Unlike Athena, who emerged fully formed out of Zeus’s thigh, the quartet of “Girls” – chronologically young women but called by a more immature younger-female appellation – spent six seasons finding themselves. And the show’s creatrix, Lena Dunham, used the dyad signifying the archetypal Feminine – Moon and Venus – as their strategy for self-discovery. […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘The Americans’ and the Lotus (2017)
April 5, 2017 by
Like “The Americans”’ Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and Philip (Matthew Rhys), the lotus is not what it seems. The flower – an Eastern representation of the female, specifically her genitalia – is externally magnificent, with no clue that it grows in the mud, anchored by earth. The title of Season 5’s “Lotus 1-2-3” refers to the […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Fargo’: Sioux Falls, Jung and the Flying Saucer (2015)
December 9, 2015 by
In “The Castle,” “Fargo”’s Season 2’s penultimate episode, Hank (Ted Danson) tells a local cop, who has legal jurisdiction but poor strategy, an anecdote. The story centers on a feisty lieutenant who, during the war, criticized their commanding officer, General Eisenhower, for his Very Bad Plan. Hank does not succeed at making this same point […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Mr. Robot,’ Prometheus and Stealing Fire from the Gods (2015)
September 3, 2015 by
An early episode in the first season of cyber-thriller series “Mr. Robot,” created and written by Sam Esmail, has Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) pondering the college loans that hang like an albatross around the neck of his childhood friend and now work colleague Angela (Portia Doubleday). Wouldn’t it be a gift if the financial burdens […]
Archetypes: Television: ‘True Detective 2 Season Finale’: Greek Tragedy and the Ani-Antigone Thing
August 10, 2015 by
Hardly anyone will argue about the density and lack of clarity in plotting and dialog throughout “True Detective”’s second season. The thing did have a most distinctive “pop,” though, which emanated from an unlikely source: its Greekness. In fact, there was so much Greece – the birthplace of tragedy – that Season 2 could easily […]
Archetypes: Television: ‘True Detective 2’: The Three-Legged Chair Theory
July 31, 2015 by
With two episodes to go, the second season of “True Detective” could use some love. Viewers can’t seem to get season one’s dyad of Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) out of their heads. Two oddballs – Cohle and Hart fit that bill extraordinarily well – are much easier to stack up […]
Archetypes: Television: Review: ‘Mad Men’ Series Finale (2015): Priest, Penance, Confessor, Confessee
May 18, 2015 by
The core of “Mad Men” has always been religious: Advertising man Don Draper’s (Jon Hamm) original sin, akin to Adam and Eve’s act of disobedience, involved his stealing the identity of another man. Neptunian themes of deceit and fuzzy identity merged with other ways to “Neptune out” – through drugs, alcohol, sex, as well as […]
Archetypes: Television: ‘Mad Men’: Don Draper, Addictions and the Priest
May 17, 2015 by
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 […]
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