‘Mad Men’ hits the desperate season with ‘Christmas Waltz’

When I noticed the name of last night’s new “Mad Men” episode, “Christmas Waltz,” I had a moment of confusion. Surely this can’t be a Christmas episode. How far along into the season are we?

Then I remembered that last week’s episode featured Weight Watchers member Betty struggling with Thanksgiving dinner preparations. (And then eating the most pathetic meal ever. Seriously, one Brussels sprout?)

So tonight’s episode, crowned by a lengthy scene of Don and Joan drinking in a Manhattan bar festooned with Christmas lights, seems a bit jarring in May — and also seems like a fast-forward to some distant point in the “Mad Men” season so far.

But the episode was knit together out of the kind of desperation that seems right around every corner during the holidays:

Joan, served divorce papers by her soldier husband, momentarily wigs out.

Harry gets contacted by former colleague Paul, who’s now become a Hare Krishna. Harry goes to a gathering and meets Lakshmi, Paul’s pseudo-girlfriend. Lakshmi later asks Harry for a favor and offers him the only thing she has: Herself.

Lane’s increasingly erratic behavior this season appears to be caused by a bad debt. To come up with the money, Lane secretly borrows $50,000 and convinces the other partners the firm is flush enough to award Christmas bonuses. The Brit finds himself sweating, however, when the firm’s Mohawk Airlines account is sidelined and revenue stops coming in. It’s only a matter of time before Lane’s situation blows up in his face.

Pete is still a pompous little ass.

Other thoughts:

Feeling of doom: I swear, almost every episode this season has seemed to foreshadow death and destruction — not personal self-destruction, although there’s plenty of that going on — and usually for Don. A couple of episodes ago, Don stood peering into an empty elevator shaft. In this weeks’ episode Don, half in the bag from drinking with Joan, drove a borrowed Jaguar home, speeding and shifting like crazy. I was almost afraid to look until the scene ended.

Pop culture watch: Recently Megan was helping an actress friend rehearse for an audition for the “Dark Shadows” TV show. This week, Harry’s Hare Krishna convert friend Paul desperately wanted to get a script into the hands of the producers of “Star Trek” — maybe even the show’s creator, Gene Roddenberry. And how perfect was it that the script Paul wrote was a thinly — very thinly — race relations allegory?

Time’s running out: As AMC reminded us at the end of this episode, only three installments remain in this season.

‘Sherlock’ takes a leap with ‘The Reichenbach Fall’

Anyone who has read the Canon — as Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories are known — knows the significance of Reichenbach Falls.

It was there, at the famous Swiss waterfall, that Conan Doyle’s famous consulting detective met his end. In the 1893 story “The Final Problem,” Conan Doyle — sick to death of the notoriety and fame and, yes, stereotyping and literary ghetto-izing that the Holmes stories had placed on his shoulders — decided to kill off Holmes once and for all. (Reader demand led Conan Doyle to reverse the decision a few years later.)

Holmes pursued Moriarty, the criminal genius, the spider at the center of the web of crime for all of England and a good portion of the globe, to the falls. Holmes’ friend and biographer, John Watson, becomes separated from the detective and later finds a note from Holmes. He is about to grapple with Moriarty atop the falls.

Two sets of footprints ascend to the top. No footprints are seen coming back down. Even an amateur detective like Watson can see that.

Tonight’s episode of “Sherlock,” “The Reichenbach Fall,” plays on that theme. After a cat-and-mouse game in previous episodes of the first and second seasons of the BBC series — airing on Masterpiece Mystery stateside — Moriarty begins an all-out assault on Holmes in this story.

Moriarty pulls off three seemingly impossible crimes: He opens the vault of the Bank of England, unlocks the gates of an impenetrable prison and seizes the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.

But instead of making off with the priceless baubles, Moriarty sits on the throne, be-crowned-and-sceptered, waiting for Lestrade and the other London coppers to arrive.

Holmes testifies at Moriarty’s trial and — being Holmes — irritates the members of the jury so much that they exonerate the criminal. Or is some other game afoot?

After the trial, Moriarty shows up at 221B Baker Street and begins “playing” with Holmes. It is a game that sees Holmes trying to find a computer code of Moriarty’s design that can unlock virtually any door, any secret, a code that makes Holmes a target of an international set of assassins.

Meanwhile, Moriarty begins chipping away at Holmes’ reputation until only Watson is still in his corner. And even Watson’s faith is a little shaken.

Although there are only three “Sherlock” episodes per season — maybe because there are only three — the series is uniformly high in quality and clever beyond compare. I’m guessing they’ll do more episodes this year and we’ll get to see them in 2013. I sure hope so.

Other thoughts about tonight’s episode:

I love the way the series plays with how Sherlock and Watson are perceived. Tonight Watson is irritated to see himself described in the press as a “confirmed bachelor” and constant companion to Holmes.

As a member of the press, I’m a little chagrinned about how it was portrayed tonight. But it is the British press, after all.

Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman continue to be among my favorite Holmes and Watsons of all time. Cumberbatch in particular isn’t afraid to play Holmes as unlikable for most of an episode.

Andrew Scott played Moriarty with just enough crazy. A little bit more would have been too much. If tonight’s episode, in the style of “The Final Problem,” proves to be his swan song, it was a good one.

Most of this show is attention-grabbing and attention-keeping. There’s some effort involved, of course, in keeping up with the quick-paced, accent-tinged dialogue delivery. But the riveting stories and scenes are another reason to keep watching the screen. The two main dialogue scenes between Holmes and Moriarty in tonight’s episode could not have been more mesmerizing.

 

Marvel movie timeline: What happened when?

You might have to turn the Internet on its side to fully appreciate this one, but a new book, “Avengers: The Art of Marvel’s ‘The Avengers,'” is coming out and it includes this timeline to the happenings of the Marvel cinematic universe.

I’ve always been a sucker for timelines, whether they’re demarcations of real events or, one of my favorite timelines from a couple of decades ago, a linear recounting of when events in the “Star Trek” universe took place.

Admittedly, the timeline of the Marvel movie universe is kinda thin so far. After all, we’re talking about only a handful of movies leading up to “The Avengers.”

But it’s fun to see how the chronology of the movies’ releases doesn’t always follow the chronology of how events played out in Marvel’s internal storyline.

I mean, it’s pretty cool to find out that when Bruce Banner was hulking out at Culver University in “The Incredible Hulk” in 2008, Thor was defeating the Destroyer in New Mexico on virtually the same day — and that movie came out three years later.

Cosmic, I know.

 

The Great Newspaper Comics Challenge Part 13

Our regular look at what’s funny in the funny pages. Because surely “Rex Morgan, MD,” didn’t take the prescription for fun with him when he left?

In “Zits,” the mom tells the teenage son to bring all the dirty dishes from his room and he comes back with a towering stack. “Zits,” the first documentary comic strip.

In “Baby Blues,” the parents watch while their daughter fails at soccer. A nation of Saturday-morning soccer parents winces.

“Speed Bump” shows us two Grim Reapers talking about another, who is wearing one of those annoying “Life is Good” T-shirts over his robe. “I worry about that guy,” one of the reapers says. Amen, brother!

“Dilbert” and “Blondie and Dagwood” address those people at work who drive us crazy: The sociopaths in disguise and the people who don’t give us recognition for our good work. Sometimes they’re one in the same. Sometimes they’re us. (Is that too meta?)

In “The Family Circus,” Mom drills one of the little tykes to say “May I watch TV please, Mommy” panel after panel, then says, “No. You need to get your homework done.” And people wonder why grown children don’t visit their parents in retirement homes.

 

Pixar’s ‘Avengers’ and more

This is just too much fun to pass up.

Above, behold: The members of “The Avengers” as Pixar characters.

Artist J.M. Walter posted this re-imagining of the Avengers on the Cartoonbrew.com Facebook page the other day and the image has been bouncing around the Interwebs ever since.

Some of the characters are easier to figure out than others. The Hulk, of course, is based on Sully from “Monsters Inc.” And since Samuel L. Jackson contributed the voice of Frozone from “The Incredibles,” why not re-imagine Jackson’s Nick Fury as Frozone?

The only one I haven’t figured out is Hawkeye. Which Pixar character is he taken from?

As an added bonus: The Avengers, known for their late-night meals, inside Edward Hopper’s famous “Nighthawks” painting. This version is by John P. Glynn.

Beautiful!

Atkins takes over for Parker with ‘Lullaby’

Maybe the greatest compliment that I can give Ace Atkins is that “Lullaby,” his debut taking over the reigns of Robert B. Parker’s Spenser crime novel series, reads link vintage Parker.

Parker had been turning out books featuring Spenser, the boxer-turned-private-eye, since the Vietnam War and straight up until his death in January 2010. Parker told stories about Spenser, his longtime girlfriend Susan Silverman and Spenser’s dangerous cohort Hawk in a relaxed but muscular style that mixed hard-boiled action, genuinely funny witticisms and relaxed, likable characters.

Atkins — one of two writers taking over a couple of Parker series — is an accomplished author on his own. He’s written a series of crime novels that take place in the steamy modern-day south.

With “Robert B. Parker’s ‘Lullaby,'” Atkins has continued the Spenser series with all of the wit and a little more effort than Parker was putting into the books at the end.

Spenser is hired by Mattie, a tough Boston 14-year-old whose drug addict mother was killed four years ago. A neighborhood mook is serving time in prison for the murder but Mattie — hardened beyond her years and raising her younger siblings with no help from an alcoholic grandmother — is convinced that someone else killed her mother. She saw some goons push her mother into a car a few hours before her death.

With Mattie frequently insisting on tagging along, Spenser and Hawk shake down the Boston underworld, top to bottom, looking for the real killers. The good guys take their lumps but there’s little doubt of the outcome.

Most of the Spenser supporting cast is here, from cops Quirk and Belson to loyal hoodlum Vinnie, even gym owner Henry and Pearl the Wonder Dog.

Atkins gets it right when it comes to Parker’s portrayal of Spenser’s style: The PI pushes and pushes and waits for some lowlife to come unglued.

I’m very glad the Parker estate chose Atkins to continue the Spenser series. In just his first outing, he’s found the style that Parker fans have appreciated for decades. And he just might have improved on recent Parker outings.

 

 

iPhoneography: Farmland, Indiana

Just down the road from me is the town of Farmland, Indiana. Farmland — which, true to its name, is surrounded by farm fields — is a town of about 1,300 in Randolph County.

Although it’s a small town, Farmland is something of a tourist attraction. It has a couple of good family restaurants — the Chocolate Moose is an old-fashioned burger-and-milkshake soda fountain — some interesting shops and an active cultural life.

It’s a very picturesque little town, with rehabbed streets, sidewalks and streetlights.

I was there the other day on a semi-work-related visit and took a few iPhone photos.

Like a lot of Heartland towns, the center of activity was once the local grain elevator, a towering structure near the rail line that cuts through the heart of town. The elevator isn’t in use for grain anymore; shops occupy the lower level. On a clear Indiana day, though, it’s still a focal point.

The rail line that cuts through Farmland just says “Indiana” to me, and stretches for miles and miles.

There’s not a town square, per se, but a neat old clock outside what used to be the opera house.

Farmland’s a nice place to go have lunch and look at shops. Definitely worth the trip.

Elvis (Cole) lives in ‘Taken’

Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Spenser and Hawk. There are some pretty amazing duos in crime fiction. I’d put Elvis Cole and Joe Pike right up there with the best of them.

Cole and Pike, the creations of crime novel author Robert Crais, return in “Taken,” Crais’ latest book about the cool Los Angeles detective and wiseguy Cole and his man-of-few-words-but-lots-of-deadly-action partner Pike.

Crais has played change-up a bit in recent books, sometimes concentrating more on Pike and less on Cole. In “Taken,” the author splits the story pretty evenly between Cole and Pike with a little attention paid to Jon Stone, Pike’s equally deadly but much more flamboyant associate.

As usual, Cole is a practical but noble example of the classic “knight for hire” crime novel character. Here he’s hired by a LA businesswoman to find her college-age daughter. Cole quickly determines that the daughter and her boyfriend have been taken by ruthless criminals who prey on human traffickers and the undocumented immigrants they smuggle into the country.

The twist in the story is that Cole himself gets taken by the bad guys and it’s up to Pike and Stone to get him back.

Crais, like Robert B. Parker did with his Spencer books, makes his protagonists immensely likable. Although Pike is quiet and mysterious, Cole is a flippant hero, needling the bad guys in his efforts to push them into mistakes.

It’s hard to imagine that Crais has been writing about Cole and Pike since 1987. He’s written 15 books about the two as well as some stand-alone novels that have fed into his series.

While the last few books haven’t had the punch of the first several, Crais has deepened our understanding of Cole and Pike — particularly Pike — and fleshed out their personalities. While the books might not carry the emotional weight of the early entries in the series — especially now that Cole’s relationship with attorney Lucy Chenier seems to be on the back burner — they’re still absorbing, entertaining reads and time spent with familiar characters.

 

‘Sherlock’ runs with the pack in ‘The Hounds of Baskerville’

 

Since it was published in serialized form in 1901 and 1902, Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles” has become one of those touchstone Sherlock Holmes stories. As much as everybody knows (often wrongly) that Holmes was a “difficult” genius and that John Watson was always a step behind him, everyone knew that Holmes took on a huge, mysterious hound in this Conan Doyle novel.

So the makers of “Sherlock,” the BBC production airing on PBS’ “Masterpiece Mystery” series, had to do an adaptation and had to do something different.

In “The Hounds of Baskerville,” the second of three “Sherlock” episodes in this season, Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Watson (Martin Freeman) take on the case of Henry Knight, who remains traumatized by seeing his father killed by a huge hound 20 years before. The two venture into the English countryside, specifically to the Baskerville military research base, to find out if giant glowing dogs with red eyes really do exist.

In the process, they have brushes with Sherlock’s brother Mycroft (the top-level British intelligence agent) and even James Moriarty, the warped genius who has become Sherlock’s nemesis. The ending of tonight’s episode forecasts the return of Moriarty next week.

Of course, Holmes and Watson also have the misfortune of running into that hound — as well as a couple of levels of conspiracy.

A few thoughts about the episode:

I loved that Holmes at one point notes that the CIA has a top-secret facility in Liberty, Indiana. That’s just down the road from me and I can assure you that if the Company has set up shop there, it’s pretty well hidden. Made me wish, for a moment, that they had chosen Muncie like everyone from “Tom Slick” to “The Simpsons” to “Hudsucker Proxy” to “Angel” has.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that: Not for the first time in the run of the series, someone mistakes Holmes and Watson for a couple. Cute.

Watson mockingly refers to Holmes as “Spock” after a scene in which Holmes is shaken by his failure to keep his emotions in check. Comparisons between the two have always been made and “Star Trek” episodes have obliquely referred to Spock’s ancestor Holmes (possible, as Trek fans know, because Spock’s mother is human). But for a joke that trumps all, Cumberbatch plays the bad guy in the now-in-production “Star Trek” movie sequel.

This Sherlock turns to cigarettes when he’s bored and anxious between cases, and not a seven percent solution.

Tonight’s episode had the misfortune of airing in the US following a couple of successful movies that had similar elements. The Baskerville hound looked a bit too much like the “mutts” in “Hunger Games,” while the idea of mind-altering gas released into outdoor settings echoed “Cabin in the Woods.”

 

The Great Newspaper Comics Challenge Part 12

It’s our weekly look at what’s funny in the funny pages. Because surely we’re still enjoying the “tip of the hat” from “They’ll Do It Every Time.”

“Classic Peanuts” gets an “awww” from us this Mother’s Day. Charlie Brown calls Snoopy to the phone. It’s Snoopy’s mom on the other end of the line. Snoopy sniffs and Charlie notes, “On Mother’s Day, you should have called her.” What do you want to bet we’re going to get a lot of Mother’s Day premises today?

Once again, “Baby Blues” hits the target as the kids watch clouds, spouting the scientific names for the types. Dad says somebody invented a lot of new cloud names since he was in school. Mom says, “Probably the same guy who keeps coming up with new ways to confuse me about math.” Right there with ya!

Finally, a good “Wizard of Id,” and it’s a Mother’s Day gag. The king’s mom comes for Mother’s Day and Rodney persuades the king to let his mom be queen for a day. The end result is the king is in irons, hanging in “Wizard of Id’s” Amnesty International-approved dungeon.

“Pickles” has old guy Earl making a BLT but using the dog snacks Beggin’ Strips instead of bacon by mistake. Finally the comics page addresses the societal problem of old people being forced to eat dog food.

Can anybody explain today’s “Speed Bump?” A rainbow leads to a pot of gold. A man finds it and the leprechaun offers his treasure … a french fry? I just don’t get it.

“Hi and Lois” addresses Mother’s Day, of course. Hi notes that Lois doesn’t want anything for Mother’s Day but to be left alone in bed. Marital counselor on speed dial?

“Dennis the Menace” marks Mother’s Day by that age-old gag of male incompetence in the kitchen. Dennis and his dad burn all the bread trying to make toast — in a toaster, for frak’s sake — and burn the eggs. Guess what? the family goes out to eat, just like in “Blondie and Dagwood.” Authorized and paid for by the National Restaurant Association.

Finally, you thought “The Family Circus” would have some maudlin Mother’s Day panel, didn’t you? The strip begins with PJ crying in a store. “I’m right here, PJ,” mom says from nearby. “Heh-heh — Just checkin,'” PJ thinks. When did PJ become that round-headed kid from “Family Guy?”