Could Ray Wise be more ...
Question: Could
Ray Wise be more perfectly cast on
Reaper? I don't just mean well cast, or even brilliantly cast: He is
perfect on that show. He's this season's Alec Baldwin. Also, I've been thinking about the people who complain about how sexist
Mad Men is. Of course, the standard response is that the show's not sexist, it's merely a depiction of sexist times. But I have noticed something a lot more subtle, and a lot more telling, namely Don's choice of women. Don married the "ideal" woman: Barbie-doll beautiful, obedient, seemingly without an opinion or will of her own, extremely well behaved. On the outside, she appears every bit the perfect trophy wife. But who are the women Don feels the most strongly attracted and continually drawn to? Midge and Rachel are strong, independent women who are the polar opposites of Betty's Waspy homemaker. In any great drama, there is so much more beneath the surface, and
Mad Men is a perfect example of that. While
Reaper (with the brilliant Ray Wise) is mindless fun,
Mad Men is the type of drama that demands (from me, at least) rapt attention and deep thought. How lucky to have junk food and high protein in the same TV season.
Answer: And kudos to you for tying together two such disparate subjects. Couldn't agree more about Ray Wise. Even when episodes of
Reaper begin to lag, the Devil never disappoints on this show. He's a hoot. And your observation on
Mad Men is well taken. I know a number of people (mostly women) who told me they couldn't embrace this show because the sexist attitudes on display were just too depressing. I agree with you that, given the emptiness of most of the lives of these characters,
Mad Men is hardly an endorsement of workplace sexism. I loved in last night's finale how when Don's wife, Betty, checked out the phone bill to see if she could catch him cheating, what she discovered was an even worse betrayal: that he was getting regular updates from her shrink. This is not a happy family, and the psychological disintegration of Don as his compartmentalized life begins to crumble has been fascinating, like most things in this engrossing drama. (We will leave the subject of what happened to Peggy in the finale for a future column. I imagine there will be a lot of "what the ----" reaction to that twist.)
