Fringe: Dramatic Irony

Irony is a divergence between literal and intended meanings. One subset is dramatic irony, where dialogue means one thing to the character speaking it, and another to the audience hearing the line. The classic example of dramatic irony is Oedipus Rex, where the audience knows what will happen to Oedipus long before he does.

The most recent episode of Fringe offered another possible example -- the Observer's line that "It must be hard... being a father." The intended reference was presumably to Walter's dilemma as Peter's father. But I suspect the dialogue will take on a whole new meaning by season's end.

Many, myself included, believe that Bolivia is pregnant with Peter's child. If so, the Observer's line may be even more profound than he realizes. Specifically, Peter and Bolivia's baby may be yet another "unforeseen consequence" of the Observer's saving Peter as a child.

Fringe: The First People Split the Timeline

In "6995 KHz," we learned that the Doomsday Device was created by the First People.  But who were they?

I believe the First People were some ancient, antediluvian civilization like Atlantis. They evolved like modern human beings and developed highly advanced technology. Eventually, they gained the ability to manipulate the very fabric of spacetime (i.e., the "Vacuum").

Unfortunately, one of the First People's spacetime experiments went horribly wrong. The resulting catastrophe erased their fossil record and split the timeline in two. The Doomsday Device is both the source of this catastrophe as well as a possible solution to the split.

The Observers are not the First People. Rather, the former are a race of inter-dimensional beings who, true to their name, have been observing this split in the timeline. The problem is that the Observers have inadvertently became participants, as we saw in "Peter."

Mad Men: Thoughts on "Blowing Smoke"

A few thoughts on "Blowing Smoke," the most recent episode of Mad Men:

* I completely bought Don's stunt.  What I particularly loved was the way it dove-tailed perfectly with Midge's heroin addiction.  That connection transformed what could have been a "very special" storyline into a brilliant metaphor for the firm's relationship with tobacco.

* I also loved how Don's stunt was vindication -- yet again -- for Peggy.  Every time the former reprimands the latter, he turns out to be wrong.  Another great example was Don's admonishment in Season 3 that Peggy was "not an artist" when she complained about the Patio Cola ad.  As we later learned, Peggy was correct that the ad simply didn't work.

* I'm guessing the narrative purpose of Don's stunt was to pave the way for some moralistic moneybags to save the day for SCDP.  Some speculate that savior might be Connie Hilton, but I continue to believe it will be Walt Disney.  Another dark horse: John Linsday, whose aid attended the party with Henry and Betty in "The Summer Man."  I wouldn't be shocked if Lindsay wants SCDP to handle the ads for his mayoral and/or presidential runs.

* More allusions to the privacy theme of this season: Bert suggests that they take their discussion "behind closed doors," while Peggy listens through the divider.

* During the last couple of episodes, I'd begun to question my prediction that Bert Cooper will die.  But last night seemed to confirm that Bert simply has no place at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.  The scenes of him wandering around with his shoes saying goodbye sealed his fate in my eyes.

* I thought the scene between Peggy and Dr. Faye was great but would have been even more powerful if the show had developed their friendship more throughout the season.  I would have preferred more scenes of Peggy and Dr. Faye's bonding, and less of Joey and Stan's workplace hijinks.

* I totally bought Megan's lone adulation for Don's publicity stunt.  So much so that I think Don and Megan's frantic hookup "Chinese Wall" would have been more plausible if it had taken place after she praised him in this way.

Mad Men: Thoughts on "Chinese Wall"

A few thoughts on "Chinese Wall," the most recent episode of Mad Men:

* The cut from Don and Megan to Roger and Jane brilliantly reinforced the notion that Don is morphing into Roger. 

* The speeches about how much David Montgomery loved his daughter were a poignant reminder that Don and Pete have daughters of their own.  Both men seemed disturbed by Montgomery's decision to prioritize work over family and substitute meaningless trinkets for genuine expressions of his love.  Let's hope they don't make the same mistake.

* On a related note: David Montgomery is a well-known professor of labor history at Yale.  Was his sad story of neglect a subtle commentary on what capitalism does to families?

* I'm glad to see Peggy and Abe get together.  Something about his naive earnestness rings true to me, and I like the contrast between Peggy's capitalism and Abe's left-wing critique of her worldview.  We've seen this tension before in the relationship between Don and Midge, the artist.  I think this is further confirmation that Peggy is morphing into Don.

* Peggy's calm reaction to the lipstick on her teeth proved to the boys she wasn't a "humorless bitch," as Joan put it.

Fringe: Two Doomsday Devices?

In last night's episode, Agent Broyles wondered why pieces of Walternate's Doomsday Device are in our world.  Later, we saw Bolivia communicate to her superiors in the alt-world that Peter was "engaged" and that he'd found the "first piece."

That raises an interesting question.  Are there two doomsday devices? Perhaps Walternate knows this and is manipulating Peter to destroy our version before we can build it.

I like this possibility because it sets up an interesting dilemma for Peter. If there are two devices, each with the ability to destroy the other universe, then Peter gets to choose which universe survives.

Is that why he's so important to the Observers?

Mad Men: Thoughts on "Hands and Knees"

A few thoughts on "Hands and Knees," the most recent episode of Mad Men:

* As I suspected, Don has NOT turned any corner. His swimming and journal writing was false hope right before things get even worse.

* As I also suspected, Don will marry Megan. Weiner could be messing with us, but the Beatles tickets seem kind of pointless otherwise. I think the point was clearly to set up Megan's relationship with Don.

* Dr. Faye is morphing into Anna Draper. Heck Faye even LOOKS a little like Anna. Along those lines, I think Don's telling her his secret is the beginning of the end of their sexual relationship.

* I think Joan didn't have the abortion. I believe she'll have the baby, and if Dr. Greg returns from Vietnam, she'll say it's his.

* Peggy and Pete's secret baby could come into play this season. Let's say the loss of Lucky Strike forces SCDP to go back to North American Aviation. Pete might threaten to reveal Don's past if he doesn't leave the firm. Peggy could save Don by threatening to tell Trudy about Pete's illegitimate child.

Mad Men: Deconstructing Ayn Rand

It's no secret that Bert Cooper is a fan of Ayn Rand.  He recommends her books to Don Draper and Pete Campbell, and even hints that he knows her personally.  Some take these references, along with the generally pro-business themes of Mad Men, as endorsement of Rand's views.  If anything, however, Season 4 has challenged and deconstructed Rand's connection between capitalism and privacy.

Rand famously wrote in The Fountainhead that civilization is "the march toward a society of privacy."   She noted that the "savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe."  Thanks to capitalism, however, people can earn money and own private property, which affords freedom through seclusion.  "Civilization," Rand concluded, "is the process of setting man free from men." 

Despite the ubiquity of McMansions, however, we're hardly the "society of privacy" that Rand envisioned.  Indeed, the more technologically advanced we become, the less privacy we seem to enjoy.  Some of this loss is involuntary, as when big government conducts electronic surveillance against our will.  But an alarming amount is voluntary, like when we allow big business to collect our personal information electronically.

The ultra-modern offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce are a perfect metaphor for this open society we now inhabit.  The ubiquitous windows and thin walls mean that conversations are never truly private even when they happen behind closed doors.  The place resembles Jeremy Bentham's panopticon, a prison where those incarcerated are always visible but never know whether they're actually being observed.

As Slate reader Mary Anne Mayo notes, the commentary on privacy was particularly evident this season in "The Rejected."  When Don fights with Allison in his office, Peggy peeps at them over the wall.  Later, Don watches an elderly gentleman ask his wife if she bought "the pears."  She replies that they'll "discuss it inside" -- i.e., in private.  The juxtaposition of these scenes underscored the loss of privacy at SCDP.  

The point was driven home by the tragicomic sight of Bert Cooper eating an apple in the lobby.  There was the firm's patriarch, his stockinged-feet up on a couch, munching away at fruit.  It was an amusingly intimate act -- something I imagine Bert doing in his inner sanctum at the old offices -- performed in a very public space.  What made it also poignant, verging on pathetic, was how nobody seemed to notice.

Bert may not be dead, but he's already a ghost, which is rather fitting when you think about it.  His whole world is gone, along with his comfortable private office and its promise of seclusion.  The old man is hopelessly out of place in the transparent new world of SCDP.  He seems as quaint and outdated as notions of privacy must to members of the Facebook generation, who routinely over-share their personal information online.

Such commentary is particularly appropriate given the subject matter of the show. The whole point of advertising is to reveal and exploit consumers' sometimes hidden preferences.  The show alludes to this with Dr. Faye Miller's surveys and scenes of focus groups observed from behind mirrored glass.  Web cookies and social-networking sites are just more technologically-sophisticated means to the same end.

More generally, it's an economic axiom that markets operate most efficiently when participants have perfect information.  Some libertarians, like federal judge Richard Posner, actually question the value of privacy as a social good on this basis.  One needn't agree with them to get the point that, contrary to what Rand believed, capitalism and privacy aren't always complementary.  Far from it.

And that leads me to a morbid speculation about what's in store for Bert.  His aforementioned specter was a brilliant metaphor for the death of privacy, but I'm skeptical the show will leave it at that.  I believe Bert is actually going to die before the season is done.  He'll become what the late Roger Sterling, Sr. was to the old firm, making Roger Jr. the new Bert Cooper of SCDP.

Let's hope for Roger's sake he's not similarly a fan of Ayn Rand.