Fear the Walking Dead (AMC, premiered August 23 @ 8/7) trailer here

A spinoff of The Walking Dead follows a family in LA at the beginning of the outbreak, Fear begins with a six episode season, but already has an order for a second season of fifteen episodes, guaranteeing many more deltoids will be eaten, and many more “don’t go out there” commands will be ignored.

note: see Amanda Keeler’s full-length review here

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Public Morals (TNT, premiered August 25 @ 10/9) trailer here

Another police drama set in New York City, this one focuses on the Public Morals Division and hence lots of vice. Star-executive producer-writer-director Edward Burns is joined by Justified bad guys Michael Rapaport and Neal McDonough, 30 Rock’s Cecie, Katrina Bowden, and Elizabeth Masucci.

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At first sight, Public Morals looks great: strong actors giving great performances; a morally ambiguous setting at a moment in time when things are changing rapidly; and enough of a family plus job plus crime story to keep us entertained. So why is Public Morals releasing all its episodes shortly after the premiere simultaneously? Part of the answer needs to dig deep into current changes in audience demands through the Netflix/Amazon model. Part of the answer needs to address the way TV shows have become so much more complex and experiment with forms of pacing that are not conducive to the 45 minutes a week format.

But as I was watching the first episode of Public Morals, I wondered if we’ve finally simply hit the point where we’re tired of watching white dudes being white dudes yet again. It feels like all too many cop stories we’ve seen—albeit with possibly better zeitgeist awareness and better characterizations. Yet I can’t help but wonder whether we deserve a different story in 2015. In fact, I kept on waiting for scenes in which Muldoon’s wife showed up, because her awareness of how the world is changing around them was a breath of fresh air amidst all the pretty young prostitutes. I’ll give it a few more episodes but I, for one, would like to hear someone else’s story and maybe look at this time period through someone else’s point of view for a change.

Kristina Busse (independent scholar) studies fan fiction and fan communities and is co-editor of Transformative Works and Cultures.

Pickle and Peanut (Disney XD, premiered September 7 @ 9/8) sneak peek here

Jon Heder is a pickle, Johnny Pemberton is a peanut, and they are friends. Of course they are. This new animated offering comes from Fish Hook and Almost Naked Animals’ Noah Z. Jones.

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Pickle and Peanut isn’t very good. It might also prove to be the bro-iest cartoon on TV right now. Both of these things are a pity, as it’s probably the most forward-looking cartoon on Disney XD aesthetically speaking, drawing from such sources as vaporwave, hipster rap, the doodle-like artwork of such programs as Regular Show and the surreal, VHS-like graphics of Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job. I want to get my hands on its credit music. Above all else though, this show about a pair of slacker best bud supermarket employees owes its existence to the cultural impact of Adult Swim on the adult (and now, children’s) animation landscape. Pickle and Peanut might be the first show on Disney XD to be actively fostering a stoner demographic.

Perhaps more importantly, it might be the first time I’ve seen a show that’s trying to be a stoner comedy on training-wheels, affecting the same detached (yet nostalgic) pop culture saturated white-boy sensibilities that can so often be seen in Adult Swim shows and skewing them towards a younger audience. That is to say, they remove the swears and deflect the sexuality entirely onto codified “no-homo” rituals and the broad construction of female characters as entirely vapid objects of attraction. The phrase “Yoga Pants” is repeated as something of a mantra at one point. It’s early days still, and I’m prepared to give this one a chance (both the aforementioned Regular Show and the wonderful Adventure Time began with similar buddy comedy formulas), but this first pairing of episodes is a shaky start. The prospect of grandma jails and zit monsters should really deliver more, if only in terms of creativity. Indeed, I would grant more credit to the idea of a humongous pimple bringing sudden popularity to its host if I hadn’t already seen it done much better on Invader Zim, or indeed just two seasons ago on Bob’s Burgers.

Camilo Diaz Pino (U of Wisconsin Madison) studies animation cultures with a focus on transnational circulation.

Bastard Executioner (FX, premiered September 15 @ 10/9) trailer here

Sons of Anarchy showrunner-actor-director Kurt Sutter and partner in life / partner in SoA crime Katey Sagal’s next outing should feed Sutter’s ample taste for blood, set in Medieval England, and focusing on a warrior who can’t seem to lay down his sword as much as he’d like to do so. True Blood’s Stephen Moyer joins Sagal, Sutter, and star Lee Jones.

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Bastard Executioner begins with a lengthy crawl, a history that may function primarily as realist motivation for mayhem. BE asks for comparison to Game of Thrones and also evokes Middle Earth – see the happy couple gamboling along the village street. In his New York Times review (15 September 2015), James Poniewozik finds BE to be “thin” as drama, “one turkey leg away from a Renaissance Faire.”

Gendered violence is a foundation of BE’s story setting. It establishes a man’s cruel nature. A sex scene appears seven minutes into the pilot — older man and much younger woman; “a barren hole with swollen meat,” he complains. It motivates the vengeance that will work toward an independent nation-state. BE calls upon an established inspiration for rebellion against British overlords. Offscreen violence energizes rebels in Braveheart (Mel Gibson, 1995) and The Patriot (Roland Emmerich, 2000). In BE, wretched cruelty visited upon women and children is piled on taxation that supports the lifestyle and power of the 1%.

It is a cruel world. BE has lots of on-screen violence and close-ups of body parts being violated accompanied by squishy sounds. In the novel The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley, 1983), the story of Arthur and company remains with the women while the men are off fighting. Staying in the domestic space of the castle saves reading pages of descriptions of hand-to-hand combat and dismemberment on bloodied fields. Instead, a paragraph or two summary of the battle suffices.

By the end of the pilot, three women – the mysterious healer, the newly widowed Baroness (oriented to social justice and with a mystical connection to the land), and the newly widowed executioner’s wife — appear to have agency. Two have been liberated from sadistic husbands. With BE, one can fast-forward through the mayhem to follow the womanly power.

Mary Beth Harolovich (University of Arizona) is a film and television historian, and a founder of Console-ing Passions.

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Within the first ten minutes of The Bastard Executioner, the plot for the first hour becomes clear to any longtime viewer of television—from the moment you see our protagonist’s beautiful, young, blonde, and super pregnant wife appear, you recognize (yet dread) that she’s never going to make it. Our hero gets vengeance, yet that scene of brutality left me as unsatisfied as it did the hero—must the audience be forced repeatedly to glimpse a dead baby’s tiny body in order to experience the slight (but unsettling) schadenfreude of the bad buy Baron getting his comeuppance?

There is a lot of gore in this pilot—an arm is hacked off, a head is separated from its body, at least two people have daggers/swords thrust through their skulls—yet my chief complaint about this program is not its violence, nor its predictability. Rather, I was disappointed by the lack of character development. For some reason, medieval dramas seem to forget that folks who lived in the past were just as human as we are. The character who becomes most intriguing is one who lives largely in the background of the two-hour opener. The wife of a “punisher” is called upon to expose that another man has taken on the identity of her (deceased) husband; instead, after a rather touching apology from the stranger, she accepts the stranger as her new mate and father of her children. What an interesting moment and choice! There is a mysticism that runs through the pilot that offers some mystery—why do our hero and “the witch” character share visions?—but largely this program opts for cliché and empty shock over character distinction and growth.

Karen Petruska (Gonzaga University) studies the media industries, television history, and media policy.

Moonbeam City (Comedy Central, premiered September 16 @ 10.30/9.30) trailer here

Parodying Miami Vice and its ilk, though looking a lot like the stills for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and also looking and sounding very Archerian, Moonbeam City unites Elizabeth Banks, Will Forte, Rob Lowe, and Kate Mara in an animated show about Moonbeam City PD.

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First draft: Whatever. [switches over to You’re the Worst]

…

Second draft: Elizabeth Banks is better than this. This year, she’s reprised her part in Wet Hot American Summer, hit a home run with Magic Mike XXL, and directed Pitch Perfect 2. Kate Mara is better than this too. In a better version of Hollywood, she’d star opposite Ellen Page in True Detective instead of getting boxed out of Fant4stic.

The “this” in question is Moonbeam City. The animated series was created by Scott Gairdner and riffs on Miami Vice as Archer does with James Bond (a dog whistle I can’t hear, though obviously Comedy Central would want some version of that for itself). Banks and Mara play beleaguered police chief Pizzaz Miller and by-the-book detective Chrysalis Tate to grossly incompetent “loose cannon” Dazzle Novak, voiced by Rob Lowe. Will Forte kills time as Novak’s professional rival, Rad Cunningham.

Moonbeam City apes Patrick Nagel’s geometric sensuality and synth pop outfit Night Club offers an atmospheric score. But by the end of the pilot, I was as fed up as Miller and Tate. Novak is the butt of the joke, but the show never indicts his boorishness. Instead, strippers orbit him and he beds a singer of indeterminate Middle Eastern descent whose name he can’t pronounce. Finally, the comedic flatness Moonbeam City tries to purloin from Archer requires a straight man who doesn’t realize he’s crazy. Rob Lowe was a walking Nagel painting in 1985, but he’s no H. Jon Benjamin. Television doesn’t need more programs like this, but Jon Hamm would have been a better choice (also what better way to take the heat off your last Mad Men Emmy nomination than parody @80sDonDraper?). Moonbeam City is falling apart; the better show would focus on Banks and Mara reassembling it.

Alyxandra Vesey (University of Wisconsin-Madison) studies the relationship between identity politics, music culture, and media labor and her dissertation analyzes recording artists’ contributions to post-network television.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy (Disney XD, premiered September 26 @ 9.30/8.30) trailer here

Hoping to capitalize on the success of the film, this animated offering also aims to pick up where the film left off. No Chris Pratt, but probably lots of Disney’s good will and hopes for success.

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The Guardians of the Galaxy animated series answers the age old question: if someone farts in space, will anyone laugh? And although I’m glad I can finally sleep at night knowing the answer (and I won’t give it away here), I did expect more from this extension of the Marvel Universe.

On a basic level the series is fine — perhaps better than fine (I must admit my exposure to the current animation landscape is limited). The animation is super sleek, and the series relies on a team of experienced voice actors who all do their part to keep things interesting. However, although the show is full of wise cracks and one liners, it feels more akin to typical animation banter we’ve seen a million times than the delightfully irreverent humor of the movie.

It’s also worth noting that the story of a misfit crew of scoundrels roaming the galaxy is almost identical to Disney’s other new series, Star War: Rebels. This is unfortunate for Guardians considering Rebels is a far superior animated series on every single level. Where Rebels pulls you in using interesting re-occurring themes and relatively complex and evolving character relationships, Guardians leans heavy on plot lines to get us hooked, and seems content to allow the movie to do the heavy lifting in the character development department.

The bottom line is, for being based on a movie that was a breath of fresh air to the Marvel cinematic universe, the series isn’t breaking any new ground for animated television. That being said, if you like loud laser battles every 5 – 8 minutes and really thought what the movie needed was more space farting, tune into Disney XD on Saturday nights at 9:30 eastern!

Nicholas Benson (University of Wisconsin-Madison) is a media and cultural studies scholar with a focus on production cultures, media franchising and failure.

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Donning his trusty Walkman, Peter-Quill (Starlord) danced onto the screen of DisneyXD this weekend in the new animated series Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. The series is an adaptation of one of the Marvel film series’ most interesting films, characterized by a strong ensemble, its morally ambiguous characters, and distinct sense of humor. Retaining the tone from a blockbuster film in an animated tv series is extremely difficult and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy succeeds admirably in this goal. In its first episode the series found its characters often torn between their heroic and mercenary influences and while the somewhat extreme distillation of each of their character traits for the pilot left much of the humor on Quill’s and Rocket’s shoulders, that humor was consistently strong.

The film’s greatest strength was in the complex but ultimately supportive dynamic of its central team and the series exploits this dynamic well. At first the extent to which the voice acting and physical features, some of which seemed troublingly more Caucasian, of the characters diverged from the original was jarring. However, I found it easy to adapt as the new variants of key characters kept the essence of the original personalities and dynamics effectively. As suggested by the series roll-out, which included the release of animated shorts exploring the background of each character, Guardians of the Galaxy is not just invested in the space adventure of the moment but in the mysteries of its characters’ pasts and their evolution as a team. I am neither a committed Marvel fan nor a franchise purist, and so the adaptation to the new format may bother others more; but, for me, the television series has managed to keep much of the film’s magic and made me into a future viewer. Besides, who can say no to baby groot?

Kyra Hunting (University of Kentucky) studies genre, representation and children’s media.

Indian Summers (PBS, premiered September 27 @ 9/8) trailer here

“New” only inasmuch as it’s new to American TV, this show follows a group of socialites at the foot of the Himalayas in the age of the British Raj. Julie Walters stars.

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If anyone has the right to tell the story of India’s fight for independence, it is British television makers. This story begins with the white British perspective of main character Alice arriving on a train. One of the main characters in this show is Indian, but we literally don’t hear him talk for the first 15 minutes, and the POV is decidedly white British. Thus, the stiff-upper-lip motif abounds. “Oh no, a home rule terrorist has vandalized a portrait of Queen Victoria. Tea time anyone?” The show seems self-aware and reflexive about colonial oppression, but there seems to be a winking ambivalence here. Yes, one of the earliest shots is a close-up of an Indian servant washing the door sign on the elite British Simla Club that reads “No Dogs or Indians.” Evidence of colonial oppression, check. But the camera invites us to relish and appreciate how fun imperialism was for the white people, as we see them glammed out in lavish period costumes singing, dancing and fucking in their elitist clubs and mansions, drinking champagne and being called sahib (or mam sahib for the lady colonists) by their native servants. This is all to say that Indian Summers seems to want to complicate Britain’s colonial history, as if to argue, see, things were not as black and white as you may think. Those Indian activists were cold-hearted killers, see? Plus we’ve cast a lot of hot Indian actors for all the interracial affairs! And there are strong female characters! I am going to keep watching, because I’ll watch any historical melodrama that promises plenty of sex scenes. I’m interested to see how race, gender and national identity are complicated as the show progresses, but I remain skeptical that this show can transcend the imperialist past it seeks to interrogate.

Eleanor Patterson (University of Wisconsin-Madison) studies the cultural politics of post-network broadcasting.

Benders (IFC, premiered October 1 @ 10/9) trailer here

A comedy examining God’s chosen sport, hockey, and a bunch of guys in an amateur league.

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I was hopeful about Benders, especially after last week’s “sneak preview” episode. That episode had a hockey-centric plot, some solid jokes, good character dynamics, and was only slightly offensive. Goon (2011) it was not, but it wasn’t bad. The official premier episode, however, shuttled hockey to the episode’s bookends for the real plot of the episode: The main character, Paul, is asked by his grandfather to kill him, and Paul agrees to do it. This is not It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia; these characters do not lack empathy. So why would you introduce them to an audience by having one choke his grandfather to near-death? Even more difficult to understand than this plot of ante-patricide is the episode’s continuous homophobic dialogue. It may originate from the show’s Rescue Me lineage or as an attempt to represent how men police masculinity, but it creates an atmosphere of aggressive homophobia that is antiquated and alienating. This line of joking is so pronounced within this episode but almost entirely absent in the preview episode. Maybe they grew up and realized that “no homo” is not the fount of humor they thought it was, but I doubt it. You’re better off watching Goon and Sirens and thinking of what might have been.

Charlotte E. Howell (University of Texas-Austin) is researching religion on television dramas from an industrial perspective.

American Horror Story: Hotel (FX, October 7 @ 10/9) teaser here

Lady Gaga joins the cast for this season’s outing, which takes its inspiration from numerous haunted hotel horror films, and from the Hotel Cecil and Elaine Lam’s death that went viral. Everyone involved has promised it will be darker, which is good, because psycho clowns who rip off their masks to reveal festering wounds was just way too breezy.

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To understand why he is not thrilled with tv’s current horror shows (including AHS), tv critic Neil Genzlinger turned to Stephen King’s “three types of scariness” from Danse Macabre (1981): revulsion, coming face-to-face with a monster, and the dread (NYT, 7 September 2015).

AHS: Hotel certainly has revolting images as well as verbal descriptions of revolting images. Viewers are invited to come F2F with monsters and oddities – sometimes fleetingly but also in extended scenes of sexual torture of men. An observation: AHS appears to avoid visual exploitation of female victims.

In AHS, one can see how style intends to produce dread and/or perhaps an awareness of the conventions. This is much better articulated in Fear the Walking Dead as its characters explore darkened houses or hallways unaware that they are at the verge of the zombie apocalypse. Similarly, the AHS seduction scene at the outdoor screening of Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922) was weak. One could see the intent of the gazes but the style did not deliver lusting with the eyes as well as it might have.

In the credit sequence, the Ten Commandments flash by but not in numerical order. Perhaps this invites fans to engage the text, to see if the ordering of the commandments is suggestive of story development. The commandments writ in neon horror red suggests the debauchery that will take place in the hotel. Were I a talent show judge, I would say “good song choice” for the vampiric blood and sex orgy that plays out over more than five minutes to the hard sex anthem from the band She Wants Revenge – “maybe this is danger and you just don’t know … I want to tear you apart.”

While AHS: Hotel builds visual/aural energy through lurid sexuality, the show presents a story foundation about families that are emotionally tortured. AHS enjoys the sex, but the parent-child relationship should provide the enduring melodrama for the season.

Mary Beth Harolovich (University of Arizona) is a film and television historian, and a founder of Console-ing Passions.

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Is horror meant to be a seductive sheen of velvet red, petite blonde, emblazoned gold? An unstitched embroidery of retrograde modernity tropes? Blanched to the cross, cut off from sons, powdered by a central elevator, shifted by eerie hallways? Lipstick and a wayward kiss, monsters hogging warts, sushi with radiation, neighing carnival carousels?

Majestic 1920s trying to pass as a disfigured 2010s is not horror. The vacant exposition of a mother needing to protect a junkie son is not horror. Perfect bodies barely connecting is not horror. American Horror Story: Hotel is seductive enough in its first thirty minutes, but whatever it lapses into as an entirety of an episode is not horror.

I’m not looking for more than five minutes of my fix of American beauty (which stodgily remains white, if also queer). I’m not looking for more than ten minutes of Gaga-ing over a pride of celebrities and their “jawlines for days.” I’m not looking for more than twenty minutes of entering and exiting stunningly staged horrendous rooms. I am looking for more than a hat tip to the Best Exotic Budapest Hotel California.

Bring me to a hotel whose abandoned dilapidation I can use to critique the tongued luxury of capitalism. Dress me a Los Angeles that doesn’t know the terrifying paradox of a void fashion mecca. Infuse fresh blood—real warts, internalized crucifixion—into the tired mother-son emblem. Give me a reason to be scared for, not by, the characters.

I’ve only seen the first season of AHS, but recently I’ve seen some good horror, especially in film. This installment of AHS, or at least its first episode, is all color palette but no muse. Emptied hotels can be such potent portrayals along the ruin porn genre. AHS: Hotel sort of gets the porn but misses the ruin.

Ritesh Mehta is a recent PhD in Communication from USC, and studies popular entertainment and production culture.

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I am an enormous fan of American Horror Story‘s first two seasons. In both of these seasons, the narrative centered on strong central characters, allowing the ensemble to orbit with limited intrusion. The last two seasons suffered in part from a lack of focus, jumping from character to character in endless false starts and wasted opportunities. Though I can’t ring the funeral toll on this season yet, I worry about the number of seemingly disconnected storylines and important characters offered in episode one. Although nominally connected, the pilot episode already presents two strong narrative poles as well as a number of as-yet largely disconnected side plots. American Horror Story works best when constructed like a solar system. This is an asteroid field.

But in other ways, this season appears set to surpass the high marks of previous American Horror Stor[ies]. Though to varying degrees, formal artistry has remained consistently strong. To my taste, it reached a zenith exploring the temporal disorientation of its main characters’ subjectivity within the claustrophically too-unified space of confinement in a mental institution. This season appears to double down on its already-impressive style and, incidentally, engages with spatial and temporal disorientation comparable to its best efforts. The most notable aspect of the first episode was set design with costuming arriving a close second. Center framing and symmetrical staging perfectly displays the geometric complexity of the art-deco interior design. In being too balanced, shot composition paradoxically offers an uncanny sense of unbalance hidden just below the aging carpet in the hallways. The richly saturated colors are equally well-suited to denote the luxurious setting, the eccentric costuming, and horrific set pieces.

Taken as visual art, this season appears headed to its highest achievement yet. I hope it can deliver a narrative worth caring about, but I’m not optimistic.

Philip Scepanski (Vassar College) studies television history, media theory, and comedy.

The Last Kingdom (BBC America, October 10 @ 10/9) trailer here

BBC America (and BBC 2) gets in on the Game of Thrones action with this tale of the founding of England in the ninth century, complete with swordplay, bodice ripping, and warring tribes, adapted from Bernard Cromwell’s best-selling Saxon Stories novels.

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The Last Kingdom arrives on BBC America courtesy of a co-production with Carnival Films, the production company that brought you ITV’s Downton Abbey, and it was commissioned by and will air on BBC Two later this month. ITV saw its reputation burnished by Downton Abbey’s success in the U.S., and the BBC is surely hoping for the same from The Last Kingdom, as the corporation fights off Tory marauders trying to plunder its license fee funding and ransack its public service orientation. BBC director general Tony Hall (presumably) won’t take on Conservative culture secretary John Whittingdale swinging a sword fiercely while fully engulfed in flames like Last Kingdom’s Viking warlord Earl Rangar, but spectacular images like that do help to make this an engaging opening hour and bolster the BBC’s case that its system can foster enthralling drama that keeps up with the likes of HBO’s Game of Thrones. If you do like the “macho dudes with beards and heavy furs gore each other to achieve supremacy in period times” genre, this series seems likely to engage you, as its first episode offers an intriguing and shifting set of “good guys” and “bad guys” in detailing late-Ninth Century battles to control England. Unfortunately, the opening episode does overwhelmingly feature guys, outside of a few women there to be sexually assaulted, gutted, or wooed as the plot needs. Critics have seen four episodes, and a number of reviews (like this and this) contend that the series gets more thematically complex and character-rich as it goes along, so I will keep watching in hopes of seeing it get there. I also will keep an eye out to see how Tony Hall and his band of public service broadcasting warriors try to capitalize on the likely critical praise for this series in their own fierce battles over the future of England.

Christine Becker (University of Notre Dame) is currently working on a research project investigating cultural hierarchies in contemporary American and British TV.

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If you seek a moodier, grey-toned knock off of Game of Thrones with less humor and fantasy and more animal skins, then look no further than The Last Kingdom. Real British will have to wait until October 22 to watch their own history on BBC 2, making it clear who this show is primarily for: Americans. TLK is also produced by Carnival Studio, known for packaging lavish British heritage for hungry American viewers in the past with Downtown Abbey. This show doesn’t have much exposition; while GoT built up to the conflict between warring factions with a first season of intrigue, replete with graphic violence and lots of sexposition, The Last Kingdom gets right down to business. Within the first fifteen minutes we are knee deep in gritty battle scenes. And, while rape and beheadings and sword fighting are present in TLK, I will say that it is refreshing to see that this show does not fixate on these elements in the same way that GoT seems in delight in gore and rape and general ultraviolence from a voyeuristic gaze that makes me, for one, feel complicit in objectifying suffering as pleasure. The Last Kingdom is also more straightforward in supplying us with a clear cut central protagonist named Uhtred (say it ten times fast and you have 50% of this episode’s dialogue… Uhtred Uhtred Uhtred Oh no Danes! Uhtred Uhtred!). Extra points if you recognize Rutger Hauer among the wrinkle-faced dirty characters that populate this show; shame on them for killing him off in the first episode. TLK’s obvious preoccupation with a hypermasculine warrior narrative makes me wish this show had more of GoT‘s ambivalent gender politics. But I have high hopes for Uhtred’s sidekick/lover Brida, so I’ll stay tuned to see what happens.

Eleanor Patterson (University of Wisconsin-Madison) studies the cultural politics of post-network broadcasting.

Fargo (FX, October 12 @ 10/9) trailer here

How will Fargo follow up on an amazing first season of dark comedy, murder, and deceit in the snow? The new cast for a new story includes Patrick Wilson, Kirsten Dunst, Jean Smart, Jesse Plemens, Brad Garret, Bokeem Woodbine, Ted Danson, Nick Offerman, Cristin Milioti, Adam Arkin, and for the oddity factor, Kieran Culkin.

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I realized that all three of the reviews I’ve done this cycle for Antenna have been for shows that are based on other things. Minority Report is a sequel to the film; Heroes Reborn is an extension to the original show; Fargo is based on the film of the same name. While there are things to like in each of these shows (well, maybe not Heroes), it’s really only Fargo that I’m tempted to continue watching, and it’s interesting that Fargo is also the show that deviates the most from the original in terms of plot. But in terms of tone and subject matter, it is a dead ringer.

Despite being incredibly violent, there’s a subtle beauty to Fargo. In the shoot-out in the diner, for example, a quick image serves as a metaphor for the series as a whole: blood mixes with milkshake; violence splashing against innocence; red and white spilling onto the floor. The everyday banalities of life mix with shocking violence.

I like this sort of imagery because it’s not overt. The camera doesn’t linger over it. There’s no reference to it. No one comments on the mixture dribbling onto the floor. But it’s there and it reflects the way simplicity is often the most subtle of all storytelling.

Watching this new season of Fargo unfold, I experienced something I haven’t experienced for a very long time—the sheer delight of having no idea what to expect. I love laughing as we go to commercial break because I literally have no idea what’s going to happen next. Last year I binge-watched the first season of Fargo; this season I’m eager for those pauses so I can reflect, learn, and be surprised.

Paul Booth (DePaul University) studies fandom, time travel, and digital technology and is the author most recently of Playing Fans and Game Play.

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Season One of Fargo started small and, thanks to a host of poor decisions made by selfish characters trying to save their own skins, sprawled out to lots of bloodshed and death. This season starts much bigger, with machinations of an organized crime family and a future president lurking about the edges. The cast of characters, though, is still filled with peppy Midwesterners quick with poorly conceived crimes and an “All right, then,” and as a result, Fargo feels kitschy and delightfully macabre.

The show’s inciting incident – a triple murder at the Waffle Hut – illustrates its tone. Fargo is darkly funny, poking at the characters’ provincial regionalisms and in the retro glory of its 1979 setting. At the same time, the violence is no joke; the premiere alone features five deaths, four of which are quite bloody, even if they are also a bit bumbling.

While the cast is a parade of recognizable faces (some made barely recognizable by creative facial hair and a liberal use of hair feathering) who comprise a strong ensemble already going interesting places, the show may feel the loss of its central villain. In the previous season, Billy Bob Thornton’s Lorne Malvo was an ominous, malevolent force of reckoning. His evil was both competent and compelling, providing a necessary foil to the cheery façade of the setting. Season Two thus far has lots of criminals and blood, but no black hole around which the action can swirl.

Fargo will get to “the Sioux Falls incident” mentioned in Season One, and the premiere sets up Midwestern mob revenge and a presidential campaign. If the narration balances these sweeping stories with the tiny details that made the first season (and the film) work so beautifully, it should be well worth the ride.

Anne Gilbert (University of Kansas) studies fans, digital culture, and media industries.

Post by Amanda Keeler, Marquette University

The Walking Dead “companion” series Fear the Walking Dead is the latest iteration of offshoot/spinoff storytelling around this narrative universe. Fear the Walking Dead premiered Sunday night on AMC, setting another ratings record for the cable channel by reaching approximately 10.1 million viewers. I’ve written about The Walking Dead previously on Antenna, in a piece that focuses on the complexities of genre and how the show fluctuates over time to blend multiple genres, primarily by mixing western imagery to create a post-apocalyptic return to the frontier. The announcement of the new program Fear the Walking Dead led me to a number of questions related to how the show would work in terms of storytelling, genre, setting, and character. Without the comic book as a reference point, how would its narrative progress and/or differ from the original television show? How would its differing landscape and location, set in Los Angeles, California, rather than the American south, shift its tone and genre? What types of character would populate its world? Would it function as an ensemble cast, or would one or two characters dominate the central narrative?

While the prolific nature of film sequels and blockbuster franchises suggests the relative safety of building new pieces around known narrative worlds, the enormous popularity of The Walking Dead puts a lot of pressure on its new companion piece. Audiences at this point, on the cusp of The Walking Dead’s sixth season premiere slated for 11 October 2015, are accustomed to many of the elements that define the original show. This precursor sets up the new show in some positive and negative ways, depending on which elements of the original show resonate with individual viewers. But unlike The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead will likely not be given multiple seasons to find its audience or to have the luxury of missteps along the way.

Critical reviews thus far have been mixed. Laura Bradley at Slate thinks it should have been a comedy so that the two shows could function as “palate cleansers for each other.” Todd VanDerWerff at Vox writes that “the show is basically Parenthood with zombies.” But, is that a bad thing? What do we want so-called “zombie” shows to look and feel like? Do viewers want this to be the same show but in a different setting, and is that even possible? Will it create the same kind of viewer dissatisfaction that the second season of True Detective experienced this summer when the central story moved from Louisiana to California?

In terms of the show’s location, I wonder if the Los Angeles location might disrupt the deeply traditional gender norms that define the characters across the first three seasons on The Walking Dead. This isn’t clear yet, but remains something to pay attention to in the context of this show’s cast, being that Kim Dickens (as Madison Clark) is the show’s most famous cast member, who may or may not be the “Rick Grimes” (Andrew Lincoln) of this world. As well, my interpretation of The Walking Dead as a western is deeply tied to its location in the south and the pre-apocalyptic professions of its two main characters in seasons one and two. Rick and Shane (Jon Bernthal), who were both law enforcement officers, have the knowledge of and access to the guns and ammunition that are key to their post-apocalyptic survival. In Los Angeles, who or what will have that kind of upper hand?

To address my pre-viewing questions: It is definitely a different show than its precedent — and it is much too soon to tell if that is good or bad. It was an entertaining hour of television that moved slowly, much like the pilot of The Walking Dead. Unlike that pilot episode, “Days Gone Bye,” however, the main character will not wake up after everything in the world has changed. This new show gives us Rick’s coma time, through the Clark-Manawa family, and it will take viewing a few more episodes to find out if this unexplored timeline is worthy of the screen time that Fear the Walking Dead is giving it.

From the perspective of the first episode, the show does one thing quite well. While not terribly visually interesting beyond the shots of a bleak, polluted urban landscape, the pilot episode of Fear the Walking Dead uses sound to tell its story in a fascinating way. As somewhat omniscient viewers who are aware of the events that will soon transpire, we know a lot more than the characters and it builds anticipation towards some unknown tipping point. The show plays with this audience knowledge by cleverly using the cacophony of the city to foreshadow the slow yet inevitable realization that zombies (or walkers) will soon be a threat to these characters’ existence. The characters hear sirens, helicopters, gunshots, but continue through their days with these “normal” city sounds. Cars zip by, narrowly missing people and objects. Shots are fired, and ignored. Dogs continue to bark incessantly off screen. With each scene the sirens grow in volume and proximity, building towards the one sound that viewers know, but these characters cannot yet comprehend: the telltale rasp of the undead walkers. These sounds all build powerfully as the characters move towards the knowledge that the audience already has. The city noises are a wonderful contrast to the prominent sounds of the first seasons of The Walking Dead: the absolute silence of a technological, industrial society that has already ceased existing punctuated by the buzzing cicadas and blood-thirsty walkers.

On the other hand, not everything in the pilot episode came together cohesively. The writing is a little clunky, the characters and their motivations don’t yet make sense, and some of the acting feels unsatisfactory. The main characters work in a high school, which the show (unfortunately) uses as a backdrop to show Travis lecture his students about the battle of man versus nature, in which “nature always wins.” In a different classroom, Madison’s daughter Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Cary) fools around with her girlfriends while her teacher lectures on chaos theory. As attempts at textured mise-en-scène or layered storytelling, these elements feel forced.

Nonetheless, after viewing only one episode into this new show, I am looking forward to watching how the questions I posed at the beginning are addressed in the coming weeks.

Fig. 1 — Mad Men from first …

Fig. 2 — …to last.

Post by Piers Britton, University of Redlands

In a manner befitting a series that flourished on its reputation for visual elegance, the finale of Mad Men, “Person to Person,” rewarded attentive viewers with an ending that subtly called upon the pilot episode. The opening of “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” was a gentle right-to-left tracking shot across a crowded bar, which ends with a dolly-in to the back of Don Draper’s head (Fig. 1). The close of “Person to Person” also begins with a right-to-left tracking shot, across the cliff-top lawns of what is supposed to be the Esalen Institute, and in the final moments there is again a dolly-in – but this time to a frontal close-up of the enigmatically smiling Don, eyes closed (Fig. 2). It is tempting to read the shift from rear to front view as a reification of narrative closure: in “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” (and in the opening titles of every subsequent episode) the over-the-shoulder shot of Don draws us into the world of Mad Men, into what lies before us and before him. The frontal shot conversely seems to evoke finality; it acts as a caesura, sealing off behind Don all that we have witnessed in the last eight years, compartmentalizing the series as something done and complete.

If such a visual metaphor was intended, it was perhaps the only way of drawing a clear line under Mad Men, a series that was never going to lend itself stylistically to dramatic resolution in the same way as, say, its AMC sibling Breaking Bad. Mad Men begins and ends with Don Draper, and as the frequently reiterated over-the-shoulder shot from the pilot suggests, his experiences willy-nilly offer the dominant point of view for the audience. Yet Mad Men is not Don’s story: it has always been a ensemble piece, and a resolutely untidy one at that. Some characters have abruptly disappeared (Sal Romano, Paul Kinsey), some others have wandered in and out of focus (Ken Cosgrove, Trudy Campbell, Bert Cooper), while six protagonists apart from Don (Peggy Olson, Pete Campbell, Betty and Sally Draper, Roger Sterling and Joan Holloway) have remained in, or somewhere near, the spotlight throughout. No recurring character had an “arc” in the conventionally understood sense of the word, for Mad Men has remained fundamentally skeptical about its characters’ capacity to grow and change according to some Save The Cat-type screenwriting logic. It is unsurprising, then, that the final few episodes seemed to be casting more lines than they reeled in, with Peggy and Roger embarking on new romantic relationships while Pete and Joan embrace or create new business opportunities. Given what we have seen of these characters over seven seasons, there is no good reason to envisage any of these new departures as “happily-ever-after” scenarios. Indeed, the only real certitude offered by the finale is that of Betty’s impending death from lung cancer. Even the closure of Don’s narrative is provisional: though the narrative does not make it explicit, that final smile seemed to many commentators to suggest that the series ends exactly as Don is dreaming up the famous “Hilltop” Coca-Cola ad that served, appropriately, as Mad Men’s coda. (Showrunner Matthew Weiner has since confirmed this.) Earlier in the episode, Stan Rizzo pointed out that Don’s going AWOL is a recurring pattern, while Peggy, in her person-to-person call with Don, underscored the fact that he could easily return to work at McCann. With these cues in mind, the road trip ending with his Esalen revelation should surely be read not as culminating catharsis but as yet another interlude.

Fig. 3 — Spaces of Madernity

So, if dramatic closure of character storylines was not on the cards, what exactly is it that became complete with the finale of Mad Men? Or, to put it another way, how can we understand the series’ structure in retrospect? One obvious way of answering this—perhaps the only incontrovertible way—is to note that the series’ story spans almost exactly a decade: starting in March 1960, the Mad Men narrative apparently ends in late October or November 1970. Mad Men in toto is thus an encapsulation of the Sixties, a fact that is likely to be remembered long after its narrative twists, recapitulations, and volte faces have faded from the memory of all but the most devoted fans. The “Sixties-ness” of Mad Men is in part marked by historical events that variously affect the protagonists’ work, emotional life, and attitudes, from the 1960 presidential election to the 1970 Newsweek gender discrimination lawsuit. More obviously, and from certain vantage points more potently, Mad Men is defined by the 1960s in terms of visual style. Quite apart from offering a much publicized parade of vintage fashions, period props and stylish environments, the show visually evokes late Fifties and Sixties films in its cinematography, and especially its lighting. Evocation is clearly not the same thing as reconstruction, pace detractors who have raised complaints about narrowness of focus or lack of “authenticity.” A good deal of commentary—some neutral and some adverse—has focused on the fact that Mad Men is a show about the Sixties created by a man who is, as Robert Lloyd succinctly put it, “too young to really remember them.” In itself this claim isn’t particularly useful.  It would be hard to mistake any scene from Mad Men, with its wonderfully stately, stylized dialogue, as an attempt to recreate Sixties mass-media vernacular, however sumptuously persuasive the visual recreation of the period might seem. Indeed, the claim that Weiner is “too young” has curiosity value precisely because he was born in the Sixties: observing that Julian Fellowes is too young to recall the era of Downton Abbey would hardly have the same piquancy.

Fig. 4 — Symptoms of Madmenalaria

That said, if the show did not in any absolute sense espouse period authenticity it seems hard to overstate its Sixties-philiac tendencies. Visual pleasure in Sixties styling looms large, as a key part of Mad Men’s identity, not just in the “raw” text of the episodes but also in its astonishingly consistent, cumulatively powerful paratexts, most notably the documentary videos on the Mad Men section of AMC’s website. “Making of Mad Men” and later “Inside… Mad Men” featurettes have appeared on the site throughout the series run, increasingly focusing on the micro-narrative of each episode and the characters’ motivations, as explicated by the actors portraying them, and by Matthew Weiner. After four seasons the “Fashion File” feature that accompanied each episode was replaced by a second regular video, “Fashion and Style,” based around interviews with the costume designer and property master or set decorator. If the “Inside …” videos speak to Mad Men’s “depth,” which is to say the ways in which it can be recognized as quality TV, worthy of the multiple awards and plaudits it has won, the “Fashion and Style” videos correspondingly speak to the importance of “surface.” Mad Men has reworked and mobilized the so-called “mid-century modern” to generate not just media buzz but an extraordinarily influential brand. The series’ fetishizing of Sixties clothes, hairstyles, accessories, cars and interior decoration has spawned an array of imitative or broadly competitive programming in the US and overseas, from Magic City via The Hour and Masters of Sex to Vegas and Aquarius. Mad Men has made a somewhat improbable style guru of its costume designer, Janie Bryant, it has begotten clothing lines for both men and women at Banana Republic and Brooks Brothers, and more broadly it has produced a fad that one commentator drily named “Madmenalaria.”

As Mad Men coalesced into a whole in the only way that television series can, by ending, then in so doing it underscored the fact that like Don Draper it has always embodied—even depended on—a duality. Other film and television texts may have de facto thrived on a tension between the espousal of emotional truthfulness on one hand and preoccupation with “superficial” visual pleasures on the other, but Mad Men is perhaps the first in which this dichotomy has been so smoothly reconciled into a branding strategy. The final ambivalent meeting of inner worlds at Esalen—with Don either/both finding spiritual peace and/or dreaming up the basis for a career-defining ad—could not more perfectly have encapsulated the obverse and reverse of the Mad Men coin.

1) A federal appeals court in Washington D.C. has dealt a massive blow to ‘net neutrality’ rules, finding the FCC overstepped its authority by requiring broadband providers like Verizon and AT&T to treat all Internet traffic equally. While it is unclear how much authority the FCC will retain, it is clear the decision greatly decreases the FCC’s ability to retain several such rules. For much more information on this course case, it’s impact on the future of the Internet, and how you can help be heard, I highly encourage you to read Danny Kimball’s recent piece on Antenna.

2) The FCC may soon have another massive decision on its hands, as multiple names and companies have become revealed as potential buyers of Time Warner Cable, a move that would bring yet more consolidation to an already oligarchic system and thus would likely come with ‘bundles’ of strings from regulators. Original reports saw Charter Communication going public about plans to acquire TWC, with the company under the leadership of John Malone making a public plea to TWC investors after the company itself didn’t take original talks seriously. The proposed deal was originally for $61 billion, roughly $132.50 a share. Not long after these reports surfaced, new movement came out of a possible split-deal between Charter and Comcast for TWC, though the proposed deal is unclear of whether it means both buying the company together or Charter buying wholesale but selling particular regions to Comcast. The reports mostly end there, but the deal is clearly heating up and it seems something ought to give soon enough.

3) While we’re on the subject of “great things happening to undeserving cable providers,” Verizon this week announced it has agreed to acquire Intel Media, a broadband streaming video service from the technology company. While no precise amount has been released, the approximation based on earlier valuations put the deal around the $200 million mark. It is not entirely clear how or when Verizon plans to integrate the Internet TV service with its own broadband and FiOS network, but the over-the-top service is expected to launch before the end of 2014.

4) Big money is certainly on the table for the NFL’s Thursday Night Football, as Fox, CBS, ESPN, and Turner Broadcasting have all submitted bids, with NBC expected to join in as well. The NFL is looking for offers of 6 to 8 games in a package for a one-year deal. Despite bids from ESPN and Turner, the belief is the NFL wishes to land a network deal, ensuring higher ratings to in turn boost valuation when the bidding takes place again next year.

5) Reorganizations are happening at Viacom, with two next units being announced in the past two weeks. One is a new Programs Acquisitions Group, a unified group that will control all aspects of the acquisitions process across all of Viacom’s U.S. media networks. The second change is a new ad-sales unit called Viacom Velocity that will create special content for advertisers using their various networks. Viacom executives referred to a recent campaign done exclusively on Comedy Central to promote Marvel’s Thor: The Dark World featuring the film’s Tom Hiddleston. Did I mention this story just so I could link to this video? You tell me:

6) Fox has once again been denied an injunction and even a rehearing of its case against Dish and their ad-skipping DVR  the “Hopper.”  Fox had petitioned for a rehearing after being denied the injunction last summer, and their goal of proving infringement in court looks slim. Fox might choose to try and take the case to the Supreme Court, but with the Aereo case already set to be decided their, it is unlikely the High Court would take such a similar dispute.

7) If you read “What Are You Missing” regularly, you are no doubt aware of the recent spat of musicians and artists filing lawsuits against their labels over missing digital royalties owed via various music streaming sites/services. The Counting Crows are now the newest addition to that growing list, which now includes artists as far ranging as Peter Frampton, George Clinton, and Rick James.

8) An interesting case out of an appeals court could change the way Internet gossip is seen and tried in future cases. The court found that Internet bloggers can in fact use First Amendment rights as a defense against defamation lawsuits, claiming the speaker does not need to claim status as a trained and employed journalist as long as the public importance and public image of the subjects in question is established.

9)  China is taking stricter measures to control online video and book publishing in order to help combat piracy and regulate content. The new regulations require posters of “microfilms,” a burgeoning market alternative to state-approved media, to submit their real names when uploading content to video streaming sites. While this could have much broader impacts, the language of the regulatory body’s announcement seems to indicate a more narrow focus on these microfilms, rather than the much larger swath of user-generated content.

10) The little guy is fighting back as an independent regional movie theater chain in the Southeast, Cobb Theaters, has filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against AMC, claiming the national chain as coerced film distributors to deny product to the smaller chains. The claim accuses AMC of contacting major film distributors and studios asking them to deny product to the regional chain, using its market control as leverage.

After four years of “Story Matters Here,” AMC unveiled a new campaign during the season finale of The Walking Dead: “Something More.” The move includes an updated logo, including altered typeface for the AMC portion of the icon, and a new color scheme. Linda Schupack, executive vice president of marketing, told Ad Week that the new tagline “speaks to the idea that we’re going to go a little deeper, and we’re going to take a twist where you don’t necessarily expect it.” Schupack also noted that the “More” will serve as a placeholder so the channel can use specific words to describe various shows (i.e. “Something Engaging”) “because the thing about this brand is, we are eclectic, we are not just one thing.”

You could argue that the shift from “Story Matters Here” to “Something More” works as a preemptive move to guide viewers past the halcyon days of Mad Men (which it just began its penultimate season) and Breaking Bad (ending this summer) and into a world where AMC airs more reality shows than scripted originals and where zombies and talk shows about zombies pay the bills. This perhaps signals AMC knows that in order to compete in today’s cable environment, it needs to appeal to more—and different kinds—of viewers.

However, what the changes really reflect is that AMC still lacks direction. “Something More” feels like the weak first draft of HBO’s nearly two-decade old “It’s Not TV. It’s HBO,” which is fitting because AMC once fashioned itself as the new HBO, but confusing now that the channel has moved away from that goal with an injection of reality and syndicated episodes of CSI: Miami. It is telling that AMC’s modifications are less HBO and more like TNT’s various “Drama Is…” campaigns. AMC wants to hold on to the prestige of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and the Sunday drama series as long as it can, but it also wants to appeal to different audience segments during the week. With different portions of AMC’s schedule and development at war with one another, the channel really has no idea what it is, or where it is going. As a result, its new and generic brand is an attempt to cover up, rather than embrace, its eclectic—read: disconnected—programming.

Although AMC’s brand shift signifies its problems and lack of imagination, FX’s brand (and channel) extension suggests a high level of measured confidence. FX and its spinoff channel FXX will be branded generationally: FX’s current and older-skewing dramas staying on the home channel , while the younger-skewing comedies like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The League will help jumpstart FXX. At the recent upfront, president John Landgraf announced that FX will target adults 18-49, FXX 18-34, and movie-heavy channel FXM 25-54 with the hope that as viewers age, they will move right along the FX family of channels .

This kind of audience segmenting is not new in the post-network era. Big media companies regularly use individual networks and channels to hit different viewer segments. Disney expertly guides female viewers from childhood (Disney Channel) through their teen years (ABC Family), and then finally into adulthood (ABC). Still, FX’s decision to attempt something similar while moving some of its more established series around is fascinating, if risky. Despite the fundamental changes ripping through the industry, there is still a sense that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. FX, one of the most successful and respected channels around, certainly isn’t broken. And there is a chance that this blows up in Landgraf’s face—that the exported comedy’s ratings fall and that the increase in the number of programs in production takes a toll on FX’s creative juices and/or bottom line.

But what Landgraf and FX understand—and why I believe this plan is going to succeed—is that brands just aren’t empty slogans and redesigned logos. At their best, brands reflect and guide particular development strategies that shape audience expectations. They take on a life of their own. Over the last decade, FX grew its brand because it developed good programs people like; its slogan or its logo didn’t matter. In fact, the channel simultaneously established mature dramas and sophomoric comedies, reaching a level of eclectic that AMC so desperately aims for. Thus, whereas AMC’s new slogan reflects its consistent lack of direction, FX’s brand extension embodies its continuous push forward.

In advertising, the “creative” department makes the ads. Distinct from agency account executives (who service the client) or agency media buyers (who buy media time and space), the “creatives” are responsible for generating the advertising concept and executing it textually and visually. Through the first half of the twentieth century, copywriting departments produced text (“copy”), often guided by account executives, and art departments illustrated it. Historically, what is now called the creative was regarded as a service supplemental to media buying.

Before the 1960s, hard sell advertising predominated. Hard sell’s repetitive, annoying, grating “reasons why” to buy was the favored strategy when advertisers believed consumers were “stupid” and the market an undifferentiated mass. By the 1960s, however, advertisers realized that consumers could be sophisticated and that markets are varied and segmented. Advertisers turned to the strategies of subtle, humorous, high concept, and emotionally appealing soft sell advertising. Doyle Dane Bernbach’s 1960s Volkswagen ads, a humorous critique of 1950s hard sell automobile advertising, became the iconographic campaign of the “Creative Revolution.” Copywriters such as Bill Bernbach championed the idea that advertising is an art, not a science.

The post-1960s emphasis on creativity solves a problem for the ad industry. Despite the scientistic behaviorism dominating market research, advertisers cannot predict which advertising appeals will resonate with consumers. So if advertising is not a science but an art, creative advertising may succeed where data-driven advertising may not. Hence, since the 1960s the creatives have rhetorically positioned themselves not as instrumentalists pursuing selling goals but as artists expressing authentic meaning because only though artistry will advertising succeed in touching and moving consumers.

As depicted in The Pitch, the advertising industry is a hotbed of artistic romanticism. In each episode, two agencies meet a client, who explains a marketing problem. The agencies retreat to their offices to develop an advertising concept and a pitch to win the account. Scenes of brainstorming follow, intercut with talking heads explaining themselves directly to the camera. Finally, each agency presents its pitch and one wins the account.

Dramatic tension centers on which agency can prove they are the most creative. Their creativity, however, must be rooted in authenticity, as one agency leader explains in episode 102: “It doesn’t need to be clever, it needs to be honest.” In fact, being glib could undermine them: “We don’t want to outsmart ourselves with clever lines.”

Creative success in advertising should reflect a commitment to meaning; referring to a creative director, another explains, “He’s not in it for the power or the ego, he’s in it for the work.” Referring to careers in advertising, one man explains, “If you’re not committed, if you’re not passionate, you’re not going to be here a long time.” Passion, the byword of the creative industries, is something that cannot be learned. As one agency director explains, “You can’t teach passion, you have to hire passion.”

For one creative director, “The creative process is baring your soul.” Describing pitching to potential clients, another explains, “When you get up in front of them to present your ideas, it’s like being naked and hoping they don’t laugh at you.” Hence, whatever instrumental goal they may be working towards, such as improving the public image of a trash company or selling Subway breakfast sandwiches, these advertising makers insist on their artistic integrity, claiming “the work” is an authentic revelation of self.

The cult of romanticism, and its rhetorical strategies of passion and soulfulness, will continue to thrive in advertising because advertisers are not able to predict which ideas resonate with consumers, despite market research data. The Pitch documents the legacy of the Creative Revolution by showing proponents of creativity in advertising insisting on the value of artfulness over scientism.  Whether or not we believe that the advertising creatives featured in The Pitch believe in the authenticity of their creative work, they are certainly selling it. Hard.

Hugh Hefner's Playboy's Penthouse

**This is the first in our new series: Mediating the Past, which focuses on how the past is produced, constructed, distributed, branded and received through various media.

About six months before Mad Men’s very first episode takes place, Hugh Hefner debuted a syndicated television program entitled Playboy’s Penthouse.  It was an early example of intra-corporate cross-media promotion, in which—to invoke the era’s term of art and Hefner’s actual words—the “foremost exponent of sick humor.” Lenny Bruce, explained “I would never satirize the obvious,” before wondering aloud, on the program, who would advertise on such a program.  Bruce concluded his ad-libbed ruminations by gibing Hefner directly: “I’m glad you’ve got some guts…you’re not interested in the people that don’t have any money.”

Maybe it was the mise-en-scène, but I recalled this line again during the extended swinging penthouse party sequence in Mad Men‘s fifth season premiere episode (of an apparently contractually finalized seven).  Back with new episodes after 17 months, the media saturation leading up to its return has had me thinking that Mad Men and the cable channel AMC on which it is shown have “got some guts” in rather the way Bruce meant.

For a couple months now, middlebrow America has been utterly awash in Mad Men.  The New York Times ran so many profiles, interviews, style pieces, analyses, reflections, recaps, think-pieces, reviews, political tie-ins, beverage tie-ins, and other pieces, that another media reporter, Joe Flint (@JBflint), tweeted after the season premiere ratings were revealed: “Mad Men draws 3.5 million viewers.  I didn’t know NYT’s staff was that big.”  The Washington Post meanwhile actually ran a piece on the number of Mad Men pieces it ran leading up to the season premiere:  22 including that piece itself!  Newsweek contrived a special retro issue timed to correspond with the new season’s premiere. The New Yorker offers online readers weekly episode synopses, as does Slate, Salon and Esquire (which also lists “all things Mad Men” on its site, and sprinkles its hard copy pages with regular think pieces about the show it has suggested “is the greatest piece of sustained television ever made“).  Even nominally non-commercial public service network National Public Radio ran stories about Mad Men on “Fresh Air,” “Morning Edition,” “Weekend Edition,” “All Things Considered,” it’s online food blog, and “Fresh Air” again!  For certain media consumers, Mad Men has been impossible to ignore.  Have you been hailed by Mad Men? (hint: you’re halfway through another piece about it).

While this media surge contributed to this season’s premiere becoming Mad Men’s highest rated episode ever, ratings are not really the point (it still had 5.5 million fewer viewers than AMC’s The Walking Dead finale had the week before).  Mad Men brings other kinds of value to AMC:  the wealthiest viewers on cable, industry prestige (AMC Networks promotes itself with Mad Men’s four consecutive Emmys and three Golden Globes), and overwhelming (and overwhelmingly positive) media coverage.  Mad Men, in other words, sustains AMC’s brand, providing a specific and prestigious visibility that extends beyond those who actually watch.  Visibility like this matters for attracting more viewers, for setting ad rates, for attracting “quality” program producers, but also, crucially for a cable channel, for negotiating with MSOs and setting carriage fees. (It also helps Lionsgate continue to “monetize” Mad Men beyond AMC).

Branding for AMC is all the more important as it transitions within a changing television industry.  Begun in 1984 to monetize vaults of otherwise unseen old movies, this is no longer seen as the most profitable way to use a library of films much less a branded cable channel.  As AMC sought to expand its revenue (beyond cable carriage fees) by introducing commercials, it began to alter its programming to attract audiences of the type (younger, richer) and size (bigger) advertisers would pay for.  In an era when old movie libraries are now more profitably being licensed to Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes, however, AMC has had to accelerate its rebranding efforts around a significant transformation (which is why “AMC” no longer stands for “American Movie Classics”) without the loss of its most valuable asset, a predominately male audience achieved through non-sports programming.  This audience came to AMC for the Three Stooges marathons and old Westerns.  They’ve been asked to stay for Mad Men.

Actually, not even so much for Mad Men, but for what Mad Men says about AMC, what its presence reflects about the channel.  Set in the milieu of mid-century advertising, it is itself functioning as an advertisement for a channel once associated with mid-century movies and now deriving increasing revenue from advertisements.  Offering viewers the opportunity to feel simultaneously nostalgic for and superior to a version of an earlier era, Mad Men actually achieves something close to what Hugh Hefner only aspired to for his 1959 program, a “sophisticated weekly get together of the people we dig and who dig us.”  If “sophisticated” once again means straight white sex, smoking, booze, and terse conversation, Mad Men at least presents it in ways that feel comparatively and flatteringly grown up for television today.  Rather than zombie walkers and fidelity to a comic book, Mad Men offers well-dressed Manhattanite drinkers and fidelity to the style of an era.  Middlebrow media has not been voluntarily filled with stories on the characters’ inner lives, much less the fashion, style, and recipes of the higher-rated The Walking Dead.  HBO’s hits Game of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire (never mind Mad Men‘s other timeslot competition The Good Wife) have not had their own tabs on The New Yorker website.  But Mad Men has.  It was born to help rebrand AMC.  It lives on to embody and advertise that new brand’s meaning.  In this capacity it is meant for viewers, sure, but it is almost perfectly suited to attract and flatter the imaginations of advertisers, reporters, and the mediasphere more generally.  The show’s value is not entirely dependent upon its immediate ratings.  This is a point lost on would-be imitators like ABC’s Pan Am and NBC’s Hefner-endorsed The Playboy Club, but it is critical to making a show set in the past point to the future of television.  It has got some guts.

AMC was reportedly demanding that future episodes of Mad Men run several minutes shorter to make room for more advertisements, that more explicit product integration be accommodated, and that per-episode costs be reduced by eliminating some cast members.  Mad Men is a program narratively set in an advertising agency.  It has been used by AMC as a fulcrum in the cable channel’s attempts to transition from an exclusively carriage-fee to an increasingly advertiser-based revenue stream.  So these demands are not surprising.

On the other hand, Mad Men signals for AMC the switch from “classic” movie programming to a growing palette of well publicized and critically well received original productions.  Mad Men‘s first four seasons have garnered vast acclaim, won multiple awards, attracted new (and slightly younger) viewers, and put AMC on Madison Avenue’s map.  One might say it has successfully made over AMC, producing a newly identifiable and desirable brand (for advertisers and certain viewers).  So the fact that a settlement was ultimately reached and Mad Men will have three more seasons (albeit with “contained” budgets, two-minute-shorter episodes, and more prominent product placement) is also not surprising.

What would have been surprising would have been if AMC had refused to renew the program and simply cancelled the show absent its demands being met.  But here’s the thing:  it would have been surprising, but no longer unthinkable.

At one time a network might have been grateful or felt indebted or at least tried to maintain the tent pole foisted by such an important show for as long as possible (think of NBC’s outrageous offerings to Warner Bros to keep ER and Friends on the air in the 1990s).  Things have changed.  It is no longer impossible to imagine that AMC might move on, leaving its signature show behind.  As it is, new episodes will not be seen until March 2012, 14 or 15 months after the most recent episode.  AMC has 4 other new shows to debut this year.  And Mad Men has never had stellar ratings.  It is not even currently the highest rated show on AMC (The Walking Dead has it beat).  Most important, however, it comes down to this:  so far as AMC is concerned, the show’s work is done.  AMC is now an established presence in original programming and advertising.  Thank you very much.

Mad Men meanwhile finds itself in an increasingly common position for primetime programming, one of indeterminate value.  To remain valuable to AMC—and thus worth renewing—Mad Men must remain difficult to see anywhere else and at least a bit less desirable to view after AMC shows it.  That is it must circulate in an economy of scarcity with transient (i.e. diminishing) value.  Thus only clips and promotional footage are legally streamable online, with full episodes restricted to AMC, then for sale on iTunes and months later DVD.  At the same time, however, for Mad Men to put AMC on the map, generate buzz and audiences, attract hip advertisers, and for that matter produce an afterlife—generating both residuals and brand new revenue for its producers beyond AMC, it has to maintain its value and be readily accessible everywhere viewers go.  In other words in addition to being scarce and transient it must also be durable and ubiquitous.  That is why you can Mad Men Yourself, follow people pretending to be characters on Twitter, have bought Barbie Dolls, Banana Republic apparel, DVDs, books, music and many other Mad Men products, and why Weiner went to the fansite “Basket of Kisses” during contract negotiations: maintenance of a vigorous afterlife.

As viewing practices change and the television industry adapts to new economics, even successful programs—much like the labor they employ—are finding their value uncertain, caught between competing and incompatible economies of circulation: scarcity and ubiquity, transience and durability.  While Mad Men‘s future has now been determined, the next successful show’s renewal negotiations are all the more precarious.  Meanwhile, over the final three seasons, Daily Variety suggests that the cast and crew—even “topliners”—are unlikely to receive large raises for their efforts on this hit show, which operates now with “an understanding that producers will have to be creative and judicious with the cast budget going forward.” AMC on the other hand continues its rewarding institutional makeover and Matthew Weiner is set to receive $30 million.

Let me start by focusing only on basic cable—premium cable is a different beast, and I’m not sure the argument holds there, certainly if Boardwalk Empire is any indication. So far this summer I’ve watched a handful of episodes of The Glades, Rizzoli and Isles, Covert Affairs, and Memphis Beat, and none have left me curious for more. I’ve got the formula, I can probably tell you what is going to happen for the next 12 episodes, if they all make it that long. None, except for a bit of play with characters in Memphis Beat, feature much I could note as exceptional. Admittedly, my viewing has fallen off from other cable originals such as Psych and Leverage that I once watched regularly; here too, the episodic-caper-of-the-week leaves me with little return on my investment of weekly viewing.

There isn’t a Shield, Battlestar, or Mad Men among these new shows. In the past, other cable originals seemed at least somewhat unconventional—Monk had his neuroses, Psych its generationally-specific banter and references, and Burn Notice—okay, I can’t completely explain my continued interest in Burn Notice, except for its function as climate porn during the Michigan winter. Anyway, cable originals have tended to have some quality or characteristic that made them seem unlikely to succeed on a generally-branded broadcast network. In contrast, Rizzoli and Isles seems a minor twist on Crossing Jordan (which debuted nearly a decade ago) and Covert Affairs is an Alias knock-off (also debuted in 2001) which only serves to remind of the writing and acting skill of the “original.”

Notably, the summer’s new offerings haven’t all been unexceptional. Many of the cable shows that most aspire to be different, exceptional, or both are on FX, and FX’s new summer offering Louie remained on brand (Terriers debuts September 8). AMC’s Breaking Bad went to amazing places this summer and Rubicon seems to be a tremendous new conspiracy thriller. And with the return of Mad Men, this summer’s cable offerings have not all disappointed. Perhaps what I thought was an “original cable” distinction, is really just a matter of the brand of FX and AMC.

Instead of “cable” and “broadcast” being in anyway meaningful descriptors of the artistry or accomplishment of series, maybe we are entering an era in which both broadcast and cable channels feature schedules divided between “branding programs” and “schedule-fillers.” In facing distinctive algorithms of budgets, subscription fees, audiences, advertising dollars, and aspiration, both types of television outlets tend to this calculation in specific ways. What seems odd about this move toward filling out a schedule by cable channels, is that they’ve never needed to—the year-round originals on one night a week seemed a viable strategy (at least from the arm chair). Do we really need more marginal programming—it seems so contrary to the emerging technological and distribution environment. Perhaps the schedule expansion that has led to a focus on quantity over distinction is a strategy to argue parity and draw more dollars from advertisers’ broadcast budgets? I think I recall a TNT executive noting the cable channel featured more hours of new original programming this winter than NBC—which suggests it is on decision-makers’ minds. I have some other theories—more posts to come.

1. The US Justice Department okayed the merger between Live Nation (the world’s largest ticket promoter) and Ticketmaster (the world’s largest ticket sales company). Will this benefit the concertgoer? The DOJ and No Doubt think so; the Wall Street Journal is skeptical.

2. AMC ordered the pilot for Walking Dead, which Frank Darabont will produce, write, and direct. Adapting the zombie apocalypse comic of the same name, the channel, it seems, hopes to combine two of its most popular draws: horror and prestige drama.

3. After only 37 days in theatres, Cameron’s love-it-or-hate-it Avatar surpassed Cameron’s love-it-or-hate-it Titanic as the highest grossing film of all time. It’s catching up to Titanic quickly in terms of domestic sales as well, but things look very different when adjusted for admissions instead of dollars—currently, it’s #25 in the US.

4. As you get ready for Lost, a series of great links to amusing preparatory material can be found at Ramblings of a TV Whore.

5. In “Getting Past Viral,” Ivan Askwith offers a provocative call to disarm, and to move beyond sloppy notions of “viral marketing,” in a post at Big Spaceship’s site

6. In case you didn’t know already, a committee of non-humanist boneheads at University of Iowa are planning to kill the Film Studies and Comp Lit PhDs (well, the program, not the individuals … though maybe that’s next). Read more, and a nice testimonial to the program via Henry Jenkins’s blog.

7. If you have a problem, and no one else can help you …. The A-Team trailer is out, for all those 80s renegades and would-be 80s renegades. But we’re forced to ask, is there a statute of limitations on iconic father figures played that Liam Neeson is rapidly approaching (Obi-Wan’s master, Aslan, Ducard (a.k.a. the dude who trained Batman), now Hannibal, and soon to be Zeus in Clash of the Titans)?

8.  Oft-injured Portland Trail Blazers center and generally large human being Greg Oden became the latest professional athlete to have his NSFW cellphone pics circulated on the innernette (Google at your own risk).  The real story here is the wave of bizarre commentary from the sports writing community provoked by the pics.

9. Critically acclaimed 2009 horror film The House of the Devil receives a VHS release this week. (Granted, the VHS comes bundled with a DVD, somewhat like the trend of vinyl LPs coming with free digital downloads.) Is the videotape about to experience a revival? Or is this just nostalgia? Or merely a marketing gimmick?

10. Are digital music downloads too expensive? The music industry had a record-breaking year for digital music sales in 2009, suggesting that consumers are more than willing to fork over cash for “legal” downloads. However, a recent study from UPenn’s Wharton School suggests that the iTunes 99-cents per song model is overpriced and the industry would actually profit more from charging less. The industry, though, doesn’t seem convinced; Billboard has been quick to try and marginalize the research as, among other things, “strictly an academic exercise.”