Damaged Goods
I already know you didn’t watch the two best dramas on TV last year. Were they too tough for you?
I’ll cut to the chase: the two shows were “Damages,” the erstwhile legal thriller starring Glenn Close, and “Mad Men,” the early-60s drama set in a Madison Avenue ad agency. No hour-long dramas were better last year. But you didn’t watch them: these programs had small ratings, even by American cable standards: especially “Damages,” the darker of the two (it will be out in Canada later this year; "Mad Men" has been available to those of you who get AMC). And I’m guessing it’s that darkness that kept you away.
You see, as much as most of us claim to have a taste for some shadowy fare in our pop culture, this isn’t often the case. And it’s most difficult in the case of television – most of us don’t want to let these thoughts and feelings (or these people!) into our living rooms. Watch “House,” all you want, and pretend that he’s some gruff bastard, but just as sure as he’ll come up with his most brilliant diagnosis ever on the next episode, you know that at his core he’s a good guy. You root for him. And it’s always been this way, from the fat, working-class TV bigot, Archie Bunker – a fundamentally decent family man who eventually learned to accept people – to the other fat, working-class TV bigot, Andy Sipowicz – a fundamentally decent man who eventually learned to accept people.
Sure, we accept a little bit of darkness on “The Sopranos,” but Tony, our antihero, is a mobster. He kills people as a matter of course in his business. “Dexter” is pretty grim, but he’s a serial killer, so if it were as happy as an episode of “The Teletubbies” something would be terribly wrong. The genius of these shows is that they make you identify with the tiny good parts – or sometimes just the raw humanity – of bad people who do bad things. But we don’t really connect to their evilness: we’ve all got these darker thoughts, and, in fact, while “Dexter” and “The Sopranos” can be incredibly tough, they’re both safe prospects. These people are defined by their badness, and it’s easier to have killers and thieves be irredeemably bad than it is our lawyers and admen. I’d make a joke about lawyers and admen being worse, but I can’t start picking the low-hanging fruit yet.
So back to “Damages” and “Mad Men.” In the former, we meet Glenn Close’s Patty Hewes – a protagonist who we’re supposed to think will be part of that great TV lawyer tradition, a Perry Mason or Jack McCoy type – and she does the unthinkable: she ( oh, spoiler and sadness alert!) kills an innocent puppy to get a witness to co-operate. A puppy! On a scale of one to evil, that’s a 10! Still, Patty has a real job, a husband and a son. She’s might be a sociopath, but she’s a borderline sociopath, and it’s that part that makes us uncomfortable. We’ll never meet a Tony Soprano, and we’ll never meet a Dexter (well, we’ll never meet them twice.) But Patty Hewes? What if this woman was our lawyer? Worse, what if she was us?
John Hamm’s Don Draper, lead adman on “Mad Men,” isn’t quite as dangerous but he’s just as dark. He makes ads for a living, and his industry suits him perfectly: he’s entirely a construct, just an image of what he thinks a man should be. His name is fake, as is his backstory, and the way he presents himself: Don is running away from something and we’re not totally certain what it is for most of the series. He’s unable to really connect to his wife or kids even though it’s what he wants more than anything. He’s a shell, something hollow on the inside. In a way, he’s even scarier than a dog-killing lawyer, because he’s even more possible, more realistic: he’s the everyman, but the one who can’t quite tell the people close to him who he really is, what he’s feeling, where he’s vulnerable – and he doesn’t get redeemed.
We, and he, are never more aware of this than during his last pitch: to Kodak, for what at the time they refer to as "the wheel," the carousel slide projector.
Sure, that’s not as graphic as a mob hit or a killer with a scalpel, but it is possible – you could be that guy - and that’s even scarier. Maybe the reason you’re not watching is that you don’t need to: there might be a little bit of that darkness inside you, and you don’t want it reflected back.
I’ll cut to the chase: the two shows were “Damages,” the erstwhile legal thriller starring Glenn Close, and “Mad Men,” the early-60s drama set in a Madison Avenue ad agency. No hour-long dramas were better last year. But you didn’t watch them: these programs had small ratings, even by American cable standards: especially “Damages,” the darker of the two (it will be out in Canada later this year; "Mad Men" has been available to those of you who get AMC). And I’m guessing it’s that darkness that kept you away.
You see, as much as most of us claim to have a taste for some shadowy fare in our pop culture, this isn’t often the case. And it’s most difficult in the case of television – most of us don’t want to let these thoughts and feelings (or these people!) into our living rooms. Watch “House,” all you want, and pretend that he’s some gruff bastard, but just as sure as he’ll come up with his most brilliant diagnosis ever on the next episode, you know that at his core he’s a good guy. You root for him. And it’s always been this way, from the fat, working-class TV bigot, Archie Bunker – a fundamentally decent family man who eventually learned to accept people – to the other fat, working-class TV bigot, Andy Sipowicz – a fundamentally decent man who eventually learned to accept people.
Sure, we accept a little bit of darkness on “The Sopranos,” but Tony, our antihero, is a mobster. He kills people as a matter of course in his business. “Dexter” is pretty grim, but he’s a serial killer, so if it were as happy as an episode of “The Teletubbies” something would be terribly wrong. The genius of these shows is that they make you identify with the tiny good parts – or sometimes just the raw humanity – of bad people who do bad things. But we don’t really connect to their evilness: we’ve all got these darker thoughts, and, in fact, while “Dexter” and “The Sopranos” can be incredibly tough, they’re both safe prospects. These people are defined by their badness, and it’s easier to have killers and thieves be irredeemably bad than it is our lawyers and admen. I’d make a joke about lawyers and admen being worse, but I can’t start picking the low-hanging fruit yet.
So back to “Damages” and “Mad Men.” In the former, we meet Glenn Close’s Patty Hewes – a protagonist who we’re supposed to think will be part of that great TV lawyer tradition, a Perry Mason or Jack McCoy type – and she does the unthinkable: she ( oh, spoiler and sadness alert!) kills an innocent puppy to get a witness to co-operate. A puppy! On a scale of one to evil, that’s a 10! Still, Patty has a real job, a husband and a son. She’s might be a sociopath, but she’s a borderline sociopath, and it’s that part that makes us uncomfortable. We’ll never meet a Tony Soprano, and we’ll never meet a Dexter (well, we’ll never meet them twice.) But Patty Hewes? What if this woman was our lawyer? Worse, what if she was us?
John Hamm’s Don Draper, lead adman on “Mad Men,” isn’t quite as dangerous but he’s just as dark. He makes ads for a living, and his industry suits him perfectly: he’s entirely a construct, just an image of what he thinks a man should be. His name is fake, as is his backstory, and the way he presents himself: Don is running away from something and we’re not totally certain what it is for most of the series. He’s unable to really connect to his wife or kids even though it’s what he wants more than anything. He’s a shell, something hollow on the inside. In a way, he’s even scarier than a dog-killing lawyer, because he’s even more possible, more realistic: he’s the everyman, but the one who can’t quite tell the people close to him who he really is, what he’s feeling, where he’s vulnerable – and he doesn’t get redeemed.
We, and he, are never more aware of this than during his last pitch: to Kodak, for what at the time they refer to as "the wheel," the carousel slide projector.
Sure, that’s not as graphic as a mob hit or a killer with a scalpel, but it is possible – you could be that guy - and that’s even scarier. Maybe the reason you’re not watching is that you don’t need to: there might be a little bit of that darkness inside you, and you don’t want it reflected back.
posted by Max at 12:10 PM
2 Comments:
Hey cuz.
Haven't seen "Damages" yet, the ads look good though, but "Mad Men" is a personal fave. Everyone should make themselves watch it. It's not always fun, but it's one of the best shows on TV.
Hey cuz.
Haven't seen "Damages" yet, the ads look good though, but "Mad Men" is a personal fave. Everyone should make themselves watch it. It's not always fun, but it's one of the best shows on TV.
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