BuzzFeed: "The 16 Best New Television Shows Of 2013"

Yes, returning shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Good Wife, Borgen, Parenthood, and others were aces this year. But this is all about the newcomers.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "The 16 Best New Television Shows Of 2013," in which I offer up my picks for the best new shows of the year, including Rectify, Orange Is the New Black, The Returned, Masters of Sex, Broadchurch, and Orphan Black, to name a few.

16. Bates Motel (A&E)

The story of Norman Bates — recounted in Alfred Hitchcock’s jangling Psycho — is only too familiar to most people. But under the watchful eye of executive producers Kerry Ehrin and Carlton Cuse, the Twin Peaks-esque Bates Motel offers a fresh look at Norman’s formative years (despite the fact that the series is set in the present day and in a different location), including his relationship with his overbearing, quixotic mother, Norma (a stellar Vera Farmiga) after they purchase a run-down motel on the Oregon coastline and discover that their new sleepy town holds all manner of deadly secrets. As Norman and Norma, Freddie Highmore and Farmiga are riveting to watch, their damaged psyches threatening to erupt into violence at any moment. The result is an eerie and off-kilter drama about the things that bind us.

15. The Bletchley Circle (PBS)

This three-episode British import — about a quartet of women who worked as codebreakers at Bletchley Park during World War II and reunite years later in order to entrap a serial killer when his pattern emerges — was a taut, thrilling chase as well as a nuanced portrait of the changing role of women in the 1950s, as each of the ladies struggles with a life of mundanity after playing such a pivotal role in the war. No surprise that another go-around is on tap for the amateur sleuths; The Bletchley Circle was downright gripping.

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BuzzFeed: "Community Season 5 Feels Like An Old Friend Has Finally Come Home"

The long-awaited return of the NBC comedy — now back under the watchful eye of creator Dan Harmon — distances itself from its disappointing fourth season. Gas leak year, people.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest story, "Community Season 5 Feels Like An Old Friend Has Finally Come Home," in which I review the first few episodes of Season 5 of NBC's Community. (YES.)

I’ll admit that I was somewhat wary when three episodes from Season 5 of NBC’s Community surfaced on my desk last week. After all, the fourth season of the Dan Harmon-created gonzo comedy — which was Dan Harmon-less, after all — left a lot to be desired. I choose to look at it as an alt-reality version of a show that I had cherished in its first three seasons: The characters vaguely resembled that Greendale study group with whom I had spent so many virtual hours, yet they didn’t feel quite right. Something was off — the plots felt too contrived, and the show wandered into a broadness of comedy that it had previously adamantly avoided.

Given that, there is quite a lot riding on the Jan. 2 premiere of Community, which sees the return of Harmon as the showrunner of the comedy he created. Fortunately, the three episodes provided to press — Episodes 1, 2, and 4 — go a long way to reassure fans that the show is once more back in the hands of its true caretakers. (Warning: minor spoilers ahead.)

The fifth season premiere (“Repilot”), written by Harmon and the also returning co-executive producer Chris McKenna, attempts to reestablish Community’s identity after the flawed efforts of Season 4, much of which are explained away as a “gas leak year.” In fact, the episode — which both comments on the efforts of Scrubs to “repilot” itself in Season 9 and utilizes a similar formatting — distances itself entirely from Season 4, intellectually and creatively. As such, the episode has a lot to accomplish in a relatively brief running time, which might be why “Repilot” feels a little overeager and fraught: It needs to not only bring the study group back to Greendale and back together, but it also has to engineer a reason as to why they decide to stay. Bridges, both literal and metaphorical, are broken and mended.

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BuzzFeed: "Where Can Homeland Go From Here?"

Showtime’s espionage thriller wrapped up its third season and much of its overall narrative. So where can the show possibly go in Season 4? WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Where Can Homeland Go From Here?" in which I look at the third season finale of Showtime's Homeland and where the show could possibly go from here. (Answer: wherever it does, I likely won't be watching as I'm fatigued with this show at this point.)

With Sunday’s season finale of Homeland (“The Star”), Showtime’s espionage thriller seemed to fold inwards upon itself, offering up a 20-minute epilogue that felt very much like a conclusion for the series, an alternately intelligent and deeply frustrating drama, depending where in its overall narrative you were at any given time. (It was, however, renewed for a fourth season earlier this year.)

In its often maddening and meandering third season, Homeland found Carrie (Claire Danes) pretending to be on the outs with the CIA while actually on a covert operation under the watchful eye of an even-more-gruff-than-usual Saul (Mandy Patinkin). Saul, meanwhile, hatched a truly mind-boggling plot to insert a high-level asset in the Iranian government… and get Brody (Damian Lewis) — himself the subject of an international manhunt for a bombing at the CIA that killed 100-plus people — to assassinate a high-ranking Iranian official in order to put the rogue nation under U.S. control.

“The Star” managed to tie up many of the narrative’s loose ends and capped off the Carrie/Brody dynamic, offering up a season finale that may have worked more effectively as a series finale. (Seriously, stop reading right now if you haven’t yet watched “The Star.” SPOILERS!) Brody’s death — ordered by Javadi (Shaun Toub) in an effort to secure his role in this power play — is meant to be a pyrrhic victory; it’s meant to be a gut-wrenching ordeal both for Carrie — who is carrying his baby — and for the audience at large. And there is a brief moment, when Brody is raised on a crane by his neck at a public execution and he stares outwards with terror in his eyes, where his death has some actual emotional weight and consequence. And then Carrie climbs the fence and shouts his name and I remember I’m watching Homeland, which ultimately stumbles into some melodramatic excess every five minutes or so.

Brody: “So what happens next?”
Carrie: “What do you mean?”
Brody: “When we get home, what happens next?”
Carrie: “I don’t know. What do you want to happen?”
Brody: “Honestly, I never expected to get this far, so I try not to think about it.”

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BuzzFeed: "How Scandal Turned Into An Exploration Of Free Will"

Season 3 of Shonda Rhimes’ additive ABC drama offers not only a pulse-pounding thrill ride each week, but also a canny exploration of self-determination. Spoilers ahead, if you’re not caught up.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "How Scandal Turned Into An Exploration Of Free Will," in which I take a look at the third season of Shonda Rhimes' addictive ABC thriller.

Scandal’s seven-episode first season, which aired in early 2012, gave very little indication of just where this riveting drama would go by its third and current season. At first glance, it appeared to be a legal drama centering on Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and her team of misfit lawyers, a group of very damaged people lured into the arena by Olivia’s gritty strength and forged into self-made gladiators. Their elite crisis management firm operated in Washington, meaning that the show’s title came into play fairly quickly via a slew of high-profile cases.

Olivia had ties to the fictional Grant Administration, and in particular to the POTUS, Fitz (Tony Goldwyn), for whom Olivia had worked and with whom she’s been having an extra-marital affair. Oval Office intrigue, horrific murders, and tales of jaw-dropping corruption soon followed as Scandal quickly became the sort of show that in years prior would have been referred to as a “watercooler drama,” a series that exerts a gravitational pull on the viewer so strong that they need to dissect every moment with their co-workers the following day. But thanks to the prevalence of social media in 2013, the Shonda Rhimes-created Scandal became that show for a new generation of obsessive viewers who took to Twitter and Facebook instantly to analyze the latest twist in television’s most serpentine drama.

Season 3 of Scandal, which wraps up the first half of its run on Dec. 12, has amped up the stakes in a show that already required Dramamine for those who found the rollercoaster plots moving at too high a velocity. While prying into the marriage between Fitz and his Lady MacBeth-esque First Lady, Mellie (Bellamy Young), and the complex dynamics between Fitz and Olivia, the show had wisely avoided giving away too much of Olivia’s tragic backstory. She was, after all, a gladiator. Donned in her white hat — sometimes quite literally — she stormed into the ring and took no prisoners. Olivia Pope was a blood-soaked warrior, unafraid of getting her hands dirty. But, ultimately, she was just as damaged as those she saved. In exploring her complicated backstory, Scandal has once again revealed new facets of Olivia’s character, one that refuses to be pigeonholed in the category of Strong Black Woman. Her father, Eli Pope (Joe Morton), oversees B613, a deadly black ops division of the nation’s intelligence forces whose very ruthlessness has smashed up the psyches of several characters, including Huck (Guillermo Díaz), Jake (Scott Foley), Quinn (Katie Lowes), and even Fitz himself. While on a covert operation for the Navy, the future POTUS was given an order by “Command” to shoot down an American passenger jet carrying 300-plus people aboard, including, it was believed for a while, Olivia’s own mother.

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BuzzFeed: "Why The Mindy Project Is No Longer A Work In Progress, But Perfection"

Mindy Kaling’s single-camera comedy is not only hitting all of its marks in its second season, it’s surpassing them… and leaving New Girl in its wake.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Why The Mindy Project Is No Longer A Work In Progress, But Perfection," in which I write about why The Mindy Project is perfect (and what Fox's New Girl could learn from it these days).

The noticeable creative decline of Fox’s once-sterling comedy New Girl — which this season has offered some head-scratching plot developments (who exactly was calling for the full-time return of Coach?) and a dearth of actual comedy — has had a unintentional silver lining of sorts. It’s allowed the show’s winsome timeslot companion The Mindy Project — created by and starring Mindy Kaling — its own opportunity to shine.

And, let’s be honest: The Mindy Project is currently glowing with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. Season 2 of this sharp comedy has continued with the strengths of the back half of its freshman year, having jettisoned some of the show’s elements that weren’t working (such as Anna Camp’s best friend character and Amanda Sutton’s Shauna) and focusing on the quirky interplay between the staffers of a women’s health clinic in Manhattan.

The show hasn’t been afraid to make those changes either, restructuring the ensemble so that Beth Grant’s Beverly, Zoe Jarman’s Betsy, and Xosha Roquemore’s Tamra now pack as much comedic wallop as the core trio — Kaling’s Mindy Lahiri, Chris Messina’s Danny Castellano, and a presently paunchy Ed Weeks’ Jeremy Reed — and writer/actor Ike Barinholtz’s Morgan Tooks. I might have described the latter as a scene-stealer, but the truth of the matter is that each of these players can now walk off with a sequence tucked firmly under his or her arms. That’s a real feat for any comedy, particularly one that initially appeared as though it might not make it through its first season; but something truly alchemical happened along the way with The Mindy Project: It not only found its groove but pushed itself to become something truly great in the process.

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BuzzFeed: "9 Reasons Why Trophy Wife Is Amazing"

ABC’s quirky blended family comedy — the one that isn’t Modern Family — has quickly become a bright spot in an otherwise largely dull season of television.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest, feature, "9 Reasons Why Trophy Wife Is Amazing," in which I offer nine reasons why you should be watching ABC's stellar comedy Trophy Wife, which airs Tuesdays at 9:30 p.m.

Make no mistake: You should be watching ABC’s Trophy Wife. Created by Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins, this witty show — which was picked up last week for a full season of 22 episodes — might just be the best new comedy of the 2013-14 season. It’s a perfectly sweet-tart confection that focuses on a sprawling Los Angeles family connected by marriage, divorce, and remarriage.

Meet Pete (Bradley Whitford), a lawyer who’s lousy at picking spouses, a concept quickly summed up in the opening title sequence. His first ex-wife is prickly doctor Diane (Marcia Gay Harden); his second ex-wife is spacey oddball Jackie (Michaela Watkins); and his current wife, the titular character, is Kate (Malin Akerman), a former party girl who has found herself the step-mother to three kids, a detour to her life route that she has taken in her stride.

Trophy Wife could be a predictable, comedy-by-the-numbers affair; instead, it’s anything but. It’s a refreshingly charming and mercilessly funny look at modern families that are far more complicated than one might expect. The result is a wickedly funny comedy that ought to be at the top of your DVR season pass.

1. The ensemble cast is fantastic. Seriously.

Trophy Wife gives us a family that is full of rivalries, vendettas, and a lot of love. It might not look like your family or mine, but what the show explores — with humor and heart — is how families support and take care of each other, even when they’re out for blood. It helps that the entire ensemble, led by Akerman, Harden, Watkins, andWhitford and including their sprawling brood of offspring, is at the top of their game, whether it’s Albert Tsai’s scene-stealer Bert, Ryan Scott Lee’s perpetually sunny Warren (witness his Ellen DeGeneres costume in last week’s “Halloween” episode), or Bailee Madison’s twitchy Hillary. Not to mention Natalie Morales’ Meg, Kate’s best friend, who carts a tornado in her wake.

This is an ensemble that seems to have been together for a while, acutely aware of one another’s rhythms and beats, rather than a cast that has filmed only a handful of episodes. The point is that it’s impossible not to fall in love with them.

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BuzzFeed: "Your Next Television Obsession Is French Supernatural Thriller The Returned"

You won’t just become addicted to Sundance Channel’s French-language drama about people returning from the dead; it will haunt your dreams.

"Your Next Television Obsession Is French Supernatural Thriller The Returned"

In the opening sequence of extraordinary French thriller The Returned, a yellow butterfly, pinned and placed in a display case, mounted on a wall, unexpectedly flutters back to life and smashes through its glass prison. It’s an enigmatically beautiful moment, and an apt metaphor for the overall premise of The Returned (which premieres Oct. 31 at 9 p.m. on the Sundance Channel), a collision between the worlds of the living and the dead that leaves both shattered.

Created by Fabrice Gobert (who shares directing duties with Frédéric Mermoud) and based on a 2004 film of the same name, The Returned (in French, Les Revenants) is unlike anything else on television, on either side of the Atlantic, an atmosphere-laden and character-driven drama that deftly blends supernatural horror, psychological terror, and familial tragedy. (If you’d like some sort of signposts into this unknown territory, I’d argue that The Returned is The Walking Dead multiplied by The 4400 plus Twin Peaks and divided by In the Flesh and, say, Anthony Minghella’s Truly, Madly, Deeply.)

The series — which has been renewed for a second season that will air in November 2014 on Canal+ in France —depicts what happens when the dead return to a French village, seemingly unaged, and the lives of those forever altered by the death of a loved one and their return. (You might be asking, Isn’t this similar to that ABC midseason show Resurrection, which is based on Jason Mott’s novel The Returned and is about what happens to a town when the dead return? While both have resounding similarities — the dead when they come back haven’t aged and seem to be alive; there is a seemingly mute boy at the center of each show; the time between death and return is different for each character, etc. — they aren’t directly related. An English language version of Les Revenants is already in the works as well for U.K. television under the aegis of Shameless and State of Play creator Paul Abbott.)

Each of the eight episodes that comprise The Returned’s first season focuses on the death of a specific character: morose teen Camille (Yara Pilartz), who was killed three years earlier in a horrific bus accident that killed 37 of her classmates as well and splintered her grieving family; musician Simon (Pierre Perrier), who mysteriously dies on his wedding day, leaving behind a pregnant fiancée in Adèle (Clotilde Hesme); eerily silent child “Victor” (Swann Nambotin), whose presence seems to presage doom and who has an ability to conjure a person’s darkest fear. Oh, and did I mention that one of the dead is a cannibalistic serial killer named Serge (Guillaume Gouix) who likes to repeatedly stab women in a subterranean tunnel and then eat their internal organs? One of his victims, stoic nurse Julie (Céline Sallette), survived Serge’s final attack seven years earlier before he seemingly vanished, though she has been haunted by the notion that she could come face to face with him again. Especially when a local waitress, Lucy Clarsen (Ana Girardot), is stabbed in the same tunnel as Julie…

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BuzzFeed: "The Good Wife Isn’t Just On Fire, It’s A Narrative A-Bomb"

The fifth season of the CBS legal drama continues to shake up its narrative foundations. In next week’s episode, everything changes. Everything.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "The Good Wife Isn’t Just On Fire, It’s A Narrative A-Bomb," in which I review next week's extraordinary episode of CBS' The Good Wife ("Hitting the Fan").

No joke: next Sunday’s episode of The Good Wife (“Hitting the Fan”) might just be the very best hour of television you’ll see this year.
I’m not one of those Good Wife adherents who qualifies their passionate engagement with the Robert and Michelle King-created drama by adding “on broadcast television,” as the show shouldn’t be forced to carry such a backhanded compliment. Even within the FCC-driven parameters of network television, The Good Wife manages to shatter audience expectations and consistently deliver a provocative drama that is both contemplative and incredibly taut.

This is particularly apt, given the seismic changes occurring in the show’s extraordinary fifth season. Even as Alicia (Julianna Margulies) and Cary (Matt Czuchry) covertly plot their exit from the firm, biding their time until bonuses are handed out, the firm itself is already in a state of transformation when managing partner Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) is forced out of her position. While the show teased a law firm sans Diane once she became an Illinois Supreme Court justice, her betrayal of partner Will Gardner (Josh Charles), is a shocking twist, as Diane sells him out to a reporter by disclosing the $45,000 he took from a client’s account… only to realize that she didn’t need to do the interview after all.

It’s this conflation of the personal and the professional that largely powers “Hitting the Fan,” written by Robert and Michelle King (and featuring a gorgeously tense score by David Buckley), offering a look at how these lawyers define the boundaries of that dynamic. When one character says to another, “This wasn’t meant personally,” there’s the sense that most everything they do oversteps those distinct categorizations; how can Will, Alicia, and Diane untangle the personal from the professional when those spheres of their lives are tied up so tightly? When is a betrayal only strictly professional?

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BuzzFeed: "What’s Wrong With ABC’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

The Marvel espionage drama bares a lot of similarities to the early run of Fox’s now-departed Fringe — and not necessarily in good ways.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "What’s Wrong With ABC’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.?” in which I ponder just what's wrong with ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and why the show is failing to deliver on the promise of its concept.

After what I thought was an enjoyable pilot episode (save for that unfortunate opening sequence), I’ve found the subsequent episodes of ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the television spinoff from Marvel’s cinematic universe, to be rather lackluster.

That shouldn’t be the case, particularly given the participation of the Whedons behind the scenes and the fact that the show’s writers have an entire universe of pre-existing Marvel material from which to draw inspiration. Yet, for the most part, these first few episodes have bordered on being depressingly dull, static installments that haven’t advanced the character development or loaded in an overarching plot or mythology that could amp up the tension a bit.

Tuesday’s episode (“Eye Spy”) was a step in the right direction, centering on a cybernetically enhanced former S.H.I.E.L.D. agent coerced into committing high-stakes crimes for her unseen puppet master. But the plot itself reminded me a little too much of Fox’s Fringe, another series about a makeshift team investigating rogue scientists and the seemingly inexplicable and mysterious occurrences unfolding in an otherwise grounded world. Everything about this episode — from the red masked couriers in the opening sequence to the tease of a larger pattern of illicit scientific behavior — screamed Fringe, in fact. (Interestingly, former Fringe writer Monica Owusu-Breen is on the writing staff for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D..)

But, like Fringe before it, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is plagued with some of the same issues the Fox drama faced in its early episodes. Despite the fact that we’re only four episodes into the show, there hasn’t been enough character development at work; the agents are largely still the same archetypes they were when the series began, and the audience has little knowledge of them besides for their names. (I still can’t keep Fitz and Simmons straight, which is saying something, especially since they’re different genders.)

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BuzzFeed: "Why Danish Political Drama Borgen Is Everything"

The Scandinavian drama, from creator Adam Price, is a dazzling exploration of the intersection between politics and the media that everyone should be watching. The television masterpiece returns to American screens — on KCET and LinkTV — on Oct. 4 for its third (and likely final) season. Minor spoilers ahead.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Why Danish Political Drama Borgen Is Everything," in which I review the third (and likely final) season of Danish political drama Borgen, which returns to the U.S. on October 4. (After writing about the Nordic Noir phenomenon last June, I named the show the best show of 2012 when I was at The Daily Beast and I stand by that metric. This is unlike anything on television.)

I’ve been passionately shouting at the top of my lungs about Danish political drama Borgen for the last year and a half. The groundbreaking and riveting show — which returns for a third season next month in the U.S. on LinkTV (and in Los Angeles on former PBS station KCET) and online — feels as if the best parts of The West Wing and The Newsroom were put in a blender and puréed… before being transformed into a gorgeously stylized haute cuisine dish. It is a staggering work of sophisticated beauty and dazzling intelligence.

Created by Adam Price, the superlative Borgen is often grouped together with its Nordic Noir kin — Forbrydelsen, which went on to be remade by AMC into The Killing, and Broen, which was adapted by FX as The Bridge — but the show doesn’t fit into the dark, dreary, and often depressing Nordic Noir category. For one thing, Borgen represents a rare streak of optimism and hope that isn’t typically seen in Scandinavian drama, which tends to revel in its almost all-consuming nihilism and darkness.

Borgen (which is often translated as “Government,” but actually means “The Castle,” a nickname for Christiansborg Palace, the seat of Parliament, the office of the prime minister, and the Danish supreme court) is gut-wrenching in its own way. The first two seasons of the show followed the ebb and flow of Denmark’s fictional first female prime minister, Birgitte Nyborg (Sidse Babett Knudsen). She’s an unlikely leader: a political moderate who ended up elected to the highest office of the country thanks to a quirk of Danish coalition government, and who struggled to balance her professional and personal lives. Her journey — attempting to improve Denmark while fighting off opposition from the left and right — was juxtaposed against that of gifted journalist Katrine Fønsmark (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen), a television news anchor with whom Birgitte occasionally crossed paths. One hallmark of Nordic television is its use of realistically rendered female characters and Birgitte and Katrine are no exception: Ambitious, flawed, and driven, they are spiritual kinsmen even while their work often puts them at cross-purposes. Ricocheting between print, online, and television media, Katrine attempted to find equilibrium in her own life, even as Birgitte’s fell apart in the wake of her national responsibilities: As Birgitte’s marriage imploded, her children’s lives became speculation for the tabloid press, embodied by the insidious presence of Michael Laugesen (Peter Mygind), the editor-in-chief of tawdry rag Expres and its online companion site.

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BuzzFeed: "Why Season 5 Of Parenthood Is The Perfect Jumping On Point"

The season opener of NBC’s 300-hanky drama is everything you want it to be: joyful, uplifting, and emotional. But, for those of you who have missed out on television’s most underrated show, this episode offers the perfect opportunity to get hooked. Warning: SPOILERS AHEAD.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Why Season 5 Of Parenthood Is The Perfect Jumping On Point," in which I review the fifth season opener of NBC's Parenthood, which will satisfy longtime fans of this remarkable show while also providing the perfect access point for new viewers.

It’s no surprise that the fifth season opener of Parenthood — which airs Thursday, September 26 on NBC — generates some tears. Parenthood, overseen by Jason Katims (Friday Night Lights) and revolving around the sprawling Braverman clan of Berkeley, California, is now virtually synonymous with emotional catharsis, after all.

As I stand on the precipice of my own impending parenthood, it’s the show that compels me to confront my own feelings on a weekly basis, realistically and perfectly capturing the highs and lows of American familial life, rendering each moment, whether it be the heartbreak of first love or the familiarity of old lovers, as something tenuous and all-too-brief.

In fact, if you haven’t been watching Parenthood, however, you’ve missed out on some of the very best writing and acting on television today, a true ensemble of adults and children who imbue their characters with such nuance that it’s often difficult to remember that the Bravermans aren’t real people with real lives. In an era of Scandal, Game of Thrones, and Homeland — collectively, Big Twist Television — the subtlety of this emotionally resonant drama is too often overlooked in favor of more overtly dramatic fare. Which is a mistake: Parenthood might be subtle but it’s also brutal, packing an emotional wallop in each installment that has millions of people reaching for the Kleenex, whether it’s a beautifully wrought moment of nostalgia, pain, or beatific joy.

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BuzzFeed: "Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Is Just As Awesome As You Suspected"

Marvel’s cinematic universe gets a television tie-in as the Joss Whedon-led spinoff — the pilot episode of which ABC screened for critics earlier this week — launches on September 24.

Over at BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Is Just As Awesome As You Suspected," in which I offer my first impressions of ABC's pilot for Marvel’s Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D..

Agent Coulson lives!

Well, sort of, anyway, if the sensational pilot episode of ABC’s Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — a bit of a mouthful, not to mention a clutch of extra periods — is any indication. While Marvel’s studio bosses are keeping mum about the truth behind the revelation that Clark Gregg’s Coulson, who was last seen on the receiving end of a vengeful Asgardian god’s pointy stick in The Avengers, firmly under wraps, longtime fans of Marvel Comics can pretty much figure out what’s going on here. (Cough, LMD, cough.)

But that’s really more than okay, because the Agent Coulson plot is just one of several at play within Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., created by Joss Whedon (who directs the pilot episode), Jed Whedon, and Maurissa Tancharoen. It masterfully blends together the high stakes action, quivering emotion, and deft humor we’ve come to expect from Joss and Co. The latter element is perhaps the most significant, because the show doesn’t live in the shadows all of the time; while there is more than enough death and destruction within the pilot episode, there is also a lot of genuinely funny beats and some snappy banter to satisfy any Whedon fan craving that delicate interplay of serious, soulful, and sarcastic.

However, the pilot for Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which revolves around the team’s mission to track down the mystery man played by former Angel mainstay J. August Richards, does feature its share of tough moral dilemmas. Perhaps most wisely, it also depicts the high-flying adventures of this motley group as exciting and bracing. It does, however, skirt the issue of whether a powerful espionage agency — so far above the common man that it floats in the sky aboard a helicarrier — engaged in tracking down unregistered “supers” are truly “the good guys.”

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BuzzFeed: "Why You Need To Stop What You’re Doing And Watch Orange Is The New Black"

Netflix’s latest is one of the year’s best offerings on any platform. Why Jenji Kohan’s gripping prison drama makes for essential, addictive viewing.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my latest feature, "Why You Need To Stop What You’re Doing And Watch Orange Is The New Black," in which I review Netflix's latest original series, one of the year's finest television offerings.

The year’s best television series have so far emerged from some very unlikely places, whether it’s the searing Sundance Channel drama Rectify, BBC America’s upcoming gut-wrenching murder mystery Broadchurch, or Netflix’s superlative prison drama Orange Is the New Black, from Weeds creator, Jenji Kohan. (That two of these shows deal with issues of crime and punishment — and specifically imprisonment — is not surprising, given our societal preoccupations at the moment, though these weighty issues are handled extremely differently within Rectify and Orange.)

Orange Is the New Black, released by the streaming platform under its now standard pattern, which incentivizes binge watching, is the first Netflix show that truly warrants such obsessive speed viewing. The important choice you have to make is whether you want to burn through the 13-episode first season in a weekend (comedian Patton Oswalt said of the show, “Now I know how mid-70’s NYC heroin addicts felt.”) or space them out over a few weeks. But regardless of which viewing method you employ, what is certain is that you will fall under the spell of Orange fast and hard. It’s the type of television show that comes around rarely these days, one that exerts an almost gravitational pull on the viewer, so authentic and funny and poignant and tragic that it’s impossible to look away from the screen. Or, indeed, to forget about the well drawn characters — carefully and exquisitely crafted from different races and ages — that exist within the drab walls of this rundown prison environment.

The reaction to Orange Is the New Black — based on the memoir by Piper Kerman — has been intense, from among both viewers and critics. But its place of origin is not the thing that is most surprising about the show. Orange, after all, is a show that features a primarily female cast — made up of mostly unknown actors, with a few exceptions — and a protagonist in Taylor Schilling’s Piper Chapman. She is often selfish and unlikeable, but she provides an entry to a world that (I hope) few of its viewers will ever see: inside a New York women’s prison.

Prison in this case is a microcosm for the outside world, a place of tribes and alliances, of enmity and secret assignations. It is a world of extreme harshness and yet also of unexpected beauty, where a small act of kindness can seem like an enormous thing. Piper, the sort of naïve hipster who makes artisanal bath products for a living and who loves to tell anyone who will listen that her products are carried in Barney’s, is instantly out of her depth. She’s a newcomer to an incredibly rigid system that doesn’t allow for pushback and which, in an almost Victorian sense, rewards those who know their place in the machinery. That Piper — who once carried a suitcase full of drug money for her then-girlfriend, Alex Vause (Laura Prepon) — has voluntarily surrendered, choosing to relinquish her freedom, makes her initially an object of curiosity among her prison mates and of scorn.

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BuzzFeed: "Clueless Comes of Age"

When Amy Heckerling set out to make a modern day retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma, few imagined that the director would create a new classic and one of the most quoted films ever. The Alicia Silverstone comedy turns 18 years old today, but, let’s be honest, Clueless is timeless.

At BuzzFeed, you can read my first feature for the site, "Clueless Comes of Age," in which I write about Clueless turning 18 years old today, which is horrifying on so many levels.

Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, inspired by the winking spirit of Jane Austen’s 1815 novel Emma, was released in theaters 18 years ago today, which means that it has officially reached adulthood. For a movie about the vapidity of adolescence, the fact that nearly two decades have come and gone since Clueless first hit theaters cuts through me like a knife.

I was nearly 18 years old when the Alicia Silverstone film came out, and I saw it on opening weekend, a hot July night in 1995, the summer before I went to college. I don’t think anyone anticipated that the film would become a sleeper hit (it grossed $11 million on its opening weekend, way ahead of estimates), nor that it would go on to spawn a lexicon of its own — with its “Barneys” and “Bettys,” the use of “As if!” as a viable rejoinder to any argument — but for those of us who discovered the film in those days, it was like a bright light was being shined directly into the inner chambers of our hearts.

Clueless, first and foremost, was smart. It may have traded Regency-era England for 1990s Beverly Hills, but it managed to retain the spark of both Austen’s titular heroine and the flintiness of the novel’s romantic comedy plot, which presents naïve Emma Woodhouse as a self-made Cupid who is, in actuality, a selfish meddler who needs to learn what love really is, even as she plays at making couples out of those around her. A few broken hearts and a sudden realization — that she loves her romantic sparring partner, Mr. Knightley — later, and Emma is both humbled and bowled over by love. She is transformed by the experience, and her romantic adventure mirrors her psychological development. Emma moves into adulthood, and so too does Austen’s “gentle reader” in a way.

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The Daily Beast: "Fall-Winter TV Preview: Snap Judgments of 2013–14’s New Shows"

Summer TV got you in the doldrums? See what’s coming up with my and Kevin Fallon’s first impressions of 30-plus broadcast network pilots, from Resurrection and Believe to Ironside and Dads.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my last story for the site (yes, you read that correctly!), entitled, "Fall-Winter TV Preview: Snap Judgments of 2013–14’s New Shows," in which Kevin Fallon and I offer our first impressions of 40 or so broadcast network pilots coming to television next season.

Your summer vacation may have involved lounging by the pool or traveling to Europe, but we’ve spent the first few months of hot weather sorting through the broadcast-network pilots for nearly 40 new scripted shows that will likely air next season. (A caveat: the networks have been known to yank a few before they even make it on the air.) We’ve come out the other side more or less unscathed and can now offer our first takes on the dramas and comedies that are headed to the fall and midseason schedules of ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, and the CW.

Every year the networks present their usual takes on the familiar doctor-lawyer-cop tropes, and this year is no exception. But there are also a few bright spots. Supernatural thrillers Resurrection and Believe are pretty damn engaging. Lottery-winner drama Lucky 7 is surprisingly alluring. And there are quite a few comedies—Brooklyn Nine-Nine, About a Boy, Trophy Wife, and even (surprisingly) CBS’s Mom—that actually make us want to watch another episode or 10.

So what did we think? First, a few more caveats: (1) our opinions should be considered “first impressions” of the pilots that were made available by the broadcast networks and not reviews. (2) All pilots—from music and dialogue to casting, etc.—are subject to change, so what airs next season may be drastically different from what we saw. (3) We reserve the right to change our initial opinions upon seeing final review copies of these pilots—not to mention a few more episodes. (4) Not all the fall and midseason pilots were sent out by the networks: ABC opted not to send out the pilot for its highly anticipated superhero espionage drama Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or those for Mind Games, Mixology, and Once Upon a Time in Wonderland; NBC didn’t send out Crossbones, Dracula, Undateable, or Chicago PD, to name four; and CBS isn’t letting us see Reckless or Friends With Better Lives just yet, while it picked up Bad Teacher to series after the upfronts. (Quite a few pilots weren’t available to press this year.)

ABC

Back in the Game (Wednesday at 8:30 p.m.)

Log line: A former All-Star softball player, smarting from a recent divorce, moves back in with her curmudgeonly dad and her young son and ends up coaching her son’s misfit Little League team.

Cast: Maggie Lawson, James Caan, Lenora Crichlow, Ben Koldyke, Cooper Roth, Griffin Gluck, J.J. Totah, Kennedy Waite.

Jace Lacob: While watching this, I kept thinking to myself that the grumpy, trigger-happy dad should be played by James Caan. What’s that, you say? The dad IS played by James Caan? Oh. It seems that even Caan tries too hard to play a blue-collar James Caan type called the Cannon, and the results are creaky and stiff. The boozy British mother, played by Lenora Crichlow (Being Human)—and her dynamic with Maggie Lawson’s Terry—is a rare highlight in this otherwise drab, lackluster comedy pilot, in which nearly every single joke fails to connect with the bat.

Kevin Fallon: There are elements here that should work. James Caan should be able to play a curmudgeonly drunk grandpa in his sleep and still get laughs. Writers Mark and Robb Cullen aren’t afraid to tread into slightly politically incorrect and sometimes even weird humor. (A friendship builds between Maggie Lawson’s Terry and another school mom that’s delightfully odd and crass.) Each member of the Bad News Bears of a team Terry ends up coaching has what should be a chuckle-worthy quirk. Yet in spite of all this, nearly every joke grounds out. With few laughs to reward an otherwise talented cast, the series is ultimately a swing and a miss.

Verdict: Strike out.

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The Daily Beast: "The Bridge: FX’s New U.S.-Mexican Border Thriller"

FX’s The Bridge, about a serial killer investigation that entangles both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border, is very good. If you haven’t seen the Danish-Swedish series it’s based on, you might even think it’s great.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest story (one of my very last ones, in fact), "FX's Border-Killer Thriller," in which I review FX's The Bridge, based on the Danish/Swedish drama Broen, which begins tonight at 10 p.m. on FX.

Borders are complex signifiers, reinforcing both national and cultural identities as well as distinguishing between outsiders and insiders. Where you are, how you see yourself, depends largely on what side of the wall—visible or invisible—you’re standing on at the moment. Few modern-day national borders are as fraught or as psychologically charged as that between the United States and Mexico, a nearly 2,000-mile line in the sand that is the most frequently crossed international border in the world.

It’s this international way station that acts as the backdrop for FX’s provocative new mystery thriller The Bridge, which is based on the Danish/Swedish drama Broen and which begins its 13-episode run Wednesday night at 10 p.m. The American adaptation of the hit drama series (a ratings success in the Nordic region as well as in the U.K.) moves its crosscultural concerns away from Scandinavia, instead exploring the socioeconomic, psychological, and cultural effects of the border between the U.S. and Mexico and two detectives from either side of the divide.

When the corpse of a woman is discovered in the middle of the Bridge of the Americas (also known as the Cordova Bridge), which links El Paso, Texas with Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, each country claims jurisdiction over the incident. As the bridge is shut down while the identity of the victim is ascertained, detectives Sonya Cross (Diane Kruger) and Marco Ruiz (Demián Bichir) square off over whether an an ambulance—carrying a wealthy American citizen in the throes of a heart attack—should be allowed to cross the border.

It’s the first time that these two disparate people—American and Mexican, female and male, introspective and gregarious—have met, and the collision between Sonya and Marco informs much of the drama to come as they are forced to work together to track down an insidious and intelligent killer. The woman on the bridge, as the detectives come to learn, isn’t just a single corpse: the top half and the bottom half belong to two separate victims, one an American judge and the other an unknown female, one of former murder capital Juárez’s hundreds of slain women in the last 20-odd years, whose continued disappearances and deaths now register barely a mention in the American media.

The killer, it seems, has a need to bring to light some of the shocking inequalities between the U.S. and Mexico, but he is no crusader. Instead, he—or perhaps she—delights in causing mayhem on both sides of the border, illuminating the travesties facing those trapped by the border while simultaneously perpetuating them. He has a drive to create both carnage and impact, and he reaches out to Daniel Frye (Matthew Lillard, appropriately smarmy here), a drug-addicted newspaper reporter working well below his potential, in order to cast his message even wider.

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The Daily Beast: "Ray Donovan: Is the Liev Schreiber–Led Showtime Drama The Next Sopranos?"

I review Showtime’s fixer drama Ray Donovan, which begins Sunday night and stars Liev Schreiber as a Hollywood fixer whose South Boston past creates present-day troubles.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Ray Donovan: Is the Liev Schreiber–Led Showtime Drama The Next Sopranos?" in which I review Showtime's fantastic new drama Ray Donovan, which premieres on Sunday night at 10 p.m. ET/PT.

The specter of HBO’s still-mourned organized crime family drama The Sopranos, which arguably kicked off the latest golden age of television, can be glimpsed in the foundations of nearly every cable drama that has come since, ushering in an era of the male antihero that has permeated the popular culture.

The Sopranos’s mischievous, malevolent spirit flits through Showtime’s outstanding new drama Ray Donovan, which premieres Sunday night at 10 p.m. Starring Liev Schreiber as the titular character, the show—created by Ann Biderman, who also created the gripping, gritty cop drama Southland—deftly balances matters of crime and punishment, love and enmity, savagery and civility. It’s a drama that’s about the push and pull of the domestic and the professional spheres. And it must be said that Ray Donovan is also about the battle between good and evil, often within the same man.

Schreiber’s Ray is a Hollywood fixer, the sort of hard-boiled figure that you might have to call when you’re a celeb being blackmailed by a transgendered hooker or a basketball star waking up in bed next to a dead woman after a night of heavy drug use. Escaping his rough-and-tumble Irish Catholic past in South Boston, Ray has established himself as an imposing if shady figure in the boardrooms and back lots of Los Angeles, equal parts deterrent and enforcer. The rich and famous—portrayed largely as venal, vapid parasites—pay him handsomely to deal with the messes in which they find themselves. And Ray deals with everything with vicious panache, imposing whether he’s wielding a baseball bat or an unspoken threat.

Ray’s talents in this area have allowed him to set up his family in the tony enclave of Calabasas, where his children and his wife, Abby (Paula Malcomson), exist in a bubble of privilege that is a far cry from their parents’ formative years. Across the city in Hollywood, Ray’s brothers, Bunchy (Dash Mihok) and Terry (British actor Eddie Marsan, excellent here), operate a struggling boxing gym, supported by their brother. Bunchy is a self-described “sexual anorexic,” a recovering addict who was molested by a priest as a boy. Terry is a sullen and solitary ex-boxer with Parkinson’s Disease who is attracted to his nurse, Frances (Brooke Smith), but too afraid to act on it.

Ray’s past is a bit of an enigma, teased out in little morsels over the course of the first few episodes. His sister killed herself as a teenager, and her death continues to paralyze the Donovan boys in intriguing ways. Ray is additionally concealing something terrible, having colluded with his business partners, Ezra Goodman (Elliott Gould) and Lee Drexler (Peter Jacobson), in order to put his own father in prison 20 years earlier. But Ray’s demons come home when his father, Mickey (Jon Voight), gets out of prison five years earlier than expected and heads to Los Angeles to exact revenge upon those who destroyed his life. Voight radiates ferocious intensity here, rendering the surprisingly charming Mickey as a volatile presence in the Donovan clan; his every move is unpredictable and laced with danger. Loud, overbearing, and unseemly, he is the very personification of the human id in a mock turtleneck and gold chain.

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The Daily Beast: "Under the Dome Is One Eerie TV Show"

From Stephen King and Steven Spielberg comes Under the Dome, a weird, scary, and potentially great excuse to stay inside this summer. I dissect tonight’s premiere.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Under the Dome Is One Eerie TV Show," in which I review CBS's eerie new drama Under the Dome, based on Stephen King's 2009 novel of the same name, which begins tonight at 10 p.m. ET/PT.

In the not-too-distant future, the inhabitants of Chester’s Mill—a small and seemingly idyllic town in Anywhere, U.S.A.—suddenly discover their town is trapped inside an invisible barrier of unknown origin. Birds fall from the sky, numerous vehicles crash, and a blood-red handprint on this transparent dome becomes a sigil of awe and fear.

This is the basis for CBS’s intriguing new “event” drama series, Under the Dome, which begins its 13-episode summer run tonight at 10 p.m. (While some have referred to it as a “miniseries,” it is most definitely an ongoing series, with the strong possibility of future seasons should ratings take off.) Based on Stephen King’s 2009 novel of the same name, Under the Dome imagines a scenario that is both rife with possibility and nightmare. Trapped and with nowhere to turn, Chester Mill’s residents must either work together to survive or succumb to the terror and uncertainty of their new situation, one that has cut them off from both loved ones and the outside world. So, live together, die alone then?

If that reminds you of the now-famous words uttered by reluctant leader Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) on Lost, you’re on the right track. Under the aegis of executive producers Steven Spielberg, Neal Baer (Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, ER, and far too many other credits to list here), and Brian K. Vaughan (Lost), the series imagines a terrifying “what if” scenario that positions the inexplicable as a backdrop for the intimate.

Much like Lost before it, Under the Dome presents a life-altering occurrence as a crucible by which to view a group of disparate characters. Barbie (Mike Vogel), a former soldier, is passing through Chester’s Mill on some illicit business when he’s trapped inside. Local newspaper editor Julia Shumway (Rachelle Lefevre) has a nose for news but seems oblivious to what’s going on inside her own home. Angie (Britt Robertson) is a local nurse who is desperate to escape Chester’s Mill even before the dome, but finds herself trapped inside with her emotionally unstable boyfriend, Junior (Alexander Koch). Local bigwig Jim Rennie (Dean Norris), a used-car salesman and councilman, looks to use the dome to seize control of the town. A lesbian couple from Los Angeles, Carolyn (Aisha Hinds) and Alice (Samantha Mathis), taking their troubled daughter (Mackenzie Lintz) to a “camp,” find themselves stuck as well.

Elsewhere, there are a pair of local radio DJs (Nicholas Strong and Joelen Purdy), the stoic town sheriff (Lost’s Jeff Fahey) and his trusted deputy, Linda (Natalie Martinez), and a subplot that indicates that the financial stability of the town may be based on less-than-legal solutions. It’s this latter element that is perhaps the most timely, given the recent economic downturn and its similar handling over on A&E’s Bates Motel: how does Small Town America remain viable? How creative do towns like Chester’s Mill have to be in order to survive in the 21st century?

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The Daily Beast: "James Gandolfini the Great"

James Gandolfini, the hulking star of HBO's acclaimed The Sopranos, has died. My piece on the legacy the actor and producer leaves behind.

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "James Gandolfini the Great," my appreciation of the late, great Sopranos star James Gandolfini, who passed away yesterday at age 51 while traveling in Italy.

HBO has confirmed the unexpected death of actor and producer James Gandolfini, who passed away at age 51 while traveling in Italy. At press time, the cause of his death was unclear, with several outlets reporting a heart attack or a "sudden stroke." He was due to appear at the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily, where he was slated to paricipate in a panel discussion with director Gabriele Muccino.

While Gandolfini appeared in countless film and television roles, ranging from comedies (like Armando Iannucci's wickedly skewering Washington satire In the Loop) to hard-hitting dramas like Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, it was his visceral turn as deeply troubled mobster Tony Soprano, the pater familias of a New Jersey crime family and a domestic one, on HBO's The Sopranos, which won him accolades from critics and viewers alike. During the drama's acclaimed six-season run, Gandolfini would win three Emmy awards for Best Actor for The Sopranos (he was nominated six times), widely regarded as one of the best television shows ever to air—it was recently named the best written show in history by the Writers Guild of America—and one that ushered in a new Golden Age for television.

"We're all in shock and feeling immeasurable sadness at the loss of a beloved member of our family," said HBO in a prepared statement. "He was a special man, a great talent, but more importantly a gentle and loving person who treated everyone no matter their title or position with equal respect. He touched so many of us over the years with his humor, his warmth, and his humility. Our hearts go out to his wife and children during this terrible time. He will be deeply missed by all of us."

With his death, Hollywood has lost one of its finest veteran actors. With The Sopranos, Gandolfini delivered a searing and deeply complex performance that captured the rage, sorrow, and frustation of the modern American male. As played by Gandolfini, Tony Soprano was full of contradictions, a complex man whose struggles with depression and panic attacks humanized him despite the violence he perpetrated on those around him. (It was hard not to love him when even his desperate, harried mother wanted him dead.) Prone to violence, Tony Soprano represented the unfettered darker impulses of the id, while also remaining intriguingly relatable. Even as the character plotted for control of a New Jersey criminal enterprise, he struggled to keep his own family together.

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The Daily Beast: "Mad Men: Who Is Bob Benson?"

The truth of who Bob Benson is was finally revealed on Sunday’s episode of Mad Men. My take on the revelation and how it connects to Don Draper. Warning: spoilers ahead!

At The Daily Beast, you can read my latest feature, "Mad Men: Who Is Bob Benson?" in which I offer my take on this week's episode of AMC's Mad Men and what the true identity of Bob Benson (James Wolk) means for the show and Don Draper.

“I used to wonder how you were so expertly servile.”

On Mad Men, James Wolk’s eager-to-please ad man Bob Benson—a sort of golden retriever in an impeccably preppy suit who was always ready with an extra cup of coffee or a deli platter for a funeral—offered one of the season’s most hotly discussed mysteries, second only to whether Jessica Paré’s Megan Draper would be murdered. Theories were rampant. Was the perpetually chipper up-and-comer, who inexplicably seemed to materialize at SCDP (later renamed SC&P), a spy from a rival agency, an undercover reporter, Don’s love child, or a government agent?

Last week’s episode, “Favors,” seemed to indicate that Bob was gay, as he appeared to make an advance at Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) by gently touching his boss’s leg with his own and seemingly making a declaration of his love. When I asked Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences panel I moderated last weekend whether Bob Benson was gay, he demurred, saying what passed between Bob and Pete didn’t necessarily indicate that. So, then, the question hovers in the air like smoke from one of Don’s cigarettes: just who is Bob Benson?

But Bob Benson isn’t a spy, an undercover reporter, or a G-man. (Nor is he Don Draper himself, as some have confusingly guessed.) The truth is far more mundane, in a way: Bob Benson is anyone he needs to be.

In this week’s episode of Mad Men, “The Quality of Mercy,” Bob’s secret history came tumbling out from a most unexpected source. Headhunter Duck Phillips (Mark Moses) discovered, when tasked by Pete with finding leads for Bob, that Bob’s personnel file “might as well be written in steam.” Every bit of information we’ve learned this season about Bob—the blue-blood connections, the dead father, his work experience, etc.—was a fiction cleverly created by a cunning social climber, one who wanted to leave his West Virginia roots behind and reinvent himself as a slick go-getter.

Does that sound like anyone else we know?

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