STARTING FIVE
Robert Morse, back in the Sixties, singing in an ad agency (he was Pierrepont Finch then, not Bert Cooper)
1. How To Succeed in Business Without Really Dying
Thoughts, quotes, observations from the “Mad Men” final season semi-finale:
“I don’t want to go to Newark.”
“Nobody does.”
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The hunk with the Rutgers athletic scholarship (poor lad)? He’s wearing a scarlet-and-gold No. 32 football jersey in the summer of ’69, when the reigning Heisman Trophy winner was O.J. Simpson, No. 32 for USC. It’s not an exact replica –two shoulder stripes instead of one –but I wonder if Matt Weiner was calling attention to this.
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The actor portraying Lou Avery is a hired hand on “Mad Men” this season, so it’s funny when Jim Cutler tells Lou that he’s a “hired hand.” That’s so meta.
Peggy takes the pebble from Don’s hand…but only cuz he offered.
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“Marriage is a racket.”
No one does severely unctuous and yet wickedly funny better than Vincent Kartheiser, as Pete Campbell.
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Robert Morse (a.k.a. Bert Cooper) has sung in a Manhattan office before, just never as a posthumous character. Check out the line at 0:55 (“Let’s not forget he’s in advertising, and that does something to men’s brains.” If How To Succeed…” isn’t the direct inspiration for Weiner creating this series, then I’ll go to the beach with Bob Benson.)
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Is Roger Sterling everyone’s favorite character? Recall that the season begins with Roger lying naked in a pool of hippies and ends with him seated on the couch, hugging his grandson, as they watch Neil Armstrong take man’s first steps on the moon. Loved the astronaut helmet, by the way.
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“We have NO liquor.”
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Roger does for Don what he couldn’t do for his daughter: rescue him.
Of course Matt Weiner was trying to tell us something: Sally Draper would rather be with the optimist nerd than the cynic hunk; with the kid who’d rather watch the wonders of the universe directly -abetted by a telescope–than on TV. And then there was the “Best Things In Life Are Free” number, capped by a shoeless soft-shoe.
In other words, stop spending so much time in front of the screen (will heed that advice myself), Weiner is saying (sure, now that you’ve made millions by it, Matt.) Still, it’s true. When I hear people say that they don’t believe in miracles, my first thought is always, What an idiot. Look around you. If life and seasons aren’t miracles, I don’t know what are. Just because you can explain how something happens doesn’t make it any less miraculous.
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Did anyone else notice the Wall of Optimism Weiner erected here? Roger and Don are both exponentially better people now than they were at the end of Season 6. Peggy is finally at a peaceful place. Is Weiner setting us up for the tumultuous end of a tumultuous decade? Don’t know, but we still have seven episodes to go, so the cat hasn’t been saved yet…
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The always insightful Alan Sepinwall’s review….
2. Great Race, Bad Call
It was THAT close.
Please do me the favor of watching the final seven laps of the Indianapolis 500 and noting the call of lap-by-lap commentator Allen Bestwick, who is not to be confused with Barry Bostwick, who may be confused with Barry Melrose, who is not to be confused with Melrose Place, which may be confused with Peyton Place, which is not to be confused with Peyton Manning, who is not to be confused with Danny Manning, who is not to be confused with Danny Ongais, a former Indy 500 racer.
Where were we?
Oh, yeah. Ryan Hunter-Reay passes three-time champion Helio Castroneves with an all-time fake out maneuver (fakes outside, passes on the inside), who then passes him back only to be passed again just as they enter the final lap. Crazy.
But it sure didn’t feel that way to hear Bestwick call it. I don’t like ripping announcers, especially those making their first call on a network for such a prestigious event, but we really missed Jim McKay on Sunday.
And I’m not even going to venture into that whole “Real WAGs of Speedway, Ind.” aspect that ABC/ESPN forced on us with the split-screens near race’s end, though others will.
Lindsay Czarniak, by the way, as your pre-race host, was terrific.
3. Gareth Bale Out
Bale’s heady game-winner.
Things looked bleak for Real Madrid in stoppage time of the UEFA Champions League final Saturday night in Lisbon. They trailed intra-city neighbors Atletico Madrid 1-0 in the 93rd minute when Sergio Ramos headed a ball into the corner of the net to tie the score.
Then, in extra time, Gareth Bale, who’d been the goat (as opposed to GOAT) of the match before Ramos’ goal, missing numerous chances, scored on a tremendously athletic header.
Then, with the outcome no longer in doubt, Ronaldo decided that he’d like to see the sphere and got himself fouled in the penalty box, which led to a free kick, which led to a goal, which led to utter shirtlessness. What an A-Rod move.
Real Madrid, the world’s most valuable sports franchise, wins, completing yet another overdog tale. That said, more post-game press conferences should go like this. Although, I gotta be honest, it did remind me a little of Anwar Sadat’s assassination. Too soon?
4. Hooray for Iran
Whereas in the USA, “too big to fail” actually means “too big to jail.”
An Iranian billionaire, Mahafarid Amir Khosravi, is executed after he is convicted for playing a role in a $2.65 billion bank scam. Even “Homeland” wouldn’t try this story arc. Can we get some Iranian justice here, please?
5. Of Course…Baseball
And why haven’t the Lastros signed Conrad Gregor’s dad yet?
We’re going to designate this as Rule No. 7: “In baseball you can always count on seeing something that you’ve never seen before.”
And here we’re not even talking about the fact that Jeff Samardzija, winless through nearly two months of the season despite having the game’s lowest ERA, finally gets off the schneid (what is a schneid, by the way? I never too German) by defeating the team with baseball’s best record at their park.
We’re not even talking about the Dodgers nearly pitching back-to-back no-hitters despite the fact that neither of their Cy Young Award-winning pitchers, Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke, were involved.
No, we’re talking about Conrad Gregor, the Houston Astros prospect who hit his first home run of the season for the Quad City River Bandits and had his dad, Marty, standing in right-center, catch it.
Just to catch a home run ball as a fan is both unlikely and, without a glove, requires a little talent. To catch one hit by your son? That’s nutty. I hope they send that ball to Cooperstown.
Also, you have to love that the younger Gregor was witty enough to quip afterward that he hoped he could work out a deal with his pops to get that ball back.
Remote Patrol
Rangers at Canadiens, Game 5
NBC Sports 8 p.m.
The last two games have gone into overtime between these Original Six rivals. This is plain riveting hockey, from someone who couldn’t have told you what ethnicity P.K. Subban was two months ago. Okay, two weeks ago.
Laura
TCM 10 p.m.
Gene Tierney, a first-ballot inductee of the soon-to-be-revealed Hall of Dame.
There’s beautiful, there’s classically beautiful, and then there’s Gene Tierney. Here she is in a film noir classic, arguably her greatest role. If you don’t watch it tonight, at least DVR it and save for worse weather watching.
What? WHAT?! No mention of half-dead Possums? They succumbed to the HEAT over the holiday weekend. Game 3 actually had me fretting until mid-3rd quarter, but FINALLY in Game 4, the Heat showed up ready to play from the tip. And Sweet Pea played fab, as did Bosh. However, just heard that both Birdman AND Old Man (Ray Allen) may be out for Game 5! Let the fretting begin.
Actually, after watching Paul George’s post-game comments last night, I thought either I had watched a different game, or PG had an out-of-body experience as there is ‘NO way, NO how’ the Pacer-Possums “outplayed” the Heat last night. The Heat NEVER trailed the entire game. The worst they looked was during the 4th quarter when they sloppily let the lead shrink from 23 down to 9. As for the Heat getting the calls from the refs, PG should look back at Game 1. Seems that “Bad Lance” is not alone on that team.
And I SAID the Thunder could do it! Tonight’s game should be intense.
Oh, and yes, I am old(er than you), but am NOT “arthritic”. 🙂
Watched end of Indy at your request, and disappointed on so many levels.
— The car-racing TV folks have seen a Triple Crown race, no? In the closing seconds of a race that has two yellow cars neck and neck, you have to have a live graphic in the corner that tells readers who the top three cars are. For the only graphic to be the slow 1-to-33 crawl of all the cars along the top is to completely miss what people care about at the end of a race.
— I’m fine with showing the significant others of drivers battling for the lead, but can’t do it on the final laps. Your TV screen is already giving up graphics at the top and bottom, so a split-screen means you’re watching the actual race in a window one-quarter the size of your TV. You’re marginalizing the very thing your viewers have been waiting two hours to see.
— I watch a lot of sports while I’m doing other things (writing stories, folding laundry) and I love announcers whose delivery draws your attention to the event. They literally pull you into the room — you put down the shirt, you stop the digital recorder, you have to see what has him excited. The final two laps at Indy would have been low-key had they been laps 9 and 10 at the same race. Lead changed hands and it was barely acknowledged, let alone appreciated for the move it was. “Nearly clipped the grass,” he said. Ugh.
For what it’s worth, I just realized that Bert Cooper anagrams to Robert Coper.
And what would you call an iconic solo performance, reinvented 47 years later?
Hopefully, not Re-Morse.