What If... Peter Quill Attacked Earth's Mightiest Heroes?

 "Bummer. I thought you were the dude from Van Halen."

Yes, I know. I'm doing so much telly at the moment, and it's a struggle to keep up. I blame all the new telly. There's this, there's Fool Me Once, there's Echo after this. I fear that Twin Peaks and the Batman movie serial may have to take a very temporary back seat, but they're very much ongoing. Same with Robin of Sherwood.

Anyway, I enjoyed this. There's character stuff with PeterQuill as a kid with Ego as the main threat. There is, perhaps, an overly neat resolution. But it's fun seeing an Avengers team form in 1988. We get a young Hank Pym, Bill Foster, and the fortysomethings are represented by T'Chaka... and both Peggy and Howard must be nearing retirement age. Peggy isn't aging bad. The Winter Soldier is well handled, though, and Thor is fun. 

One complaint, though: the United States has many fine ales and a proud brewing traditiob. But its bottled "light beers" are unfit for human consumption. Thor and T'Chaka endorsing "light beer" is the most unrealistic thing in this episode.

Mad Men: Indian Summer

 "Just think about it deeply, then forget it. Then an idea will jump up in your face."

This is an episode about ambition. The central scene, of course, is about Roger's second heart attack as he's dragged in to placate big clients Lucky Strike, but the situatioin has admen and clents alike being very, very worried about Sterling Cooper. So Don, the undoubted talent, is made partner.

This leaves openings. Peggy gets another chance ("Maybe lightning will strike twice"), through the fog of casual sexism, to impress, using her talent for euphemism to its fullest. And, when asking for a raise from Don, she's advised not to be "timid"... and gets what she wanted. In direct contrast to Pete, whose blatant angling for a promotion gets him nowhere.

Peggy gets an orgasm though. Unlike the sexually frustrated Betty, who takes what she can from the washing machine as her husband works late and has an affair with Rachel who, in turn, is adjusting to the concept of being the "other woman" and what it means. All this is very gendered, and the affair is very much at Don's masculine convenience.

As ever, this is all subtly done, and superlative telly... but the suicide of Don'd brother is not; hanging is a drawn out and horrible way to go. And it's a resentful Pete who gets the parcel for Don...

Mad Men: Long Weekend

 "This is all there is..."

This is yet another multi-layered and multi-faceted episde of a drama with a lot going on, ending with Don facing a bit of a low-key existential crisis after Roger's heart attack. But essentially it's aboiut how society, certainly in 1960 but very much also today, expects women to be pleasing to men as men use them.

We see this first with Betty's widowed father and his new girlfriend who, to Betty's disgust, "lives to serve". It's revealing that Don says casually that it'll be "good to have another woman around the house, give Betty a break." But we also see this with Roger (and, passively, Don) abusing his power to hire some pretty young twins half his age, invite them to drinks, and then humiliate and sexualy use them while they fulfil theor roles of being pleasing. It's creepy to watch. We also see a kind of parallel as Joan and Carol (of whom more later) pick up two men; Joan snags the good one while Carol, stuck with the dud, just sighs and tells him to do "whatever you want".

And Don, distraught, instinctly goes to Rachel- a woman he respects, and who is not afraid to be firm with him- for succour. She doesn't yield meekly... but she yields. Althoigh not after getting some of Don's life story out of him. He's the son of a prostitute, raised by his dad, a client, and after his dad's death by his dad's wife and her new man. Bloody hell.

Even the exceptions are interesting. When Carol finally, drunkenly, confesses to Joan that she loves her ("Just think of me as a boy"), Joan pauses and pretends it never happens- and Carol goes along with it. Same sex attraction simply can't be mentioned.

And then there's Peggy, callimg out Pete on his entitled dickishness. She's going places.

This is simply an extraordinary bit of telly.

Mad Men: Shoot

 "I like this show. Very gay songs."

Once again, Mad Men gives us a devilishly clever forty-seven minutes of television. Ostensibly it's about a bigger, rival agency trying to poach Don from Sterling Cooper, unsuccessfully in the end, and the use of a modelling job for Betty as a quid pro quo. Yet it's so much more than that. It's about contemporary attitudes to women working and how they need the implied permission of their husbands, and how being at work is seen, unthinkingly, as neglecting her role as mother. It's all done with admirable subtlety.

Peggy, on the other hand, is now seeing the downside of her copywriting success, no longer seen as sexy now that she's a bluestocking- leading Pete to take extreme measures to defend his masculine definition of her "honour". And yet, in this man's world, Peggy seems to be confident she can go places, much to Joan's well-meaning bemusement. 

The ending, though, is clever, and not only pecause it makes the title a pun on both modelling and firing a shotgun, as she takes elegant revenge on at least one man who has dared to wrong her. This is wonderfully symbolic of something much deeper, and the perfect ending to an elegantly well-crafted episode.

Mad Men: Red in the Face

 "He doesn't even wear a hat!"

This extraordinary drama of bygone manners here turns its attention, in an oblique manner, to politics, as Sterling Cooper is set to handle Nixon's presidential campaign. Nixon va Kennedy is seen partly, as in the original meeting, as a clash of the generations. But it's also about social class: Betty is upset to see Helen Bishop in the supermarket and be accused of being a pervert after what happened with little Glen. You can nsymathise with her... but she slaps Helen and then proceeds to close ranks against the working single mother with her snooty friends, and to note that "I hate Kennedy" just to spite her. Wow.

There's still gender in the mix, though. Don gets a report from his pet Freudian quack on Betty and is told, with extraordinary masculine condescension towards Betty, that she has "the emotions of a child". Women are infantilised, yet the men drink enormous amounts on a weeknight, drive away while bladdered and behatted, and make inappropriate passes at their friends' wives- and Don blames Betty, over whom he has some power by dint of his gender, wen Roger, his boss and thus untouchable, makes a move on her. Ouch. Meanwhile, Pete's marriage is showing some very real cracks and he and Peggy are certainly attracted to each other.

This is a pre-Sixties world of hats, hard drinking and sexual harrassment. It all feels very secure. Yet, with Kennedy in the background and Peggy in the foreground, there may be the green shoots of something new. This is such perfectly observed telly.

Mad Men: Babylon

 "Mourning is just extendsed self-pity."

The title is clever. It relates to the ad campaign for Israel and Don's half-flirty, half vaguely racist decision to pursue lunch with Rachel because, well, she's Jewish, so she must know about Israel, right? But no; she's happily exiled in Babylon. Yet another kind of Babyon is on show, one of sin and adultery. Roger is having an affair with Joan. Don is avoiding sex with his actual wife and sleeping instead with his Bohemian girlfriend.

A lot is going on, as usual. Peggy hints that there may be substance to her, and gets a chance to write some copy, much to the disgust of Joan, who randomly alludes to Marshall McLuhan, of all people. Rachel may well acrually like Don, in spite of him being married. We get a flashback to Don's Depression childhood as Dick Whitman. Don ends up out of place in a Beatnik poetry place, where his profession is treated as a sell-out by pretentious jobless types.

There are lots of subtle moments about the characters and about the place and time in which they find themselves living. Not a lot actually happens, but that's not the point. And both the acting and the directing are utterly sumptuous.

Mad Men: 5G

 "I like being your medicine..."

It's an arresting title for a programme made in 2007, but even more arresting is the programme itself. Centred around the idea of a man's "executive" bank account is an examination of 1960 American man, his independence and his secrets. Done has plenty here. Peggy may discover that he's having an affair, but it's Joan who controls such infrmation and what's done with it- and her job as secretary is actually to help him cover it up.

Don has bigger secrets than that, though- or should I say Dick Whitman? His brother Adam is a simple but decent fellow, but Don is believed dead by his family and has reasons to be so desperate to cover up his own past that he bribes his own brother to say away... with money he can spend without Betty knowing. Wow.

Meanwhile, Ken is a published author... and all the other ad execs, fancying themselves as writers, are predictably jealous, saying a lot about the cultural cringe of advertising. And Pete is most jealous of all, so much so that he gets his wife to push for a story to be published... and is upset that she won't sleep with an old friend to do it. Again, wow. Men rule the world here, and it's tyranny.

I suspect neither Don's secrets nor Pete's marriage will last massively long. But this is bloody good stuff.

Mad Men: New Amsterdam

 "No job for a white man...!

I wouldn't have expected it, but Mad Men, that glacially and elegantly unfolding little visual serialised novel of life and manners of New York in 1960 turns out to devote an early chapter to that most un-American of subjects: social class. Well I never.

There's always been an undercurrent of class conflict to the talented and moody Don, a man with depth and soul yet a mysterious and deeply suppressed past, and Pete Campbell, a younger man who oozes the arrogance of entitlement. Here we have a nicely observed culmination of that conflict as Pete breaks the rules and steps on Don's toes, getting himself fired... only for it to be revealed that there is a deeper level of rules, and that certain aristocrats are needed to oil the wheels of posh New York society. The Pete Campbells of this world are unsackable, and the episode concludes with a tale of Pete's family connectrions to the Roosevelts.

We also find Betty connecting more to Helen, discovering the reason for her divorce and becoming the object of a rather cute crush from her young son. There's a class difference here, too, the camera (and nosy Betty) lingering on the notably less well-kept interiors of the house, and with Helen volunteering for the Kennedy campaign while it's implied that the Drapers are Republicans- this being 1960, when said party supported democracy and the rule of law.

This is slow yet fascinating telly.

Mad Men: Ladies' Room

 "What do women want...?

The second episode, while is does a lot of other stuff, rather cleverly examines the lot of women in the America of 1960 through the respective lenses of Peggy, continuing to settle in at the firm, and Betty Draper, whom we properly meet for the first time. Contrasting against them is Don's other woman, Bohemian and carefree to the point of throwing a television out of her window, but lacking any real connection to society, long term security or- so far, at least- even a name.

Peggy continues to run the gauntlet of constant male attention in a world in which casual sexual harassment and even groping is utterly normalised- the worldly-wise Joan takes it utterly for granted- and the only acceptable excuse to a man's advances is to claim to "belong" to someone. 

Meanwhile, Betty- whose name evokes Betty Friedan of The Feminine Mystique fame- is drowning in a life of suburban domesticity where the arrival across the road of- shock horror- a divorced woman is the subject for hushed gossip. It hardly seems surprising that she should have a nervous breakdown. Nor is Don's very contemporary resistance to her seeing a psychiatrist, given the stigma of mental illness- although, like a stopped clock being right twice a day, he sort of has a point in that this shrink seems to be a Freudian, and therefore a quack. And even when he relents, we learn that the shrink is reporting to him. Don, who is cheating on his docile wife, is subtly controlling her.

Oh, and there are a lot of women crying in the ladies...

There's also Don's evasiveness about his past, which is moving slowly towards the foreground. This is brilliant television, and it' very telling how well we know the characters after two episodes.

Mad Men: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

 "Now, try not to be overwhelmed by all this technology. It looks complicated, but the men who designed it made it simple enough for a woman to use."

I've seen the first season of Mad Men before, but in 2008, before this blog was conceived. Revisiting this first episode has been fascinating, but the overall experience has been the same. This is bloody good.

In terms of plot, things are fairly simple- it's 1960, and Don Draper is a Madison Avenue ad executive known for his inspiration. On the surface he is charming and brilliant but, like many charismatic introverts, he has hidden depths, as hinted at most strongly in his conversation with Rachel Mencken, where he is phiposophical and she is perceptive, recognising another person living a life perhaps different from what one's origins may indicate. Essentially, he comes up with an advertising slogan for Lucky Strike cigarettes, while Peggy has her first day- and sleeps with creepy Pete after his stag night. Then we see that Done- who is having an affair with a Bohemian girl with whom he connects- is married to a trophy wife with two kids.

Yet it's not about the plot, it's about the subtle (and blatant!) evocation of a mid-twentieth century, before the '60s started swinging, filled with all sorts of gender and racial norms, and attitudes that jump out at us, whether about smoking, women working or Jewish clients using Jewish firms. Don, as an advertising exec, has essentially a bullshit job, but with prestige. He's allowed to sleep in work time. Meanwhile, Peggy's doctor humiliates her when mansplaining about the pill.

The writing, acting and direction are all masterful. Let's see how the rest of the season goes.

Iron Man 2 (2010)

"If there's one thing I've proven, it's that you can count on me to pleasure myself."

I loved the first film. I love this one too. Not as much as the first film, but a lot.

Yes, the plot may meander a bit, and contain a predictable bit where the hero hits rock bottom, but it works. Robert Downey Jr is still born to play Tony Stark. Gwyneth Paltrow is a fine Pepper, yet again, and still has great charisma with Downey. And Don Cheadle is much better as Rhodey. We also get loads and loads and loads of Tony being charismatic and Iron Man action sequences. That gets us halfway there already. And then there’s the Elon Musk cameo...

The conceit works- Tony is dying from the very thing that keeps him alive, and so needs to develop things from his father’s past while Justin Hammer acts as antagonist and this time the baddie is a rather different variation on Whiplash. Plus we get a splendid big set piece at the Monaco Grand Prix, and a lot of world building; there’s a lot about Nick Fury’s Avengers Initiative, we meet Black Widow and discover a familiar-looking old shield. And the post-credits points it all toward to Thor. It’s positively nostalgic seeing all these early MCU films. But the film works on its own terms, carried along by strong characters and a superb cast even if the plot, while perfectly decent, doesn’t quite have the narrative flow if the first film. Three films in and the MCU is going strong.

Ant-Man (2015)

"How's retirement?"

"How's your face?"

This is probably one of the less good Marvel films I've seen; there was a certain lack of polish and there's an unevenness that makes it very noticeable that Edgar Wright was replaced as director. And yet it shows the Marvel benchmark that we nevertheless have a thoroughly enjoyable film that isn't going to garner many negative comments. It helps that Paul Rudd is so excellent.

You can sort of tell, in spite of the different genre (a heist movie within the Marvel Cinematic Universe) and very different setting that the script is from the same source as a certain three films starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, in spite of the lowered humour quotient. But this is very much a Marvel film, complete with Stan Lee cameo and gratuitous reference to Tales to Astonish. It's interesting that Henry Pym was a superhero, as Ant-Man, back in the '80s here, but that Janet Van Dyne, a character I remember so well from Secret Wars, is dead. my Marvel comics knowledge is pretty thorough up to about 1993 and pretty hazy after that; is she dead in the comics?

It's nice to have someone released from prison (admittedly for a pretty Robin Hood crime that doesn't lose our sympathy) as a hero. This film believes in rehabilitation, which is a big reason to like it. The character stuff s good too- Scott being cruelly kept from his daughter (my own little girl is not much younger) and the dynamic between Hank and Hope. The most emotive scenes are all about fathers and daughters. It's a fun film to watch, and even has a giant Thomas the Tank Engine. It's well worth seeing, and don't be put off by the fact that there are better Marvel films. It would be a shame to skip this.

Ted 2 (2015)

"Piss off- I don't want to get any jizz on me..."

Ted 2 is much like Ted, which is no bad thing. And that is to say that it feels like an extended episode of Family Guy right up to the point of reusing a skit about donated sperm. But, again, this is no bad thing. Seth MacFarlane may not be quite in the very first rank of comedy film-makers, but he can certainly be relied upon to be very funny indeed.

This time the plot is about Ted's legal crusade to legally prove that he's a person while much weed is smoked by all, but this is just an excuse for the one liners that we know and love, and the stand-up style observational comedy that we expect from MacFarlane. The pop culture references abound again: Sam Jones is back, while Michael Dorn's character goes to the New York Comicon dressed as Worf...!

Also, Sam is cool: an idealistic and very intelligent lawyer, an attractive female character whom we can actually respect for her brains and her principles... and she smokes a lot of weed. It seems that young Americans do a lot of that these days. 

This is a film that will surprise no one who knows the slightest thing about Serh MacFarlane, and I for one have no problem with that. I'm hoping for another sequel.