MAD ABOUT MAD MEN

As 2009 gracefully enters its final two months, I accept the idea that there are few genuinely great television shows. If you love what they now call "procedural" cop shows, series that take you through the process of solving a crime, the CSI's and NCIS are by far the best. If comedy is what you crave, ABC has resurrected its viability as a television network with Modern Family, an absolutely hilarious half-hour of familial dysfunction. Few watch, but smart minds love 30 Rock and The Office, two well-written shows that never fail to produce big laughs.



There's also no excuse to miss a program, anymore. If you can find out what time, you just set the TIVO, DVR or VCR. If you can't, TIVO reminds you. Or just watch on demand if your cable company provides the option. That's why there's only yourself to blame if you haven't seen Mad Men, an hour of motion picture-like quality that flows in reverse of the short-attention-span theatre that most of TV programming has become.



Mad Men is set in the early 1960's, and it's visual authenticity is breath-taking. It's realism is jarring--unlike the movies and television from the era it depicts, Mad Men rips the facade off a time long passed. That it is not on a major network (it's on AMC, Sunday nights at 10, Eastern and Pacific) makes no difference. If it were on CBS. ABC, or NBC, it would have been quickly cancelled and forgotten. It's a show that gives its characters the time to truly interact, and viewers the time to ingest the depth of its writing. Better the show be watched a few million on basic cable, revered by critics, rather than be axed for another hour of Jay Leno.



The second to last episode of the season was so moving, I watched it twice. It was set against the assassination of John F. Kennedy. How this real life tragedy was woven into the drama was done masterfully, and reminded me that I'm old enough to have been through that weekend...in November of 1963.



With few exceptions, no one in Mad Men's cast was alive on that fatefull weekend. I was four. The images of what I saw on television burn brightly in my mind, though I had no feeling for the weight of what had taken place. I don't recall the Friday it happened. The earliest reaction I remember is asking aloud why the news was still on, and wondering where the cartoons were. Instead of Bugs Bunny, there was David Brinkley, at his slanted desk.



The next day, a Sunday, there was the image of Jacqueline Kennedy and her children, just about the ages of my sister Lisa and me, kneeling at the side of the coffin. The face of CBS coreespondent Harry Reasoner is another memory, speaking softly, reassuringly. Film of a color guard in close-up, folding an American flag with military precision, ran as my mother folded clothes. While the bulk of the country attempted sleep, those of us on the west coast got a respite from the onslaught of news...I know this because I went to the store with my father, and when we got back, a rerun of Mr. Ed was playing on Channel 2. I remember being in that nearly empty store, eye level with a box of Kellogg's Sugar Smacks, with Huckleberry Hound on the front. Kids notice things like that.



The pictures and thoughts from that weekend were all jogged by how the two children on Mad Men reacted: with questions, not knowing why adults were in tears, and transfixed by what was on that black and white TV screen, without a clue as to what they were watching. From a child's point of view, I found it to be exactly as I had behaved and reacted. For a medium that cheats facts and suspends disbelief on a constant basis, I find this fantastic. Well done. It couldn't have been better. A television drama captured the moment so succinctly it could have been a memoir. If you've never seen Mad Men, you should catch up on DVD. I'm utterly knocked out by it.





TWICE IN A LIFE IS ENOUGH



Being reminded that 46 years have passed since the Kennedy Assassination also brought forth memories of the more recent national trauma: 9/11.



Because I'd been so young, years passed before I was aware of the impact JFK's murder had on the country. I was full of questions as a child and as a young man. Not so much about who really killed him, but about how crushing it must have felt to be an adult, and cognizant of what had happened. I found out when I was almost 9, in 1968 when the world seemed to be tearing apart at the seams. The RFK and MLK assassinations were so shocking, I'm not certain a lot of parents knew how to help their kids cope with the grief. Seeing color videotape of RFK at the old Ambassador Hotel's Embassy Room, waving the victory sign and heading off into the kitchen is still too much for me.



9/11, however, happened when I was 42. The shocking deaths of not one national leader, but over three thousand citizens was beyond any of our scopes of reality.



I had a lot of time to think about the parallels of these two national tragedies in my lifetime: November 22, 1963 and September 11, 2001. The breaking of the news, the national coverage and preemption of commercial messages for four days. The jarring images. The fall out. As human beings, we endure, we heal, we move ahead with these events in our memories, and we are remarkable in that way. But at the half-century mark, I'm more than willing to speak for anyone reading this: Twice in a lifetime is enough. Let's hope we never have to go through anything like that again.



Perhaps if we held a mirror up to these events and see what we've learned, some growth can be gained from the pain. When JFK was assassinated, it marked the first time more Americans received news of tragic, historic importance via television. The reporters of the time, mostly men, mostly journalists who'd begun their careers at newspapers, comported themselves with what has been called "rigid detachment," "dolorous, but contained." They followed their creed of impartiality without displaying too much emotion (aside from a visibly choked-up Walter Cronkite when he delievered confirmation of the President's death), but their collective calm helped a grieving nation. The tape of the coverage on CBS and NBC survives in its entirety, and to see it is to view a medium coming of age, and living up to its responsibilities.





By 9/11, television news had changed. It was no longer a public affairs arm of broadcast entities, allowed to do good deeds so as not to impede the path to station license renewals. It was now a money-making force. In color, live via satellite from anywhere in the world, its pictures accopmanied by one-line captions emblazoned across the bottom of the screen. Yet the pros were there to do what had been done in 1963. Dan Rather, uncannily, filled the role he'd filled after JFK...a much older man, but just as inquisitive. The late Peter Jennings, like Walter Cronkite on November 22, forgot to put on his suit coat, and remained that way for four days.



Instead of three networks in full news mode, it was the spectrum of cable and satellite channels--QVC and Home Shopping Network went dark; on HBO movies played, but sister channels to ABC, CBS and NBC carried the feed from their mother networks. And a staggered nation tried to cope.



In the case of both these events, JFK and 9/11, political exploitation was an inevitablity. After President Kennedy, LBJ was swept into office in his own right, and twisted enough senatorial arms to pass Civil Rights, Voting Rights, Medicare and the acts of the Great Society, before he was crushed by the weight of Vietnam. Following 9/11, the George W. Bush /Dick Cheney administration muscled the Patriot Act through congress, and went to war. I'll leave it up to you to decide what benefited the country in the wake of tragedy, and what did not. Because that's how those who truly reported the events would have it.







WHERE HAVE YOU GONE MANNY RAMIREZ?



Home for the winter, that's where...and with the rest of the Dodgers. They did what they could with what they had. I really don't care that Manny was soaping himself up and singing Meringue favorites in the shower as the Phils' Jimmy Rollins jolted a two-run, game winning double off Jonathan Broxton to beat the Dodgers in Game 4 of the NLCS. It was a case of lightning striking twice--Matt Stairs popped a mammoth blast off Broxton in Game 4, last year to steal a win from L.A. and insure a Phillies pennant in five games. The 2009 result was just the same.



Other than that, it was a terrific season. 95 wins, the Western Division championship, a three game sweep of St. Louis and their vaunted pitching rotation in the Division Series. Any other off-season, all I'd say is they should go out and get a front line, ace starter. This winter will be different, though. Not in the Dodgers glorious history have their owners been in the midst of a nasty divorce. The Frank and Jamie McCourt parting promises to be edgier than Days of Our Lives (and with actual soap operas going south, why not have real life folks who control one of baseballs enduring franchises air their peccadilloes and promiscuity in public?). My advice to any Dodger fan is to follow my lead: Let whatever happens, happen. Just hope Rupert Murdock and News Corp (read: FOX) don't enter the picture, should either victorious McCourt be forced to sell.

Besides, it's November. God help us, I saw the first Christmas Tree, already. Prepare to have your bells jingled for a loooong time!!