Smash
It’s opening night, and Ivy has the jitters. She was all good the night before, after the performance, but then she overheard a couple audience members talking about the show on the street and they weren’t that enthusiastic about her performance. They were actually a little snobby that she had only been in the chorus prior to Bombshell.
However, Ivy’s mom comes through and actually says the right thing to give her daughter confidence, and she nails it. Karen is even envious of her performance. Karen almost wasn’t going to go because it’d feel like going to an ex’s wedding, but she went anyway.
Ana tells her some disturbing news about Jimmy and his past, and his brother, and Karen confronts him about it. She needs to know the truth. Jimmy, in a surprising show of maturity, tells her everything (or what seems to be everything), but he can’t keep his natural combative instincts at bay forever and he and his brother get into it and get tossed out of the afterparty by Eileen.
The reviews start coming in after the show, and even though the one from the Times isn’t as glowing as they’d hoped, Eileen has no intention of letting that stop Bombshell from becoming the longest running show on Broadway.
Julia and Tom get into it after Julia gets the rights to The Great Gatsby to be their next project, but Tom got offered a directing project that he wants to do.
However, after the reviews about his directing are less than stellar, he thinks he’s going to get the directing offer pulled and he tries to go back to Julia to do Gatsby. Julia objects, saying she can’t be his fall back plan, that’s not what a partnership is, and with the reviews of her work and a little encouragement from Scott, she decides maybe she can do Gatsby as a play and not a musical, on her own.
The two Marilyns make up and do a duet to Sinatra’s “That’s Life” and they really nail it. It was a fun song, with a few improvised lyrics included directed at their experience with Bombshell.
Ivy asks Karen about Derek, and finds out that she was his second choice once again. After Karen turned him down, he ran back to her. So, when Derek comes up to her and asks if she wants to go home and celebrate, she turns him down, quite coolly, and keeps the ball firmly in her court as to whether they ever see each other again. Derek, unsurprisingly, finds another actress on his way out and decides she’ll do for the night.
Lots of relationship drama in this one, but at least Ivy doesn’t blame Karen for Derek’s behavior. Like those two needed another thing to fight over after they’ve just made up. It’ll be interesting to see what happens (if the show makes it that long, which at this point seems rather doubtful) with Julia and Tom going their separate ways.
Jordin Althaus/AMC
Mad Men
When Megan gets an opportunity to do a love scene and ultimately, a love affair, with a costar on her show, Don is a little less than enthusiastic about it. They go to dinner with one of the writers and one of her costars, a husband and wife, and realize too late that they were invited out by a couple of swingers. Don picked up on it far sooner than Megan did, who was really confused about what was going on until the very end. And, to top it all off, Don shows up on the set for her love scene–extremely tame compared to today’s soap operas.
We get a little more insight into Dawn, Don’s secretary, and her personal life in this episode. She’s a maid of honor for a friend’s wedding, and keeps showing up late because of her job. It’s pretty clear that she doesn’t like it SCDP, and she’s in constant fear of losing her job. I know that feeling as well, so I felt bad that she was so worried about it. However, my fear had to do with a tyrannical managerial system and a lack of a checks and balance HR department–hers seems to be tied in directly to her race.
Frank Ockenfels/AMC
Remember, it’s 1968. While Civil Rights were passed four years earlier, the entire country is still adjusting to having black men and women as a part of the workforce, especially in the more “elite” office and executive jobs, as opposed to the manual labor and “lower” status service industry jobs. It must have been very scary for someone like Dawn to have worked her way into a well-respected job like an ad agency secretary with the constant fear that it could all be taken away.
The SCDP team is quietly courting Heinz ketchup, unaware that Peggy and her team are also vying for the opening and have prepared their own pitch. Don is certainly pained when he listens through the door and hears Peggy quote him as if it were her own aphorism, “If you don’t like what people are saying, change the conversation.” Afterwards, with the secret pitch–only Don, Pete, and Stan being in on it–over with, Kenny shows up in an outrage, saying they’ve lost the rest of the Heinz division as well since they were told specifically not to go after ketchup.
Michael Yarish/AMC
Joan’s old friend Kate shows up (guest appearance by a favorite of mine, Marley Shelton) and they hit the town. Joan doesn’t realize until the next morning how much she is admired and envied by her friend. She’s a partner at an ad agency in Manhattan, never mind how she got there. Even if she’s still viewed as an admin, less than, by some of the men at the agency, she’s still in a pretty high position of power for a woman at a male-dominated company and industry in 1968.
Joan also got into it with Harry’s secretary who had asked Dawn to punch her time clock later in the afternoon so she could leave early for one of the other girls’ birthday parties. She fired her, but as soon as Harry found out, he marched in and demanded an apology from Joan, asserting that the girl be hired back. Joan, cool as ever, did not apologize, but said that the girl should do “whatever she thought was best”.
Soon after, Harry barges in on the partners meeting and demands to be included in the next one. He feels he’s earned it much more than Joan has, and says so, putting both Pete and Roger on her defense. Later, Harry barges in on a meeting with Roger and Bert and demands again that he be included in the partner meetings and made partner. Roger hands him a check for his cut on a recent TV special idea, and insinuates that maybe he overreacted.
Bert [on Harry’s initiative]: That’s the most impressive thing he’s ever done.
Roger: Should we fire him before he cashes that check?
However she got her partnership, Joan earned it just as much, if not more, than Harry has. She’s been the glue that has held that office together for years. There would never have been another office manager as good as she was, and she even helped Lane with the financials when SCDP was having trouble last season. There would probably never be a Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Price without her. Harry’s just being a petulant child because he’s got a monopoly on the TV department, which he shouldn’t have.
Michael Yarish/AMC
If there’s one area that’s neglected at SCDP, it’s the TV department because they figure Harry’s doing a fine job running it without their help or input. But, he does have a monopoly on it. If he were to leave for another agency, which he may well do if they don’t make him partner soon, they’d be up shit’s creek with no one to replace him.
They should have another person in there, a protege of sorts, someone like Peggy, who can get a good grasp on the goings-on and who could fill in if Harry ever left or fell ill or anything. That way, he would lose some of his leverage, and they would be better equipped to keep the department running.
Up next:
Monday night, CBS is off again this week. Just new eps of The Following and Bates Motel. Tuesday, New Girl is off again this week, so I get another day to catch up!
Wednesday, Chicago Fire and Nashville are still off. I believe Chicago Fire returns next week, but Nashville might be away again another week. Psych, How to Live with Your Parents, and The Americans are new this week.
Thursday, Grey’s, Elementary and Scandal return with new episodes (I know I don’t cover it, but just a heads up). Also, Hannibal and Men at Work are back for new episodes.
FYI: To my understanding, Hannibal is skipping the previously scheduled episode four in light of the recent events in Boston, as the episode contained some rather sensitive material that might offend viewers or make them uncomfortable. I understand their reasoning, but I hope they’ll put the video online for that episode for anyone who would like to see it. It does sound really disturbing, but I’m interested in seeing the plot line anyway. They are just airing the next episode filmed, instead of taking the week off.
Also, Happy Endings and Smash are new Friday and Saturday, respectively.
Have a great week, and Happy Earth Day! Hug a tree, skip the bottled water, recycle a soda can, and walk instead of driving if you can. 🙂
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