The addiction-centric archetypes associated with “Mad Men”’s Don Draper (Jon Hamm) have been consistent over the series’ seven-season run. In the pilot, viewers learned that Don drank, smoked and was unfaithful. Over several dozen episodes, they realized those habits – booze, cigarettes and sex – were embedded in the man’s sinews. And that these activities […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Mad Men’ (2015): ‘The Archetypal Significance of Betty Draper’s Death’
May 11, 2015 by
‘Mad Men’’s penultimate episode was titled “The Milk and Honey Route,” evoking a place or time where the sweetness of creation coalesces into a destination of fragrant bounty. Instead, the x-ray of Betty Draper’s (January Jones) aggressive, terminal lung cancer only suggested piles of gray, foul-smelling cigarette ashes contaminating the notion of paradise. Archetypally, though, […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Mad Men’: Peggy Takes Back Her Projections
May 4, 2015 by
Last night’s episode of “Mad Men” was aptly titled “Lost Horizon.” Visually conjuring up an inability to pinpoint where the sky ends and the sea begins, the image is about fuzziness which, when applied to the lives of this series’ characters, amounts to an existential blur. But from what just transpired in this episode, that’s […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘The Americans’ Season 3 (2015): Parent-Child. Parent-Asset
April 23, 2015 by
Children are the most personal entities in the world. But, in the spy arena, to refer to someone in the field as a nameless “asset” is as impersonal as it gets. “The Americans” sees these two categories of individuals – neither of whom, for different reasons, are capable of fending for themselves and ensuring their […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Mad Men’ (2015): Jung’s Unlived Life of the Parent
April 6, 2015 by
“Severance,” the first of “Mad Men”’s final episodes, refers to the financial exit package for Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton), newly fired from SC&P. The timing is eerie, because just the other day Ken had seriously addressed both his disenchantment with his industry and his lack of time to pursue his literary talent. Because he has […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Better Call Saul’ (2015): ‘Pimento’: Oh, Brother!
March 31, 2015 by
During his run as the affable, fast-talking criminal attorney in “Breaking Bad,” Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) was essentially the collegial “brother-in-crime.” After last night’s “Pimento” episode of “Better Call Saul,” it’s clear that Saul’s depraved clients in the future were probably more brotherly than his real life older brother Chuck (Michael McKean). Astrological Mercury rules […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘iZombie’ (2015)
March 18, 2015 by
You are what you eat plays out big time in CW’s undead-medical procedural “iZombie,” adapted from a comic book series by the creatives that brought you “Veronica Mars.” “iZombie” features another plucky female, the well named Olivia “Liv” Moore (Rose McIver), a medical resident whose life literally transforms one night during some zombie mayhem at […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘The Missing’ Season 1 Finale
January 11, 2015 by
Not every kidnapping provides closure. The merged realities resulting from years of searching for a loved one – is the victim dead, living under a new identity, an unwilling participant in a dreadful ongoing scenario, or all of these? – is the substance of “The Missing,” a miniseries on Starz which broadcast its Season 1 […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Manhattan’ Season 1 Finale: Death, Pluto and the Bomb
October 26, 2014 by
Pluto was first spotted in the sky in early 1930, three years before Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. And this planet’s archetypal energies – death, destruction, power, transformation, secrecy, spying, obsession and control – shatter every frame of “Manhattan,” WGN America’s smart, riveting drama series which broadcast its first-season finale last week. Created by […]
Astrology: Television: ‘The Knick’: The Mercurial Bridge between Life and Death
August 11, 2014 by
Mythological Mercury was the god who, at the behest of the deities, winged his way back and forth from Olympus to the Underworld. In Cinemax’s “The Knick,” directed by Steven Soderbergh, New York City’s Knickerbocker Hospital, at the turn of the 20th century, metaphorically and efficiently does duty as both locations. The hospital’s residential Mercurial […]
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