return to worldwidereview.com,
the home of critical reviews
From: blp Category: Art Date: 11 March 2008 Time: 08:21 AM Review: It's true. I was thinking about the dialogue as I was watching - how it's not enough like Douglas Sirk. Kids don't say, 'Gee, dad, that's swell!' People don't express dislike by saying 'don't care for' as in 'I don't care for these ads.' The creative director's Beatnikesque girlfriend never says 'Square' or 'Daddy-O' or even 'Cool'. I'm serious. If anyone doubts just how stilted and odd fifties talking sounded, they should check out the old David Smith/Frank O'Hara interview that was shown in the last room of Smith's Tate Modern show recently. O'Hara is a good, funny poet whose best work hasn't dated, yet his mode of speech has. And, yeah, the un-PC thing was intensely great in the first episode, but already felt a bit tired by the second. Also, the trouble in consumerist paradise plotline around the archetypally psychologically unwell fifties housewife is ludicrously cliched.