10. "Oprah, don't leave us!" and "Has 'Mad Men' gone mad?" by Heather Havrilesky at Salon.com (Nov. 20, and Sept. 28).


Havrilesky is the sharpest journalist covering television today, not to mention the funniest. Her column on Salon.com, "I Like To Watch" is a weekly stop for me on Sunday mornings (post New York Times). Whether she is praising The Wire, or stomping all over the dated newsprint-created hemlines on latest season of Project Runway, Haverilesky both embraces the many wonders (and the yuckiness) of the tube, but also manages to keep it firmly grounded in its cultural relevance. Havrilesky knows that a good critic must not only recommend and condemn, but must also explain why the book/movie/television show means so much in the time it was created. Both of these pieces display this talent in ample, gut-busting style.

"Oprah, don't leave us!", published just a day after Winfrey's announcement that her syndicated show will go off the air in 2111, is cultural criticism at its finest. Walking a fine line between veneration and satire, Havrilesky begins the piece by aptly describes the pull Oprah has over those who know better:

Oprah tells us what to read. We don't always love her taste in books, but we love chatting about books with her on her butter-yellow couches. Oprah tells us whom to love and admire. We don't always care what Barbra Streisand is up to, but we love watching Babs and Opes clash and subtly try to outshine each other, like colliding stars. Oprah feeds our souls. We never liked Dr. Phil that much after he exited Oprah's sacred circle of trust, but while he was basking in her glow, his words spoke to our very hearts. Oprah delivers us from evil. When Hurricane Katrina hit, we didn't wonder what George W. Bush or the Coast Guard would do to help those people, we wondered what Oprah would do. Maybe some of her ideas are a little weird, maybe some of her guests are quacks, but Oprah herself is smart and brash and so awesomely powerful but also so openhearted and so wise.

How will we as acolytes survive this abandonment? Or more importantly, how will our husbands, roommates, or dogs find us during the next two farewell years? Curled up on the floor in the fetal position crying "I want my imaginary black mommy! I want my imaginary black mommy!" (That line made me laugh harder than any other this year.) While Oprah prides herself on helping people to "Live Your Best Life," women (and men like me) will need an Oprah to help us deal with our loss of Oprah, Haverilesky tells us. "Stronger? Better? Without Oprah?!! That's just not possible." a point Haverilesky states Oprah cannot disagree with. Ouch.

Amping down the satire, "Has Mad Men gone mad?" was a mid-season response to the growing critical consensus that the show, in it third season, had lost it potency. Taking the time to describe the cultural shift that the series had been leading up to since its inception ("Goodbye three-martini lunches. Hello disillusionment!"), the piece nails the ridiculous tenants of American life that seem so fundamental to who we are as a people. As Havrilesky states, "This is what "Mad Men" is best at, after all: capturing a mood, and making all of the little worker bees and homemakers and children in its picture reflect that mood in their own way." Coming just after the heartbreaking episode in which curvy secretary Joan leaves Sterling Cooper for a domestic hell only the audience knows about, the article captures the hidden absurdity of modern life in exacting detail.

"Isn't that the American dream, after all? We like to see ourselves as independent, headstrong, deeply unique individuals, paving our own paths through the wilds of contemporary life. We so easily forget that almost every decision we make, from whether or not we breast-feed our babies, work overtime, sleep more than six hours a night, exercise, visit the doctor, vote, do drugs, drink, stay married, all of it, springs from the common, accepted attitudes of the times. The beliefs we hold most sacred, the ideas that define our identities, more often than not boil down to trends. It might take a few decades, but one day we inevitably wake up and notice that a big percentage of the individuals in our demographic were also smoking, dabbling in Buddhism, using formula, spanking their kids with a wooden spoon, getting divorced in middle age, reading Dr. Spock, becoming vegan, you name it. The very choices that feel fundamental to us are the ones that look almost hilariously clichéd and goofy in retrospect."

Haverilesky ends the article by imagining 18th season of the series, where audiences laugh over people injecting botox into their faces, and going bankrupt over the lack of publicly funded health care.

If only Mad Men itself could be so illuminating.