I am going to write about a lot of TV shows on here…that’s a given - ask anyone that knows me, but I’m start with Samantha Who? I have loved Christina Applegate since Married…With Children but I have to say, I think this is the best roll she’s ever played. For those who haven’t seen it (lame) its the story of a woman, Sam, who wakes up from a coma and has no recollection of her life before the accident that put her there. During the episode new Samantha quests to better herself and erase people’s recollections of her as “bad Sam.” “Bad Sam” is a freakin’ riot and sometimes I wish there was more of her.
Jean Smart plays Sam’s mother and is fantastically cast as the mother who is trying to use her daughter’s attempt at rehabilitation to guilt her daughter into spending more time with her.
Sam’s got two best friends Andrea (pronounced Ahn-dree-ah) from her old life and Dina, from her childhood. Dina the fantastically neurotic and insecure friend is played by Melissa McCarthy and Andrea, the boozy, selfish and a little slutty friend played is by Jennifer Esposito.
The comedic timing between these 4 ladies is impeccable. It’s currently in repeats on Tuesday nights at 9 on ABC. The second season will premiere on the fall on Mondays at 9:30.
I also want to give special props to AMC’s 60’s advertising drama Mad Men. This show was easily my favorite show from 2007. It was the definition of “appointment viewing” for me last summer. Jon Hamm, who plays advertising exec Don Draper, won the Golden Globe for Best Actor this past January and is a shoe-in for an Emmy nomination.
John Slattery plays the typical misogynistic 60s man to the hilt. He cheats on his wife with his secretary, smokes too much, drinks all day at work and chases any skit he’s near. Come to think of it, most of the men on the show do - its the norm. With Vincent Kartheiser’s snivelly suck-up Pete Campbell, that streak of stepping out on the missus catches up to him in the season finale and sets up what is bound to a be a pivotal plot point in season 2.
The three ladies on the show, Elizabeth Moss (Peggy), January Jones (Betty) and Christina Hendricks (Joan) are all vastly different characters - Peggy’s the shy, naive secretary who discovers along the way that since she’s never going to be the va-va-va-voom vamp Joan is, she’s got to leave her mark in the office another way and actually becomes the first woman to (sort of) infiltrate the boy’s club of Sterling-Cooper Advertising. Joan is the “mother hen” secretary at S-C whose been sleeping with the boss, but who is also deeply insecure after being kept as a mistress for so long . She plays the roll with such subtle sadness one minute and such sexual magnetism the next that, for me, she became a scene stealer every time she graced the screen. January Jones is a superstar in the making as Don’s wife Betty who feels the sting of being a neglected wife and mother. Don never comes home, sleeps around, snaps at her for being insecure and even forces her to see a shrink because he thinks something is wrong with her for being so sensitive when she just wants to spend time with her husband. She wears the mask of perfect housewife, but often voices her displeasure to other housewives, but rarely to Don, except in a few rare cases when she just can’t take it anymore and speaks out of turn. She always winds up apologizing even when she’s 100% correct! She’s gorgeous to watch, always impeccably dressed (which comes from her past as a model,) and plays the roll with just a touch of entitlement and snobbery.
The show should be replaying on AMC but, sadly it is not. Season 1 will be out on DVD (and on my book shelf) on July 1st. Look at the swank packaging:
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