost seemed liked happy endings for a series that was concluding, and they likely were.

But Fringe will be back for one concluding season, as our heroes fight the Eternal Bald Observers, and I'm looking forward to more great television.

Hey, check out my essay The Return of 1950s Science Fiction in Fringe in this anthology

See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves ... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips ... Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man ... Fringe 4.8: The Ramifications of Transformed Alternate Realities ... Fringe 4.9: Elizabeth ... Fringe 4.10: Deceit and Future Vision ... Fringe 4.11: Alternate Astrid ... Fringe 4.12: Double Westfield / Single Olivia ... Fringe 4.13: Tea and Telepathy ... Fringe 4.14: Palimpsest ... Fringe 4.15: I Knew It! ... Fringe 4.16: Walter Likes Yiddish ... Fringe 4.17: Second Chances ... Fringe 4.18: Broyled on Both Sides ... Future Fringe 4.19 ... Fringe 4.20: Bridge ... Fringe 4.21: Shocks

See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21: Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ... Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe

See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ... New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22: Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Bones 7.12: The Corpse is Hanson

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Tue, 08 May 2012 04:47:00 +0000

Yes, the corpse was Hanson on tonight's hilarious Bones 7.12 - not Hart Hanson, the brains behind the real Bones, but Hanson Stephens, fictitious head producer of the fictitious Bone of Contention movie based on Temperance Brennan's characters. Given that the real Bones is based on Kathy Reichs' characters - that is, a real human being writer's characters, in contrast to Temperance, who of course is fictitious, too - not to mention that Stephen Nathan is a real producer of the real Bones - tonight's episode was one fine meta-meta-show indeed. Bertrand Russell would have been proud, and it's all the fault of Hart Hanson (also a real person) and Kathy Reichs (also mentioned as the fictitious writer of the episode).

Well, if that's too heady I probably should stop this here, while I'm ahead, but there's more. Bones objecting to the shoddy science in the movie, a podiatrist we've seen before on the show now on the set as the technical adviser, a superb Hodgins fictitious character in the movie, and of course a murder victim - Hanson. The investigation into who killed him - conducted by Bones and Booth - seems to have something to do with Cherie, the seductive blonde playing Kathy (Bones' counterpart) - I thought I was watching Smash for a second - but the real murderer (oops, maybe true murderer would be a better word) has other motives.

Booth has some of the funniest lines and set-ups in the episode. He enjoys the comparison to Steve McQueen, loves the donuts, and I always like how one thing he never kids around about on a case is the FBI - at least, not to someone not really on the team.

And - as icing on the cake - it turns out Hansen's is not the only dead body on this show. Cam starred in a vampire movie years ago, fro and all ala Blacula, and she gets a stake through the heart at the end of Invasion of the Mother Suckers, to the delight of all of our real characters back in Washington, DC.

I don't know where to score a copy of that movie, but I'll be first in line for Bone of Contention when it opens in the summer of 2013.

See also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke ... Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington ... Bones 7.4: The Tush on the Xerox ... Bones 7.5: Sexy Vehicle ... Bones 7.6: The Reassembler ... Bones 7.7: Baby! ... Bones 7.8: Parents ... Bones 7.9: Tabitha's Salon ... Bones 7.10: Mobile ... Bones 7.11: Truffles and Max

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7: Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ... Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ... Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ... Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ... Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Mad Men 5.8: Mad Man and Gilmore Girl

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Mon, 07 May 2012 16:12:00 +0000

Two fine stories on Mad Men 5.8 last night -

Megan, after a great run in the "beans, beans, the musical fruit" and new Cool Whip campaigns, decides to quit her job in advertising! Her heart and soul are in acting. One round of applause from an audience is worth all the Heinz beans accolades in the world. Peggy tries to talk her out of it - which makes sense, given that for Peggy the advertising work is the job of a lifetime. Don is understanding - he'll miss the sexual energy in the office, for sure, but he'll have a happier Megan at home, and he does have a decent streak that shows through sometimes. The whole segment is a noble statement on the fatuousness of advertising.

Meanwhile, Pete sleeps with the Gilmore Girl (Alexis Bledel), aka the guy on the train's wife. This is a daring move for Pete, who likes it so much he calls her, wanting more than a one-time tryst. She demurs, but Pete persists, arranging to come home with Howard (the train guy - who's also an insurance guy) on the pretext of wanting life insurance. Once in Howard's home, Pete even manages to grab a kiss from Beth/Rory. She leaves the room with a migraine, but later encourages Pete with a heart drawn on a misty car window. All in all, good show for Pete, and the second sex-out-the-blue thread for Mad Men this season, following Roger's flirtation from afar earlier this year.

And just top off this excellent episode, we get the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows," ending up the show, playing into the credits, replete with a nice shot of the Revolver album cover, of which I have many. The show has migrated beautifully into the 60s, and I'm enjoying this season more than any other.

See also Mad Men Season 5 Debut: It's Don's Party ... Mad Men 5.3: Heinz Is On My Side ... Mad Men 5.4: Volunteer, Dream, Trust ... Mad Men 5.5: Ben Hargrove ... Mad Men 5.6: LSD Orange ... Mad Men 5.7: People of High Degree
And from Season 4: Mad Men 4.1: Chicken Kiev, Lethal Interview, Ham Fight ... 4.2: "Good Time, Bad Time?" "Yes." ... 4.3: Both Coasts ... 4.4: "The following program contains brief nudity ..." 4.5: Fake Out and Neurosis ... 4.6: Emmys, Clio, Blackout, Flashback ... 4.7: 'No Credits on Commercials' ... 4.8: A Tale of Two Women ... 4.9: "Business of Sadists and Masochists" ... 4.10: Grim Tidings ... 4.11: "Look at that Punim" ... 4.12: No Smoking! ... Mad Men Season 4 Finale: Don and -

And from Season 3: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11 ... Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World in Mad Men ... Mad Men Season 3 Finale: The End of the World

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons ... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ... Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ... Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

20-minute interview with Rich Sommer (Harry Crane) at Light On Light Through

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Fringe 4.21: Shocks

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Sun, 06 May 2012 03:42:00 +0000

Having closed the bridge between the two realities last week, how could Fringe have topped itself this week, in 4.21 the first of a two-part season finale? Fringe did this in at least four ways:

1. First, let's bear in mind that the two realities we've been watching this season are not the two realities of previous seasons. The two Season 4 realities are realities in which alt-Peter was not successfully rescued by Walter and drowned in Lake Reiden. Our (alt) Peter did indeed come back to our reality, as an adult, in mid-season, but differences between the two realities of Season 4 and earlier seasons can continue, and indeed are ...

Take William Bell, for example. He apparently died in the Season 1-3 two realities. But he need not have died in Season 4's, and indeed he did not.   And, he's not only alive, but apparently the evil mastermind behind David Robert Jones. (I never took seriously the report that Leonard Nimoy was never going to play Bell again - an actor can change his mind.) Bell tells Jones that in order for Bell's plan to succeed (presumably, to become creator and master of a new universe), the "bishop" on the chessboard has to be removed (killed).

2. When I first heard that, I just had a feeling that Bell was talking about Jones removing himself, but my wife pointed out that Walter is a Bishop, and she had a point. For that matter, Peter is a Bishop, too, and it looked as if Jones was planning to eliminate Peter - setting a trap for him and Olivia - and indeed comes close to overpowering Peter when Olivia helps Peter dispose of Jones. In his dying breath, Jones realizes that he, Jones, was really the bishop to be eliminated.

3. The way that Olivia helps Peter against Jones was also cool and noteworthy - Cortexiphan has now given Olivia telekinetic powers (moving objects at a distance via sheer mental will and direction), and she directs Peter, on a nearby rooftop, to literally beat Jones.   He falls back into an electric grid and is electrocuted.

4. But there's one last stunner. When Bell's bad guys get the drop on Walter and Astrid (whom Walter has a little earlier called "Alex"), she pivots into ass-kicking FBI mode - great to see - knocks down a bunch of villains - and then is apparent shot dead.

I certainly didn't see this coming, and have to hand it to Fringe to still surprise and shock, just when you think you have it figured. Looking forward to Part 2 next week.

Hey, check out my essay The Return of 1950s Science Fiction in Fringe in this new anthology

See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves ... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips ... Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man ... Fringe 4.8: The Ramifications of Transformed Alternate Realities ... Fringe 4.9: Elizabeth ... Fringe 4.10: Deceit and Future Vision ... Fringe 4.11: Alternate Astrid ... Fringe 4.12: Double Westfield / Single Olivia ... Fringe 4.13: Tea and Telepathy ... Fringe 4.14: Palimpsest ... Fringe 4.15: I Knew It! ... Fringe 4.16: Walter Likes Yiddish ... Fringe 4.17: Second Chances ... Fringe 4.18: Broyled on Both Sides ... Future Fringe 4.19 ... Fringe 4.20: Bridge

See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21: Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ... Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe

See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ... New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22: Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Bones 7.11: Truffles and Max

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:31:00 +0000

How can a bullet in one body have bone traces with two different ages, one old and the other one really really older? This might have been the makings of a good science fiction story - look for that next week - but in Bones 7.11 this was entre to a fine West Virginia Hatfield vs. McCoy family feud, and a custom of putting shards of bone from a hallowed ancestor into bullets.

Bones continues its mix this season of good science mystery and heart warming family reassembly. Tonight it was Bones' father's turn, on hand to meet and take care of Christine, after she was suspended from day care (an honor!) because of Bones' keeping too close tabs on the day care center.

Max and Bones have had a difficult relationship, to say the least. He left his daughter when she was a little girl, and Bones has found that hard to forgive. He's been ferociously loyal and protecting of Bones in the series, weaving in and out of the law to do that.   Bones love him, but still doesn't trust him. So of course he seems to have disappeared somewhere with Christine, even though it was only a slipped-out-of-pocket phone, which can happen to anyone.

Booth's innate sense of what is right for his new family is better than ever, and he sees how good Max is for Christine as well as Bones.   He gets two nice long kisses from Bones, early in the episode, as reward - and in public, on a case, which makes this even sweeter.

The only unsettling thing in this otherwise soul satisfying episode are the tainted truffles ingested by Hodgins and Daisy. Personally, I would never eat a wild mushroom for fear of being poisoned, though for all I know I already have in some restaurant.   So far, my brain is still enjoying Bones, and for that matter, Justified, which this jaunt to West Virginia reminded me of ....

See also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke ... Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington ... Bones 7.4: The Tush on the Xerox ... Bones 7.5: Sexy Vehicle ... Bones 7.6: The Reassembler ... Bones 7.7: Baby! ... Bones 7.8: Parents ... Bones 7.9: Tabitha's Salon ... Bones 7.10: Mobile

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7: Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ... Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ... Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ... Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ... Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Mad Men 5.7: People of High Degree

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 05:32:00 +0000

Well, Megan's father certainly has one, formally - as we find out in Mad Men 5.7, he has a PhD - but as for his humanity, and most of the rest of the characters, we get another stellar performance to the contrary, in this fine, feisty episode.

Back on the "beans, beans, the musical fruit" front, Megan comes up with a great idea for pain-in-the-ass Heinz: a commercial that will show families eating Heinz throughout the ages, from prehistoric times to the present and on to the Moon in the future. It's a sad note, to my eyes - that the Moon was still a symbol of the future in the 1960s - and the client loves it.   Megan, actually, is a person of high degree, as Don is beginning to more fully realize.

So is Peggy, who truly congratulates Megan, even after Peggy failing with Heinz as we saw previously. And so is Joan - which we already knew - who congratulates Peggy after Abe asks her to "shack up" with him, a little less of a proposal than Peggy was hoping for after Abe had invited her to a special dinner just the two of them. But as Joan wisely says, this does show how much Abe cares about Peggy.

Not so Peggy's mother, one of the most horrible characters in the series, who walks out on dinner with Peggy and Abe after they tell her the news, and then lectures Peggy on Abe's using her. Peggy has struggled with her mother most of her life.   And in one of the best scenes in a night of excellent scenes, Peggy asks her mother if she wants her to be lonely.   Peggy's mother answers: if you don't want to be lonely, get a cat. (This, I guess, being the embittered in love equivalent of if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.)

Sally has a good night - Don lets her accompany Megan and her parents and Roger to the award ceremony (which Don is receiving for his anti-smoking screed) - until the end of the evening, which I'll get to in a moment.   At the ceremony, Megan's father expresses his disappointment in her - not a very nice father - while her mother, aware of her husband's transgressions, winds up in a back room pleasuring suave Roger.   This is what Sally sees at the end of the evening.   It's been quite a year for her along these lines, having seen Megan somewhat naked in bed in the morning earlier this season.

But in many ways the worst blow is taken by Don, who finds out near the end of the evening that the people at the awards ceremony - people whom Don sees as potential clients - really hate him for his anti-smoking declaration, because it showed that Don could turn turncoat on a client. It's an apt lesson in a show about selling, and resonates with Matthew Weiner's work on The Sopranos, where anyone who was applauding you could just as likely be enemy as friend .   Not likely to be the case, though, with fans of Mad Men, including me.

See also Mad Men Season 5 Debut: It's Don's Party ... Mad Men 5.3: Heinz Is On My Side ... Mad Men 5.4: Volunteer, Dream, Trust ... Mad Men 5.5: Ben Hargrove ... Mad Men 5.6: LSD Orange

And from Season 4: Mad Men 4.1: Chicken Kiev, Lethal Interview, Ham Fight ... 4.2: "Good Time, Bad Time?" "Yes." ... 4.3: Both Coasts ... 4.4: "The following program contains brief nudity ..." 4.5: Fake Out and Neurosis ... 4.6: Emmys, Clio, Blackout, Flashback ... 4.7: 'No Credits on Commercials' ... 4.8: A Tale of Two Women ... 4.9: "Business of Sadists and Masochists" ... 4.10: Grim Tidings ... 4.11: "Look at that Punim" ... 4.12: No Smoking! ... Mad Men Season 4 Finale: Don and -

And from Season 3: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11 ... Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World in Mad Men ... Mad Men Season 3 Finale: The End of the World

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons ... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ... Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ... Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

20-minute interview with Rich Sommer (Harry Crane) at Light On Light Through

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

The Third Returns with Exits

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 03:15:00 +0000

Emon Hassan's The Third returns with its second episode - "Exits" - this Tuesday, May 1. If ever there was a medium is the message movie, ala Marshall McLuhan, "The Third" would be it (even though McLuhan liked tetrads better than triads). This is because the story, quiveringly, quietly terrifying, is told with not much content.

But I'll tell you a bit about the content, anyway. An old woman is stretched out, eyes closed, in bed. I thought she was dead, until she smiled. Her son kneels by her bed, and cries. Maybe she was dead, after all.

There's not much of the emotive actor Philip Willingham in this episode, except that haunting face, at the beginning. But there's a guy who looks like an elderly Buddy Holly, or maybe Elvis Costello, if he'd continued with his Buddy Holly look. And the woman and son.

The music by Kevin Mahonchak is superbly eerie and unsettling, as is the cinematography by Hassan. The second episode of The Third premiering on the first (you knew that was coming) is just five minutes or so, with four more episodes to follow. In case it's not apparent, there's a kind of music of the spheres, mathematical synchronicity to The Third, not only in its name but its presentation.

Reviewing last week's episode of Mad Men, I said it felt like it had been directed by some David - Cronenberg or Lynch. The same could be said of the shot of other-worldliness to the cortex that is The Third. You can catch the start of Exits (a rearrangement of exist) only on the Web, on Tuesday, over here - where you can also see all six episodes of last year's pilot, right now. Click on the label "The Third" below to read my reviews of three of those.

Fringe 4.20: The Bridge

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 03:34:00 +0000

Fringe 4.20 tonight matched the great news that Fringe will get another (albeit final) season - matched this news with a superb episode that shows why Fringe should continue forever.

Jones' plans become clear to Walter: bring the two realities together, so they will destroy each other, and therein engender a new universe, of which Jones will be lord and master. The only way to stop Jones from doing this, other than stopping Jones, is to close the bridge between the two realities. Olivia has a plan, but it fails. No one knows how to get to Jones. Closing the bridge is the only option.

We get wonderful scenes between Walter and Walternate like nothing before in the series. The other side will suffer with the connection broken - likely defeating Faulivia's hope of seeing rainbows again, but an other side even without rainbows beats no existence at all.

Peter stays on our side - "home is where the heart is," he tells Lee, and Peter's heart is with Olivia. But Lee's heart is with Fauxlivia - this was clear from the episode in which alt-Lee was killed - and Lee will stay over there. Our side will be even more like it was in the first two seasons.

And so the bridge is closed. Walter fears that Peter may not survive the closing, but he does. Walter says he'll miss them, and so will we, but there may be a way to reopen the connection, after Jones is taken care of (he may figure out a way to reopen the bridge anyway, for his own nefarious purposes).

And now we likely know at least part of why there was no other side in last week's future Fringe episode. The future with the Eternal Bald Observers is a future that builds on tonight's closing of the bridge.

But what can be rent asunder can be brought back together. Olivia tells Fauxlivia to keep looking up (for rainbows), and we can look forward to a two-hour finale and one more season for a science fiction series that has become one of the very best ever on television.

Hey, check out my essay The Return of 1950s Science Fiction in Fringe in this new anthology

See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves ... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips ... Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man ... Fringe 4.8: The Ramifications of Transformed Alternate Realities ... Fringe 4.9: Elizabeth ... Fringe 4.10: Deceit and Future Vision ... Fringe 4.11: Alternate Astrid ... Fringe 4.12: Double Westfield / Single Olivia ... Fringe 4.13: Tea and Telepathy ... Fringe 4.14: Palimpsest ... Fringe 4.15: I Knew It! ... Fringe 4.16: Walter Likes Yiddish ... Fringe 4.17: Second Chances ... Fringe 4.18: Broyled on Both Sides ... Future Fringe 4.19

See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21: Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ... Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe

See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ... New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22: Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Awake 1.9: A Reason to Stay

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:49:00 +0000

An excellent, really satisfying Awake 1.9 last night, which moves the plot nicely, powerfully along.

In yellow world, Britten is going along with wife Hannah's desire to move to Oregon, and get away from their painful past. This move would have dramatically changed the basis of the series, and I knew that something had to happen to stop the move from happening.

Britten finds the reason in blue world, where Rex his son is broken up about his girlfriend Emma breaking up with him. Britten provides good fatherly advice to Rex, who talks to Emma, and finds out that she was pregnant with his baby (but lost it). When Rex tells this to Britten - in another fine father/son scene - and Britten discovers that the conception occurred right before the crash-up that took Hannah's life in blue world and Rex's in yellow world. (Kudos to the script writer for the adept way this conversation was handled - giving us the precise information, without being likely to ruffle any FCC feathers.)

Back in yellow world, Britten realizes that the same conception must have occurred - before the car crash - and there's a chance that Emma didn't lose the baby. We and Britten had already seen in this episode that given events can be reversed in the yellow and blue worlds - such as a single event in a sporting game that can change the outcome of the game. And, sure enough, Britten discovers that Emma is still pregnant with his grandchild in yellow world.

So now Britten and his wife have a wonderful reason to stay. And we also know that this will put Britten's life in danger, removing Captain Harper's best argument to the villains to leave Britten alone - that he's leaving town. All of which gives us more than reason that ever to stay with fine, intellectually provocative series.

See also Awake ... Awake 1.2: "Whole" Family ... Awake 1.3: Frequency of Yellow and Blue ... Awake 1.4: The Baker and the Hooker ... Awake 1.5: Stretching a Dream ... Awake 1.6: Popper's Penguin

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com

Bones 7.10: Mobile

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 03:36:00 +0000

Bones 7.10 ends with a mobile above Christine. Bits and pieces of Bones and Booth and Parker's lives sparkling, dangling, slowing spinning in air.   Christine's smiling her great baby smile. It's another happy ending. The mobile was made by Parker.

It looked like a bad case of sibling rivalry. Parker lying, Bones finding cut-up pictures in Parker's closet.   Sweets confirmed it (that makes it at least 50/50 not likely to be correct). Bones tells Booth he must speak to Parker, and Booth says they both should. That in itself is a happy development, on the way to the happy ending.

And so the family, once on the peripheries, is coming back together. I was wondering when we'd see Christine introduced to Parker.   Bones' brother and father, and Booth's brother and grandfather have yet to make the introduction. But the universe is starting to coalesce, in a greater, extended form.

Meanwhile, on the science side, in the tiny part of the world, a little worm holds an internal key to the case. Hodgins does an autopsy on the worm. The results help track down the killer's location, as well justify Hodgins' big expenditure on cool equipment.   Cam doesn't like the expense, and in a neat closing of a potential plot loophole, Hodgins reveals that the Jeffersonian doesn't allow personal expenditures on equipment (Hodgins is incredibly wealthy).   So he has no choice but to demo the equipment's mettle.

Bones started with a big bang some years ago, the center not holding, people and relationships flying out in all directions. It was exciting. But now it's all coming back together, in a nucleus of a new family.   With just about every other relationship in every other television show in some kind of disrupting crisis, the mobile revolving ever closer to the center on Bones is just the thing.

See also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke ... Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington ... Bones 7.4: The Tush on the Xerox ... Bones 7.5: Sexy Vehicle ... Bones 7.6: The Reassembler ... Bones 7.7: Baby! ... Bones 7.8: Parents ... Bones 7.9: Tabitha's Salon

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7: Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ... Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ... Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ... Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ... Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Mad Men 5.6: LSD Orange

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 05:12:00 +0000

Mad Men 5.6 ... LSD, break-up shake-ups, diced-up sequences out of time, and anachronisms galore ...

Focus groups in 1966? I don't think so. Intimate encounters with total strangers in movie theaters? Always possible, not very frequent. LSD parties? I guess so, possibly, technically yeah, but not very likely.

Was that Timothy Leary at that little party with Roger and Jane? I dunno, maybe, or maybe Roger was just addressing Leary in the abstract.

It was that kind of episode. It was sad and good to see Roger and Jane break up, courtesy of their acid trip (and now the path is more open to Joan). It was not so good and also sad to see Don and Megan at such odds, and Megan's statement that every time they fight like that, it takes a little of their love away, did ring true for them.

Peggy's been a wild card, since the very first episode of the series, when she slept with Pete. She was that way tonight, drunk and stoned in the movie house, after she runs into more trouble with client Heinz. "Beans, beans, the magic fruit ..."

So, I don't know, it's like David Cronenberg or Lynch directed this episode, or maybe Tarantino. Did it work for Mad Men? Well, the orange Howard Johnson certainly did, and I don't blame Megan one bit for for not liking the orange sherbert, it had artificial written all over it, and that worked just right, too.

See also Mad Men Season 5 Debut: It's Don's Party ... Mad Men 5.3: Heinz Is On My Side ... Mad Men 5.4: Volunteer, Dream, Trust ... Mad Men 5.5: Ben Hargrove

And from Season 4: Mad Men 4.1: Chicken Kiev, Lethal Interview, Ham Fight ... 4.2: "Good Time, Bad Time?" "Yes." ... 4.3: Both Coasts ... 4.4: "The following program contains brief nudity ..." 4.5: Fake Out and Neurosis ... 4.6: Emmys, Clio, Blackout, Flashback ... 4.7: 'No Credits on Commercials' ... 4.8: A Tale of Two Women ... 4.9: "Business of Sadists and Masochists" ... 4.10: Grim Tidings ... 4.11: "Look at that Punim" ... 4.12: No Smoking! ... Mad Men Season 4 Finale: Don and -

And from Season 3: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11 ... Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World in Mad Men ... Mad Men Season 3 Finale: The End of the World

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons ... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ... Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ... Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

20-minute interview with Rich Sommer (Harry Crane) at Light On Light Through

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Future Fringe 4.19

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 04:00:00 +0000

Just when all four Fringe realities finally are beginning to make some sense - original and original alternate Fringe realities (the first three seasons, with Peter surviving his passage from over there to over here), and the new there and over there, in which Peter did not survive, but to which Peter returns - just as we were beginning to make sense of this, we get a new kind of reality, a future, in which the Eternal Bald Observers have created a totalitarian world, at least over here.

A truly excellent, nearly standalone Fringe took place in that future tonight in episode 4.19, replete with new opening credits that speak of community and self, and show freedom behind barbed wire. Etta looks a little like Olivia (and that's because, as we find out at the end, but was pretty guessable throughout the episode, she's Peter and Olivia's daughter), and she's part of renegade Fringe team who are fighting an underground battle against the Observers. Her partner is Simon, played Lost's Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick), always good in these roles. They free Walter from amber, reunite his brain with his missing brain tissue (stored in Massive Dynamic), and we get a sharp as a whip Walter who is a little reminiscent of Walternate. Walter in turn leads Simon and Etta to an amber reservoir - and free Astrid and then Peter, but not Bell, who is also frozen there (Walter, with all of his faculties, wisely doesn't trust Bell). Simon takes Peter's place in the amber, and Peter and Etta have a moving father and daughter hug.

And there the episode ends - which is surprising in itself. Where is Olivia? Also frozen in some amber somewhere close at hand, or maybe she's at work on the other side? Or maybe she was killed in the fight against the Observers, which would be in accord with what September said earlier in the season (but not in accord with Peter out of the amber - he seemed not that devastated). For that matter, what happened to the other side when the Observers took over here? Broyles, who has lived through this time unsuspended in amber, and still commands the Fringe Division (but now under the Oberservers' thumb), will no doubt play some heroic role in ridding this future of the Observers.

Or maybe not. Here, with Fringe possibly ending its run, is a great new opening with all kind of options for surprise and soul for a fifth season.

Meanwhile, it will be fun to see in the next few episodes maybe a little bit more of how we got there.

Hey, check out my essay The Return of 1950s Science Fiction in Fringe in this new anthology

See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves ... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips ... Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man ... Fringe 4.8: The Ramifications of Transformed Alternate Realities ... Fringe 4.9: Elizabeth ... Fringe 4.10: Deceit and Future Vision ... Fringe 4.11: Alternate Astrid ... Fringe 4.12: Double Westfield / Single Olivia ... Fringe 4.13: Tea and Telepathy ... Fringe 4.14: Palimpsest ... Fringe 4.15: I Knew It! ... Fringe 4.16: Walter Likes Yiddish ... Fringe 4.17: Second Chances ... Fringe 4.18: Broyled on Both Sides

See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21: Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ... Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe

See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ... New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22: Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Bones 7.9: Tabitha's Salon

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 05:05:00 +0000

Tabatha Coffey is well known to viewers of Bravo's Tabatha's Salon Takeover - she'd make a good murderess. So would've Tabitha, also in a hair salon, on tonight's Bones 7.9. But she turned out to be no murderess, either.

But the show turned out to be pretty excellent nonetheless, with blue birds - not really blue birds, but birds with an artificial blue hue - falling from the sky, like Hitchcock's The Birds meets the flying dead, plus some good shots at academic publishing courtesy of Arastoo almost getting a paper in a journal, and even a lawyer named Tess Levinson (no relation, as far as I know).

But the best part of the hour, as it's been the past few weeks, is Booth and Bones and their lives together with Christine. Bones is a little uncomfortable with the clothes that don't quite fit after her pregnancy. Sweets tells Booth to buy Bones some lingerie, and we get some fine lines in the lingerie shop as Booth decides what to buy (I resisted calling this review "Mangos"). Back home after the case is solved, Bones likes the lingerie, is about to take it upstairs with Booth and some ice cream, when Christine starts crying. The joys of new parenting ... but the truth is, it's all good, and there'll be time after Christine goes back to sleep.

Bones is not only more relaxed at home, but she's more humane on the job. She gives Arastoo a heartfelt talking to about his needing to touch the bones and not rely just on computers, and not needing to pursue scholarly fame, just do his job as best he can.

But I have a feeling, in this unique blend of so many good themes that Bones has become, that it will be famous for a long time.

See also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke ... Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington ... Bones 7.4: The Tush on the Xerox ... Bones 7.5: Sexy Vehicle ... Bones 7.6: The Reassembler ... Bones 7.7: Baby! ... Bones 7.8: Parents

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7: Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ... Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ... Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ... Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ... Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Mad Men 5.5: "Ben Hargrove"

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:37:00 +0000

Who is Ben Hargrove? He's the nom de plume - fictitious name - which Ken Cosgrove uses when his science fiction and fantasy stories are published. We learn this in Mad Men 5.5, one of the best episodes ever in this series.

Hargrove is probably most based on Alfred Bester - who did not write under a pseudonym but whose stories, like Hargove's, were often about murderous androids or other murdering entities, and like Hargrove's, were interplanetary.   And Bester did work for Holiday Magazine - senior editor, non-science fiction - though, as far as know, no one pressured Bester to give up his science fiction writing, as Roger (unsuccessfully) tries to do with Cosgrove/Hargrove.

Hargrove also bears some resemblance to Isaac Asimov, who occasionally did write under a pseudonym (Paul French), and may or may not have been encouraged by colleagues at Boston University (where he was Associate Professor of Biochemistry) to write science not just science fiction. Some of his science fiction did, however, deal with murderous robots and planets, and Asimov also looked a lot like Harry Crane in Crane's earlier years on Mad Men.   (I should mention that I also write about robots and planets, also am a professor - at Fordham - but would never write under a pseudonym. I want everyone who knew me in third grade to recognize my name on Amazon.)

Back to Mad Men 5.5: It had lots of other great scenes, including fisticuffs between Lane and Pete - Lane decks him - followed by Lane impulsively kissing Joan as she offers him ice for his hand. Did she like it?   Well, she certainly didn't object, but opened the door to the office afterward, signaling that she didn't want anything more to happen. But she did touch Lane's hair right before, and she did taunt him and us when Lane asks, after the kiss, if he did anything wrong, and Joan replies that he only did what everyone in the office wants to do ... punch out Pete (the men, at least, would much rather kiss Joan).

There was one anachronism amidst all of this great television. The college co-ed that Pete covets in the driver ed class is upset about all the mass killings in the news (the nurses in Chicago, University of Texas at Austin) and says "things seem so random all of a sudden". Right, except "random" wasn't used this way back in 1966 - to mean something bad - back then, random just meant random or arbitrary.

But a small quibble about a superb show, in what continues to shape up as the best season of Men Men so far.

See also Mad Men Season 5 Debut: It's Don's Party ... Mad Men 5.3: Heinz Is On My Side ... Mad Men 5.4: Volunteer, Dream, Trust

And from Season 4: Mad Men 4.1: Chicken Kiev, Lethal Interview, Ham Fight ... 4.2: "Good Time, Bad Time?" "Yes." ... 4.3: Both Coasts ... 4.4: "The following program contains brief nudity ..." 4.5: Fake Out and Neurosis ... 4.6: Emmys, Clio, Blackout, Flashback ... 4.7: 'No Credits on Commercials' ... 4.8: A Tale of Two Women ... 4.9: "Business of Sadists and Masochists" ... 4.10: Grim Tidings ... 4.11: "Look at that Punim" ... 4.12: No Smoking! ... Mad Men Season 4 Finale: Don and -

And from Season 3: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11 ... Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World in Mad Men ... Mad Men Season 3 Finale: The End of the World

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons ... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ... Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ... Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

20-minute interview with Rich Sommer (Harry Crane) at Light On Light Through

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Fringe 4.18: Broyled on Both Sides

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 02:56:00 +0000

Broyles - alt-Broyles - is the key figure in Fringe 4.18 tonight, in a story we've seen before - on Fringe and in other series - but is nonetheless good.

We found out last week that alt-Broyles is working for Jones, and was thus responsible for alt-Lee's death (even though that's not what alt-Broyles wanted to happen). Tonight we find out why: Jones is providing essential recuperative medication for Broyles' son Chris.

By the way, there were more good alt-touches than usual tonight, ranging from a train-like board with a list of towns and areas in the New York area that have been damaged by the cross-reality contact (but are now recovering) to no black boxes on the other side (they rely on satellite telemetry) to no Sherlock Holmes there, either.

What the other side does have is alt-Nina, and this one is genuinely evil, working with Jones to destroy both worlds. Fortunately, she's in prison, where alt-Broyles winds up, after he delivers the big twist in the story by not going along with Jones, and instead turns himself in to our Broyles on the bridge.

So Jones is foiled, at least in his worst plans tonight, but he's still at large and can pick right up where he and we left off. First, however, it looks we'll be in for a good Eternal Bald Observer episode next week - one that takes place in 2036, with an EBO on a Times Square billboard and someone who looked like Olivia's niece (grown up) in the thick of the action.

What will this tell us about Jones and what he's up to now? Hard to say, but his evil doings are having some good effects, like getting our Lee and Fauxlivia together.

Hey, check out my essay The Return of 1950s Science Fiction in Fringe in this new anthology

See also Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves ... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips ... Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man ... Fringe 4.8: The Ramifications of Transformed Alternate Realities ... Fringe 4.9: Elizabeth ... Fringe 4.10: Deceit and Future Vision ... Fringe 4.11: Alternate Astrid ... Fringe 4.12: Double Westfield / Single Olivia ... Fringe 4.13: Tea and Telepathy ... Fringe 4.14: Palimpsest ... Fringe 4.15: I Knew It! ... Fringe 4.16: Walter Likes Yiddish ... Fringe 4.17: Second Chances

See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21: Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ... Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe

See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing ... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6 ... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ... New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22: Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ... 17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ... Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

MSNBC Cuts Away from Zimmermam Attorney Resignation

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:37:00 +0000

Unbelievably, MSNBC cut away from George Zimmerman's attorneys, as they were explaining to a press conference why they were resigning from the case. Back to Dylan Ratigan and his planned concluding segment. Fortunately, CNN provided continuing coverage (I didn't check about Fox).

MSNBC is thus continuing its amateuristic approach to news programming. When news of the Mumbai massacre broke on the Thanksgiving weekend several years ago, MSNBC offered canned documentaries about prison life. They still switch to prison coverage at 10pm every Friday - as if no real news happens after that time.

Two bright spots are the four new hours of sharp, intelligent commentary by Chris Hayes and Melissa Harris Perry every Saturday and Sunday. But as today's poor performance in covering a live press conference about one of the most important stories of the year shows, MSNBC still has a ways a to go.

Bones 7.8: Parents

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 03:10:00 +0000

Bones continues to break new ground with every episode.   Think about it.   In the past 60+ years of television, we've had crime fighters, male and female, single and married, some even with kids playing a significant role (for example, 24 and The Shield). But Bones is now on the way to doing it all, and more with each episode.

For most of the series, Bones revolved around a deeply flirtatious, star crossed couple. At the end last season, Bones got pregnant. At the end of last week's episode, Bones and Booth had their baby - Christine.   This week, we get to see Bones and Booth at home with the baby, and attempting to wrap their previous and continuing professional lives around Christine.

It can't be an easy thing.   Bones and Booth both work in the most demanding jobs imaginable. Though the humor in them and all around them leavens this, their work is no less life-and-death demanding. Can they sustain this work and be the wonderful parents we know them to be?

In one sense, this is a metaphor for all parents. But it's also very real and literal for Bones and Booth. In episode 7.8, they leave Christine in good hands for the day.   Like all parents, Bones and Booth wonder if Christine will be ok?   Each, in their own way, are distracted by this as they nonetheless give their all and crack the case.

The real question, of course, is not whether Christine be ok, but will Bones and Booth?   In the excellent last scene, Bones does not want to stop holding Christine sweetly asleep in her arms.   She's missed her baby, apart from her all day. Booth asks if maybe Bones should stay home longer with Christine. Bones answers that it won't be easy, but she wants to continue working as well as being a mother.

So the stage continues to be set for the quintessential 21st century family.   Who would have ever imagined that Bones would become a tableau for the best of family values. In an ideal world, we might get to follow this family until Christine became an adult. As it is, we'll have to do well with just a couple of years.

See also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke ... Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington ... Bones 7.4: The Tush on the Xerox ... Bones 7.5: Sexy Vehicle ... Bones 7.6: The Reassembler ... Bones 7.7: Baby!

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7: Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ... Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ... Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ... Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ... Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Awake 1.6: Popper's Penguin

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 00:10:00 +0000

Another excellent Awake last Thursday - 1.6 - which, like all the episodes, teaches us something profound and useful about Britten's condition. Indeed, the show in effect makes use of philosopher Karl Popper's observation that we increase our knowledge not by finding or proving what's true, but by proving what's not true - and thereby increasing our knowledge by subtracting what's false. If we think all swans are white, and see a million white swans, we haven't proven that all swans are white - the very next one may be black. But as soon as we see one black swan, we now know that all swans are not white.

In Awake 1.6, we get a penguin not a swan, and like all penguins, it's black as well as white. But this penguin is different from Popper's swan, white or black, because of the important fact that it's hallucinatory. Now, an imaginary swan of any color would do Popper's epistemology no good at all - it would say nothing about the nature of real swans in the world - but the imaginary penguin in Awake provides us with an important lesson:

If Britten can hallucinate, and pretty quickly realize that what he's seeing is an hallucination, then that suggests that what he usually sees in yellow and blue worlds is real. True, Dr. Lee shows up as an hallucination, but that's only after Britten is given ketamine in this "real" world. Which suggests to me, again, that we don't need quotes around "real" in either world.

Yes, I can see that the penguin could also be a metaphor or a symbol for the whole series, and the "fact" that one or both worlds are really dreams, but, as I've been saying (actually, writing) about this series from the beginning, that would be an obvious and too-easy resolution for what Britten is going through.

If have an interest in philosophy, and the finer intellectual things in life, you just gotta love Awake. Where else can you get a review of a television show with relevance to Karl Popper's der Logik der Forschung.

See also Awake ... Awake 1.2: "Whole" Family ... Awake 1.3: Frequency of Yellow and Blue ... Awake 1.4: The Baker and the Hooker ... Awake 1.5: Stretching a Dream

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com

Game of Thrones 2.2: Cersei vs. Tyrion

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 21:07:00 +0000

The best part of Game of Thrones 2.2 last night was the brother-sister conversation/confrontation between Tyrion and Cersei.   Tyrion knows and gets everything Cersei has been up to - he even thinks she gave the order to kill all of Robert's bastards, and is mildly surprised to find that it was Joffrey's idea and he who gave the order.

Cersei usually outwits and outplays in the game of the thrones just about everyone - not only Little Finger, as we saw last week, and of course Robert last year, but even Eddard Stark, as we also saw last year.   Cersei is prone to kill anyone who knows her and Jamie's secret - anyone likely to really do something about it - and this was the reason that Eddard had to die, risky and provocative of bloodshed and war as that was.

Tryrion, the one person other than Jamie who knows this but is in no real danger from Cersei, sees things differently. He would not have killed Ned, and wants to return his bones to his family as a gesture of respect and civility. He's not in favor of slaying the bastards. Having been to the northern wall, he also realizes what lies behind is a real danger - scoffed at by Cersei.

I haven't read the books beyond the first volume, so I'm predicting just based on what we now know, but it's becoming ever more clear that the imp has the greatest survival chances of not only of his family, but of most all the families in Game of Thrones. He's certainly one of the most appealing characters. As just a small example of his survival quotient, he dismisses the Captain of the Guards who follows Joffrey's orders and replaces him with his own man.   Tyrion can do this as the Hand.

The Queen is stronger than the Hand in terms of formal power, but not necessarily with Tyrion as the Hand.   Meanwhile, in other doings, Arya has some expected difficulties in her feigning young malehood, Snow's in trouble with that uber-polygamous creep with many wives-daughter, and Greyjoy really enjoys a close ride on horse with his sister, before he finds out that she's his sister. An incestuous bunch, these gamers of thrones.   Still not much doing with the dragons - but they're like sleeping giants who will soon arise.

See also Game of Thrones Back in Play for Season 2

And see also A Game of Thrones: My 1996 Review of the First Novel ... Game of Thrones Begins Greatly on HBO ... Game of Thrones 1.2: Prince, Wolf, Bastard, Dwarf ... Games of Thrones 1.3: Genuine Demons ... Game of Thrones 1.4: Broken Things ... Game of Thrones 1.5: Ned Under Seige ... Game of Thrones 1.6: Molten Ever After ... Games of Thrones 1.7: Swiveling Pieces ... Game of Thrones 1.8: Star Wars of the Realms ... Game of Thrones 1.9: Is Ned Really Dead? ... Game of Thrones 1.10 Meets True Blood

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The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

The Killing 2.2: Holder

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Levinson) — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 06:02:00 +0000

As intrepid as Linden is, she's never going to catch Rosie's killer entirely on her own - there are just too many people and obstacles in the way of that. She needs Holder. In The Killing 2.2, the two get back together.

Holder is in some crucial ways as powerful a character as Linden. He's weaker - ethically - than Linden. But that means he has to struggle more, win a victory over himself, in order to get back on the path of doing the right thing. He did this last week, when he proved that his superiors just wanted to bury the Rosie case - not really do anything to find her real killer. Linden realizes this tonight, and she pulls Holder back from some brink and back into partnership with her.

They'll need all the help they can get. The mob boss - Yanic - bald-facedly lies to Stan, to get him off the track of the real killer, which evidence that we and Linden and Holder are beginning to see is pointing in Yanic's mob's direction. Of course, we've gotten lots of false leads in this story before, but sooner or later one is bound to pan out.

The greatest strength of The Killing remains the portrait it provides of Rosie's family in the aftermath of her death. Tonight we see Mitch in a tryst with a guy she picks up in a bar, desperate for some kind of feeling. It's another facet of a family unraveling, disintegrating, understandably unable to come to tems with the brutal loss of Rosie. Mitch's sister is the only one holding them together.

Jamie is also a hero, doing his best to keep Richmond afloat. The candidate at first can't accept that he'll never walk again, but begins to see the harsh truth by the end of the episode. Does he still have a chance to get elected and a role in finding Rosie's killer? I'd say yes to both.

See also The Killing Season Two Premiere

And see also The Killing on AMC and The Killing 1.3: Early Suspects ... The Killing 1.5: Memorable Moments ... The Killing 1.6: The Teacher ... The Killing 1.8: The Teacher, Again ... The Killing 1.9: The Teacher as Victim, Again ... The Killing 1.10: Running Out of Suspects ... The Killing 1.11: Rosie's Missing - from the Story ... The Killing 1.12: Is Orpheus the Killer? ... The Killing 1.13: Stretching Television

Special Discount Coupons for Angie's List, Avis, Budget Car, Garden.com, eMusic,

The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...