I’ve never seen an episode of Game of Thrones, but I thought fans might be interested in this.
On the topic of TV, Kathleen Geier has a couple of theories about slipping Mad Men ratings, which are down 1/3 for this year’s season premiere versus last year’s. You can read them here. Mine’s a little simpler: splitting up the last season of a big ensemble drama like Mad Men diminishes it.
AMC probably thought that splitting up Mad Men would work because it worked for Breaking Bad. But that show was driven by one character: Walt. All the other characters in that show existed mainly as someone for Walt to interact with, so it was possible to split the last season without sacrificing the momentum of the show.
But, even though Mad Men is centered around Don Draper, he’s not the Walt of that series. Other characters (Roger, Pete, Peggy, Joan, Sally, Betty) have complex story lines, and some of the magic was the way the writers were able to weave together the stories of the different characters in the eleven episodes between the intro and the season finale. Cutting it into two seven episode seasons means less time to spin those tales, and last season had a rushed air to it. Without giving away spoilers, this season’s first show was kind of “meh” because the writers were again pressed to catch us up with too many characters in one episode, especially considering how the cast has grown and that action takes place on both coasts. So, there were a lot of “drive by” scenes where we had a brief glimpse of a character without any real advancement of their story. I haven’t seen the second episode yet, but I’ll be interested to see if the writers can pull it together, because this double ending nonsense is a real constraint.
cleek
man, that first episode was boring as fuck. i haven’t seen the second, and literally the only reason i’ll watch it is because i’ve sunk so much effort into it already – have to see it through. i honestly don’t give a crap about any of the characters any more.
but, frankly, and even though i’ve watched every season faithfully, it’s just a boring show. most episodes, next to nothing happens.
NotMax
Then there’s crap like this:
kindness
Klingon I ain’t. Not sure if I would take to Fire & Blood Ale.
raven
They revised the numbers on MM after people watched asynchrously, it wasn’t that bad.
semperfi123
Shorter muckymux….”I don’t know anything about anything but after reading dkos for 10minutes here is my expert analysis.”
zmulls
Second episode was much better….lots of good Sally and Dawn moments.
Paul in KY
@semperfi123: test
Percysowner
@cleek: Oh, thank you! I didn’t start watching it until recently when my daughter told me I had to because it was so good. She says the show is so dense and packed that she can only handle one episode at a time. So I started watching and found it cold. I mean the only characters I have warmed up to are Joan and Sally. I marathoned it so maybe I missed the dense details, but all in all I didn’t think that much happened.
I’m also like 5 years older than Sally, so I lived through most of the social issues and I’m so not shocked by the sexism, racism, and social changes. It’s more of yeah, that’s what it was like instead of wow, was that really what it was like.
rikyrah
Parents Outraged After Finding Easter Eggs Filled With Racist Notes
Updated: Apr 21, 2014 4:53 AM EDT
By WRIC Newsroom – email
HENRICO COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) -Parents in the West End are outraged after waking up to find Easter eggs filled with racist notes.
“You can hit the whole world with the Internet, stay out of my yard.”
The Smiths were having an egg hunt with their 3-year-old son Sunday afternoon. It’s an Easter tradition that was interrupted after an upsetting discovery.
“My husband noticed the last Easter egg and i knew it wasn’t one that put out. we opened it and it’s got the white supremacist stuff in it,” said Jackie Smith.
Inside the egg was the message “diversity = white genocide.” It said, “Mass immigration and forced assimilation of non-whites into our lands is genocide.”
“I think it’s absurd,” said Brandon Smith. He went around their college hill neighborhood looking for more of the eggs and alerting parents so other children wouldn’t find them.
“We don’t want other kids around here who can read being like, ‘Hey mommy what’s the million man white march or what’s the genocide project?’ Most of us don’t want to explain genocide to our 6-year-olds,” said Jackie.
http://www.wric.com/story/25293952/parents-outraged-after-finding-easter-eggs-filled-with-racist-notes
The Ancient Randonneur
Thumbs up to anything coming out of Ommegang Brewery. Do they still brew at the Cooperstown location or is it all imported from Belgium now?
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: If the parents want to know who did it, they don’t have to look any further than the first few comments under the article. If the white supremacist creeps actually went into these peoples’ yards and placed the eggs, isn’t that trespassing at the very least? There are some sick, twisted assholes out there to place that crap in children’s Easter eggs. It shows how low and cowardly they are.
gaucho
Last season was pretty forgettable. 80% of what was in the recap I read was pretty much purged from my brain. People might stick with it week to week, but a big gap can be deadly for ratings.
If this wasn’t the last season, I might be letting it slip to a future binge-watch on DVD or Netflix.
FridayNext
Reacting to the OP: Do people really put that much thought into the immediate future of a season before turning on an episode? In my experience people decided to watch or not watch an episode of a show they like based upon whether they think they will get anything out of the time invested in the short term. I could see if it was a gradual drop off, with people slowly realizing there will be no payoff to plot threads, but lower ratings on the first episode or two of a season? I am dubious.
But then, I am not watching any GoT’s episodes until a) GRRM lives to finish the series and b) The show stays on the air long enough to finish the books. So maybe people are consciously waiting until the last season(s) play out.
FridayNext
@cleek:
Agree! Last night was a little better, but not much. Pete had some nice scene chewing scenes and it’s nice to see Dawn get some screen time and development. Other than that my bar for what is important enough to keep me from watching new episodes is sinking by the week.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@rikyrah: Classy. I’m sure it’s merely free speech from the “real” victims, since we all know being racist is nowhere near as bad as someone calling you out for being racist.
Wonder if Michelle is scheduled to speak at any graduations in that aeea?
Mike in NC
@rikyrah: Maybe Eric Cantor planted those eggs. That area is his turf. He’s coming down here to campaign for a creep who worked for Jesse Helms.
Karen in GA
Well, in slightly happier news, I’ve learned how Iggy the Wonder Schnauzer defines “loyalty.”
CONGRATULATIONS!
My wife watches Mad Men for the furniture.
I’m serious.
I routinely fall asleep when she watches it, because I don’t give a shit about 60s furniture.
Gindy51
@Betty Cracker: When you think about all the stuff they COULD have put into those eggs.. well perhaps next year they will have the egg hunt in a more secure location.
Amir Khalid
Just curious: what kind of haram firewater is in that bottle?
Karen in GA
@Betty Cracker: But… but… post-racial something something!
(Reason no. 2,715 why I’m glad I don’t have kids — I don’t have to try explaining this shit to children. “Oh, come here and sit by Mama, li’l Becky, and I’ll tell you all about it. Hmmm. Well… see, it’s like this, sweetie — some people are ignorant motherfuckers who need ‘asshat’ tattooed on their foreheads so’s we know not to bother with ’em.”)
rikyrah
Conservative heavyweights have solar industry in their sights
The Koch brothers and large utilities have allied to reverse state policies that favor renewable energy. Environmentalists are pushing back, but the fight is spreading and intensifying.
By Evan Halper
April 19, 2014, 9:00 p.m.
WASHINGTON — The political attack ad that ran recently in Arizona had some familiar hallmarks of the genre, including a greedy villain who hogged sweets for himself and made children cry.
But the bad guy, in this case, wasn’t a fat-cat lobbyist or someone’s political opponent.
He was a solar-energy consumer.
Solar, once almost universally regarded as a virtuous, if perhaps over-hyped, energy alternative, has now grown big enough to have enemies.
The Koch brothers, anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and some of the nation’s largest power companies have backed efforts in recent months to roll back state policies that favor green energy. The conservative luminaries have pushed campaigns in Kansas, North Carolina and Arizona, with the battle rapidly spreading to other states.
Alarmed environmentalists and their allies in the solar industry have fought back, battling the other side to a draw so far. Both sides say the fight is growing more intense as new states, including Ohio, South Carolina and Washington, enter the fray.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-solar-kochs-20140420,0,7412286.story#ixzz2zXAks5Jf
Origuy
@rikyrah: All but a couple of the comments on that easter egg story (why did I read them?) are from racist whites talking about “race mixing” and “the white genocide”. One that isn’t says that this place isn’t the only one where the eggs were placed. I found a report from Oakdale, near Sacramento.
Origuy
@rikyrah: All but a couple of the comments on that easter egg story (why did I read them?) are from racist whites talking about “race mixing” and “the white genocide”. One that isn’t says that this place isn’t the only one where the eggs were placed. I found a report from Oakdale, near Sacramento.
schrodinger's cat
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I don’t watch Mad Men anymore, but when I did, I watched it for the clothes.
Alexandra
First episode of this season’s Mad Men should have been longer, like the preceding two seasons. More room to let out the seams and spend more time with the characters. Agree on the stupid season split, only the hardcore will care in 12 months time. There’s a real sense of decline, dread and malaise hanging over the entire thing… just the way I like it.
Still easily my fave show on TV, though. It repays close attention. If people don’t get what it’s trying to explore or find it boring, that’s their loss. Shrug.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: I haven’t tried that particular brew, but Ommegang is a highly-regarded brewer of generally Belgian-style beers; they are based in Cooperstown, NY.
Linnaeus
*shrug* I’ve never found Mad Men to be boring at all. Sure, some episodes are stronger than others, but I think overall the narrative is strong and the characters seem quite real to me. Plus I love the attention to detail with respect to costume and set design. The show really nails it there.
I don’t agree with the notion that “nothing happens” on the show. I actually think quite a bit happens, but generally Mad Men doesn’t hit you over the head with it. It’s one of the better portrayals of the 1960s in popular culture (not without its faults and defiiciencies, to be sure) out there. I wonder if our collective imagination of the 1960s is somewhat skewed in favor of seeing it as a time of constant activism and upheaval. Of course, the decade was a time of significant social change. But for a lot of Americans, life just kinda went on – the changes weren’t front and center in their daily lives.
Mad Men may never get the ratings, but then again, neither did The Wire.
RobertB
@FridayNext: After the start of season 4, HBO renewed GoT for two more seasons. I completely understand wanting to wait on the series to be completed, but GoT is one of the exceptions.
PopeRatzy
@Gin & Tonic:
Ommegang “3 Philosophers” may be the best North American brew. It is as good as anything Unibroue in Quebec brews.
WaterGirl
@Gindy51: Yeah, and women shouldn’t go out late at night or wear short skirts.
CB
Oh man, I found the Fire and Blood ale on Friday, and while its hard to justify a $15 beer, Ommegang put up a damn good fight. One of the finest red ales I’ve ever had. Incredible complexity. The Ancho chiles put it over the top. Amazing beer.
Belafon
@Karen in GA: That’s pretty close to what I tell my kids.
Linnaeus
Speaking of Mad Men and the late 1960s, let me point BJers to this book of photographs taken in Detroit between 1967-70. The book was originally released in in 1972 and was intended as a more general portrait of the kinds of people in American cities, but since then has been reinterpreted as a presentation of Detroit right about when it was entering its most significant phase of economic and demographic change. Even if you don’t have any ties to the area (as I do), you might like the pictures themselves, especially if you’re a fan of the show.
FridayNext
@RobertB:
Which will take them up to, what?, maybe somewhere in a Feast for Crows with AT LEAST 2 more books that have yet to be finished by an author who has been know to take 5 years or more to finish a book?
Serious question. Assuming A Song of Ice and Fire stays at seven books of comparable lengths (GRRM estimates the last two books will be 1500+ pages, that’s three seasons each right there) to those already published,how many seasons of the show will be needed to cover them all? They are on season 4 now, and haven’t even finished the 3rd book. At some point the actors will want to move on, die, or get too old to play their characters.
I don’t follow the fan boards or gossip for either the show or books, so this question may have been asked and answered, but I am seriously doubtful that GRRM will finish before he dies and/or the show stays on long enough to adapt all the books.
Gypsy Howell
Mine’s even simpler:
Megan
I was a diehard MM fan for the first 3+ seasons, but as soon as they introduced the Megan character, the show started to drag for me. I can’t disentangle whether it’s the writing of the character or the way Jessica Pare portrays her, or both, but all the screen time and storyline time they
ve devoted to the Don & Megan relationship has felt very flat. matthew Weiner loves Jessica Pare waaaaaaay more than I do, apparently.
After seeing the first ep this season, I wondered if I was even going to follow through to the end (although at this point, I’m so invested in it that if nothing else, I’ll hatewatch it to the end).
OTOH, last nights ep was so much better. Pete! Roger and Jim! Joan! Peggy! Don and Sally! And I loved the whole Shirley-Dawn storyline. And there was no Megan in it at all.
rikyrah
I couldn’t watch Mad Men when it first came out. Not one episode at a time. So, I DVR’d the first two seasons of it, and watched them during two different weekends. That’s how I fell in love with the show.
Seanly
@gaucho:
I’ve seen some posts from folks in the business (like John Rogers of Kung Fu Monkey blog) complaining about the split season approach of basic cable shows. Apparently writers and audiences hate it and I can’t imagine it’s good for the shows’ ratings. Not sure why basic cable does it for episodic features. For the all the overbreeder reality chronicles, Storage Wars or that ilk, it doesn’t matter, but the midseason cliffhanger and 3+ month wait is killing story-driven shows.
raven
@Seanly: The Soprano’s fooled around like that. I guess it was that they took 2005 off.
cleek
@raven:
i think that was due to a writers’ strike.
MaryRC
@Linnaeus: Yes — the upheavals in the culture affect the Mad Men characters but they happen off-camera. For example we don’t see anyone in the office marching on Selma or even mentioning it but there are now two black women in the office, one of them rocking an Afro and the other just promoted to an office of her own. By the same token, I don’t see Megan the actress becoming the victim of a Manson-family-like murder although we’re being set up to think this. If the Manson family murders are referenced, they’ll happen to someone she knows or lives near.
Fort Geek
To cleanse the mental palate of the cruddy white supremacists’ egg-laying, here are some damn cool carved goose eggs.
MaryRC
What raven mentioned above is interesting in that there was a lot of pearl-clutching, not just by Geier, over the apparent fall in ratings for the first Mad Men episode this season, only to find that DVR viewings have boosted the ratings by 75%. So people are watching it, just not on Sunday night. I wonder if this signals a change in the way that reviewers will start to react to morning-after ratings data.
gaucho
@Seanly:
Interesting. I agree with the critiques of the split season approach. I think the most interesting series of the last 10 years (The Wire, Sopranos, etc.) all had real story arcs over the course of a season, a bit like a set of serial novels. Breaking it up, unless the series really has all of the elements working together, just makes a season harder to deliver a satisfying product.
FridayNext
@MaryRC:
Maybe, maybe not. But what you should keep in mind is that ratings matter on commercial TV only in how they effect ad revenues. If people are not watching the show when it airs, along with the commercials, but watch it later DVR’ed where I presume they don’t watch commercials, the ultimate ratings won’t matter so much, unless people are streaming it with commercials or through a paid service.
It’s all in how the network makes money. Do they make as much money on a DVR’ed program? If not, it doesn’t really matter how many people see it this way since it doesn’t make as many people as much money.
RobertB
@FridayNext: Without spoilers, I’d say this – they’ve done three really good seasons on GoT, and so far season four has been just as good. I’m willing to bet on the next two that they’ve bought. The novels and the show can go to crap at any time, but given what’s been covered by the show, the books are worth reading, and the show’s worth watching now. They’re really good, even in its unfinished state.
zmulls
The model is changing, as we all know. MAD MEN could have gone the HBO route and not offered the series to anyone but subscribers to the cable station. But they recognize that more people are paying a la carte and there are enough folks to make it worth their while. (I think HBO will eventually go this way, but they will be the last holdout).
I stopped buying cable – too many channels with too little to watch, and I realized I was subsidizing the sports channels. I wait a year for HBO shows on DVD, but I will pay for the few series I really want to see. I paid for BREAKING BAD, I paid for TOP CHEF and I am paying for MAD MEN. I don’t get to see them until the next day, but I am at least that patient.
The revenue model is now to get some money from the cable subscriptions, and some other money from the pay-per-view folks like me. I agree that I don’t contribute to the advertising revenue, and I agree that the falling numbers for “live viewing” will mean less advertising revenue. But that’s just one side of the equation.
The problem we’re having with discussing the ratings is that the size of the “first night” audience is no longer the only component in Total Revenue. So saying the audience is dropping is *not* a sign of unpopularity, it’s a sign that the show/network is taking in less money from cable subscribers – and probably more money from a la carte viewers.
Fort Geek
@FridayNext: Books 4 and 5 happen concurrently; Martin had so much material that he broke some of the characters out and put them in IV (Cersei, especially) and the rest in V.
I still haven’t managed Book 5. It took me 8 months in 2010 to get through the first four, more because of medical troubles than because of the books. I’ve been too tired to even try tackling the 5th. It’s taken me months to get through a 100 page book. A thousand pages might take me as long as it does for Martin to finish the series.
Another Holocene Human
@rikyrah: Somebody’s pissed about the gubernatorial election results!
I know the pain those families feel is not funny, but mockery is the only thing that can stop hatred in its tracks. Like that Star Trek episode where the engineers laugh the evil hate entity off of the Enterprise. So I will mock.
Xantar
@rikyrah:
What do you think of the criticism some people have leveled at Mad Men that it doesn’t reckon enough with race considering that it’s set in the 60s?
Another Holocene Human
@Mike in NC: If it’s Eric Cantor, how does he spin this incident to make himself the victim? is the next question.
Another Holocene Human
@Xantar: I’ve never watched the show, but I’ve watched the reaction to it. Isn’t the show all about white male privilege? Under a microscope, even? Is it too subtle, is it the meta and not the meat? Does the show have an Archie Bunker problem?
Paul in KY
@Karen in GA: I liked your explanation.
Trollhattan
Funnily enough, my DVR didn’t snag MM or GOT last Sunday because there’s now a clot of shows I’m trying to record on during a roughly three-hour slot and the box can only handle two HD recordings simultaneously.
1st world problem!
So I imposed my will upon it and retrieved both missed episodes from the endless rerun stream and was able to stitch the two MM episodes together last night. Good thing, as the first had me scratching my head over where the hell we left things last season.
In sum, the writers seem hellbent on pounding the crap out of several key characters–notably Don, Roger and Peggy–how much lower can they sink?–and at the moment the sole core character on the upswing seems to be Joan. But I’m jelling in the belief the story arc ultimately revolves around Sally, whose age and life path provide the perspective from which to reevalute the 50-60s from today’s vantage point. She’s about ten years older than Weiner and I suspect has all the experiences (saw The Beatles for crissakes) that he wishes he’d had. Regardless of my pet theory, she and Don seemed to have a kind of breakthrough last night, and I’m very curious as to whether it was meaningful or simply each admitting they’d learned something about the other they’re now willing to accept.
BTW, Roger’s lunch with his daughter was completely hilarious. What self-help book did she read–or is she seeing a non-Freudian shrink?
zmulls
@Another Holocene Human:
It’s a collection of fragments of minutely observed human interactions, through the prism of our memories of the time “we” (the boomers, that is, the generation of the series creator) came of age.
It takes a lot of attention to detail to really discover the show. I finally went back and watched the first couple of seasons and enjoyed the show as a whole a lot more. It is indeed like a novel, but more like an 18th century novel of manners. It’s a little like a MIDDLEMARCH for the 1960s via the 1990s, but with the central character as self-deceiving as Dorothea Brooke is honest.
THE WIRE, a very different show, also required you to pay more than passing attention. You had to lean forward and listen hard and fill in the details. Neither show wants to spoonfeed moments to you. As much as I loved BREAKING BAD, for many reasons, subtlety was not always its strong suit.
For instance, in last night’s episode (which I watched this morning), I turned my attention away for a moment, and I totally missed that the two African-American secretaries had an inside joke of calling each other by their own name — as they were the only two minorities in the office and were mistaken for each other. MAD MEN is a treasure trove of moments like that, but it’s not going to stop and Make Sure You Heard It. It’s a show that uses mood and style as a means of conveyance.
It is truly worth the effort, but it’s meant to be a political or historical document. It’s about people and deceit: The lies we tell each other and especially ourselves. That’s why it’s about advertising.
Trollhattan
@Another Holocene Human:
It starts out with what I believe to be a very realistic appraisal of that world at the time and then proceeds to dismantle/deconstruct it brick by brick (glass-and-steel panel by glass-and-steel panel?) over a roughly decade-long span. It “glorifies” Madison Avenue in the sense The Sopranos glorified life in the mob.
mark
One thing that struck me on from watching the first MM episode was how many ads I had to fast forward through on my DVR. I was left wondering if the high degree of story line fragmentation was because they had to satisfy so many different advertisers? I wonder what the time count was on actually story line and if it was above average?
FridayNext
@Fort Geek:
I am aware of books 4 and 5. Read them both. But that doesn’t alter the calculus of books to shows, does it? It would take the same number of seasons to cover the material whether they are two concurrent books or one large book. Yes? No?
Frankly, halfway through 5, I started to lose interest. I really don’t think it matters who wins the Iron Throne at this point, and I am rooting for The Others. They can’t possibly rule Westeros any worse than the various players in the Game will.
zmulls
@Trollhattan: Trollhattan, ITA that Sally will be one of the characters who matters most as the stories come to a finish. I’m not sure that Don and Sally’s relationship will be *more* important than what happens to Peggy, not to mention Joan, Pete and Roger…..but Sally’s story will be equal to theirs.
What’s amusing is that Matt Weiner couldn’t possibly have known that he was casting an child actress who would be able to play the kind of moments Kiernan Shipka is pulling off. As she started to grow up (and take acting lessons from the pros around her), Weiner must have been frantically rewriting the story arcs in his mind to take advantage of the possibilities. Imagine if she had turned out to be a terrible actress at 14?
Fort Geek
@FridayNext: I’ve seen some harsh criticism of Book 5 (especially by PZ Myers over at Pharyngula), and that’s also made me wary of picking it up.
Maybe Martin rushed that book into print (hahahaha).
Still, you’re right–and maybe Martin himself is worn out by the monster he’s created. I can’t see myself writing either if it’s no fun anymore.
zmulls
You realize that GRRM has probably realized he will literally be writing these books for the rest of his life.
Trollhattan
@zmulls:
She’s a phenomenal kid, and what she can do non-verbally puts many adult actors to shame. Am quite happy we don’t see more of Weiner’s kid, who can’t ditch the creepy vibe even when his character is doing something laudable.
zmulls
It does not escape attention that she has gotten more screen time over the years, and Weiner’s kid has gotten less. I’m sure he realizes that his kid doesn’t have “it” — if he did, creepy Glenn would have gotten a bigger storyline.
Gypsy Howell
@zmulls:
Eh, they would have done what they did with Bobby – just recast her every season. And then we’d be hearing snippets of dialog along the lines of “My, look how much Sally has grown up and CHANGED over the last year, Don”
RobertB
@FridayNext: Heck, I must’ve misread your message than about not reading the books. Anyway, I suspect that Benioff, etc. will throw out a good bit of book 4 and 5, or trim it down a lot. If they can do that, and GRRM can get caught up on the rest of the series, it’ll be great. If not, the show will turn into a decent Dark-Ages soap opera. There’s a lot of stuff on TV worse than that.
As far as the novels go, there are whole sections of books 4 and 5 that can just get pitched out, and not hurt the story. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they’re _bad_, but they’re a bit bloated.
JR
Tried that beer this weekend. It was pretty pedestrian: I didn’t pick up any notes of the peppers. It drank fine, but wasn’t anything special, which something at that price ought to be.
liberal
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
My wife watches cuz she thinks Jon Hamm is teh hot.
agorabum
@cleek: Reading fail. I initially thought the comment that nothing seems to happen in the show referred to GOT. Was about to protest rather dramatically….
Maybe some hybridization is needed. In the game of advertisements, you win or you die?
Sondra
@Percysowner:
Me too. Not to mention the fashions – I loved my mini-skirts too, but now it’s just boring. There just isn’t anything to draw me back in after the way last season ended.
It was fun for awhile but there are other better shows on this season.
Have any of you been watching Hannibal? It’s weird, but sort of riveting.