Sex and the City is a major cultural touchstone, which guarantees that impressions of the series will be deeply polarized. For every person who loves the SATC franchise, there's someone who hates everything SATC stands for. Wolf, however, appears to be firmly in the love camp. While it may be puzzling to consider a noted feminist being firmly pro-Bradshaw, looking at her frame of analysis, it only makes sense.

Wolf argues:

I have written before about how radical it was that the narrative of Sex and the City centered not around a couple — let alone the traditional formula of hero-plus-beautiful-secondary-love-interest. Rather, the core of the tale was always the life-sustaining friendship among four women, as the men in their lives came and went. This break from narrative norms was remarkable not just because Bushnell was insisting that four women — no longer in their first youth – were renewably compelling on their own terms; it was also radical because, in a very un-PC but admirable flouting of feminist norms, Bushnell was brave enough to lay bare the secret – that for many women the search for love is the same urgent, central, archetypal quest story that for men is played out in war narratives and adventure tales. Bushnell was gutsy enough to disclose that even we serious, accomplished, feminist women spend a lot of time, when we are alone with our female friends, telling stories centered on the men with whom we are romantically entangled, exploring the quality of the love and attraction, the romance and the sex. And we are often just that graphic and hopeful and vulnerable and slutty as those four characters.

Wolf is calling out some tropes in pop culture that appear so often, they are considered normal and rarely receive critical analysis. I'm not sure how many episodes of Sex and the City pass the Bechdel test - clearly, conversations about work, money and breast cancer do, but much of the plot is discussing relationships. However, the overall narrative of female bonding cannot be ignored, particularly when so many popular series revolve around a solo girl within a sea of men, or women who are generally appendages/comic relief for the men who carry the series.

There is one line in particular that is critically important: "This break from narrative norms was remarkable not just because Bushnell was insisting that four women – no longer in their first youth – were renewably compelling on their own terms."

In those respects, Sex and the City is revolutionary. Beyond focusing on the lives of women, it focuses on older women, in an industry that tells women that are over the age of thirty that their only role is to be the hot wife or the hot mother. The character who has the most sex also happens to be the oldest character — Samantha is still as fabulous and fly at 50 as she was when she strolled on screen a decade ago. And the fact that four older women carried a television show that focused on their lives is also amazing. Jennifer Kesler, over at the Hathor Legacy, talks about some of the lessons she learned during her time taking film classes at UCLA:

There was still something wrong with my writing, something unanticipated by my professors. My scripts had multiple women with names. Talking to each other. About something other than men. That, they explained nervously, was not okay. I asked why. Well, it would be more accurate to say I politely demanded a thorough, logical explanation that made sense for a change (I'd found the "audience won't watch women!" argument pretty questionable, with its ever-shifting reasons and parameters).

At first I got several tentative murmurings about how it distracted from the flow or point of the story. I went through this with more than one professor, more than one industry professional. Finally, I got one blessedly telling explanation: "The audience doesn't want to listen to a bunch of women talking about whatever it is women talk about."

In this type of environment, any media that challenges the dominant narrative around who is worth watching is worthwhile.

Wolf also continues to make a deeper point - in addition to showing women and their exteriors, Carrie Bradshaw was also given an interior life:

After the shallow or deeper sagas of hot sex or social slights, of hungover breakfasts with the girls or Cosmopolitans and hookups at night, every episode saw the letters unscrolling — often forming quite existential questions — across Carrie's computer screen. Teenage girls watching each episode were taking in a clear message. Not only can I dress up and flirt, seduce and consume, overcome challenges, yield to temptations, take risks, fail, try again – I can think about it all, and what I think will matter.

However, Wolf makes a common assumption that begins to reveal the flaws in her analysis:

It may seem ironic that the first female thinker in pop culture (not in books — books have had them since Doris Lessing) came to us with corkscrew curls and wacky cloth flowers in her hair, teetering on Manolos worn over Japanese-schoolgirl socks. But really, can you name a TV show or film prior to this that centered around a woman reflecting about her life and the world? Carrie, for better or worse, was our first pop-culture philosopher.

I actually can, which speaks to one of Wolf's limitations in argument, and one of the larger criticisms of Sex and the City — often, the analysis around the series speaks for "women" as a collective group, not bothering to realize that there are often other narratives flowing at the same time. For some women, Sex and the City is their cultural touchstone — for others, it's the fabulous foursome in Girlfriends, or before that, Living Single. And many people can relate to all of the series I've named. At the beginning of Sex and the City's heyday, I was still in high school — our Carrie Bradshaw might have been Angela Chase of My So-Called Life, or even the animated character Daria. And I am sure there are some I am forgetting.

Sex and the City is many different things, to many different people. And while it does subvert some paradigms in the pop culture landscape, it does much to uphold others. Sex and the City's issues with diversity are well known and discussed — hell, even the cast of the series started petitioning to see more color on set. But even with that base level of awareness, SATC couldn't help but replicate existing tropes that people of color are generally servants or sex objects. And, while Carrie Bradshaw may have rocked a name plate necklace as an acknowledgment to the types of women who don't have the idealized Manhattan lifestyle, SATC reinforced that well-off, white narratives are the stories worth telling. In some ways, SATC also represents the worst of our consumerist culture, where happiness is counted in Jimmy Choos and Birkin Bags, instead of values and quality of life.

But to only focus on those messages is to ignore why SATC became so popular in the first place — there are universal narratives to this story. Heartbreak is heartbreak, whether it's found in the pained expression of Carrie Bradshaw appraising herself in a mirror after three days of crying, or whether it's Nana Komatsu tearfully turning her back on the boyfriend who betrayed her in the manga series NANA. And friendship is friendship, whether it takes place in an unnamed cafe over breakfast or in the living room of a friend's house.

And that — the humanity rather than the iconography of Carrie Bradshaw — is why so many women are still watching.

Carrie Bradshaw: Icons of the decade [The Guardian]
The Bechdel Test [Wikipedia]
Why film schools teach screenwriters not to pass the Bechdel test [The Hathor Legacy]
'Sex And The City' Diversifies [CBS News]
NANA [Wikipedia]
Nameplate Necklace [Time]

She began in the theater, starring in Broadway and Off-Broadway productions such as Chicago, Hair, and Eubie. After 12 years on Sesame Street, she joined the cast of 227, playing Rose (there's a snippet here, and a great clip here).

According to blogger Thembi Ford:

Kevin Peter Hall (the 7′2″ actor who portrayed Harry in Harry and The Hendersons and Predator in the movies of the same name) guest starred as Rose's love interest on 227 and in 1988 the two began a real-life relationship, marrying both on the show and in real life. Sadly, he passed away in 1991 from complications of AIDS contracted through a blood transfusion. 227 was canceled that same year…

Still, Alaina Reed Hall continued acting and singing, with guest spots on A Different World, Friends and Ally McBeal. She also had a one-woman theater show, "Alaina at the Bijou."

Alaina Reed Hall had been battling breast cancer and was 63 years old when she died.

Below, one of my favorite songs: "Sing."

Sesame Street Star Dies of Cancer [E!]
In Memoriam: Alaina Reed Hall [What Would Thembi Do?}
Alaina Reed Hall [Wikipedia]
Alaina Reed [Muppet Wiki]

Related: Breast Cancer: An African American Perspective [IMDb]

[Image via Muppet Wiki]

Of Sex and the City's supposed enduring relevance, Cattrall tells the WSJ, "Post-feminism has been really confusing. It influenced so many women to leave a lot of their feminine qualities behind and assume the business suit." She says SATC offered something different, which is why "it's captured so many women's imaginations. It's truthful and it's real and it's now; it's not dated, and it keeps evolving. These four women really make up one complete woman." That one woman would, of course, be very very rich, and what with Carrie's shoe obsession and Charlotte's fetish for housewares, she'd need a pretty huge home to hold all her stuff. A home that could be designed by Nancy Meyers.

Daphne Merkin noted Meyers' focus on immaculate interiors in her recent Times Magazine profile (which we wrote about last week), but Nicole LaPorte's Daily Beast essay pays even more attention to Meyers's "decorator porn." LaPorte writes,

[T]he sumptuous details in Meyers' films-the gazillion-thread-count sheets; the Park Regent suites; the glintingly new Porsches (none of which seem solely to be there because of product-placement deals)-are so unrelentingly omnipresent in every, single frame that they actually become distracting. During a screening of It's Complicated, Meyers' latest installment of decorator porn, I became so consumed with the outlandish dimensions of Meryl Streep's (a.k.a. Jane, the film's protagonist) Santa Barbara kitchen and all of its Martha Stewart accoutrements-cake plates with perfectly frosted cakes on them; vases stuffed with plump basil-that I missed whole sequences of dialogue.

But that might be just fine — Meyers's films may be just as much about what the characters sleep on as about what they say. Meyers tells Merkin that her lavish interior decorating "softens the message" of her films, but really it only amplifies that message — that women can have everything they want in bed (a man; good sheets) and out. Merkin thinks the point of Meyers's linen fixation is that "your character is attested to by the quality of your bed linens and where good taste stands not only for itself but for all that it exudes in the way of fast cars, moral turpitude, kinky eroticism and political scandal." But the beauty of Jane's home in It's Complicated may speak less to her character per se than to her independence, even her happiness. Merkin writes that Jane is "a professionally successful divorced mother of three who runs a flourishing Santa Barbara bakery and seems content to be on her own when romance sticks its big foot back in the doorway to her life" — and the beautiful house she paid for with her own money may be the filmic symbol of this contentment.

Cattrall's words (uttered, interestingly enough, at a party hosted by a linen company) point to a similar stuff=happiness equation in SATC. The women of that show did "assume the business suit" metaphorically — they all had high-powered careers. But they chose to exercise their economic independence by purchasing very "feminine" accoutrements, like vertiginous heels. Post-feminism is indeed confusing, and the answer both SATC and the Meyers oeuvre seem to offer is to become the sugar daddy you want to marry, and then give yourself lots of expensive presents.

While being able to afford Manolos and chintz without a man around does have a certain "Independent Woman" appeal, neither Meyers nor Sex and the City totally jettisons the Prince Charming narrative — viewers of the first SATC movie will surely remember the giant closet Big buys Carrie. More significantly, portraying independence through buying power is dated, no matter what Cattrall says, and it's also kind of depressing. LaPorte described Meyers's aesthetic as "aspirational," which is exactly the word that women's magazines use when they depict the ideal life as a collection of stuff outside the price range of their readers. Women's happiness has long been defined by restrictive standards of marriage and child-rearing, and the new standard of expensive-shit-buying is no less limiting, even though the tastemakers who promulgate it are often women themselves.

Of course, what many SATC fans loved about the show was not its glitzy shoes or unrealistic real estate (Carrie had a good job, but not that good), but its depiction of enduring female friendship. And Merkin's depiction of Meyers's movies as pleasant wish-fulfillment for women over 55 implies that nobody actually considers such women desirable — a perception movies like It's Complicated may actually counteract. What women of all ages could use are complex roles that focus on all aspects of their lives — not just what they look like to men. Both Meyers and SATC have taken a step towards this — it's just a shame they had to do it in such expensive shoes.

Nancy Meyers' Decorator Porn [Daily Beast]
Can Anybody Make A Movie For Women? [NYT Magazine]
"Sex and the City 2's" Kim Cattrall On The Franchise's Enduring Appeal [Wall Street Journal Speakeasy Blog]

"She's raising Don's kids. And I also feel that she was always in her own show." Godwin also gets Weiner to talk about Betty's relationship with Henry Francis. Godwin posits, "My theory about Betty is that she's a sloth — she doesn't like to leave one tree without already having found her next tree. She doesn't like touching the ground." Weiner answers:

What confirms your suspicion of this, because I agree with you, is that Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley) did not sleep with her. He knew he was not getting anything. He was not getting anything until it was legal… He's a handsome guy who says, "You'll never have to work again." A lot of women like that. Lots of people don't know the people that they're marrying. She didn't know Don that well. But Henry has been good to her, and I think she knows what he's about, and he's a very exciting person for her. I think he's the anti-Don in the sense that he seems very grounded. All I can tell you is that, as a pregnant woman, when he treated her sexually at a party, something happened in her brain chemistry.

The other woman we may seem more of is Carla; Weiner says that he and the writers have "talked about" a Carla-centric episode:

Deborah Lacey is a great actress, and Carla's relationship with the family has so much integrity. That's a real relationship between employer and employee, and that's something that we're very proud of.

In addition, since she is one of the only African-Americans on the show, her thoughts of, feelings about and place in the changing American landscape of the 1960s —compared to that of the Drapers — could make for extremely rich storylines. And if the show makes it to 1968 and Martin Luther King's assassination, well, she's just got to have a bigger part.

Lastly, the bad news. It's about Joan.

Godwin: It's a tragedy. It hurts me. She bet on the wrong horse when she married her husband, and now all we can do is hope that he dies in Vietnam.
Weiner: Guys like him, apparently, don't really die in Vietnam. Only good people die.
Godwin: And he's not good?
Weiner: No, he's not good for her.

Ugh. Sadness.

Mastermind Matt Weiner Tells the Future of Mad Men [E!]

Amy is from Oakland via Texas and a "permalancer" for Old Navy. She likes Lady Gaga and would love to dress Leigh Lezark.

Anna is originally from Wisconsin, loves Carla Bruni and worships at the altars of Marc Jacobs, Lanvin and Band of Outsiders.

Anthony hails from Birmingham, Alabama and loves glamour and color.

Ben made dresses that were inspired by different kinds of snakes and would love to design for Rihanna. Keep your eye on this one!

Christiane's originally from Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, and makes simple dresses using vivid colors. She might go far in this competition.

Emilio's hometown is Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He has a background in costume design.

Janeane Marie lives in Portland and is inspired by "earth science and space."

Jay is a visual merchandiser and stylist for the Gap — in the kids' division. He did a really cute happy dance in the casting session when Tim Gunn liked his stuff.

Jesse is from Ohio but lives in Orlando, FL and is an actor as well as a designer. He made a bright blue tulle party dress that no one liked but still made it on the show.

Jesus is originally from Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico. He used to dress up Barbies and used his mom as his model in the casting session. He says he adds "a little touch of grandiosity" to everything.

Jonathan's dream client is Meryl Streep and he loves Galliano. He made shorts with a hideous appliqué on the crotch and was picked anyway.

Maya is 22 and created a collection called Fashism, which is super avant garde. Crazy shapes and orb-like purses with spikes. One to watch!

Mila is inspired by artists Mondiran and Calder; she's into color blocking and loves Halle Berry and Cate Blanchett. She, Emilio and Pamela are the forty-somethings in a show with mostly 20 and 30 somethings.

Pamela's favorite designer is "God." Her dresses are pretty, soft and beautifully constructed, and Tim Gunn thinks "she's on the cusp of something big."

Ping works as a design intern, assistant stylist, model, interpreter, reporter and freelance writer (!!!). She loves "everything asymmetrical." She is a little wacky, and so are her clothes. She's going to be fun to watch.

Last, but not least: Seth Aaron lives in Vancouver but is originally from San Diego and does tough, rocker jackets. He's got 2 kids, a lizard and a dog. His favorite color is black and he fears "getting fat."

So you heard it here first: Keep a fashion eye on Ben, Christiane, Maya and Ping… And be prepared to be entertained by Anthony, Jesus and Jay.

There are photos, casting videos and at-home videos on the site, but be warned: Lifetime's website is THE WORST. It still SUCKS, just like it did last season, and you'll have to sit through those damn "the touch the feel of cotton" commercials over and over if you want to see anything good. It's like they want to drive people away.

The good news is, Season 7 taped over the summer in New York, where it belongs. So I'm looking forward to it!

Project Runway Designers [MyLifetime.com]
Project Runway Season 7 Cast Revealed! [Blogging Project Runway]

Flying Cars

As my friend used to say when he amused himself by winding his watch backward during history class, "Forward, forward, into the past!" First stop: flying cars. obviously, this mode of transportation was a mainstay of The Jetsons' vision of the future, a vision that revolved around everything being really angular and having lots of buttons. This vision continues to influence us today, in the form of superfluous stupid buttons and dials on what should be simple devices (does my microwave need a "popcorn" button?). You could argue that the simple, streamlined iPod heralded the end of Jetsonian hegemony over consumer technology — or maybe it was the recession and the decreasing popularity of the private jet, an actual flying car for rich people. Then again, we do have robot maids. And robot girlfriends, aka horrible mechanized dough-wads that crawl into bed with you.

The Clean Future

The clean future, best exemplified in Star Trek: The Next Generation and, to a lesser extent, Star Trek: Voyager is a place where clothes never tear, metal never rusts, and people only get sick if it means they'll go crazy and want to fuck their crewmates. Of course, the Star Trek universe has its problems (Borg), but somehow at least those aboard the Enterprise have achieved a kind of cleanliness utopia in which nothing ever looks cruddy for even a second. This is best exemplified by the replicator, which creates food or drink already in a dish so you don't have to boil or chop or otherwise disarray anything in your perfectly ordered living space. The Star Trek universe is basically an obsessive-compulsive's dream. And judging from the fact that even my OCD ass is currently living on top of a squalid pile of old magazines, shoes, and Werther's Original wrappers, I'd say we are pretty far from this vision of the future.

The Dirty Future

Both the clean future and the flying-cars future take a fundamentally optimistic view of technology. But proponents of the dirty future know the truth — shit is always fucking breaking. In the clean future, machines are pretty — in the dirty future, they are ugly and covered in tubing. A good example of the dirty future is the film Brazil, in which the ever-present machinery only makes people's live more dangerous and annoying. The dirty future can also be represented by actual dirt — cf. Mad Max — but its truest message is the constant breakdown of systems humans invent to do their bidding. If anything, the dirty future is the flying-cars future gone horribly awry — and its symbol is not the iPod, but the New York subway system.

The Branded Future

In the branded future, everything is sponsored and there are advertisements everywhere. Blade Runner kind of kicked off this idea with its building-high ads, and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest picked it up with the idea of calendar years sponsored by brands like Depends. The branded future is basically the logical extension of mid-twentieth century corporate culture, the kind that subsidized Little League teams and cute stuff like that. But the branded future is sinister because it implies that no square inch of space in unspoken for – there is no rest for the eye amid the chaos of commercial imagery. And yeah, we are totally there. Downtown LA already has enormous ads on its buildings. If you watch pro baseball, you'll be familiar with shit like the AFLAC Seventh Inning Stretch — time has been subsidized. This future is, sadly for Infinite Jest, now out of date, because it's already here.

The Dystopian Future

As you may have noticed, these categories have some overlap, and a dystopian future can also be dirty (Children of Men), branded (the aforementioned Blade Runner), or clean (Gattaca). But what it must have is a constant feeling of impending doom. This doom comes from one of two sources — the total breakdown of human society (The Road), or an extraneous threat to the planet Earth (the seriously underrated Sunshine, pictured). Of the two scenarios, you really want to get stuck in the latter, because you're less likely to get eaten alive.

The Future's Future
Of course, we seem to have drawn so close to our own doom that even this to be in scenarios don't quite look like the future anymore. So what is the future of tomorrow? What can we look forward to with dread and anticipation at 12:01 AM on January 1, 2010, when everything will obviously be totally different? Well, forward, forward, into the past! The future's new black, if I may speculate, looks like a scene near the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey — a bizarre and beautiful room full of Louis XVI furniture in which we drink from the teacup of death. The fact that this scene is eerily similar to the only cool part of The Matrix Reloaded — the appearance of the weird Frenchified Merovingian (pictured) — just confirms for me that this is our inevitable destiny. I know many people have explained the significance of the weird French bedroom scene in 2001, but I have resisted even reading these explanations. The future's future cannot be understood in the terms of today, and it exists outside the technology that makes the clean future clean and the dirty one dirty. There are no buttons; there is no world to end or not end. There is only a bizarrely well-decorated waiting room in which we anticipate our ultimate fate.

I felt bad for her, I really did. But the thrill is gone! You done me wrong, PR. And it's not me: It's you.

Anyway: Here's what happened last night. Carol Hannah cried. She was comforted by the Aryan arms of Logan.

Carol Hannah cried some more, and was comforted by Christopher.

Later Carol Hannah bucked up and put on some mascara.

Tim Gunn had a mothertrucking meltdown. Don't make Snagglepuss angry! Or he will exit! Stage left!

Here's Althea's show. She said that she was inspired by sci-fi movies of the '50s and '60s.

I thought her show was more '80s.

Or '90s.

Carol Hannah's show was basically just stuff she wanted to wear. Here are the notes I took last night:
yawn
baggy satin
preggo top
bottle brush dress
cleopatra sea anemone

Irina was inspired by New York, and the armor a woman needs to protect herself in this city. Although I found her distasteful as a "character" on the show, her collection had some really nice coats and was more cohesive than the other two. Still, was it as good as collections by Kenley, Leanimal or Christian Siriano?

In the end, judges Heidi Klum, Michael Kors, Nina Garcia and Suzy Menkes agreed that Carol Hannah's collection had "impeccable tailoring" but was not cohesive and had too many ideas. The panel thought that Althea's collection was "plugged in to the street" and that she "knows what's cool," but Irina's "edgy" "armor" made her the winner. I was watching with a friend who declared, "this is terrible television." I sighed and agreed, but felt the need to point out: It didn't used to be like this!
So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen. Adieu.

(Except the show returns in January!)

Double X's KJ Dell'Antonia writes,

Senators Jim Moran (Va.) and Bill Pascrell (N.J.) have introduced the Healthy Kids Act, which proposes "specifying categories of foods and beverages for or about which any advertisement, promotion, or marketing directed at children and youth shall be an abusive, unfair, or deceptive act" and limiting advertising for certain other foods and beverages-presumably the slightly less objectionable ones-to two minutes an hour on weekends, three on weekdays.

It's true that limiting advertising directed at children, like increasing the penalties for sex offenders, is a perennially popular measure. Few parents haven't heard their kids beg for Koala Yummies* after catching a TV commercial, and some research suggests that kids' eating habits are influenced by what they watch. Dell'Antonia points out that without regulation, companies have every incentive to keep pushing Miley-Cyrus-shaped-mac-and-cheese-whatevers** on undiscerning little brains, and that limiting said pushing is thus "good policy." It may be true that restricting advertising might reduce some kids' cravings for salt, sugar, and yellow no. 5, but Dell'Antonia also identified a much bigger culprit for children unhealthy eating habits: the government. She writes,

In September, Michael Pollan noted in an editorial in the NYT that, with the proposed health care bill, the federal government is "putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating Type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup." The Healthy Kids Act would have that same government encouraging the production of foods and beverages containing high-fructose corn syrup, but discouraging their consumption. It seems cynical to call that progress, but I guess we'll have to take what we can get.

Until farm subsidies quit making Industrial Grade Fructose Snax^TM artificially cheap, it may not matter much whether advertisers make them artificially attractive. So rather than trying to keep kids in the dark about all the delicious varieties of corn syrup glutting supermarket shelves, maybe we should concentrate on filling those shelves with brussels sprouts instead, via agricultural that encourage farmers to grow food that doesn't make you die. Then TV regulators can worry about what really matters — why the women on kids shows are so hot these days.

* Are these still around? They were delicious.
** I don't know what kids are eating these days. Get off my lawn.

You Can't Sell That On (Kid's) Television [Double X]
Cultural Milestone Of The Week: Screw Sesame Street! Sexy Entertainers Are Steaming Up Kiddie TV Shows [Details]

Of course, the latest Pine-Sol ad is a spoof, and a fun one: a film noir-style vista, sweeping score, a mysterious mansion, a glamorous woman ascending winding stairs. Then we see it's "the Pine-Sol lady," Diana Amos, apparently there for an assignation with a hunk, who's mopping. Then she reclines on a rose petal-strewn bed in couture to watch. That, you see, is the power of Pine-Sol.

As Amos tells<,/a> the New York Times, "We all would like our husbands to mop...This says that real men mop, and it breaks it down to: It can be fun, it can be sexy, and women like it clean." Adds Tom McNulty, author of Clean Like a Man: Housekeeping for Men, "I think women do have a fantasy about men cleaning."

My first thought on seeing the Pine-Sol commercial was that it was like those "Porn For Women" books in which we're treated to pictures of beefcakes cleaning and over which I recently heard a group of ladies positively cackling with glee at a bookstore, so there you are. Todd Wasserman at BrandFreak agreed, although he felt at least half the joke was Pine-Sol-Lady-as -sex symbol. (If pushed, I'd say the irony comes more form the fact that Pine-Sol is the most institutional, least sexy aroma on earth with the possible exception of raw sewage.You'd need a bed of roses, too, just to drown it out. )This has clearly become a recognizable trope that women relate to, or at least know is a cliche. But is it just a joke, or have our social mores intersected so powerfully with biology that this does indeed signal un-ironic modern lust? In any case, housework builds libido - so there's that.

Selling a Household Cleaning Product on Its ... Sex Appeal? [NY Times]
Sure, Pine-Sol Cleans, But It Can Also Satisfy Your Wildest Desires [Brand Freak]
Pine-Sol | "Visitor" [YouTube]

Those of us who are — or used to be — fans feel like we are being tortured as producers drag this shit out as long as possible. All of this happened so long ago, the fashion show pictures went up online in February, and it feels like this whole thing has taken FOREVER. Since there were three finalists instead of four, they could have condensed the finale into ONE show, but no, they are forcing us (ME) to watch two sloooow-ass episodes of this crap. Gah.

Rant over.

So, Tim Gunn went to visit each designer as she worked on her collection. Carol Hannah — living on Long Island — was first; she'd been inspired by the architecture of Duke University. Tim's "Can I be blunt?" was much-needed.

Tim saying, "I love a kitchen" made me realize that the reason I'm obsessed with him is because Snagglepuss was my favorite cartoon when I was a kid. Alright already. Heavens to Mergatroid. Exit. Stage left.

Tim Gunn in an apron!

Tim visited Irina in Manhattan next, and her floofy, snippy dog Princess basically snubbed him. How dare you snub Tim Gunn?!?! Something is not right in this house.

When I saw this, even though I was watching TV by myself, I said out loud: "Are you kidding me? Project Runway is NOT ABOUT screenprinted T-shirts!" I wrote in the notes I was keeping: "WTF."

Do you think the fact that her parents gave their little princess "free rein" is maybe why Irina is so bitchy? Or do you think it's because her mother tells her she "has" to win it and she has "no choice."

Tim visited Althea in Ohio next, and we learned a lesson: People in sci-fi movies wear handknit sweaters.

Also, when Tim critiqued Althea's Edwardian wild west coat, Althea couldn't stop saying, "Yeah. Yeah." Even as Tim was saying, "This can't walk down that Bryant Park runway."

The only mildly dramatic moment was when Irina was informed that she could not use the Coney Island images since she did not create them. Duh. Also: Go away.

My favorite part about Nina and Michael visiting the designers was Carol Hannah saying, "I did not expect them to be here." Of course not! They have been missing all season. They don't even really recognize you guys.

My second favorite part about the Nina/MK visit was Irina initially saying, "Advice is always great." And then later, deciding to ignore Nina's extremely specific advice just for Irina.

The "surprise" was a surprise to absolutely NO ONE. Of course the designers had to make another look — it happens every season.

It was also not a surprise to see these kids, because former contestants always return. It was a surprise that Althea picked Logan, stealing sick-to-her-stomach Carol Hannah's man right from under her nose.

So even though Lifetime is, for some reason, making us wait another week to see the runway shows, the pictures have been up on line for months. if you're interested, you can see all the final collections here. Otherwise? See you next week for more of this bullshit, and we can finally say goodbye to the worst season ever.

Project Runway 6.13 Finale Pt. I + Final Collections [ONTD]

This is a modern problem. In the days before all this technology, everyone watched the same things, at the same time. If you missed a TV show, you were SOL - but you didn't miss it. And should you, you didn't risk running into anything more hazardous to the enjoyment of a plot twist than a mouthy coworker. Of course, there were still twists: Psycho's publicists went to famous lengths to keep the plot secret, and a recent trailer I saw for Spencer Tracy's 1941 Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde requested that the audience not "tell their friends" about the actor's dramatic transformation.

But clearly, it's become an issue, especially with must-see series like Mad Men, that people are as apt to watch a few days or even months after airing as not. It's something we run across a lot on this site: how much to give away? What's fair game? How much is universally known? January Jones has gone on record in her belief that, once aired, the term "spoiler" isn't applicable. And this increasingly rigid definition is gaining ground amongst those who are sick of tiptoeing around the viewing habits of others.

Point: In a recent essay on the blog Televiosinary, Jace Lacob asserted his argument thusly:

I firmly believe that, once an episode has aired across the country, all bets are off. It's a free-for-all, as far as I am concerned. Writers, critics, bloggers, whoever, should be free to discuss the episode's intricacies and plot developments with abandon. There's no need to label a post, an interview, or anything as a "spoiler" because it's not spoiling anything.

Sums up one of his commenters, "The simple rule should be: Before the fact, spoiler. After the fact, public. Those of us who write/blog/talk about TV on a regular basis can't be expected to know the viewing habits of all our readers."

And another, "Asking that writers, editors and sites label something that's already aired as a "spoiler" is essentially asking them to tailor their coverage to the individual reader who has not seen it. I know people time delay their viewing. The simple solution, as stated above, avoid the sites."

Counterpoint: The retort of Slashfilm's David Chin, however, is equally straightforward. "Really, how difficult is it to just throw up a sentence at the beginning of the post explaining what exactly you'll cover/spoil?" Furthermore, he argues, the notion of "airing" is arbitrary nowadays.

The world of broadcast and cable television is rapidly moving away from the idea of fixed schedules for television shows. Very few of my friends and colleagues watch shows on TV when the air, and if they do, they also use things like DVD, DVR, and Hulu to supplement the episodes they don't see. On the one hand, I question how realistic and reasonable it is to expect people to know exactly where a show is in its timeline. If you're catching up with a show on DVD/DVR/Hulu, it's entirely possible that you will have no idea what episodes have recently aired. And while you would be a good, well-behaved TV watcher if you kept informed, it's a lot easier for me to take five seconds to write a one-sentence spoiler warning than for you to find out where exactly a show is in its release schedule.

Weighing in, NPR's Linda Holmes takes a middle ground, but feels the silent treatment is, ultimately, unrealistic. "At some point, we have just entirely lost the quality of the discussion, because I am leading you through a series of security doors that 95 percent of people won't care about and will find cumbersome and frustrating, just so that you can avoid knowing that Pam has a sister who will be on an upcoming episode." A wild-card view comes from the Guardian's Peter Robins, who argues that sometimes - as in the case of a highly sexual movie one sees with one's elderly mother - a spoiler is not just appreciated but necessary.

Of course, a lot of the argument boils down to common sense. Robins is talking about content, not plot. No matter when it runs, a story should try not to reveal a major spoiler in the title, especially if as in the case of our layout, one can stumble upon it in the course of a casual scan. A year later is not the same as a day. By the same token, don't read a post about a show you're saving because you had a dinner with your boyfriend's family. Understand that some things are common knowledge. And also know that (with the exception of various horror films) the pleasure does not all lie in the twists. For instance, I was still able to enjoy Hamlet.

Why Talking About An Episode That's Already Aired Isn't A "Spoiler" [Televiosionary]
Spoiler Alert: The Responsibility Of Online Writers In A Hulu/DVR World [Slashfilm]
Film Spoilers Can Be Good For You [Guardian]
The Spoiler Problem (Contains Spoilers) [NPR]

Related: January Jones Doesn't Believe In Mad Men Spoilers

In the latest Vanity Fair, James Wolcott unleashes the sort of despairing tirade that intellectuals have been haplessly aiming at our culture's demise since the dawn of Survivor. "The influence of Reality TV has been insidious, pervasive. It has ruined television, and by ruining television it has ruined America," he proclaims dramatically, and enters into the sort of acid-tongued dismissal of televised whoredom that's become an armchair sport of its own in the past decade. America's obit also contains the lines "it is also true that the mega-dosage of reality programming has lowered the lowest common denominator to pre-literacy," and "Reality TV wages class warfare and promotes proletarian exploitation."

But fruitless as such rhetoric may seem in our benighted times (and, I'm sorry, but Super Nanny is an excellent and educational show that has taught me how incredibly easy raising other peoples' kids is) there was one salient point I found to be tragically apt. Quoth he,

Reality TV has annihilated the classic documentary. When was the last time you saw a prime-time documentary devoted to a serious subject worthy of Edward R. Murrow's smoke rings? Since never, that's when. They're extinct, relics of the prehistoric past, back when television pretended to espouse civic ideals. Murrow and his disciples have been supplanted by Jeff Probst, the grinny host of CBS's Survivor, framed by torchlight in some godforsaken place and addressing an assembly of coconuts.

Well, anyone who's spent much time on Netflix knows that reports of the documentary's death have been exaggerated, but let's talk about the greatest casualty of the last decade: The History Channel. Yes, I know: before it was all-Hitler, all the time. If you were lucky, you got a dash of Churchill, or maybe a few re-enactors running onto a battle field. Historians talked. Voiceovers intoned. Hitler's final days approached inexorably, while an actor who didn't really resembled him gesticulated wildly. Sometimes we saw the holy land or a weathered piece of parchment. You know, the History Channel!

Now, the network is beyond parody. The viewing public is, the programmers seem to feel, unwilling to watch anything that doesn't involve Da Vinci-Code-style speculation, cryptic pseudo-historians, and, whenever possible, the paranormal. Three times in the past week I tried to find a comforting educational program. I was presented with Ancients Behaving Badly, something about Lord of the Rings involving what looked like a reenactment of the movies, and Ancient Aliens, respectively. Take a smattering of shows from the current schedule: Nostradamus Effect: Satan's Army; MysteryQuest: The Lost City of Atlantis; Fort Knox: Secrets Revealed and UFO Hunters: The Silencers. I never thought I'd be so glad to run across Civil War Journal: Stonewall Jackson.

I don't want "mysteries" unless they're staid Mysteries of the Bible, thanks very much. I don't want buried treasure. I don't need the founding fathers to have hidden a treasure map in the Constitution because, call me a nerd, but the Constitution is interesting sans Nic Cage. Templars don't need to be skulking around for Church history to have a bearing on the development of England. And, oh yeah, aliens have nothing to do with history. To put this in terms the New History Channel will find more engaging: It's like Indiana Jones. The ones based on real history (yes, I'm talking about the holy grail and the arc of the covenant; work with me) are better. The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was idiotic. (I'd say these aren't actually suggestions, but programs already exist pertaining to each of the films. The Crystal Skulls are ancient alien artifacts - maybe.)

Old programming has been shunted onto History International, where you can still get a comforting fix of Medieval weapons and Nuremberg (although the homepage gamely advertises Cults: Dangerous Devotion, Ku Klux Klan: A Secret History and the perfectly dignified show that for some reason has been christened The Naked Archaeologist.) It's not the same. It knows it's second-rate, that the powers that be don't think it can pull in the youngsters. It's not sexy. The History Channel was always for the regular joe; it wasn't for academics or historians. But it assumed people like history, because we're living it, and it's interesting, and it has a bearing on who we are today. Now, we're controlling the programming instead. Maybe it does have to do with reality TV, or the general dumbing-down of the culture. Personally, I blame Dan Brown (although not in a grand-conspiracy way.) All I know is, these half-facts and bits of speculation and scholars' cautious assertions quickly cut with a more dramatic reenactment are, well, boring. And while I'm more than happy to don a gratuitous explorer's fedora and say cryptic things about the role of ancient dolls any time the History Channel wants me to, that's not really the kind of history we need to make. Hmph.

I'm a Culture Critic … Get Me Out of Here! [Vanity Fair]

This isn't going to be a big "I hate Betty Draper" screed. I agree with my co-blogger Tami, who, in September, wrote in a piece called "Sexism Makes Me Hate Betty Draper:"

The character of Betty Draper, who was fresh and hopeful in season one, is now nervous with periodically shaking hands. She is withdrawn, bitter and cold. She is alternately dismissive and cruel to her children (particularly her daughter), her friends and other family members. She is unhappy and the world knows it. Personal misery can make for an unpleasant personality.

I understand why Betty is the way she is. She was molded by her family and a society that viewed women like her as dolls not living, breathing women with needs and desires. In Sunday's episode, Betty's father Gene hints several times that he, too, didn't know what kind of person he was raising. He mentions that Betty is nothing like her independent mother, his wife, who was working when he first met her. He frets that he shielded Betty from too many things, raised her to be a princess—"Scarlett O'Hara" he calls her. After he tries to discuss his final wishes with his daughter, she huffs: (paraphrasing) I know it must be hard for you to face whatever it is your facing, but can't you keep it to yourself? It's selfish and morbid for you to talk to me about it. I'm your little girl! Later, Gene tells his grandaughter, Betty's child, that she can be whatever she wants to be..."no matter what your mother says." It is likely a message he never gave his "little girl" Betty. Nor does it seem he encouraged his wife's independent streak, as there is no mention of her working after they married. [...]

A commenter named Lgreer28 on Television Without Pity asked just this question to the Betty haters:

I find it amazing that people are always pointing out Betty's immaturity, while ignoring the immaturity of the other characters. Why do they expect her to be the perfect parent? Why is it that her flaws are not tolerated, yet the flaws of the other characters are? Why do they constantly complain about Betty's flaws and ignore Don's? Why do they ignore the fact that Don is no more a perfect parent than Betty? Why do they ignore his own immaturity or his tendencies to indulge in his own illusions?

Indeed. Betty is a bad mother, but "Mad Men" is riddled with bad fathers. Betty is selfish, but not nearly as selfish as her errant husband. As for my beef, Betty hardly created the hierarchy of race and femininity that strangles her and all of the other women on the show—black ones, included. There is scarcely a man on the show who hasn't committed Betty's "crimes" and much more and who isn't 10 times more responsible for perpetuating the inequities of the time. Yet, she is the person that gets all of our hate, which maybe proves that when it comes to sexism, we aren't so much more enlightened than folks were in Betty's day. We tut and gasp over the biased treatment of women on "Mad Men." "My God, I'm so glad things are different today!" But as we analyze the show and its characters with our 21st century eyes, a woman is still judged more harshly than a man for similar infractions. We've laid aside the mid-day gin at the office, the skinny ties and girdles. But it seems that, in some ways, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

In addition to Tami's take, Amanda Marcotte writes about the ire of some conservatives that so much focus is given to Betty's unhappiness:

Oh, I can't imagine what it must be like to be a social conservative invested in that show. You must flinch every time Betty walks onscreen, looking pained, bored, and miserable. That she herself is a petulant brat doesn't make up for that, because the show is making the point that oppression isn't suddenly right because the oppressed aren't perfect people. And the show implies that certain ugly character traits are the result of oppressive systems, that Betty Draper is a miserable person because she's been turned into one. How dare the show suggest that bitchy women might be more pleasant if they weren't treated like second class citizens? And so [Benjamin Schwartz, writing for the Atlantic] gave you an out: Betty's character makes you uncomfortable because it's not realistic, and January Jones is a bad actress, and women in the 50s were never bored because being someone's sex-and-domestic appliance is what every woman really wants! It's not you, it's January Jones and the evils of feminism. [...]

And really, Schwartz's contempt for the character and his scapegoating of the actress—-and especially the applause he got from social conservatives for it—-shows the underlying contempt for women in the paternalistic platitudes about how women were happier when being a housewife was mandatory. Dreher's being upfront about it. Asking us to spend time on the feelings and thoughts and fantasies of Betty Draper is boring, because the whole point of wives is that they're in the background, making it possible for the real actors—-mostly men—-to make things happen.

The conservative reaction to the Draper marriage shows exactly how effective that storyline is in making its point. A lot of liberals, I've found, are bored with Betty for another reason entirely. They can't understand why she doesn't just pick up and leave already, if she's so unhappy. We're on the other side of it—-so feminist that it's hard to wrap our minds around the psychology of someone who isn't. But conservatives flip the fuck out, get defensive and start scapegoating January Jones, going so far as to argue that her dull affect is evidence that she can't act, when in fact it's evidence that the actress is being fearless in her portrayal of someone whose entire personality has been flattened out by boredom.

I have to admit that part of the Betty hatred comes from the fact that I can empathize with Carla. Betty is, as Tami explains, "the embodiment of pre-Feminine Mystique, upper-middle class, white womanhood." It's part of the same reason I also hate Pete Campbell.

But more than that, there is another element at play. More than just Betty's character flaws, what makes her unwatchable is the painful lack of an inner life.

As I wrote about the fate of minorities on the series in season one, the third season has been categorized by stripping away at the inner lives of all the women on the show, Betty most markedly. Betty, from seasons one and two, had a strong inner life outside of Don. Even while she was confused as to the general reason for her shakes and malaise, she was curious and introspective. She maintained arm's length relationships with other women, but still revealed much of herself. On occasion, she acted out of character, expressing her protective streak by shooting the neighbor's birds, or when she decided to take out her aggression sexually, using a sexy stranger.

For most of season three, Betty's been pouty and insolent. The shades of insight into her motivations and personality have generally vanished, as Betty is mainly used to help advance the plot, at the expense of her own development. (Weiner, in an interview with the Daily Beast today, appears to view her childlike nature as key to her character.) Now, again, this isn't unique to Betty - Peggy and Joan also lost their inner lives this season, appearing mostly in the context of the men they were involved with (romantically or professionally).

But watching Betty go through the motions of finding out Don's secret and falling for another man while stripped of her inner life was something like watching her die a slow, painful death. Gone are the casual conversations with Francine, just hurried discussions about the reservoir. The look into the inner workings of Betty Draper achieved with the psychiatrist are a memory. Without her inner life providing insights to her behavior, we are left with a direct reading of Betty: spoiled, selfish, cruel. The only time a glimpse of the season one and two Betty surfaces is during her finale fight with Don, his careful facade smashed to pieces. They attack each other, brutally, Don focusing in on their class differences and Betty dredging up the scorn, confusion, and anger that's plagued her for the last three years:

In the end, Betty flies off to Reno, leaving behind the suburbs, the failed marriage, and the lingering doubts of her own sanity. She's moving forward with a man she doesn't know, in order to escape another man she doesn't know. Fitting, really.

So while I hate Betty, I kind of can't help to see her for who she is - a flawed, miserable person stuck in an increasingly desperate gilded cage. The marriage was already poisoning the two children - having it end will probably be for the best. Perhaps Betty's story line could have been salvaged. Perhaps Matthew Weiner could have humanized her more, given her more space to experience grief and rage before she got the upper hand by finding Dick Whitman's box of secrets. Perhaps then, instead of being a tangle of privilege and petulance, Betty Draper would have been seen as a woman in an impossible position, seeking a savior, instead of looking like an opportunist.

But either way, it's over. The Draper family is dead. Long live the Drapers.

Related: Sexism Makes Me Hate Betty Draper [What Tami Said]
Why Does Betty Draper Have To Make Wingnuts Feel Guilty? [Pandagon]
"Fuck Pete Campbell!": Mediations On Mad Men And Whiteness [Racialicious]
Why "Mad Men" Is Afraid Of Race [Double X]
On Mad Men And Race [Racialicious]
"Shoot" Wins ADG, Matt Weiner's Visions, Birds [Basket of Kisses]

You've seen it: a middle-aged mom, presumably moving her son into his dorm room, and the son's nerdy roommate, share a Halls Refresh lozenge and a weird moment of sexual connection. Then her menfolk walk in and are suitably appalled. ("Surprisingly mouth-watering," leers an insinuating voice-over.) The American Decency Association has called the ad "perverse" and its founder explains, rather oddly, that "I believe that an advertisement like this really does grease the skids and does further promotion and legitimization of elderly ones with younger ones — and it's like putting fuel before the fire."

"Elderly ones with younger ones" are also the theme of Cougartown, of course, during which the lame ad ran, and presumably the show's fans were neither unduly shocked nor influenced. But the ad is, certainly, problematic, albeit for a number of different reasons. Slate's Seth Stevenson, while he finds the add bizarre and silly, thinks this is a bit of a tempest in a teapot - that it's in the tradition of recent absurdist candy campaigns and too outre to be taken seriously. The bigger question, for him, is who the hell the commercial is targeting: boys or moms? Candy's aimed at kids, but the spot's placement - and its virtuous lack of sugar - suggest that it's playing to mom tastes, which Stevenson finds duly dubious.

In a way, I'm with the ADA, because the continuing perpetuation of the cougar/MILF thing is indeed creepy. If the ad featured a dad and a young female nerd, it would be universally shunned and it's time we stopped pretending that the reverse is always the stuff of harmless fantasy. That said, the ad's a send-up of the cougar phenomenon's absurdity, and if that's a signal of shark-jumping (or, as Hortense has suggested we rename it, "pulling a Scrappy-Doo"), bring it on.

But what bothered me most was sort of exactly this: this isn't a MILF and a strapping stud: it's a frumpy middle-aged woman and an Asian nerd, shorthand for "NOT SEXY!!!" That's why it's funny, you see: these are two groups whom no one would ever find attractive if not under the influence of the cough drop! (Note the action figures and equation.) That, after all, is what the husband and son are reacting to: not just the inappropriate dynamic, but the fact that these non-sexy types are breaking out of their designated roles. "Surprisingly mouth-watering," is after all, the tag-line. One can only imagine what other treats Hall's Refresh has in store!

Of course, at the end of the day, Stevenson's right: it's just a dumb commercial, and these people occupy Commercial-Land, in which all husbands are single-digit stupid, all moms are knowing, all kids are sassy and precocious, and everyone, given their bizarre enthusiasm for fast-food promotions, is apparently stoned, always. All this, presumably, makes us want to buy stuff. And if that's true, Stevenson shouldn't even question the targeting: we are, it would seem, morons. Who eat cough drops for pleasure.

Can Cougars Sell Cough Drops? [Slate]
Halls Refresh Commercial - Mom [YouTube]

Farber spoke with pop culture professor Robert Thompson, who said of the Real Housewives franchise,

Essentially, this is a show about women behaving badly. That may be fun to watch, but by no means does it play to the more noble parts of the human spirit.

It's kind of hilarious that Farber felt he needed to consult an expert in order to tell us that the Real Housewives aren't, like, Tolstoy. On the other hand, it is kind of interesting to speculate about whether, as viewers, we're laughing at or with the 'wives. Andy Cohen, the show's executive producer, says, "It's about strong, driven, independent women, each with their own singular point of view." And he claims that the show's stars are cast for their status as "archetypical women," not their boobs or willingness to catfight. But Thompson says, "The 'Housewives' gives you a sanctioned, alternative space in which you can freely watch people you hold in contempt." And even Cohen admits that, "There are a lot of times where we are winking at the audience and saying, 'This one said she believes in raising kids healthfully.' Then the next thing she says to the kid is, 'Light me a cigarette.'?"

So is it Okay to like the Housewives? Clearly, anyone who says they watched the recording of "Tardy for the Party" for its musical value is full of shit, as is anyone who claims not to chuckle once in a while at the spectacle of grown women carrying on like overprivileged teenage girls. On the other hand, maybe a show about "women behaving badly" isn't so ignoble. I kind of giggle every time I hear Sheree say "People are intimidated by my success" in the opening credits, but at the same time, it's a pretty ballsy thing to say on television. Yes, the Real Housewives are full of themselves, but it's kind of exciting to watch women who are unafraid to assert how important they are. Kim, Sheree, and the rest aren't models of generosity or restraint — okay, they aren't really models of anything, except sometimes their own clothing lines — but they are loud and bitchy and attention-grabbing and people love them for it, which is maybe not such a bad thing.

Although Cohen may take it a little too far. He says, "Often, people want to apologize for watching. But I would defend this show to my death, for one reason: It's fun." The Real Housewives is pretty fun — but it's not really worth dying for.

It's A 'Real Housewives' World: How Catfights, Cougars And Cosmetic Surgery Conquered Television [NY Daily News]