Was Mad Men Enough? Also, is NYC Prep Better Than Gossip Girl?

Hello-Hello on this Tuesday morning!

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We are still catching up from our little weekend getaway to a family wedding.  We had the most fun, seeing relatives and visiting the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum for the first time. The wedding and reception were just delightful, the latter held in the The Terrace Club at Progressive Field, home to the Cleveland Indians. The best moment had to be the newlyweds going to home plate for photos, it was all wonderful fun, a lovely party and celebration.

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We begin by thanking the fabulous Park Avenue Princess for her generosity in bestowing upon us the Sparkles Award! To quote from her post:

“The Splash Award is given to alluring, amusing, bewitching, impressive, and inspiring blogs.”

Here are the stipulations accompanying the Award:

• Put the logo on your blog/post.
• Nominate & link up to 9 blogs which allure, amuse, bewitch, impress or inspire you.
• Let them know that they have been splashed by commenting on their blog.
• Remember to link to the person from whom you received your Splash Award.

And this award goes to the following…

Five Tomatoes

Lipstick at the Mailbox

Little Bow Prep

Mindless Musings

Puppy Love by Erin

Queen Bee Swain

Sweet Tea in Seattle

The Pink Tutu

Three for Tippy

(Ladies, we understand if you are crazy busy with the summer wrapping up, school and other obligations getting underway, we merely want to let you know how highly we think of you! If there’s no time to post about or pass on the award, not to worry!)

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Again, we send our gratitude to Miss Park Avenue Princess for including us!

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We have a few tidbits related to the comings and goings of certain television programs, starting with this look at the season finale of NYC Prep. The piece ran on the LA Times Show Tracker blog and in addition to asking readers if they want to see a NYC Prep Season 2, writer Enid Portuguez offers the following:

“It’s yet to be seen whether “NYC Prep” will get another season to prove itself. If it does, we’ll get treated to more of Sebastian’s hair flips, Kelli’s eye rolls and, hopefully, a set of new and improved prepsters. If not, we’ll just have to observe the Upper East Side through the eyes of “Gossip Girl,” which is completely fine with me.”

The story is essentially a synopsis of the show’s final episode in case anyone missed (that’s a liberal use of the word) it.

Also talking about the show, Newsweek’s Pop Vox blog with a post entitled “7 Reasons NYC Prep Tops Gossip Girl“.  Speaking from the perspective of one who has seen not a frame of NYC Prep, and less than 20 minutes of G2, it is an interesting post:

“… NYC Prep actually trumps its scripted predecessor, Gossip Girl, in terms of quality guilty-viewing pleasure. Despite its flagging ratings, the series is actually more entertaining than the show from which it was born.”

One reason we love the piece? Because the writing peaks well into the red zone on TP’s Snark-O-Meter. Here is a sample:

“Reason #5: That entitled cadence. You can give an actor all the speech lessons you want, but there’s just no aping the actual singsong, privileged speech patterns of the Upper East Side native.”

There you have it.

As far as Gossip Girl goes, People (and a host of others) is posting some details about the upcoming season’s plot lines.

SPOILER ALERT CAUTION SPOILER ALERT

Giovanni Rufino/THE CW via People

(Before proceeding, we must say the photo above makes us think of a giant ice cream cone piled high with different flavors of sherbet, it is simply yumalicious.)

Back to People’s story, the magazine interviewed the show’s producer about what fans can anticipate this season:

“”Chuck (Ed Westwick) and Blair (Leighton Meester) are definitely going to be a couple and stay a couple this season…”

“We have our big Polo match in the first episode, we go to Sotheby’s for an auction in the third episode and in the fourth episode, we have a big movie premiere at Ziegfeld (Theater),”

For TP the most intriguing G2 item on the People site had nothing to do with the approaching season, for more of that information click here.  Rather, it is this photo of Mr. Westwick from the mid-1990s, part of the magazine’s bio on the actor. (Note the argyle.)

Courtesy People.com

Additionally, Ms. Meester has taped a version of the Broadway classic “Tonight” from “West Side Story,” it is part of a promotional campaign for the upcoming MTV VMAs

Courtesy MTV

We think the young star looks stunning.

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And then there was Mad Men on Sunday night. We enjoyed it immensely here at the Prepatorium, and it appears we were were not alone: the show drew record ratings with 2.8 million viewers. Those are more-than-significant numbers for a ‘cable show’ as some still refer to original programs on the “smaller networks”.

Courtesy Vanity Fair

All day Sunday (which started in Cleveland and ended back here at Princess InterGalactic HQ) the two of us were uncharacteristically neurotic concerned about somehow forgetting to watch the program, going so far as to set an alarm. What a relief yesterday to learn a friend experienced the same anxiety!

As for the show itself, it was one of the more cerebral episodes, delving into some psychological areas not frequently visited on other popular television shows.  It seemed a little racier than we remember Seasons 1 and 2 being, but that could simply be our tendency to ‘enhance’ history for those things we look upon with affection. Or it might have been more liberal use of vulgarities, we really cannot say.

Once again we cite the Newsweek Vox Populi blog for their review of the show in Mad Men: Was it Worth the Wait?

“But in terms of forward momentum, this was only a slight improvement from last season’s opener. Some viewers are bound to become exasperated and move on. I, however, won’t be among them. I’ll be the first to admit that the glacial pace wears on me at times, but there’s also something charming in the way Mad Men demands that you let its story unfurl at its own pace. It’s television as an old-fashioned courtship: true love waits.”

We do have one question for readers who watched: were we the only person on the Preppy Planet hopeful, despite fully knowing better, that Don’s philandering ways might end, if only temporarily while Betty is in her last trimester?

Sigh. Silly Princess.

We are back again tomorrow, hoping your today is fabulous!