About Last Night: Monday

Mad Men: Loula

Shut the door, have a seat, smack your secretary (respectfully!) on the butt and pour yourself a few Old Fashioneds: Mad Men is back! It’s Thanksgiving 1964, and a lot has changed since we last saw everybody around this time in 1963. Don is mysterious and grumpy, Roger is quippy, Peggy is plucky, Pete is smarmy, Joan is thoroughly awesome, Betty is just generally a horrible person, and Henry is gross. So okay, I guess that’s pretty much where we left everybody, but still. Sterling Cooper Draper Price is having a nice freshman year though – they’ve already got an office in the Time Warner building with a (possibly imaginary) second floor! One of Don’s new-fangled “TV commercials” has already captured the attention of Ad Age magazine, for which he gives an interview that should be great PR for the agency, but just makes him look like a self-absorbed dickhead. Somehow.

Also, I already miss Kenny. Mr. and Mrs. Henry Francis are still living in the Draper house, which is just so creepy and awful, and even Henry realizes it’s more out of spite than anything else. “Who is Don Draper?” has pretty much been the theme of the whole series, but this year it’s more specifically “Who is Don Draper, Once You Take Away The Husband Part And Replace It With A Thanksgiving Smackaround By A Whore In His Dimly Lit Bachelor Pad?” Let’s get drunk and find out!

True Blood: WaffleBoy

Wow, we got a full hour of action on America’s favorite show about vampires with sketchy Southern accents. All sorts of things are happening to all of our favorite characters.

For starters, Tara and Franklin’s new relationship hits the kind of snag that involves one party repeatedly wailing on the other party with a medieval weapon. The one thing we defintely know about this, is that it is going to be really hard to explain away in couple’s counseling.

The Closet King’s evil plans are chugging right along, and in fact he gets Not The Dita to accept his proposal to be his vampire beard. Sam’s family is still a complete mess, but the writers are able to work a supernatural angle into it, so yay for staying true to the central theme of the show.

Lafayette and Mexican Jesus have their first kiss, but then their relationship hits a snag. Luckily, this snag doesn’t involve somebody getting wailed on with a medieval weapon. Also on the love front, Jason is head over heels in love with Crystal. Who says they can never be together, but they can make out by the lake. Oh and of course she has a deep dark secret, I mean besides being engaged to a meth dealer. Anyway, all this plot development leads to Jason wearing his letterman’s jacket for no apparent reason, and probably being late for his second day as a pretend cop.

Eric reveals himself to be utterly ruthless in going after what he wants, but does something that makes me want to send him a pony every year for Christmas. Oh and Anna Paquin tries to cry and fails for what has to be at least the 27th time on this show. Like I said, it’s a busy, busy, busy episode. You need to be watching this show.

Design Star: SwellMel

In last night’s episode, the 7 remaining Design Stars head to the Trump Tower and meet with Donald Trump, Jr. and Vern.

Vern tells the designers that this week’s challenge is to design a model apartment in the Trump Plaza Residences in Jersey City, N.J.

The twist: to incorporate a New York City souvenir package and physically incorporate it into each teams’ design. LOLZ I’m thinking Statue of Liberty centerpieces, anyone?

Teams this week are once again color-coded. Blue team: Alex, Casey and Emily the Strange and Michael.
Red team: Tom, Courtland and Stacey.

Don’t worry guys. I’ll share my lamps with you!

Check back Wednesday to find out who Donald Trump, Jr. says, “You’re fired!” to.

The Gates: Alejandra

This week is all about fallout – fallout from Theresa’s murder, fallout from Claire’s chance meeting with Barbara, fallout from Andy learning she’s a succubus and fallout from Buckley screwing over Devon. Oh, and in case you didn’t realize (because it was never actually on the show, just in the “Previously On” for this week), Devon’s divorce?  It was from Man on Top himself, Mr. Buckley.

Anyway, Nick and Dylan have a heart-to-heart about sweeping Theresa under the rug, but Marcus starts meddling and pisses Dylan off.  Who, in turn, goes all vampy on Nick and threatens his life if there is no backing off.  Before Nick can call off Marcus, our young deputy finds out that Theresa was none other than deranged killer, Amanda Wolcott.  He confronts Nick, and apologizes for overstepping his bounds, and all of a sudden, Nick can rest easier.

Claire can’t, though, because Barbara is all up in her grill making insinuating comments.  Claire considers having Christian off her, but then decides to be a big vampire and do it herself.  She’s making plans as the episode ends, so Barbara still might make it after all.

Andy’s pretty freaked out to learn her true identity, and asks many questions of her dad in her quest to understand what she is.  Peg tells her that her condition doesn’t allow her to properly regulate her body’s energy, so she must suckface it out of unsuspecting boys.  But of course, Peg can offer herbs to make that all better, so Andy’s in much better spirits by the end of the episode, agreeing with Charlie to take it slow.  However, she’s in much better spirits mainly because she doesn’t know that her father killed her mother when her mother tried to kill him having sex.

And finally, after two episodes, Devon returns with a bang.  She makes a big show of making friends with Vanessa, her exes new wife and former affair, and then attends a party Vanessa is hosting in Nick’s honor, steals a DVD of some kissing with Chad Taylor from Buckley’s safe, and skates away scot-free.  God, I love Devon.

But Devon only stole one DVD from Buckley’s safe, and there are several others, all with names of Gates’ residents on them.  At the end of the episode, Buckley pops in a newly minuted DVD of Theresa threatening Nick and Dylan killing her.  He smiles to himself, labels the DVD “Nick and Dylan” and locks it in his safe, pulling his douchey self-portrait over it.

I want to know what’s on the other videos;-)