I’ve been resistant about this, but I do love Noah Wyle. Of course it means keeping fingers crossed that Good Blood Moon er, Blood MoonGood Moon Bloodgood doesn’t stink up the joint like she did in her Burn Notice arc. We’ll see.

Fighting Evil So You Don't Have To.

This past Saturday, I attended a reunion panel for The Middleman, a wonderful show that ran for twelve episodes on ABC Family.  TV critics passionately stumped for the show, but the audience never showed up, and the show was canceled before its first season was through.  (I blather on a bit about it here.)

Now it was two and a half years later, and C2E2 had brought some folks from the show in for an hourlong Q&A.I scampered into the Q&A a couple of minutes late.  My Chicago trip was marred every step of the way by insufficient planning; in this case, I hadn’t realized that C2E2 was far, far, far away from where I was staying in Evanston, so I finally reached the exposition hall with literally minutes to spare.

My heart sank when I saw a line snaking down the hallway and into a panel room, but rose again when I saw that it was for a different panel.  The Middleman room was maybe two-thirds full — good for me, but bad for humanity.  A comics convention should be packed with Middle-fans, right?

Ah well.

The crowd was heterogeneous:  some old, genial types (like me); some intense twenty-something guys — even the ones without costumes were clearly hard-core comic fans; a smattering of pleasant Renn Faire-ish types; and some tween girls who all thought Wendy Watson was awesome.

I got in just as they finished introducing the panel, which was the entire central cast of the show:  Natalie Morales (Wendy Watson); Matt Keeslar (The Middleman); Brit Morgan (Lacey Thornfield); Mary Pat Gleason (Ida); and Jake Smollet (Noser).  Mark Sheppard (Manservant Neville) was supposed to be moderating the panel, but he’d had some last-minute conflict.  The remaining panelists made a running joke of this, riffing off of the zillion other shows Mr. Sheppard gets cast in.  (“Oh, he’s chasing people down on Leverage.”  “He’s wheeling and dealing in some space western.”  And so on.)

So instead, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, AKA “Javi”, AKA the creator and showrunner of The Middleman, took over the moderating duties.  He kicked things off by asking the cast to complete the phrase “The Lost Pyramids of…”

“Itzilichlitlichlitzl!” shouted the cast.

Not surprisingly, this had been a vexing piece of pronunciation for the cast to learn.  Javi finally recorded an mp3 of himself pronouncing the name properly and sent it to the cast to have them memorize it.  The file still lurks on Natalie Morales’s iPod, jumping into its “Shuffle Songs” playlists and sporadically freaking her out.

Javi posed a few questions to the cast, and then went to the audience for questions.  He badly wanted to handle the questions “Donahue-style”, weaving through the crowd with a handheld mic to get questions, but there were unfortunately technical limitations, and he was stuck with the usual “line of people behind the microphone in the aisle”.

The audience questions were uniformly good.  I wish I could remember them, but I (foolishly) never took out my netbook so I could take notes.  Fortunately, at least three people were videoing the entire panel.  Surely *somebody* will put a recording online.  (Please?  Pleeeeease?!) What follows are my (very) vague recollections of the Q&A.

A lot of the questions were about the show-making process.  An example:  “How many people did you look at for each role, and which of them was hardest to cast?”

Apparently Keeslar was cast from before the beginning.  Javi had seen him in The Last Days of Disco, years before the ABC Family nibbles, and said, “Yep, that’s the guy for The Middleman.”  Later, he would repeatedly tell ABC Family executives that he wanted the lead to be “a Matt Keeslar type”.  They finally suggested back to Javi, “Why don’t we just make an offer to Matt Keeslar?”  Javi mused upon this simple wisdom and quickly agreed.

Sidebar:  Javi had nothing but the best things to say about ABC Family.  Any time an audience member posed a question that was even *faintly* redolent of blaming the network for cancelling a good show, Javi would catch them up short, correct that misapprehension, and then move on to answering the question.

As for the collaboration with the network, it turned out the network had strong, strong opinions about initial casting (for example, “make the heroine Latina” — see below) and the overall look of the show.  Javi was happy to cede that ground to the network.  They got on the same page with initial casting, and then later on, the show cleared stuff like costume choices and set designs with the network.

Outside of that, their freedom was rather astonishing.  The writers were free to write the show they wanted to write.  And that’s really what mattered to Javi; on-set, he told the cast, “Do whatever you like, but don’t change a word of the dialog.”  And if you’ve watched the show at all, you probably have a notion of how machine-tooled the dialog is, and how unchangeable it is.  Beyond that, the actors were free.

So everyone had the creative freedom they wanted:  the network got a shiny-looking, diverse show; the writers got to write their crazy screwball sci-fi comedy; the actors got to do anything they wanted, just so long as they said the right words in the right order.  Everybody wins!

One person asked, “If the show had been on a larger network — FOX or something — could the show have found a larger audience? or was it always destined to be a niche thing?”  Nobody really addressed that question, just because they couldn’t conceive of the show being on another network.  Ms. Morales pointed out that FOX would have cancelled them in two episodes.  They all said they wouldn’t have had nearly the same creative freedom on a larger broadcast network.  Javi summed it up:  “If the show hadn’t been on ABC Family, it wouldn’t be the show that you love.”

And yes, ABC Family did cancel The Middleman.  Javi addressed this with (of all things) a line from The Commitments:

"Sure, we could have been famous and made albums and stuff, but that would have been predictable -- this way it's poetry."

That nearly made me cry.

This is partly because I am a great big wuss, partly because I’m such a fan of the show, but mainly because there really is something poetic about making something beautiful and then moving on.  It’s heartbreaking that we got no more than we got, but how wonderful that we got it at all.

Returning to the topic at hand:  Matt Keeslar was pretty much their one and only choice for the title character.

For the lead, Wendy Watson, ABC Family wanted a Latina heroine.  Every time I’m reminded of this fact, I do a mental double-take.  One expects networks to go the other way with their notes:  “Ah… we’re not really targetting an ‘urban’ demographic with this property.  Could you maybe re-cast this role to be more… ‘conventionally-upscale’?”  Television — especially broadcast and basic cable — is consistently, blindingly, eerily Caucasian.  The friends on Friends were all white people, and they largely encountered other white people, and they lived in New York City.  (For those of you unfamiliar with NYC, that last clause was the punch line.)  It’s laudable that a network — even a tiny little network like ABC Family — tried to correct for that in some small way.

In the original comic, Wendy Watson was a “corn-fed Iowa redhead”.  Javi at first rebelled against the network note to make her anything but that.  (“But why?  You’re Latino yourself!  Shouldn’t this make you happy?”)  Most Latino characters on TV reinforced stereotypes that Javi personally detested.  He referenced a list of stereotypes that Natalie Morales had mentioned earlier in the panel (when she talked about roles she typically went out for):  “I don’t say ‘Papi’, I hate *HATE* salsa music….”  Then he digressed, talking about waking up every morning in Puerto Rico to the oh-so-cheery salsa radio station.  (He did a couple of quick salsa steps.  I had never seen salsa danced with such bitter irony.)

“I like synth music written by Germans,” he concluded irritably.

Back to the topic at hand:  Javi and the network came to an agreement that Wendy would be LINO, or “Latina in Name Only”.  (Javi has used this term on the Minuteman commentaries.)  No “Papi”, no salsa, lots of comic-book fannishness.  And this was okay by ABC family — they got to strike a blow for diversity in TV casting (and hooray for that, by god), and Javi got to avoid perpetuating irritating racial stereotypes.

(Interestingly, the show would go on to lean a bit on Natalie’s Latina-ness as it went on.  “I’m Cuban!” might be my favorite throwaway line in the whole series.)

In any case, the initial casting calls for Wendy Watson included (seemingly) every Latina actress in L. A., but it was quickly whittled down to two actresses.  Apparently Ms. Morales now feels a bit awkward when she runs into the woman she beat out for the role.

Noser had the biggest “cattle call” casting efforts, as ABC Family had no idea at first what kind of Noser they were looking for.  “But in the end, Jake Smollet would not be denied.”  I don’t remember much about what they said w/r/t casting for Lacey and Ida, though the second choice for Lacey wound up cast as the first fish victim in “The Flying Fish Zombification”.

There was another good question about what initially drew the cast to the roles.  Ms. Morales got the “It was paying work!” answer out of the way first.  Ms. Morgan mentioned that it had been absolutely wonderful *finally* to read for a part that wasn’t either (1) the dumb blonde or (2) the first hapless victim in a horror movie.

After the first couple of questions, there were only one or two people in the question line.  At that point, a question actually occurred to me, so I squeezed out of my seat, got in line, and stood around nervously for several minutes.

The question I babbled out (so, so nervous) was pretty much the same one I asked about LOST for Mo Ryan’s podcast:  “This is for anybody who wants to weigh in:  say in the near future, a showrunner picks up the DVDs for The Middleman and watches all the episodes.  What do you want them to take away from that experience?  What influence do you want the show to have?”

Honestly, I only vaguely recall their replies.  I was sort of a deer in headlights.  Partly it was “OMG OMG JAVI AND ALL THE ACTORS ARE LOOKING AT ME BE COOL MAN BE COOL.”  Mainly I felt nervous because I’d heard so, so many stories about idiotic fans asking boneheaded, insulting, or incomprehensible questions at comic-convention Q&As.  Even after I was done talking, I had residual anxiety:  “Okay.  Didn’t go off on a fifteen-minute personal anecdote about chronic-pain issues.”  N.B.:  some guy really did that while asking a ‘question’ at SDCC.  “Didn’t try and fail to be funny.  Didn’t say anything creepily sexual.  Asked a question that isn’t answered on the DVD commentary.  Okay.  I think we did alright.”

Meanwhile, the panel had a pretty good discussion going.  I vaguely recall Matt Keeslar talked about how The Middleman had smart characters.  I think Brit Morgan alluded to how nice it was to have have two female characters who were friends:  not ‘frenemies’, not cruel acquaintances who did bitchy soap-opera machinations to each other, but friends.

Mainly I remember that Javi initially held out the mic for me, and I didn’t realize I was supposed to take it from him, and he told me verbally I could take the mic, and I was all, “PETER DON’T PANIC MAN JUST TAKE THE MIC BE COOL”.

There was a question about the characters’ favorite moments from the show.  Mr. Keeslar said it was the movie-theater scenes between the Middleman and Lacey.  The entire audience “d’aww”ed as one — which is not surprising, as those scenes were the core of the Middeman/Lacey relationship.  Like the relationship, they are tentatively hopeful but at the same time melancholy.

There were questions about the actors’ favorite catchphrases (Mr. Keeslar:  “‘Flaming pork buns’.  Or anything off of a Chinese menu, really.”) and their least-favorite tongue-twisting lines (for Ms. Morales, a short line about [I think] pimp-slapping; for Ms. Morgan, a fairly long speech about female empowerment).

There was a question about what sort of things they might have done in future seasons of The Middleman, had they been renewed.  Javi talked about his pet notion of starting season two as if it were season *seven*, with a major jump ahead in time and plot, and never a word of explanation.  He also alluded to killing off the Middleman so that the alternative-world Middleman could come and take his place.

SPOILERS FOR THE COMIC SERIES:
Apparently, when the TV show was just about to premiere, the comic series killed off Matt Keeslar’s character.  Javi felt compelled to make assurances to Mr. Keeslar:  “This isn’t like that Dick Wolf thing where he writes death scenes for all his characters and keeps them in a vault to use as a bargaining chip in contract negotiations.  It’s really just a coincidence.”

A few other random observations:

• Brit Morgan talked at Amy-Sherman-Palladino-esque speeds^[1]; eventually Javi took away her Red Bull and drank the rest of it himself.
• A tween Latina girl dressed like Wendy Watson came up to ask a question in the Q&A, which was a nice moment of ‘yes, this show was good for humanity’.^[2]
• There may be a “Jolly Fats Wehawkin Employment Agency” T-shirt available on cafepress.  The woman who designed the shirt may have been sitting next to me at the Q&A.  Javi may have ensured that the original key art for the faux temp agency somehow found its way to her.  I can neither confirm nor deny any of these things.
• Apparently I am not the only viewer who loves Ida’s groundless and insistent conviction that Wendy is a pothead.  (At one table read, Mary Pat had to ask a staffer why everyone laughed at Ida’s reference to “4:20″.)

Eventually, the panel finished up.  I think it actually ran twenty minutes longer than scheduled.  Javi and the cast booked it to the autograph booths.  I pondered going by there, but I figured the interaction would just feel weird.  Plus I hadn’t packed my DVDs of the show.

So, off I went to the next panel, that quote about bands and poetry still rattling around in my head.

The Middleman Panel.

_______
[1] “I love Gilmore Girls — they talk like Puerto Ricans!” — Javi.  The fact that Javi was evidently raised by people who talk like Rory and Lorelei might explain a lot about how The Middleman sounds.
[2] It’s kind of bizarre that this is a show whose panel audience included both tween girls and old men as die-hard fans, and yet not in the creepy way you might fear.

One of those seeds blossomed into the brilliant and criminally under-appreciated Middleman. Another produced the short-lived Huge. And then there was Greek.

I don’t want to write a paean to the show; I did mention it was slight, right?

However, as slight as it may have been it was consistently funny and charming and witty and clever. Creator Patrick Sean Smith and his writing team never aspired to greatness, but they took no shortcuts either. They wrote interesting and believable college kids in a setting many of us can recognize, though for some of us it’s a bit further in the rear-view mirror. The show was peppered with pop culture references ranging from Jaws to the films of John Hughes but never felt weighed down by them. Mostly, the show was about its cast of well-drawn characters, with dual focuses drawn on popular, pretty Casey Cartwright (Spencer Grammar) and her younger, geeky brother Rusty (Jacob Zachar).

As an indication of the care the creators took with the show, Casey’s four-year love triangle with slacker-king Cappie (Scott Michael Foster) and Evan Chambers (Jake McDorman – my choice for this generation’s Billy Zabka, and that’s a compliment of the highest order from me) never felt like a crutch or a worn out storyline. The shifting love and enmity between these three was believable and never wearying, although Casey herself could occasionally be trying.

Did I mention this show is *funny*? That Aaron Hill’s Beaver is a lovable manchild? That Geoffrey Arend guested as alumni burnout Egyptian Joe and temporarily lived inside a giant model volcano in the basement of Kappa Tau? That Rusty turned that same volcano into a beer-spewing monster by stealing a weather machine? That the inimitable Clark Duke¹ is a regular? This show is funny.

But on a netlet that’s settling for melodrama and teen soaps, there’s little space left for unassuming funny.

Greek has no murders, no Molly², but plenty of moxie. Catch it on DVD or streaming and see if you don’t agree. Me, I’ll be watching the series finale tonight and laughing at the hijinks that ensue.

1. Seriously. He can do no wrong.
2. Ringwald, suffering for some past wrong by reading Brenda Hampton’s pablum.

I have very little and very much to say about this beautiful season four premiere. Let’s see whether my talky or taciturn side wins, shall we?

When we left Dillon, Coach had been screwed out of his position by Joe McCoy’s machinations,¹ banished to the newly reopened East Dillon High as both consolation and punishment. Despite promises of large state grants to both schools, the best talent and lion’s share of the money have been diverted to Dillon.

With reduced income, reduced status, inadequate facilities, and a dearth of assistants, Eric finds himself in a position he hasn’t faced in a very long time. Remember: he was the JV coach at Dillon before he was elevated to the head coaching job. He isn’t accustomed to fighting with and for scraps. And they are scraps.

His team, such as it is, consists of those unskilled and unidentified athletes Dillon was willing to draw district lines around. Of course there’s a strong racial and economic split between the two squads as well. With the East Dillon players coming from the poor side of town, black and Latino students make up a large percentage of its population which is reflected in the composition of the team. Hearkening back to season one’s “Blinders”, there’s a strong but so far unmentioned problem with race on the team. Following Eric’s rant, only black players walk out and Eric specifically checks with Vince Howard² to see if he’s going to stay.

In fact, race is a thread through much of the episode despite never being mentioned. In the scene with the bloc of angry parents shouting at Tami about their children being moved, the first two parents to speak are black. Then a white woman whose “parents went to this school before Tami ever heard of Dillon High” wants to know why her daughter is being “sent to that hellhole with that element.” In the context of the scene, her rant is overlooked but we can’t ignore it. Especially not given the question asked of Tami numerous times about whether she thinks the two schools are equal. It would be impolitic of Tami to say, “separate but equal is inherently unequal,” but that is the clear implication.

Give all this context, Eric’s emotional explosion against his new team and the subsequent racial divide is far more worrisome.

On other fronts:

• JD has gone full Vader, embracing daddy and daddy’s ways even if he’s letting himself be a bit wild on the side. I remember last season how excited I was to see what Jeremy Sumpter would bring to the table but now I fear he’s been turned into a caricature. I realize he was dejected at State but the mustache twirling is a bit much.
• Matt is back in town – we don’t know why yet – and finding that Dillon Tech isn’t quite the same as the Art Institute of Chicago. Then again, perhaps he’s finally come across a truly insightful teacher (his sketches do have a bit of that “art student” feel to them and I can’t disagree with her sentiments) who will help him find his own unique vision.
• Julie is going to run to East Dillon to be with her few friends who’ve not graduated yet, further challenging Tami’s public proclamations that the two schools are equal.
• Tami and the coaching staff at Dillon are dancing to two vastly different pieces of music. Whether she can keep from being stomped by them will be one of the key story lines this season.
• Related, Buddy realizes he’s not only been marginalized but has in fact thrown his lot in with bad folk. With so little power thanks to Joe’s money, I expected him to stand by Coach Taylor at East Dillon this season. After seeing him tonight, I’m further convinced he’ll make that jump, as difficult as it may be.
• And Tim. Ah, Tim Riggins. Thank you for one great scene after another. The books flying, the young girl’s shredding of a former star, and every moment with Billy and Mindy. That first scene at dinner with Billy and Mindy, where Billy says nothing, that was gold. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep repeating it until the end of time: Derek Phillips is a remarkable actor whose talents made Billy Riggins so much more than the joke he was intended to be.

I’m thrilled to see FNL back at full power. I would stack this season premiere next to most of the episodes in that first, perfect season. Last year was good; this year promises to be great.

What did everyone else think?

1. I’m sure in his eyes, Coach hoisted himself on his own petard by ignoring precious, perfect JD.
2. Welcome to Dillon, Wallace.

Roday does triple duty for this episode, starring and helming from a screenplay he co-wrote. Filled with subtle and not-so subtle homages to Hitchcock, this is the prettiest and most ambitious episode of Psych to date. It also has one of the most touching and peculiar scenes I expect to see on TV this year, something that would feel at home in a Wes Anderson film. And yet it retains its sense of fun throughout.

Psych has grown on me. I’ve been a fan since the pilot but have really appreciated how much the creators have let the show and characters grow into something more than the cheap entertainment it originally appeared to be. This isn’t high drama, but Steve Franks and his writing staff have found a good balance, where rich characterization adds depth and humanity to what would in lesser hands be cardboard stereotypes.

I know a lot of critics find Roday too grating for regular viewing but it’s only through watching the full run of the series that I’ve come to see his Shawn as more than a wisecracking, juvenile attention whore. In these few episodes where Shawn faces challenges and risks to himself and those he cares about, the obnoxious facade slips enough to show the scared kid beneath. The scared kid who jokes and jibes and demands to be the center of attention because that way no one will know he is scared.¹ And in tonight’s season finale, that scared kid is forced to choose between saving O’Hara and saving Abigail by the devious and deadly Mr. Yin.

The season finale of Psych is on USA Network, tonight at 10/9C.

1. And he won’t be alone, when he’s forced to confront his fears.

While I find White Collar to be a decent diversion and continue to watch it each week, it’s failed to make the leap narratively. I’m sticking around because I think Matt Bomer’s got a lot of charm, I love Willy Garson, and I’m a long-time fan of Tim DeKay’s.¹ Story-wise, they aren’t treading ground that I haven’t seen on dozens of other shows over the years.

I just don’t care if Neal ever gets back with Kate.² I’m not sure how much I care about Project Mentor and Fowler and I haven’t found him threatening in the least. Noah Emmerich is a fine actor who can certainly be an intimidating presence and he’s doing what he can with what he’s been given, but there’s just no heat there.

And of course I’m still stinging from the cheap feint over the mid-season cliffhanger.

I want this show to be more than it is and I think part of why I’m still watching is the hope that a little of Matt Nix will rub off on Jeff Eastin. I want Neal to do something truly bad to someone who deserves it. I want him to have a dark secret he must keep from Peter bigger than the uninteresting, plain vanilla machinations to steal the music box for Fowler. I want Peter’s threats to send Neal back to prison to be real, to feel like more than the equivalent of Ralph Kramden’s “to the moon, Alice.”

All of White Collar‘s sister shows have embraced the dark to some degree. Even the lightest of light weights, Royal Pains, has demonstrated a willingness to rough up its characters and challenge our assumptions about them. Not so with our mismatched buddies here. Peter is (mostly) a by-the-book guy who grudgingly lets Neal bend the rules a little bit. Neal is a thief with a heart of gold. Mozzie, who at least expresses great antipathy for suits, is nonetheless a pussycat. Where are their edges?

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised Fowler and the criminals-of-the-week aren’t very intimidating. With such toothless protagonists, it would be terribly unbalanced to have actual bad guys as the bad guys.

But there is still hope.

The season finale inches toward the edge of the abyss, keeping its light heart while letting Fowler be a touch more intimidating. Revelations about Mentor and its relationship to Neal add a little spice. And maybe this time, the final shot won’t be a cheap trick to be explained away with a wave of the hand. If the events of Tuesday’s finale hold, it’s just possible that I’ll be watching White Collar next year for more than the charm of its leads.

If you’re hopeful like me, go ahead and give the season finale a chance this Tuesday at 10/9C on USA.

1. Plus, I keep hoping Natalie Morales is going to get a bigger role.
2. The fact that Alexandra Daddario is a blank as Kate doesn’t help the character’s cause. Why the hell is Neal smitten with such a non-entity?

Over the last three years, Michael Westen has faced his demons, ghosts from his past, and – in Victor – a cautionary tale of his own future. In tonight’s season finale he meets something far worse: himself.

The monster whose crimes fill Michael’s burn notice has been locked in a dark hole, stripped of his freedom and the credit for his evil acts while Michael has roamed Miami. Simon’s life’s work is Michael’s burden. And Simon wants it all back. To that end he spent millions, double-crossed Gilroy, and broke into the bright light of South Florida to force Michael’s hand.

Guest star Garret Dillahunt brings his usual creepiness to Simon, and by moving with dancer’s grace and standing straight as a statue of Lenin, he imbues Simon with a definite Michael Westen-ness. This monster, more than Victor or Dead Larry or Brennan, is what much of the world sees when it sees Michael.

Of course not everyone is fooled by the burn notice. Maddie knows her son. Sam and Fi know Michael. And for the most part, Michael still knows himself. There are a few moments, brief instants, in tonight’s episode where Jeffrey Donovan’s face contorts and his eyes glint and we can see bits of himself leaking away. Michael’s salvation has always been his makeshift family which is why they fight so hard to keep him from going off alone. This season¹ has seen him forced to push his friends away to work with (and against) Gilroy but their bonds have been strong enough to hold. Any hope Michael has of avoiding the fate of becoming what the pages of his burn notice say he is rests with Maddie and Nate and Sam and Fi.

But are they enough?

Earlier in the season, it seemed Michael was beginning to accept his new life. When Gilroy came to town, he wasn’t fighting to work with him to clear his name but because Gilroy was a bad chappie. With his makeshift family keeping him attached to the world and his drive to be freed from under his burn notice diminishing, it seemed Michael might find some peace. Simon’s entrance on the scene, and his burning desire to get his life back, complicates that. Simon needs intervention from Management to get back his life. At what cost to Michael?

Watch tonight’s very explosive² season finale at 10/9C on USA.

1. All seasons, in fact. The central theme of Burn Notice is that Michael’s ties to his friends and family are the only thing keeping him human. His desire to escape into his job is tempered by his attachment to those he cares about who care about him. A nice allegory for many of us, I’d say.
2. They love to bring out the pyrotechnics in the season finales. I for one love them more for that.

First, let’s get the big mystery out of the way…based on the way Betty’s belly looks I’d say we’ve jumped forward about eight months from the end of season two. Enough time for Don and Betty to have come to yet another in their long string of accommodations, for things at Sterling-Cooper to still be in flux, for Harry¹ to be much more important, and for Bert to have acquired a lovely piece of tentacle porn to keep his Rothko company. But just little enough time that we can watch as the new world order begins to emerge.

I will assume Don’s visions in the opening segment were a reflection of his anxiety over being a father again. Notions of belonging, family, parentage, and especially fatherhood are constantly aswirl within him. We’ve seen facets of this confusion before – his fear of being recognized as Dick Whitman and the time he told Bobby how he had been treated by his father in trying to explain he would never treat his own son that way are the two that come immediately to mind – and this scene shows us they are at the forefront of his mind. At least when he’s at home.

Because Don is a man of as many aspects as of suits. The inner strife that roils beneath the surface at home disappears the moment he removes himself from the heat. Each facet of his life seems to get its own, segregated psyche. He is always living in the moment with little comprehension of the consequences of his actions from one realm to another. Don is a master of compartmentalization.

More than Sal, anyway. Poor Sal. The guy can’t cut a break. A man in uniform takes all the pressure off him and…fire alarm. Which interruption is the problem with poor Sal, he who has a burning fire within that can’t be quenched and he won’t let burn free.

As I see it, the episode’s title refers less to the short trip to Baltimore than it does to the Brits out of water. They’re trying to establish control over Sterling-Cooper from afar with a small colonizing force, but simply fail to understand the reality of the situation. Pitting Pete and Ken against each other will only go so far; pushing everyone around with the gracelessness of a dying empire will eventually fail. Note how easily Joan maneuvers Moneypenny into a visitors’ office, knowing full well he’ll be pushed outside to the secretary’s desk once Lane Pryce sees him there. She understands how things work at Sterling-Cooper, and how things work in America. The Brits don’t²

Unlike Joan (and one suspects, Don,) most of the American staff are in thrall to the romanticism the Brits represent. Hence Bert’s insistence that the fog of London must exist, and barring that, that the name is still apropos. See also the secretaries swooning over Moneypenny’s accent. It will be the clear thinking of Joan and others like her that will keep the essential character of Sterling-Cooper; otherwise, the rebirth we witness this year will be massive in its scope.

One other point about the Americans vs. the Brits: have we ever seen a bald man at Sterling-Cooper before? A bald man in advertising at all? There have been almost no bald men on the show in its two-year run. But tonight we have a loud, brash, ballsy and bald American who speaks truth to power as he’s being forced out the door. A man who rightfully is upset by the manner in which his new corporate masters are rigging the system. A man who, I propose, is Matt Weiner’s avatar. His time at AMC has been (as far as we can tell, and barring the contract dispute last year) relatively calm but he’s been in the business long enough to have had his share of empty suits get in his way. Maybe I’m reaching. You decide.

On the Draper homefront, Betty is completing the distancing from both her children. Bobby’s the little liar and now Sally is (she jokes) the little lesbian. As they remain close to Don, closer than in the past with his softened demeanor, it seems, Betty will be focusing more of her attention on the baby she carries. Assuming no birthing catastrophes befall her, this can only lead to her further infantilization as she spends all of her time and emotional capital on her baby, ignoring her two older children.

Finally: Pete. Oy. He got the inferior client list³ and has the inferiority complex. Instead of accepting the situation as it is and doing his best to make it work – the approach Ken seems anxious to take – Pete wants to bitch and moan about it. His self-righteous sense of entitlement makes this a difficult pill to swallow. Add to that his constant sense of inferiority to Ken and he is practically choking in the gall. Ken is more confident. Ken is better looking. Ken is taller. Ken is a better writer. Ken is, Ken is, Ken is.

All in all, a great start to the season.

What did everyone else think?

1. !
2. Not yet, at least.
3. What hapened with Utz that caused Ken to lose them? Am I forgetting something from last season involving Ken, or is this a missing puzzle piece?

This episode was all kinds of wonderful. From Hardison’s wig to Parker’s awkward interactions with people to the tongue-in-cheek homages to the great thrillers of the ’70s, from start to finish: fun. By switching up roles in an effort to allow Sophie to seek some comfort and excitement after her breakup, everyone got a chance to use some of the skills they’ve been developing in their ongoing effort to become more well rounded thieves and grifters. We’ve seen more of this, extending back to the latter episodes of the first season, and each time the writers have found a way to make it interesting. Sophie isn’t a master planner and never will be; it would be far more boring if she slipped into Nate’s role without some trouble. Likewise Parker scamming and Eliot playing computer geek.

If I were to complain about anything it would be that Eliot didn’t struggle enough finding information on Hardison’s interrogator and that Nate seems too comfortable in the midst of a grift. The weight rests on Beth Riesgraf’s shoulders to be the awkward, uncomfortable one when playing a role; I’d like to see a little more of that from everyone but Sophie.

That small grumble aside, this was good.

Edit: I wrote my review off the screener. I should have waited. During the episode, TNT had cross-promotion of Raising the Bar with *Nancy Grace*. An hour in which Leverage bashes her loosely fictionalized stand-in and they put her smug face right there in the middle of it!

In what I can only surmise is Time Warner’s blindness, the team took down Nancy Grace tonight. A shrill, idiotic, fear-mongering harridan whom no one takes seriously as a journalist.¹ After viciously twisting the truth, lying, and slandering an innocent man in order to secure ratings, the exonerated bus driver finally tried to kill himself. His good name had been muddied by Hunter – would have been muddied just to be uttered aloud by so despicable a person² – until he finally tried suicide. Fortunately his daughter found him in time and then found her way to Leverage’s door.

It’s probably good for her that Sophie is looking for something to fill the emptiness she’s now feeling; Nate appeared ready to walk away from this job restoring a man’s name. But Sophie thinks they can do it by tainting Monica Hunter and forcing the network to issue a complete apology. And if they taint her enough, all her victims will be rehabilitated in the public’s eye.

The team chose a straightforward con but failed to take into account the extreme pettiness of Hunter. Handing her a story about secret prisons peppering America, she opted not to run with it when she realized her fans wouldn’t be interested. They’d be happy to know such prisons exist in their midst.

Unlike most of the setbacks on Leverage, this wasn’t a failure of the mission or the result of a clever mark seeing through their machinations. This was, plain and simple, an idiot. No sensible person would think a respect- and power-mad “journalist” would pass on a story of that magnitude and import for short-term ratings. I believe Hunter would pass; it’s just so shocking to encounter someone that stupid in real life or fiction.

As opposed to many of the team’s cons, the conflict was not a result of Hunter resisting for any rational reasons. The biggest obstacles they faced were the result of her bad choices. Jumping the fence at the military base was “Lucy trying to get into the show at the Copa” stupid. And while it did lead to some difficulties in getting her and Hardison back out, it ultimately helped seal her fate.

As much as I enjoyed this one, I’m not sure what to say about it. We’re all aware of the problems of cable news and cable “news” but fear mongering isn’t a new thing. As long as there have been crowds there have been demagogues ready to excite and yoke them for their own nefarious purposes. Historically, those have been about military power and political and religious control but even petty capitalists have capitalized on fear before. Hell, even Henry Hill used fear to whip up the good citizens of River City into a band uniform-and-instrument buying frenzy.

On the personal front, it was nice to see Nate acknowledgment that Sophie “carried his drunk ass for over a year.” Their relationship has evolved into something much greater than the passionate banter and battling of the past into a true friendship. The spiritual void she’s feeling right now will presumably test her convictions about who she is and what she does; having a true friend in Nate will make that much simpler.

What did everyone else think?

1. Had Hunter been a man, I’d have assumed it was a Glenn Beck stand-in.
2. Seriously: Nancy, Glenn…what I’m writing here applies to you.

For two seasons, I’ve found myself in the awkward position of complaining when my second favorite event on the annual sports calendar comes around because USA would preempt Burn Notice for two weeks. When USA lost the broadcast rights to the US Open to ESPN, the knowledge that Michael, Sam, and Fi wouldn’t be interrupted was the only comfort. You see, ESPN does shitty tennis coverage whereas USA has done kickass work for twenty years.

And then I found out the summer finale was in August anyway. Aarrrrgggh!

Alright. That’s out of my system. The gang will be back in January-ish so tonight’s episode, the episodes I have saved on the Tivo, and seasons one and two are all I’ve got to tide me over. Will it be enough?

Tonight’s episode alone might do it.

Back in early June, Jeffrey Donovan tweeted about playing Michael McBride in the summer finale so I was prepared for it. What I wasn’t prepared for was the amount of awesome on display. From the smallest moments – Sam saying, “I’m getting Fi out of there no matter what,” to Michael’s revelation that Fi is not his past before plugging Strickler, this episode went deeper into these characters than we’ve gone in a long time.

Fi knows she isn’t the same person she used to be as well as Michael knows he has to find a middle path that will keep her in his life. Even Madeline realizes she has a place in her son’s life, different from what she’d like though it may be.

I don’t think there’s much I can offer in terms of analysis beyond what anyone can see: the family was stressed tonight by outside forces conspiring to tear it apart and hurt it. Under that stress, its bonds strengthened and it fought back. Strickler, in the hands of Ben Shenkman, proved to be a far worthier foil for Michael than Moon/Blood/Good/Stone/Detective chick. He was clearly competent and dangerous and carried himself with the cool confidence that comes from knowing you have the upper hand with an adversary. He never threatened, yet was always threatening. Likewise, Paul Blackthorne was a believable badass. That he and his team could succeed was a given.

Until Michael and Sam got eyes on the boathouse I could not guess whether the episode would end in a cliffhanger or a rescue and denouement, an advantage for writer Craig O’Neill that doesn’t offer itself but once or twice a year on Burn Notice. Because of the uncertainty – would Fi be shipped to Ireland and season 3.5 start overseas with an extraction and rescue mission or would it resolve tonight – the tension remained higher throughout than had this been any old episode. It wasn’t obvious that Fi’s brother wouldn’t die even after surviving the initial shooting. It wasn’t obvious Diego was going to die.

But for all the tension and all the excitement – explosions, a wickedly awesome stunt with Ms. Reynolds’ Buick, the standoff with Strickler – this episode was about these people we’ve grown to care about and the way they’ve grown as we’ve watched.

That’s storytelling at its finest right there.

What did everyone else think?