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Archive of Overnights

Overnights

9/ 2/08

2:30 PM

‘Mad Men’ Writers Bone Up on Lacan

If nothing else, she wears her racquet on her sleeve.Photo: Courtesy of AMC

Recently, Mad Men has framed Don and Peggy as warped reflections of each other: both guarding private lives, both managing public images, and both nearly going crazy with the pressure of juggling both. This episode, they take their circus act into a hall of mirrors.

But do they like what they see?? »

More: Tags: lacan, mad men, tv

Overnights

8/26/08

3:30 PM

‘Weeds’: Nancy, Rat

We've heard of jumping the shark, but shooting it?Photo: Courtesy of Showtime

Is 13 too young to be having sex? Nancy thinks so. "What happened here last night?" she asks Shane and his two pierced girlfriends who had stayed over. Shane, surlier than ever, isn't about to let his "slaphappy drug dealer" of a mother dictate his sex life (a refreshing development from recent Oedipal entanglements). "Where were you last night?" he asks. "Quit pretending to be a mom."

And quit pretending to be a gangsta! »

More: Tags: tv, weeds

Overnights

8/25/08

11:30 AM

‘Mad Men’: Peggy 2.0

She's got Don pegged.Photo: Courtesy of AMC

When Peggy's Catholic Brooklyn family erupted last week, it was a reminder of how very much she'd been repressing at work. The escalating nuttiness at home and Peggy's utter placidness in the office seemed just more proof that Peggy is the only other Sterling Cooper employee with anything approaching Don's lockjaw discretion. But, Jesus Christ (sorry, priest played by Tom Hanks's son), we didn't know the connection went this deep.

Peggy's origin story. »

More: Tags: mad men, tv

Overnights

8/19/08

1:45 PM

‘Weeds’: Nancy Has Her Vision Quest

The mayor realizes he really needs to get a bigger couch.Photo: Courtesy of Showtime

Nancy begins the episode in a blissful state, awakening in the arms of the craven mayor of Mexico. It’s a moment soon ruined by the realization that the mayor has breakfast meeting in another country, and that Nancy's kids are in another room. Across town, Celia wakes up handcuffed to a strange bed, her daughter explaining her mom’s poisons to a presumptuous room-service guy: “mostly Xanax and coke.” Isabelle has called in Celia’s nearest and dearest — “Such an unexpected pleasure to see you, loser,” she says by way of greeting her ex, Dean — for a family intervention led by a woman with a librarian’s bun.

And what of the sad, tall, angry baby man? »

More: Tags: tv, weeds

Overnights

8/18/08

4:00 PM

‘Mad Men’: The Secrets Are Out

Photo courtesy of AMC

The last — best? — episode of Mad Men pitted Don Draper against the nasty comedian Jimmy Barrett and his even-nastier ball breaker of a wife. Beaten down and practically molested, Don bottomed out, then bounced back, unleashing a desperate, violent retort to Mrs. Barrett that might be television’s most shocking moment this season. It was almost a perfect episode — except we missed Peggy and Pete. But now she’s back! And, though we get just a little of Pete, we do get to see him in tightie-whitie tennis shorts.

More: Tags: mad men, tv

Overnights

8/12/08

2:00 PM

‘Weeds’: Throwdowns and Sit-downs

Courtesy of Showtime

This week, Weeds tackled the Oedipal theme head-on; impressive, as we'd worried the writers would let recent icky revelations dwindle away into clever oblivion. Uncle Andy, shaving in the morning, hears the distinct banging of Shane's newfound self-love. After Shane shoves something into a bathroom drawer and scuttles off, Uncle Andy investigates, finding the photos of naked Nancy taken by Shane’s father. "My baby," cries Nancy, who has just returned from a throwdown with the button-cute MILF who is not only sleeping with her son but launching a pot business in the back of her smelly cheese shop. (Nancy, with that trenchant Nancy look, delivered her special brand of maternal love: "You're fucking my 17-year old son. Brad's gonna be 17, sooner than you think. He's a good-looking boy.") It's a world gone mad, Andy posits tentatively.

More: Tags: showtime, tv, weeds

Overnights

8/11/08

12:30 PM

‘Mad Men’: Marriage As a Full-Contact Sport

Courtesy of AMC

If Mad Men’s last episode collapsed the distance between home and office, this one utterly obliterates it — and moves everyone’s spouses into office cubicles. In the last episode, Pete’s father died and left him craving a stronger father figure, and Peggy clashed with her Catholic family. So of course this week the show ditches both Peggy and Pete, while the other admen bring their wives into the ring for a series of face-offs that posit fifties marriage as a full-contact, tag-team cage match.

Insulting Mrs. Utz. »

More: Tags: mad men, tv

Overnights

8/ 5/08

1:30 PM

‘Weeds’: Mayor Unleashes the Beast on Nancy

Photo courtesy of Showtime

With Celia's over-the-top behavior this episode — her slurred speech skewing into baby talk, her fratty jokes falling off the beat — Weeds has once again veered into campy, wacky, quirky territory. We blame the writers, who failed to divulge why our friend has stepped so far into crazy land: Was it simply the jail time, poverty, and retail job? She's taking some sort of drug, which Isabelle attempts to replace with a breakfast bar. But there's nary a word on what it is, or what effects it's having.

Nancy's high on something else entirely. »

More: Tags: tv, weeds

Overnights

8/ 4/08

5:45 PM

‘Generation Kill’ Shifts Into Death Drive

Photo courtesy of HBO Films

If it’s an arc you’re looking for, you’ll want to note that “Combat Jack” found soldiers protesting the incompetent leadership so forthrightly established last episode. But in summer 2008, we all know better than to expect a movement climaxing with “mission accomplished” — or even an unhappy ending, given that McCain seems to have been right about the surge. Generation Kill won’t resolve easily, and if it doesn’t feel a bit chaotic in the meantime, well, that wouldn’t be very true to life (and death!) now, would it? What we have, halfway through the series, is a game of You Sunk My Battleship! When a town, lit up at night, is mistaken for an enemy convoy, the 11,000 pounds of bombs the gang call in fall on a placid parcel of desert. Whiff. But when they shoot up a sedan at a road block, a little girl is killed. Whoops. What’s there to do but drop more bombs, let off more rounds?

Revealed: the episode's operating metaphor! »

More: Tags: generation kill, tv

Overnights

8/ 4/08

11:30 AM

‘Mad Men’ Crosses Into the Dark Side

"I love it when you talk about your father passing away."Photo courtesy of AMC

The first episode of season two was a declaration of some great big generational smackdown: war vet Don Draper and his cocktail-sipping comrades versus the encroaching tide of Pepsi-drinking baby-boomers, with fresh-faced kids invading Sterling Cooper like cute little cockroaches. It was a great set-up. So of course the second episode of Mad Men — the most deviously unpredictable show on TV — ditched all that, almost entirely.

Who is Annakin, and who is Palpatine? »

More: Tags: mad men, tv