Recently in Television Category

In 1960, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, candidates for the U.S. presidency, spoke at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner. The foundation -- named for the four-term Governor of New York and candidate for the presidency in 1928, an Irish kid from the Lower East Side -- hosts the white-tie dinner as a fundraiser for Catholic Charities. In election years since 1960, candidates have often, but not always, been invited to speak.

This year, McCain went first. He set the bar high -- in a meta way, even -- but I think he was bested by The One. See what you think:






As a bonus: McCain finally makes it to Letterman's show. Verdict: More cranky than funny, certainly not as good as his performance at the dinner.

In the premiere episode of the new series Life on Mars, which we previewed in yesterday's post, the time-warped protagonist, Detective Sam Tyler (Jason O'Mara) makes references to The Wizard of Oz. He tells a sympathetic but disbelieving policewoman (Gretchen Mol) that he's going to "follow the yellow brick road," hoping he'll find the end and a way out of what he believes is a dream.

If you missed the episode, click on the continuation link below to see how Sam first realizes that something is amiss ...
 

The American transplant of the British series Life on Mars premieres tonight on ABC. The title of the series refers to the David Bowie song, which was playing on NYPD detective Sam Tyler's iPod, when he is hit by a car and suddenly transported back thirty-five years to 1973. When Tyler (Jason O'Mara) wakes up, the song is playing on an 8-track. Tyler returns to his station to find people whom he doesn't know: Chief Detective Gene Hunt (Harvey Keitel), Detective Ray Carling (Michael Imperioli of The Sopranos), Detective Chris Skelton (Jonathan Murphy of October Road); Chief Detective Gene Hunt (Harvey Keitel), and policewoman Annie Norris (Gretchen Mol), who becomes his 1973 love interest. His present-day (2008) love interest is played by Lisa Bonet, and the series mixes past and present through dream sequences. According to the Los Angeles Times, the opening episode "closely follows the model, not only in plot and dialogue but often in specific shots." The series, originally set in Los Angeles, was drastically reconceived after David E. Kelly dropped out and turned the series over to the producers of October Road and Alias. Only O'Mara returns from the cast that appeared in the pilot.

During a recent walking tour to Brooklyn Bridge, my Modernist New York class came across a scene from the series being filmed near the Brooklyn Heights Esplanade:




It was a kick to see the cars and clothes of my pre-teenage days. I'll be watching the pilot just to see Harvey Keitel do his thing. After that, we'll see: perhaps I'll add it to my TiVo's Season Pass list, where it can join Mad Men (set in New York in the 1960s) and replace New Amsterdam, another show that evoked New York's past, but was cancelled by Fox last spring.

Meanwhile, here's a preview of the series from the Los Angeles Times:

blast from the past -- Bowie as Ziggy:

As I said in my last post, Universal Pictures' planned adaptation of Moby-Dick will not be the first anime version of the novel. 

The science-fiction series Hakugei: Legend of Moby Dick aired in Japan between 1997 and 1999 and spanned 26 episodes. The series is set in the year 4699, when the galaxy is ruled by a totalitarian Federation that uses its giant white warship, Moby Dick, to make sure that planets tow the line. Ahab, still peg-legged, is transformed into a more light-hearted, slightly piratical figure (complete with eye-patch)  who leads a motley, futuristically cosmopolitan crew in the hunt for "whales" -- derelict ships that can be salvaged. Ahab has fought against Moby Dick in the past: "For the first time in my life," he eventually tells his crew in the fifth episode, "I experienced fear. I thought that white bastard was terrifying . . . but also beautiful. Our ship was blown to bits. I saw my crew torn apart, blown right into space." 


Ahab, his leg torn off, one eye blinded, survives, for reasons that he still does not understand. He spends time in prison, then escapes, spending his time hunting "whales" and running from the Federation. And then a boy named Lucky, an Ishmael figure, who isn't quite what he seems, tracks Ahab down: he needs Ahab and his ship, the Lady Whisker, to help him save his home planet, Moad, from the ravages of Moby Dick. And Ahab gives in to his desire for revenge.

The Pequod's collection of "isolatoes federated on one keel" is amusingly transformed into a group of oddballs who would be at home in any number of anime extravaganzas: a  laconic, tatooed, muscle-bound savage with an unlimited (and not too discerning) appetite (Queequeg?); a strangely precocious little kid (Pip?); a computer geek; a speed freak; a fat cook; a saturnine swordsman; and a doctor who's never seen without his armor on; and Dew, an android in search of a purpose (who has no real analogue in Melville's novel).


All 26 episodes of Hakugei have just been released in the U.S. in a six-disc box set by ADV films. In an interview that accompanies the discs, series creator Osamu Desaki says, "I did this work thinking I'd like to depict something from the point of view of a group who's been excluded from the world." It is also, he says, about the fact that "humans have feelings or longing, or rather awe, for gigantic things." Desaki takes great liberty with Melville's story, but from what I've seen so far, his vividly frenetic style captures something of the novel's unruly and inventive spirit. I can't wait to see how it turns out. I'll have more to say when I've finished watching the series.

Part of Betsy Bradley's argument in her forthcoming book on the Knickerbocker myth is that by the end of the nineteenth-century the Knickerbocker sensibility had become so ingrained among New York's upper crust that a writer like Edith Wharton could draw on the Knickerbocker sensibility without ever having to name it. The society that Wharton depicts in The Age of Innocence (1920), for example, places a family with Dutch ancestry -- the Van der Luydens -- at the very top of their social hierarchy: their Dutch past gives them social clout that no other family can match.

This week's Knickerbocker sighting is an example of this sensibility at work without mention of the name "Knickerbocker." I've been catching up on the first season of the series Mad Men, which is set in New York in 1960 and centers on the life of Don Draper (Jon Hamm), the creative director at the Madison Avenue ad firm of Sterling Cooper. The fourth episode is called "New Amsterdam," and it turns on Don's decision to fire an upstart account executive named Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheimer), who has pitched his own idea to a client who isn't happy with the campaign that Don has conceived.

We've already discerned that Pete comes from a wealth family with whom he has had some conflicts. Earlier in the episode, the recently married Pete goes to his parents to ask for help with the down payment for a Park Avenue that his wife has found. His father, sitting in a tan smoking jacket and shorts with a Scotch, refuses, in large part because he disapproves of his son's choice of profession:

Pete: Why is it so hard for you people to give me anything?

Dad: We gave you everything. We gave you your name. And what have you done with it?

The punchline of the episode, and each episode seems to conclude with an unexpected turn, is that it isn't the father's name that's important, but rather the mother's. "Coop" (Robert Morse), the head of the firm and one of its founders, explains to Don and his boss, Roger Sterling (John Slattery) why they can't fire Pete:

Coop: New York City is a marvelous machine filled with a mesh of levers and gears and springs, like a fine watch, always ticking ..

Don: Sounds like a bomb ...

Coop: How much do you know about Pete's family?

Don: Nothing, except they put out a mediocre product.

Coop: His mother is Dorothy Dyckman Campbell. The Dyckmans owned pretty much everything north of 125th Street, which -- I don't know how good your geography is -- but that's a fair chunk of the island.

Don: So they're rich. So what?

Coop: Well, no, his grandfather dropped it all in the '29 panic. Some people have no confidence in this country.

Don: What's your concern, then?

Coop: Well, I don't want Dorthy Dyckman Campbell standing on the dock at Fisher's Island this summer talking about how badly Sterling Cooper treated her son. . . . We lose him, we lose our entree to Buckley, the Maidstone Club, the Century Club, Dartmouth, Gracie Mansion--sometimes. It's a marquee issue for us. See my point?

Don: Absolutely. He's more important to us than I am.

Coop: Don't fool yourself. There's a Pete Campbell at every agency out there.

Don: Well, let's get one of the other ones.

Coop: You're going to need a stronger stomach if you're going to be back in the kitchen seeing how the sausage is made.

Don: I thought it was a big watch.

Coop [laughs]: You handle the words. You know how much we want you here with us.
Roger: No doubt about that. Don's a big boy, Fred. Aren't you Don?

Don: Well, thank you . . .  sir.

Coop: There you go I'm glad we're all better now.

The Campbells, in other words, may not have the most money in New York, but they have something priceless: the Dyckman name and the social clout that comes with it.

Mad Men, by the way, is a well-written series that deserves the accolades it has received. Its setting reminds me of a show I loved as a child -- Bewitched (1964-72) -- nearly every episode of which seemed to end with the non-witch, ad-man husband, Darrin (Dick York, then Dick Sargent), coming up with a brilliant ad campaign (often aided by his witch wife, Samantha [Elizabeth Montgomery]) that happened to explain away the kooky enchanted circumstances that occurred during the episode. Imagine Bewitched transformed into an hour-long adult series that substitutes smoking, drinking, and sex for witchcraft and slapstick, and you'll have Mad Men. (Don's wife, Betty [January Jones], even has a hair style that resembles Samantha's!)

The first season is now available on DVD, and you can catch the second season on Sunday nights on AMC.