Don Draper meets changing times
This week it’s all about the chopping block — and I’m not talking about that successful renovation show on Channel Nine or the somewhat successful cooking show on Channel Ten.
I’m talking about the television shows that the US networks have decided to axe — some even before their time.
We also look at Mad Men and Australia’s new scripted television series which has been compared to Packed to the Rafters — even before it aired.
If you enjoy the pleasures of 2 Broke Girls, Revenge, Gossip Girl, Smash, Glee, Modern Family, The Office, and The Simpsons, well you’re in luck. These shows have been renewed for another season in the US.
But for those who are enjoying Missing, The Secret Circle, Awake, One Tree Hill, Unforgettable, Terra Nova, Ringer, House, Harry’s Law, and CSI: Miami, sadly the sun has set. They have been cancelled.
Another show which the sun has also set on but will be in reruns forever is Desperate Housewives. Yes, Wisteria Lane is not taking any new residents in prime time. The last episodes (which are to be aired in Oz soon) have tied up some loose ends and given viewers some ghostly reminders of the past eight seasons.
One thing is for sure, there will be no Wisteria Lane big screen outings. Creator Mark Cherry once claimed that Desperate Housewives will not be likened to Sex and the City’s cinema scope.
The Universal Studios set of Wisteria Lane will now be turned into settings for other shows.
One show which will be back on TV screens is a reboot of The Munsters. Number 4351 Wisteria Lane may be turned back into 1313 Mockingbird Lane.
I’m still waiting for the update about the new Bewitched series. Watch this space!
On Monday the premiere of Girls airs on Showcase (Foxtel). The premise is similar to Sex and The City. However, Girls has much more realism. Its characters are in their mid-20s and the show’s setting is Brooklyn. It’s less glamorous than the Manhattan view of Sex and the City — even though Miranda moved to Brooklyn in later seasons.
Girls has it all — sex, drugs, and fickle relationships — and the pragmatism of New York.
What has the sex, the sass and is now entering the swinging ’60s is Mad Men, which is past its halfway point of the fifth season in the US, but only up to episode seven in Oz. The year is 1966, where there is a gradual shift to non-conservative values, such as the sexual revolution and drug-taking — think LSD and marijuana.
In upcoming episodes we will see Don Draper (Jon Hamm) dealing with the changing times. He has controlled everything in his adult life.
But now there are new horizons with the second wave of feminism. Margaret “Peggy” Olson (Elisabeth Moss) was once naïve but is now starting to accept her own power as a woman. She knows what she wants and doesn’t excuse herself for it. Advertising in 1960s America was a man’s world, but times are definitely changing.
A character that’s having trouble adapting to the inevitable change is Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser). Coming from a well-off old New York family, Pete seems to have it all — a beautiful wife, a child, a house in the suburbs and now he’s a partner in advertising agency Draper Sterling Cooper Pryce. With all this conventionality, Pete is now lost.
I think the writers are slowly alluding to the fact that Pete’s mental state is not too good. In previous episodes, he’s mentioned he has a gun and he keeps looking out of office windows.
Perhaps Pete will jump out of the Time Life building, which is where the agency occupies two floors.
With Mad Men renewed for three more seasons, I wonder if they will time jump toward 1969 and take the agency into the hairy 1970s. Perhaps Don Draper’s daughter Sally could get caught up in the flower power of the late ’60s, and run away to California to join the Manson family.
Anything is possible, especially when it revolves around a family of debt collectors.
After six months of promotion, Tricky Business has started. It was promoted as Channel Nine’s new show of the year. It was compared to Packed to the Rafters even before it began. But Packed to the Rafters it isn’t. Tricky Business is about a family of debt collectors who deal with love, lust and maintaining a family business.
Tricky Business was tricky. It was entertaining. The opening frames along Wollongong’s new coastal road with a nice low helicopter shot got me hooked. I was already following someone’s journey into the world of somewhere.
However, I didn’t like much of the dialogue, but who cares if it’s not a masterpiece. With the visual location shots, attractive actors (Kip Gamblin and Lincoln Lewis), and expensive look,
Tricky Business is a show that is downright original. Who would have thought a show about debt collecting was so colourful and attractive.
Another show that is indebted to its viewers but has confused them somewhat with seasonal changes, is Packed to the Rafters. Recent reports say that cast members are leaving in droves.
Whatever the case, they can create more characters like Voula Karadonis.
Recently watching an episode on my Foxtel IQ, I had to laugh at the Greek character Voula Karadonis (Olivia Stambouliah). Voula works in a wedding retail shop. Her first scenes were helping another character find a suitable wedding dress.
I hope the show’s creators are noticing the great talents of Stambouliah’s great talent — perhaps a spin-off show? Australia does need more ethnic characters on television — and in a positive light.
By TIMOTHY CONNELL
