April 19, 2012 On Television Dear Don Draper, I Think I Understand By Adam Wilson [facebook_ilike] Dear Don Draper, I think I know what’s wrong. Are you waking to pee in the middle of the night? Suffering from joint pain? Hot flashes? Vaginal dryness? Don, you’re going through menopause. I’m kidding. Sort of. No one doubts your manhood, especially not after Sunday’s display of muscle and plumbing. You’re a beefcake, buddy, grade-A American sirloin. When you stripped down to your undershirt it was like you were Spartacus entering the arena. Or, to put it in more modern terms, it was like you were Khal Drogo and the sink was your Khaleesi. Poor Pete Campbell in his dinky little party tie, face crimson and flush, fawning over you. Twice emasculated, and married to that ballbuster Trudy. She wears hair curlers to bed, Don. Hair curlers! Read More
April 11, 2012 On Television Dear Don Draper, Stop Ignoring Me By Adam Wilson Dear Don Draper, I worry that you may not be getting these letters. I have yet to receive a response, and after seeing last night’s episode, I’m convinced that either the mail isn’t arriving or you’re willfully ignoring my advice. Especially the stuff about smoking. I mean, cancer is one thing, but watching you light up with a hundred-plus fever and a hacking cough made my own tonsils burn and balloon. The bad news from the future is there’s still no cure for the common flu. Or maybe there is but Big Pharma won’t let us have it. However, we do know this: despite what your ads may say, cigarette smoke doesn’t soothe a sore throat. Shocking, I know. Try some Halls and a neti pot. Read More
April 5, 2012 On Television Dear Don Draper, Relax Already By Adam Wilson Dear Don Draper, I just got off the phone with my mother, and she’s a bit upset. This is not your fault, I know. Mothers! You never really had one, so let me explain. They’re a complicated bunch, prone to outbursts of emotion. Always clutching their chests like their hearts are exploding; always assuming any discoloration is cancer. For example, your ex-wife, one of the worst mothers around. One minute she’s slinkily horny, and the next she’s screaming at Sally for no reason. One minute she’s stuffing her face with Bugles—they still have those by the way—and the next she’s convinced that she’s dying, ruining your fun by forcing you to face mortality. See what I mean? And Betty’s not even Jewish! Speaking of Jewish: my mother. “Daddy and I almost plotzed,” she tells me, “when that Jewish father said that ridiculous prayer. I mean, they could have had a normal Jewish person. You know, someone who went to NYU or Parsons even. Not some schlub in a madras jacket.” Read More
March 28, 2012 On Television Dear Don Draper, It’s a Wonderful Life By Adam Wilson Dear Don Draper, Birthday greetings from the year 2012! Adam Wilson here, writing to tell you that things will be okay! I know life looks bleak right now, Don. You just turned forty. You’re feeling it. Your frown lines tell the tale, your smoke-seasoned cheek skin, the whiskey jaundice blooming in your beautiful eyes. The way your manly body slumps and crumples, finally flaccid after decades of tumescence. It’s 1966 and everything’s orange and yellow, plush and furry, groovy, heady, already psychedelically aglow. At the end of last season you were smiling like a lobotomized monkey, gaga over Megan the secretarial sex machine, offering love and financial security in exchange for a peek at her abs. Now you’ve got the spoils of that horny dream and it’s not a pretty sight: an open plan apartment accented by white rugs and cream-colored decorative pillows; a wife whose sexual liberation extends outside your bedroom and into the public salon where she’ll embarrass you in front of your coworkers, strutting her silky stuff while a band of blond surf bros play anesthetized hippie pop; daughter Sally quickly turning Lolita; your son Bobby all but unrecognizable from last year (it’s not your fault—they changed the actor); baby Gene with his creepy, beady eyes; plus the possibility of even more unwanted children! Read More
February 22, 2012 On Television The Aristocrats By Meredith Blake Let it be known that Lady Fiona Herbert, the eighth Countess of Carnarvon, occasionally answers her own phone. When I call the Countess’s office to discuss her new book, Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey, I am unusually anxious; it’s not every day I speak to a member of the British aristocracy. “Hello?” answers a startled-sounding voice. I nervously ask if Lady Carnarvon is available. “This is Lady Carnarvon,” the voice replies, erupting into hearty laughter—which, happily, is not directed at me. The Countess had been reaching for the phone just as it rang and was caught off guard. “I’m completely useless as a receptionist,” she says. For a woman who lives at Highclere Castle, one of Britain’s most impressive “family piles,” as well as the primary setting of the spectacularly popular PBS costume drama Downton Abbey, Lady Carnarvon is surprisingly warm and unpretentious. She projects an image of slightly disheveled glamour: her household is not a well-oiled machine, but something more akin to a living archaeological site, where one might just discover a decades-old scrapbook while foraging through an out-of-use desk drawer. “We found a staircase recently. That was quite exciting,” she tells me. Downton Abbey isn’t Highclere’s first brush with fame—parts of Eyes Wide Shut were filmed there, and British tabloid curiosity Jordan celebrated her 2005 wedding at the castle, arriving via a pumpkin-shaped carriage—but the phenomenal success of the series has thrust the Carnarvon family’s ancestral home into the spotlight like never before. It’s also spawned a cottage industry of Downton Abbey tie-in books, including two competing biographies about Almina, the colorful and controversial fifth Countess of Carnarvon. Read More
February 6, 2012 On Television Buffering By Adam Wilson Lillyhammer, now streaming on Netflix. My name wasn’t on the list. When I told her I was with The Paris Review, the woman in charge gave a can’t-be-bothered shrug and stuck me on the red carpet between a correspondent from the socialite party blog Guest of a Guest and a reporter from The New York Daily News. The two were in deep discussion about a monthly gathering for gay men over six foot two. “The Tall Gay Agenda, you’ve seriously never heard of it?” “But I would never get in—I’m only 5’9”! “It’s not just for tall gays, it’s in celebration of. Admirers are welcome!” I was eavesdropping hard, announcing my dorky heterosexuality by wearing a backpack, revealing my red-carpet naïveté by not carrying a recording device and mumbling the name of my publication. “Shouldn’t you be, like, hanging out with The Observer or something?” The occasion was a screening and gala to celebrate Lilyhammer, a quirky new series starring Steven “Little Stevie” Van Zandt (of Sopranos and E Street Band fame). Stevie plays a former New York mobster removed to rural Norway after ratting out his boss and joining the Witness Protection Program. The show, which premiers today through Netflix’s Play at Home streaming service, is the company’s first foray into original programming. Prophetic bloggers have buzzed about the inevitability of this move for years: Netflix is coming, and the masters of pay cable are terrified. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I streamed the whole thing. Read More