“Do you like girls?” Mad Men’s “The Crash” and the sad origin of Don Draper

Matthew Guerrero

Who is Don Draper? It’s a question that Mad Men has held over our heads for six seasons now, and overtly explored in the aftermath of his divorce from Betty. But though Don may have been intoning “deep thoughts” in the narration of his diary page, somehow the man underneath has always stayed distant from us. Even the time that Don spent living openly as “Dick Whitman” in California only served to give Don another mask, another role to play as effortlessly as he does “Don Draper, Advertising Genius”.

Game of Thrones Recap: "Second Sons," or Don't Have Sex With Melisandre by Donald McCarthy

Drunk Monkeys

Let’s talk about weddings.

I’m not a wedding person. I’ve never been interested in the fairy tale wedding, or having a wedding, or even getting married. There’s no question that on this issue, I’m a bit of an outlier. Weddings have been a staple of our community for centuries, acting as social, economic, and religious events. The media often likes to tell us that a wedding is the seminal moment in a person’s life (next to, maybe, having kids) which is why we have ten year olds already planning for their wedding.

It’s Safe to Come Home to The Office

Ryan Roach

There comes a time in every sitcom’s life when the viewers find themselves doing a lot more smiling than laughing, when the characters are so familiar that both the sits and the com feel repetitive, rote. Supporting character’s nuances and shading are rubbed off in favor of one-note, broad jokes of the “X is dumb” and “Y is sex-crazed” variety. The characters can never do anything new because we’re not conditioned to accept that sitcom characters are three-dimensional and anything out of the ordinary is “out of character”.

Game of Thrones Recap: "The Bear and the Maiden Fair" or the Master Writes! by Donald McCarthy

Drunk Monkeys

What’s neat about Game of Thrones is how involved George R. R. Martin is in the process. He’s regularly consulted, Benioff and Weiss spent a weekend with him this past summer to pump him for future information, he gets talked about in regards to casting, and once a season he writes an episode (they’d love for him to do more but he has to write the next book). The respect Benioff and Weiss show Martin is one of the reasons this show works but it’s also worth noting that the respect Martin shows Benioff and Weiss is equally important. He’s been supportive of the changes they’ve made even if certain members of the fanbase have howled about them (That horse is now a female! Burn them all!). A direct adaptation of a book to the screen will never work, after all. It wouldn’t work for any good book as a book is a remarkably different medium than the screen. A lot of people don’t seem to realize this and it doesn’t matter if we’re talking about Game of Thrones or the recently released The Great Gatsby (the movie’s finest moment has the emotion from the book but the line of dialogue, “I wish I’d done everything in the world with you,” isn’t actually from the book even though it so felt like it was); you can’t do a direct adaptation. 

TV Recap: Game of Thrones "The Climb," or Jon Snow is on Top of the World by Donald McCarthy

Drunk Monkeys

One of HBO’s teasers from the season had a monologue from Littlefinger, which appeared in tonight’s episode, about “the climb.” Despite not having any new footage, when I first saw this teaser months back I was really intrigued because this season of Game of Thrones has a lot more magical elements and moments of shocking violence (Dracarys, Jaime’s hand, the duel with Benric and the Hound) yet the promo department focused on the idea of what people will do for power and what people will do once they have the power they wished for. It made me happy to see because that’s a much better representation of what the show is about instead of a sword fight or a scene of a dragon (not that I’m knocking those amazing moments). Martin’s books have always been interested in what happens when people try to “climb” to power.