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[oselle]

Paul Krugman had a great editorial in today's New York Times about the nauseating Graeme Frost situation. You can read it here. (You'll have to watch a tiny American Express ad first, but you can skip it by clicking on the upper right.)

For llinos, who had some questions about what sort of arguments people put up to the idea of national healthcare, this comic strip pretty much says it all. Don't laugh too hard -- I've actually heard people say things like this. And mean it. No, really.

Has anyone here been watching the spectacular Mad Men on AMC? The season is just about over (next week is the finale) and wow...this show completely blows me away from week to week. By the end of last night's episode, I was literally sitting there with my mouth hanging open. The writing on this show leaves me absolutely speechless, not to mention the acting, the art direction, the wardrobe and everything else. If you've missed it and AMC repeats it (which they probably will, since it's been a huge critical success for them) please do yourself a favor and watch it. Warning: May cause cravings for cigarettes and scotch.

And speaking of television...

I went out to lunch today and had a couple of Bloody Marys. Then my friend found a worm in her ravioli so we got an extra round of drinks on the house (no, she did NOT plant it!). Being moderately soused put me in the mood to reconsider last night's SPN episode. I'm sober now and I'm reconsidering the reconsideration but felt like working it out anyway.

I was thinking that maybe separating Sam and Dean at this stage is a good thing. Maybe it works in terms of where they are. As much as the show benefits from the dynamic between the two of them, maybe it's more realistic (as realistic as anything can be in this show!) for them to be pulling away from each other. Selling your soul's gotta make things a little...awk-ward, huh? For both of them -- Sam probably doesn't want to be around Dean because he's furious at him and he's surreptitiously trying to figure out a way to save him. Dean probably doesn't want to be around Sam because he just doesn't want to deal with this at all. It made me think of a Joe Walsh song from the Season Two soundtrack (most kindly sent to me on CD by baylorsr):

Seems to me
You don't wanna talk about it
You just turn your pretty head
And walk away.

That's what Dean's doing. Turning his (very, very) pretty head and walking away!

What I have to wonder, though, is whether the writers are thinking the same thing. Or did they just separate Sam and Dean so that they could get Sam alone with Ruby? I'm not sure why I want to know this, but I really like to feel secure that the writers know what they're doing. If the writers only split them up out of necessity to move the plot along, that's somehow less meaningful than if they did it both to move the plot and because they know that this is what's right for the characters.

I just sort of...don't want to give credit where it isn't due. Do you know what I mean? It's one of my biggest beefs with the Harry Potter books -- readers twisting themselves in all kind of analytical knots to give meaning to a situation or character that Rowling only created to kick the plot along. That's the writer's job. Creating meaning, depth. It's not up to us as readers or viewers to create it where it doesn't exist. That's why Mad Men so astounds me because the I never wonder if the writers know what they're doing. I don't have to go prospecting for depth because they've already given me more than I could ever have dug up on my own.

I'm still very much on the fence about last night's episode and I'm not sure that I trust the writers. The whole Ben subplot is bothering me even more, especially when they've got Dean blathering about how he's leaving nothing but a car behind. Ummm...pardon me??? I said this to ghyste and I'll repeat it here: Dean just sold off his life and his soul to save his brother and he thinks he's leaving nothing behind? Some kid that he doesn't even know would somehow be a more rewarding legacy than the brother for whom he sacrificed everything? What the fuck, Sera Gamble? I felt like that was a sloppy, gratuitously angsty line calculated to make the audience (female members, anyway) go "Awwwww!" It doesn't fit the show's context, it doesn't fit the character and it just feels cheaply manipulative. Sorry.

Maybe I need some more Bloody Marys. Ah well. There's always next week. Onward and upward.