TV Reviews: Grading the “Luck” Series Finale and “Mad Men” Season Premiere

Today brings Alabama Liberal’s first “All TV day” in which I’ll review two critical behemoths now (Luck’s series finale and Mad Man’s season premiere) and then later on today I’ll be bringing you an entertainment editorial about what TV shows I hope get another season and which ones I hope don’t. Plus, a review of the season finales of Alcatraz, The River, Archer, Southland, and the premiere of Bent. So if, like myself, you will watch almost any scripted show once, you should be in luck today…

1. Luck Series Finale…

Luck is the HBO drama about the various characters involved in a California racetrack and is notable as quite possibly the first show that PETA ever got cancelled. For those that don’t know, Luck was already green lit for a second season but the show had three horse deaths—-spread out over three years of filming—-and PETA raised enough hell that the second season was cancelled before it even started filming. Now, I can’t say I’m up in arms about this (although PETA shouldn’t be making decisions like this as they aren’t in favor of filming so much as a gold fish on television) as Luck isn’t exactly my favorite show HBO has come up with, but it is vastly better than True Blood and even a bit better than Treme. Which is just a roundabout way of saying the show probably did deserve a second season to find its sure footing and it had loads of potential.

Nowhere was that more evident than in the season/series finale, which was probably the most accessible and exciting episode the show has had. Too much of this show has been hindered by three trademarks of the David Milch drama (he’s the creator of Luck as well as the great Deadwood and the not-so-great John From Cincinnati): 1. Glacially slow pacing. 2. A fondness for oddball malcontents that are so gruff they’re borderline insufferable. 3. That weird dialogue syntax he uses which shuffles nouns and prepositions (“No accident this,” “You want I should break?”) to make all his characters sound like accidental tough-guy versions of Yoda.

Still, none of those things necessarily bothered me in the finale episode, and I grew downright invested in the stories of whether Dustin Hoffman (in a soulful, subtle performance as a gambling tycoon trying to shake loose his scum-of-the-Earth partners) or Nick Nolte (almost as good with those watery, empathetic eyes) would finally triumph after season long struggles. The episode was successful at showcasing Luck’s big emotional theme: that whether you’re a loser gambling addict or a big wig with a sky box at the track, a gambling high can make magic happen as cynical, downtrodden characters for once get to be winners. [And it doesn’t hurt that the episode looked amazing.] After a season of making us work for it, the emotional payoffs were exhilarating, and certainly better than anything Mad Men was offering up over on AMC. Season Grade: B…Season Finale Grade: A-

2. Mad Men Season Premiere…

Okay, so this show has been off the air for over a year and a half, and in that time period it’s fans have either obsessed about when it’s coming back OR…kind-of…well…gotten over it. Unfortunately, I have to say that I am more in the second group than the first. That may be because I have always really LIKED Mad Men but I have never really LOVED it. Like “Luck,” it also suffers from pacing that makes turtles look fast, but unlike Luck, Mad Men has no real sweeping emotional currents to make your eyes go watery. Whereas Luck saves even the worst episodes with thrilling racing sequences or gorgeous cinematography of green, open spaces, Mad Men goes into the opposite direction, sealing us away in cold office tombs and cramped emotional places as the characters feel suffocated by their circumstances or lifestyles.

Anyway, the premiere: It’s no real surprise that critics and Emmy voters love the show, as most of them are old enough to remember the stories of John Cheever and Richard Yates with relevance, but a younger demographic may look at this and say “What’s the point really? Why should we care about these Madison Avenue pricks and their hostility towards a changing Civil Rights landscape?” Last night’s premiere showcased some Civil Rights marchers as a direct link to making the show more current to the Occupy Wall Street generation, but to me it smacked of desperation to make what is ostensibly a wallow in nostalgia more relevant, and probably failed on both counts. For most of the viewers that really love Mad Men, it’s because of its escapism into a decade often seen as more glamorous (“Oh…the men wore suiiiiits and the women wore gorgeous dresses to the office…swoon”), so they aren’t really all the concerned with Civil Rights, and most who will be are a little more caught up in today’s struggles to really find too much shocking or riveting about the mid-60’s.

The major events of last night’s premiere showed that Joan had her baby, Don was in the throes of a mid-life crisis as he tried to fuck his younger wife anywhere and everywhere, Peggy is still bitter and under appreciated, and Pete is still bitter and jealous of everyone else’s status. So in other words: some things have changed but most things haven’t. It’s always very premature to judge a show like Mad Men on its premiere episode—-this is one of those shows that always has a slow start but really pays off in the final two or three episodes of every season with one outstanding episode in the middle—-but so far I have to approach it cautiously, with the understanding that I’ll be watching this show until it ends no matter how much I may find it unsatisfying. Premiere grade: C+