Monthly Archives: October 2009

The Counterforce Casting Couch: Independence Day 2

Posted by Benjamin Light on

Let’s face it, Hollywood is never going to fund a big-budget original movie ever again.

Search your feelings, you know it to be true.

Marco and I have been talking for a while about doing a series of posts on movies that should be made. Now don’t get me wrong, the projects we’ll be proposing shouldn’t actually be made. In a better world, the budgets would go to real artists who do good work, but that’s not the world we live it, and at Counterforce, we believe in making the best out of a bad situation. Just like Liam Neeson.

no thank you

no thank you

So, let’s get right down too it. You know, you know they’re going to make an ID4:2 some day, so we might as well make it enjoyably bad. Hell, just the idea of watching this movie instead of some Michael Bay cartoon-adapted crapfest gives me a boner. You can never ever go wrong blowing up as many international landmarks as possible.

Thus, The Counterforce Casting Couch: Independence Day 2

PREMISE:

This is gonna be a little rough, we can fill in the blanks during lighting shifts on the set. So, it’s like 20 years after the event of ID4. Will Smith is the President, obviously. The White House will have just finished being rebuilt and look exactly the same as before. Jeff Goldblum will basically be playing Al Gore. Sorta Green Living Apostle / Technocrat in Chief. Shia LeBeouf is Goldblum’s rebellious kid and Aaron Yoo is his buddy who films all their wacky adventures on his Flip Camera. There will be some drama because Shia doesn’t know his dad was a hero because Goldblum’s role was classified or something.

aaron-yoo-shia-labeouf

Ryan Kwanten from True Blood will fill in the Hick Character contingent with his little jailbait sister, Dakota Fanning. I threw a lot of brits into the cast so there can be other groups of characters in the UK and Australia, Iraq, etc. Famke Janssen will play somebody’s wife. Maybe Bill Pullman’s.

dakota_fanning

So, the Aliens come back, only this time, they come in peace and claim to be seeking asylum. Apparently these aliens are the not-evil faction of the bad guys. Will Smith will have all these mixed feelings because he hates aliens, but doesn’t want to be prejudiced to the nice ones. It will be like that scene in Star Trek 6 where Kirk talks about the klingons who killed his son, only this time it will be Will Smith saying it, and he’ll be talking to the First Dog.

Ryan Kwanten

Obviously, the bad aliens come back and destroy a shit-ton more monuments and landmarks. They’ll be led by Nic Cage, who is some kind of evil billionaire who helps the Aliens in exchange for world domination. Definitely gotta sack the Burj Dubai, the White House, Big Ben, the Golden Gate, the Vatican, etc. But this time, the good aliens have shared some of their technology, so the fight is slightly more fair, but earth still gets its ass kicked and the bad aliens occupy the planet. This would all take place on July 2nd.

yeah, that shit's gonna fall

yeah, that shit's gonna fall

The next day would be a lot of failed counter-offensives and characters hiding from Alien stormtroopers. Then Shia LeBeouf will decide to form a resistance and Aaron Yoo will do all the tech shit to get the word out on the internets. Ryan Kwanten will be there with Dakota, and he’ll turn out to be some kind of hillbilly ass-kicker. I see a scene with him, shirtless, feather tied to the back of his head, destroying enemy food supplies boston-tea-party style. Then we’ll cut to Said Taghmaoui in Iraq with a British accent and he’ll be all, “It’s the Americans, they want to organize a resistance, about bloody time!”

not the bees!

And then July 4th will be the big counter-attack. Aaron Yoo will die. Will Smith will fly an alien fighter ship with Bill Pullman as his wingman. They’ll fight their way to the mothership, land on it, then fight their way to Nic Cage’s lair on the bridge. Somehow, Jeff Goldblum will be there too. A big fistfight later, Will Smith wins, then escapes and Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum pilot the Mothership into the sun, sacrificing themselves. Shia hooks up with Dakota Fanning, and then after the credits roll, Samuel L. Jackson walks into a bar to talk to him about the Avengers initiative.

And… scene.

Fuck yeah!

Fuck yeah!

You know you’d pay to see it.

“How do you say ‘Hamburger’ in Japanese?”

Posted by August Bravo & Marco Sparks on

We want to get hammered on Prohibition-era hair tonic and open a hotel on the moon and make the rock full of cheese as American as possible (and be greeted as liberators)(before we blow it up) and maybe, just maybe, Conrad Hilton agrees with us. With a little bit of “wow!” as a lady friend of mine once said, between our dreams and our desires, we existed with last night’s new episode of Mad Men in the “Wee Small Hours.”

August Bravo: That Betty sure is a dreamer…

Marco Sparks: You may say she’s a dreamer, but she’s not the only one…

It’s really shaping up that this season is all about the meeting of dreams with desires, two things that aren’t necessarily the same thing.

August: So it seems. Betty is afraid to give into these desires. Don, however, is not.

Marco: I think Betty’s a smart person, a worldly person of sorts, but not a person of depth. Is she really afraid to to combine her wants and dreams of a silver fox lover from the Governor’s office, or is she just trapped within the boundaries of her princess mindset? It seemed like she would’ve fucked that guy (had the show been set in the present day, they would’ve been twittering naughty little missives towards each other) as long as it hadn’t been so “tawdry.”

But that aside, I loved that the episode started off with Betty laying in the dark with her dreams and ended with Don finally asleep in bed with the thing he wanted.

August: I think she’s still trying to see if she still has it. Don neglects her because, let’s face it, he doesn’t seem to give a fuck anymore…

Marco: They’re practically roommates raising kids together.

August: Yeah, and she wants some attention. Some naughty play on the side to get excited about. Reminds me of my ex-girlfriend, actually.

Marco: Which one?

August: Actually, all of them!

Marco: Yikes. Betty just reminded me of my feeling for this show, at least this season, when she’s patronizing  her nanny/housekeeper Carla about “her station” and talking about those four dead girls in Birmingham. “This has really made me wonder about civil rights. Maybe it’s not supposed to happen right now.”

And I feel like when you really get down to it, everything Don does is a reaction to something. Quite probably everything.

August: Betty may actually want the guy from the Governor’s office, but she’s just reacting too, I think. Betty is slowly becoming a more interesting character to me as this season progresses. And more like Don.

Marco: He is one of the most influential characters on TV or in real like in, like, forever.

August: I think Betty wants without thought towards consequences, and last night she got lucky in her covering of them and not getting too caught up by them.

Marco: I loved that Betty A) of course had a hard time discussing civil rights with Carla, but B) threw that fundraiser pretty much to cover herself with Carla, who had Henry Francis, the man from the Governor’s office, coming over for an illicit hello.

August: I don’t think Betty’s going to be so lucky in the future. And yeah, Don does just react. I don’t think he starts a lot of the situations he finds himself in. They just present themselves and he does what he can to craft them, to shape them. He is crafty. But for now, Don isn’t going to stop doing, getting, or taking what he wants. He’s in that 1960s mindset, and why wouldn’t he be?

Marco: The 1960s were like a theme park for insecure men with money to walk around just being better than everyone. Especially their women. And the women of Mad Men have to be careful because they can be let go when they reach their full potential.

August: Yeah, really. Don is the man, quite literally, so therefore he’s accepted as being better than Betty. He deserves more.

Marco: And takes more.

August: He brings home the bacon. And sometimes he wants a woman to play with that bacon. And why shouldn’t they?

Marco: He is Don Draper, after all.

August: He works hard, he plays hard. I think that’s how he feels.

Marco: Don Draper is secure enough in his awesomeness to show up to work late pretty much all the time.

August: But usually because he’s at home reading the bible with his family, of course.

Marco: Oh, of course. You’re really feeling Don, aren’t you? So is Don beginning the relationship with teacher, the very “close to home” relationship, based on the disapproval of his new father figure with unrealistic desires (like the moon), Conrad Hilton?

August: Oh yeah, definitely. I think Don’s just fed up with everything lately. “Give me more ideas to reject,” he says.

Marco: “Now that I can finally understand you, I am less impressed with what you have to say.”

August: Having to say things like that daily and put up with your underlings while constantly being jerked around by a powerful man like Hilton can stress a guy out. At that point, Don really needed something his life to go right, and go right the way he wanted it to. He needed a good powerfuck.

Marco: And the teacher was perfect for him because she presents herself to the world he lives in like she’s from another planet. And I’d like to think that, deep down, she’s outing herself as being from the same planet Don is from, or heading to as the show progresses, but who knows.

She jobs along lonely stretches of highway at all hours of the night, she lives above somebody’s garage, and she advocates not staring right into the sun. And she’s seen their entire affair, and knows exactly how it’s going to end. Who knows what Don Draper’s views on fate and predestination are, but I think he knows the one thing he can control, whether doing so is a reaction or something else or not, is to fuck this woman’s brains out, especially if there’s a higher risk of him being caught than ever before. “Doesn’t that mean anything to a person like you?”

August: You can tell that Don’s giving less and less of a shit about Betty, it seems. She asks if it’s okay to have the fundraiser there and he says sure, as long as he doesn’t have to go. Don’s a little like Betty in that he wants what he wants, and right now it’s the teacher. He’s drinking too much coffee, he’s not sleeping, he’s giving more and more of himself over to Connie, I don’t know.

Marco: Everyone’s walking around hunched over, with burnt fuses sticking out of their necks.

August: Exactly. Everything, especially everything with Don is a ticking time bomb at this point. Especially when it comes to Conrad Hilton. Don may want Connie’s approval, but I don’t he’ll be able to give Connie the love he wants.

Marco: Speaking of time bombs, I feel like yet another fuse was lit last night in the coming hardcore show down with Roger and Don.

August: Seriously. Even though Don and Roger technically agreed on aspects of the Sal situation last night, there’s still going to be a showdown. I’m hoping for a fistfight!

Marco: More American bloodlust as usual, huh?

And Don did cause all of us to step back a little with the way he treated Sal in this episode, wouldn’t you agree?

August: He knows about Sal, knows about what went down on in that hotel room with the bellhop and Sal, or was about to go down in that hotel room when they were out of town together. Sal’s being bit in the ass for not having given in. Don’s a cool guy with a lot of the things that flow outside what is currently considered the social norm of his time, but it seems he doesn’t trust that lifestyle. The way he mutters to Sal, “You people.”

Marco: It was absolutely chilling, wasn’t it? It’s kind of funny that when Don is mean to people like Pete Campbell or Ken Cosgrove or Kurt or Smitty, Kinsey and Crane, and the rest, we kind of cheer it on. We want to see more of it. Maybe even with Peggy, a little. But when I said that Joan was the spine of this show in a lot of ways, I think you could make the argument that Sal’s part of the ribs of the thing.

From his first scene in the first episode, when he walks in and you can tell he’s gay, and you instantly know how hard his life has to be in this time period, I think there was too much of a chance that this character could’ve been a joke, but he’s always been written well and Bryan Batt has played him with such class. And I think we’ve come to realize how much we like Sal this season just by watching him suffer so. Especially at the hands of Don Draper.

August: But Don had to do what he had to do. Lucky Strike is their biggest client, after all.

Marco: They were there since the pilot too, weren’t they? They’re “toasted.” But in Lee Garner, Jr. we have a villain you can really hate. A bully. He wants what he wants, as do all the characters on this show, and he won’t be told no too.

August: You upset him and Lucky Strikes and you’re fucked. Like Sal is now.

Marco: I blame it all on Harry Crane, who looks more like young Isaac Asimov to me than Perry Mason.

August: When I said that Sal was fucked, well, it was Harry Crane who did the fucking. He should’ve done something when he got that phone call, and his silence is what did Sal in.

Marco: Yeah, it is. It’s funny to me that a majority of the other characters all have better gaydar than Sal, in that they can all tell that Sal is gay and he’s clueless about them. But then again, that commercial was super homoerotic, so maybe it wasn’t so hard to figure out.

But, to be fair to Don, it seemed like Don and Sal never talked about Sal’s sexuality, so with Don witnessing Sal’s hookup with a bellhop out of town, he may’ve assumed that it was a regular thing with him (as I think you could call all of Don’s extramarital partying around) and Don may be upset that Sal didn’t follow his vague advice of: “Cover your exposure.” Eh… then again, maybe not.

I just hope that Sal finds some temporary solace there in Central Park…

August: Seriously.

Marco: …and then teams up with Joan for a comeback at Sterling-Cooper.

August: Is it too late to make a comment about Sal being shafted? Sal got shafted!

Marco: I guess it’s never too late.

What about the moon?

August: And you reminded me, where the fuck was Cosgrove? I think I liked Roger’s line the best, the one about what the company is going to be known for…

Marco: ”That’s what you want this place to be known for? That and some guy losing his foot in the lawnmower.”

August: Yes!

Marco: I think that Betty actually got not just the line of the night, about the meta-statement of the season, maybe the entire show itself when she was referring to Baby Eugene and Connie at the same time…

August: “‘I want what I want when I want it,” as she feeds the baby in the wee small hours…

Marco: “…and you don’t care what it does to the rest of us.”

Trash Talk.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Is it weird that whenever I end up in a fast food place, which I’m finding increasingly hard to do with an alarming frequency, I always see the sign on the trash can…

And think of this:

…which, of course, is from Michelangelo’s Creation Of Adam, the 1511 fresco that is one of the many images adorning the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and illustrates the Book of Genesis.

Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whatever your brand of religion is.

Either way: It’s the hand of God touching the trash of the world. Or, rather, throwing it away. The Garden of Eden wasn’t a paradise, it was a compose pile! It was a recylcing bin! The refuse of humanity!

from here.

I know, I know, I need to get out more. Maybe not spend as much time with just myself and my thoughts. Believe me, you’re not the first to mention it. This is where all my thoughts tend to go:

And, only semi-related, the Burger King character still freaks me out…

I mean, right? Look at this guy.

After cars and cash, the next thing fly honeys dig in a guy is his Henry VIII apparel. This I know be truth.

Look at that. First he’s rubbing sun tan lotion on your girlfriend at the beach while you’re at work and then next thing you know…

You’re waking up to a big bad mistake. And he’s got his own cologne. Ugh. But I digress…

…to celebrity trash, it is! No, no, just kidding.

I’m fascinated by the idea of trash as art, such as the sculpture of Tim Noble and Sue Webster immediately above here, or Yuken Teruya’s trash art tree seen a little higher up, the refuse of humanity turned back into something of use or importance. The recycling of that which we used and no longer want into something that we not only want, but cherish. Who knows, maybe Michelangelo would be proud. Especially if it was all done in the name and glory of God. Or, at least of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I don’t want to sound like the Wes Bentley character in American Beauty, but it almost makes you want to look at trash slightly differently, right?

Well… maybe not. But food for thought, I hope.

Do women know about Shrinkage?

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Rachel: “Ah! Oh my God! I’m sorry I thought this was the baby’s room. I’m-heh-really sorry…”

George: “I WAS IN THE POOL! I WAS IN THE POOL!”

From the classic Seinfeld episode, “The Hamptons.” It was on the other day and I just wanted to share this lovely moment with you (again). Picture from this lovely site.

The time is now.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

 

from here.

I woke up this morning and turned on the news. Old white men were screaming “FOR WHAT!?” and it took two minutes before I found out what they were so upset about: Barack Obama won a Nobel prize for Peace. Such an antiquated notion, but he won it for talking, for getting people excited, getting them hopeful, and, yes, because the rest of the world hated GWB that fucking much. On top of it, Jim and Pam got married on The Office, there’s a sequel to Phantom Of The Opera, NASA is bombing the moon (which I believe we talked about before, yes?), You can get strawberried M&Ms, and Marge Simpson is appearing on the cover of Playboy.

You’re wide awake, the time is now, and we’re all living in the future. Up next: Liquid hard drives, jetpacks, giving extraterrestrials reality shows about breaking into the music industry, and death rays!

I sing the blog electric!

Posted by Marco Sparks on

I typically get Harper’s magazine at work, but a week or two ago I was at the book store with some time to kill. There and elsewhere. So I figured, Oh, what the hell, and I bought the latest issue. Not such a hard decision, but definitely made easier when I saw that the piece of fiction in that particular issue was a new one by Jonathan Lethem. He has a new novel coming out, entitled Chronic City, so I assumed it would be a selection from that. Well, having read the story, called “The Dreaming Jaw, The Salivating Ear,” I doubt it. But it’s interesting, nonetheless. Very interesting.

from here.

The first paragraph:

“I do not think I shall visit my blog anymore. It is not so much the smell that discourages me—gulls have skeletonized the corpse in the entranceway, and the lapping tide has salt-rinsed the floorboards where the intruder’s blood was once caked as thick as fruit-leather—as it is a certain malodor of memory persisting there. The stink of my disappointment being that stink which the sea’s salt can never rinse.”

If I’ve learned anything from this story, it’s that your blog is your fortress, and you are a warrior. Protect your kingdom. And remember: You are not a mariner. Your blog is perhaps not a boat, but regardless, the tide is coming in…

Another line: “I offer this, my blog, to the world, but I do not require the world to need it or accept it, for it is my very own blog.”

from here.

Here We Go.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Roman Polanski: Art is not enough.

Alan Moore’s new fanzine: Dodgem Logic.

Illusions: What’s in a face?

James Ellroy’s American Apocalypse.

Why do women have sex?

Autism may be more common than previously thought.

Top court overturns Italian prime minister’s immunity.

On sex and marriage.

“Here We Go.”

Gay men in danger in Iraq.

Man’s skull grows back after 50 years.

Teenager details rape by Joe Francis.

Afghan Taliban say they pose no threat to the West.

Tyler Perry reveals that he was abused as a child.

Pierre Chang does not like being lied to.

Archaeologists unearth 17th century bottle used to scare off witches.

10 reasons not to bring someone back from the dead.

Franken passes bill to help contractors raped abroad.

I’d like to say that I’d like to see less rape in the news, but really what I mean is I’d like to see less rape in the world.

Major breast cancer breakthrough announced.

Want to switch your biological clock around?

Indian shot for public urination.

Motherfucker needs to be impeached!

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Political commentary outrage presented without comment, found here.

“I’m only in Rome for one night. I won’t have my heart broken.”

Posted by August Bravo & Marco Sparks on

When in Rome… well, when you’re in Rome, you can pretend that your life isn’t so bad, that you’re not so bored in upstate New York, and that you’re maybe getting picked up by some guys straight out of a Fellini movie. Or, who wish they were in a Fellini movie. So, let’s get out of the office for the long, hot weekend and go make some accommodations while talking about last night’s episode of Mad Men, “Souvenir.”

August Bravo: Pete Campbell, man of reason.

Marco Sparks: And a reader of Ebony magazine!

August: And always so smart, so capable.

Marco: And ambassador to the Republic of Dresses! That would totally be a great indie rock band name, by the way.

August: Can you blame it on the kid for the ruined dress? Maybe you can, but Pete doesn’t. He’s just the man to step up and fix things on his own. But why just for a stranger?

Marco: He’s a sucker for a foreign accent?

August: Is he even really that good of a guy or does he just want a piece of ass?

Marco: Piece of ass. Definitely. Also a little boy…

…pretending to be a man. But without a proper understanding of what a man is (if any of us so called “men” really know).

August: And then there’s Betty’s man from the Governor’s office, coming through in a clutch. Is that more than she can say about Don? I think she thinks so.

Marco: It would seem that, as the show’s progressed, Don humors Betty less and less. But he did let her name the baby Eugene.

August: The reservoir is the only thing she’s shown passion in recently… or did I speak too soon? Who is this guy really and why is Betty so interested?

Marco: Perhaps it has more to do with the fact that he’s interested in her? Everyone sees Betty as an object of some kind, and more and more in a less favorable way since that’s all they see her as, so perhaps she’s entertained by this guy who definitely only sees her as an object that he wants to get into. Much like one would get into a reservoir, I would imagine, if I were to end this paragraph with a bad gender-related analogy.

August: She’s always had such a strange and wandering curiosity. And then she’s all smiles after the kiss in her father’s car.

Marco: Of course he compliments the car. Is this guy just lucky or does he know exactly how to play Betty? And as she drives off, who is she looking at in that rearview mirror? The man who wants her, or… just herself, satisfied?

August: Such a twisted woman. I’m slowly thinking she’s becoming more like Don with the deviousness.

Marco: It’s possible that, unlike Don, Betty knows how to be good and disgusted with herself after a bad time.

August: And then there’s Joan. Kicking herself maybe for leaving Sterling-Cooper?

Marco: Maybe, but she’s gonna play it cool. She’s Joan, after all. The fact that she showed up right then was perfect though, because, well, no matter how much Joan is used, she’ll always be underused. She is the climate of this show. She knows how to handle all of the characters on this show perfectly, including Pete, but except for herself. I mean, psychology? She knows her husband is less than pathetic. But I think she probably handles her marital lack of bliss better than Betty.

But it was also perfect that she showed up then because just as my disgust-o-meter with Pete was getting higher and higher, Joan showed up, cooled the whole thing down, played him like a fiddle, and reminded me of the only man on the show I think is more detestable than Pete Campbell: Joan’s rapist husband. But Pete will straddle that line before the episode’s end again.

You know things are bad for these characters when the recurring mantra on this show, said here and several places before, is: “This never happened.” It’ll shock you how that’s only a slighter worse philosophy than “When you have no power, delay.”

But your buddy Cosgrove had one scene in the episode and two fabulous lines, including this one, and then: “New York in August? It’s like a great big melting wax museum. Nothing but those fat girls with the hairy armpits putting their feet in the fountain.”

August: And then there’s Italy.

Marco: Just a quick jaunt over the ocean. When you look down at the water from the window of the plan, is it clear enough for you to see the bottom or do you only see your own reflection?

August: Don the big tipper?

Marco: Such a manly thing. I don’t know how much money I’m handling you and you know what? Fuck it. Take it all. Whatever. Get lost. The same with when Carla wanted to talk to Betty about Sally. Don’s all like, “Oh, this is about the kids? Shit. I’m gonna… go get the luggage. Or something.”

August: And apparently Don is the cock blocker of his own wife? Ha ha.

Marco: A scene that perfectly reverses what I said earlier about Don humoring Betty less and less. I found that scene both perfect and wonderful and also chilling. Roleplay adds so much excitement, but then again, it’s kind of sad when a couple needs that excitement. Betty wants to be someone desirable, and hopefully that someone is her, or the alternate universe her that never got married to Don and had kids? And Don? Don wants to roleplay as a guy who’s going to get laid.

August: Where the fuck did Betty learn Italian? Wait, she was a model there, wasn’t she? No idea she knew the language. Apparently this just attracts Eurotrash douchebags with bad hair  to hit on her.

Marco: The Eurotrash have been hitting on pretty girls with big, ridiculous 1960s hair and telling yankees to go home for a long, long time. Nevermind Franz Ferdinand, Pearl Harbor, and the Holocaust, I think that’s what the two world wars were actually about.

I love that Connie is fascinated by Don, and by Don’s wife. And he wants Don to see what it’s all really like in a Hilton hotel. It’s like he wants to tame and break Don. Or maybe at the end of the season he’s going to claim that Don is his lost son and give him his fortune?

August: Best moment of the episode: Sally asserting her dominance? I think so. All she wanted to do was play being married and kiss Ernie? Tsk tsk. She’s growing up so fast.

Marco: Sally’s going through a little kid version of what Betty’s going through, but she doesn’t understand it. Not that Betty does either. Not that Betty would explain it to her daughter even if she did. I was amazed to see Betty being calmly motherly about the first kisses, of which there’ll be lots of, so true, but not addressing a recurring problem that’s been coming up more and more: Sally’s latent anger.

Little Sally Draper’s still in my top 5 of favorite characters on this show just because of the scene where she watches her mother put the make up on in the mirror over her shoulder. Again, Betty sees herself, sees what she wants others to see, something desirable, something more, and ignores her daughter, and then leaves. And leaves her daughter only to ponder things that she’s too young to understand.

August: I guess that dress line/move does work! Man, is that what I should be doing?

Marco: No.

August: Shouldn’t I be walking around, trying to fix young German girls’ dresses? I guess that could get you into trouble…

Marco: Not only is it sleazy to the nth degree, it’s scary to see that Pete them forces himself on that girl. This is the little boy who yanks his shirt and tie off over his head once he gets home and his wife is gone, but then wants his “kindness” rewarded and his manliness affirmed. If not for the editing of the show, I think we would’ve been questioning if Pete Campbell was a rapist as well, making that au pair go through kleenex box after kleenex box afterward…

August: I was surprised at Pete’s feelings of guilt afterward, his silence as a confession to his wife.

Marco: The guy’s never been called out on his shit good and properly before. I’d like to say that maybe this will be a turning point for him, and it probably will be, but not necessarily for the better.

That’s one of the things I really liked about Peggy letting Pete know about the baby in last season’s finale: It’s not that we didn’t get a chance to see his emotional breakdown/reaction to the news, it’s that her telling him that left no space for it. She was making it clear what happened and that she didn’t care what he thought of it.

August: And now Pete wants Trudy around more? WTF? It’s the 60s. Who wants to be around their wife more?

Marco: As someone far smarter than the two of us put it: emosogyny. Also, Trudy can do better. But her reaction to his admittal/non-admittal fascinates me. It’s like there’s one thing on the mind of or on the tip of the tongue of every 1960s married couple: fidelity. And it’s fragile.

August: Betty keeps changing and changing. This woman is full of it. And yet, so empty…

Marco: The same ways as Pete. In fact, I feel like Betty and Pete are the same, with a few differences. Both want respect, both want to be desired and admired. Both are afraid of being in their house by themselves, or with kids (who aren’t really people yet, let’s face it). Both need their spouse to make this a home. But right now that may not be good enough for Betty…

But I’m going with that for now. The same as Peggy is a junior version of Don Draper, Pete is a junior version of Betty. Both couples, whether they know it or not, are destined to be stuck with each other.

August: Home is where the heart is. But where is the heart?

Marco: It’s in Italy.