Last Sunday’s Mad Men episode, Favors, was stock full of new reveals. For the first time, Sally Draper saw her father having an affair with (“comforting”) the neighbor. Bob Benson, whom the internet believes to be an investigative journalist/government spy/murderer, came on to Pete Campbell, and conspiracy theories abound. But most important, we got a glimpse of Stan Rizzo’s bedroom—where above his bed hangs an enormous poster of the easily recognizable Israeli military strategist and politician, Moshe Dayan.

We Mad Men extremists certainly like to prophesy what creator Matthew Weiner will do with between 10 and 11 p.m. on Sunday nights. But why was Rizzo reppin’ Israel? Was he paying homage to the Six Day War? Showing some respect for the ever-cool eye patch? Have he and Jewish co-worker Michael Ginsberg been talking Israeli politics and war strategy during late nights at the office?

The truth is that no one ever really knows why Mad Men characters do what they do. But that didn’t stop us from trying to figure it out:

So, what was with life size poster of Moshe Dayan in Stan Rizzo’s bedroom? Was it an homage to “Stardust Memories”? #MadMen #VietcongPoster

— Julie Horowitz (@AtomicWife) June 11, 2013

So why does Stan have a giant Moshe Dayan poster? My theory is purely superficial: he just really digs the eye patch.

— Alan Zilberman (@alanzilberman) June 10, 2013

Huh? There’s a Moshe Dayan poster in Stan Rizzo’s bedroom? That seals it: Matthew Weiner is just screwing with us.#CatchingUp with #MadMen

— John Walker (@yinzr) June 12, 2013

Cameo of the year: #MosheDayan in ep. 11 of #MadMen. Wtf, Rizzo? twitter.com/JudahAriGross/…

— Judah Ari Gross (@JudahAriGross) June 12, 2013

Will we see Rizzo’s poster again? This Mad Men fan hopes so.

Previously: Network Jews: Michael Ginsberg, the Smartass Ad Man on Mad Men
Alison Brie, Jewish Actress from ‘Community’ and ‘Mad Men,’ Totally Rocks
The Jewish Women of Mad Men

The post Moshe Dayan’s ‘Mad Men’ Cameo appeared first on Jewcy.

That Don Draper is a singular talent—perhaps even a genius—is central to the premise of AMC’s Mad Men, the penultimate season of which commences this Sunday. Though at times the series has chipped away at Don’s (Jon Hamm) seeming professional invincibility, viewers still believe fundamentally in his exceptional abilities. Yet, at the very moment when Don seems to deploy his formidable skill less frequently, viewers are introduced to a new but equally striking talent in young copywriter Michael Ginsberg (Ben Feldman). Don’s changing role in the firm—and evolving sense of self—was an important theme of the series’ fifth season. Central to that theme’s exploration is Ginsberg—the smart-alecky, frenetic savant who just might be the evolutionary Don Draper.

We are introduced to Ginsberg in his comically awful interview with Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) in the season’s third episode. He makes perfectly clear to Peggy that he is only interested in meeting Don, and anything else is a chore. Here Ginsberg scans as a Woody Allen caricature, twitchy with a darkly off kilter sense of humor. (“You know, your book really does have a voice.” “That’s what they said about Mein Kampf.”) Despite the terrible first round interview, Peggy reluctantly brings him back in to meet Don—with whom he’s equal parts gregarious, clever, and charming—and Don gives him the job.

So begins the fascinating relationship/rivalry/pissing contest between Don and Michael. It takes all of one episode for Mad Men to insinuate that Ginsberg may be uncommonly skilled in his own right. After selling a campaign to Butler Shoes, Ginsberg goes off the rails, telling Mr. Butler about an idea the creative team rejected. But he does so in such beautiful, vivid detail that Butler asks, “Why don’t we do that?” Don is livid. “In your heart you knew it was good!” Ginsberg offers. “In my heart, I’m on the verge of throwing you in front of a cab,” Don retorts. Their repartee is in part a diversion. As a businessman, Don is incensed Ginsberg did not stop when the client said, “sold.” But mixed with his disgust is fear. Don is threatened that Ginsberg demonstrates, in his own way, the ability to sell creative work at a level previously accessed solely by Don himself.

It is Ginsberg’s skill making the pitch—the very skill that made Don a legend—that puts him in Don’s crosshairs. Even after the first accepted pitch, Mr. Butler called Ginsberg a genius. Don coughs demonstratively. We are watching the rise of a new advertising star at the very moment Don transitions to a more heavily managerial role. For the first time, viewers are asked to entertain the possibility that Don is not peerless—something Don seems keenly aware of as well. For a show that emphasizes the exceptional talents and personal shortcomings of one central character, the role played by Michael Ginsberg is deeply jarring.

Don’s professional brilliance always seemed tied—even obliquely—to his back-story. He was a man without a firm identity, a hobo—drifting and alone. In a startling scene with Peggy and Michael late at night in the office, we learn that Michael is the most unusual of Holocaust survivors: a child born in a concentration camp. “Are there others like you?” Peggy asks. “I don’t know,” Michael replies heavily, his back to the camera and reflection lit up in the window. “I haven’t been able to find any.” Here, too, we are supposed to connect Michael and Don. As with Don, there is a clear, if inexplicable, connection between Michael’s creative brilliance and personal history. Mad Men intends for us to link Don and Michael as singular individuals and talents.

Late in the season, Mad Men dispenses with the connection’s subtlety. Sterling Cooper Draper Price is working on a campaign for the drink Snoball. Working late at the office, Don happens upon Michael’s work in the writers’ bullpen. Michael wrote the tagline “Get hit in the face with a Snoball!” across a doodle of Hitler. We see Don’s competitive juices flowing. He pulls out the Dictaphone, and throws out, “A Snoball’s chance in hell.” At the next morning’s meeting, Michael’s idea resonates deeply, while Don’s “Yeeees. Even Me.” tagline with a picture of the devil draws polite support.

“Wow. That’s actually good,” Ginsberg says. “I’m glad I could surprise you,” Don sneers. Ginsberg backtracks, but makes it worse. “No, it’s just damn impressive you could not write for so long and come back with that.” Michael cannot help himself from highlighting Don’s aging, rusty approach. Michael could not have known it was his own work that inspired Don to get back in the game. He certainly understands, though, that his comments were openly baiting his boss.

Though the creative and accounts teams agreed to lead with Michael’s “Get hit in the face” campaign at the pitch meeting—to Don’s annoyance and Michael’s pleased-with-himself delight—Don leads with his own idea and leaves Ginsberg’s in the cab. When Ginsberg discovers they bought Don’s devil campaign—without even seeing his own—Ginsberg is apoplectic.

The payoff comes as they ride the elevator together. Michael snaps at Don: “what do I care? I got a million of ‘em. A million.” “Good,” Don counters, without so much as looking at Michael, “I guess I’m lucky you work for me.” Ginsberg tries again: “I feel bad for you.” Don, with a dash of the old swagger, retorts icily, “I don’t think about you at all,” and walks away.

Michael’s frustration is understandable: he outperformed the best, but Don retains creative control and buries Michael’s work. Don’s studiously dispassionate cruelty reveals the extent to which he feels threatened. Michael might eventually render Don obsolete, but not as long as Don can fight it.

“Look at all the great work you’ve done as creative director. Look at all these voices. All this talent.” So says Joan (Christina Hendricks) to Don, as he reviews the campaigns SCDP had created in recent months. But is it true? Don pitilessly crushed the enthusiasm of his talented employee for an ego boost—a cheap trick to convince himself he still “has it.” Not to mention Don finally pushes Peggy a step too far—and out the door, to the agency of a hated rival.

There is a brief moment, late in the season, which suggests Michael’s relationship with Don may evolve quite differently. With the creative team working exhaustively—and unproductively—on the Jaguar pitch, Michael is struck with an idea. He knocks on Don’s door, and the tension is palpable, as they disagree over whether the team works better with Don present or absent. But Michael proceeds. Jaguar isn’t a sexy, temperamental mistress—an idea that got the team nowhere; it’s better than that. “Jaguar,” Ginsberg says, knowing he has nailed it, “At last. Something beautiful you can truly own.” Don’s face goes blank—he realizes it’s perfect. Then he sighs, and smiles knowingly. Ginsberg slaps his hands, pumps a fist, and smiles contentedly. Perhaps it’s the beginning of a productive relationship for two brilliant ad men.

Mad Men watchers have always wondered how things will end up for Don Draper; the fifth season strongly suggests that answer may be delivered through Michael Ginsberg. Will Michael—and Peggy, if she wends her way back to SCDP—team with Don to propel the firm to the heights of the industry? Or have the two young talents been developed as foils for an industry legend’s precipitous decline to irrelevance?

As viewers, we have suspected it must end in one of those two ways. Only with the arrival of Michael Ginsberg, though, can we see the agent of change. Mad Men makes clear that Michael’s future success is not in question. The only uncertainly remains with Don: will he recognize the firm’s potential and capitalize on it? Or will his vices—pride, jealousy, and continuing uncertainty about who he is—prevent him from doing so? Showrunner Matthew Weiner has two seasons remaining to reveal what Don’s future holds, the first of which begins Sunday night.

Previously on Network Jews:

Dr. James Wilson on Fox’s Dark Medical Procedural House

Ari Gold, the Jewish Hollywood Agent on HBO’s Entourage

Police Detective John Munch on Law & Order: SVU

The post Network Jews: Michael Ginsberg, the Smartass Ad Man on Mad Men appeared first on Jewcy.

When Homeland returns for a second season this Sunday night, it will be able to boast a bevy of Emmy’s and claim Barack Obama as a fanboy. But perhaps its most noted distinction is indirectly leading to the creation of America’s new catchphrase—“Mandy Patinkin, holla.” As I’m sure you know, Homeland is an adaptation of the Israeli TV series Hatufim, Prisoners of War, and is only one in a flood of programming coming out of the Israeli-Hollywood pipeline. Just last week Universal Television bought rights to The Gordin Cell, a series following former Russian intelligence agents reintegrating themselves in Israel.

There have been various hypotheses offered for the recent obsession with Israeli television: Israelis, they’re just like us! 9/11! And inevitably—Jews run Hollywood. Showtime and HBO as well as all the major networks have at least one Israeli television adaptation in the works.

But the Israeli TV shopping spree hasn’t been particularly discriminatory and results vary: The sitcom The Ex-List was canceled after only four episodes, and the reality show 3 got the axe after two. And while the success and failure of a show can be a crapshoot, there does seem to be a pattern in whether or not a series has crossover success.

America has a long history of adapting TV shows from other countries. Iconic American classics such as All in the Family and Three’s Company were modeled on British shows. More recently, the U.K. has given us the soon-to-be-put-out-of-its-misery series, The Office, as well as NBC’s Prime Suspect and MTV’s Skins—both failures. In the hunt for new ideas, producers have turned to other countries; AMC’s The Killing, for example, was based on a popular Danish program.

Sharon Shaif, who co-edited the book Global Television Formats: Understanding Television Across Borders and is currently writing a book on Israeli reality television, told me that traditionally, the rule of thumb when scouring for potential crossover hits is to find programs that are “culturally neutral” and adhere to established formulas. For Israel, though, the lesson has been almost the opposite. The Israeli shows that have succeeded in the United States have been steeped in Israeli cultural concerns, from war and terrorism to the specter of the Holocaust.

HBO’s In Treatment, the most successful Israeli crossover before Homeland, is a case in point. Adapted from the Israeli hit B’tipul, the show centers on a psychologist, with each episode depicting a therapy session. The patients in the Israeli version included a pilot, whose father is a Holocaust survivor, grappling with having bombed an Arab school; a couple deciding whether or not to have an abortion; and a childless woman in her 30s from a traditionally conservative Mizrachi family. The U.S. script follows the Israeli version almost word-for-word, only changing Israel-specific details, such as turning the pilot into an Iraqi war veteran.

Hatufim, which aired on Arutz 2 in 2010, is even more predicated on the Israeli context. The show revolves around the return of two Israel Defense Forces soldiers who were held in captivity in Lebanon for 17 years, and thus hits on one of Israel’s most sensitive nerves: the culture of the abducted soldier. While the series was successful, it had many detractors, who accused writer and director Gideon Raff of exploiting the issue at a time when Gilad Shalit was still in captivity.

Though Raff consulted on the U.S. version and serves as its executive producer, the series diverges sharply from its Israeli model, and with good reason: returning soldiers don’t have the same hold on the national mindset in America. So while Homeland takes as its premise a U.S. Marine returning home after being held captive by Al-Qaida since 2003, it adds an element of suspense to the mix with Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), a CIA operations officer who suspects he may have been turned.

While Hatufim and B’Tipul didn’t offer culturally neutral source material (far from it), they gave Hollywood something even more valuable: fresh ideas. The shows are unlike anything on American television, not only in theme, but in genre. For viewers used to network cop shows or cable series focused on tormented male anti-heroes, a show set entirely in a therapist’s office is nothing if not different. And Israeli television is a fertile ground for dramas that don’t conform to American models. “Israel is not wedded to the usual procedural formats—lawyer, cop, etc.,” says Shaif.

Not so with comedy. Israelis grew up on a steady diet of imported American sitcoms—the first Israeli sitcom, Krovim, Krovim, only premiered in 1983. Today many of Israel’s comedies mimic the classic sitcoms of the ’80s and ’90s. The familiar tropes are there—the plots are driven by misunderstandings; men are constantly screwing up and spend an episode working to hide it from their wives who will inevitably find out; children are a bit too precocious.

With contemporary popular American comedies trending toward meta-references and fast-paced jokes, it is not much of a surprise that American audiences would shy away from shows imitating Israeli shows that imitate American shows from 20 years ago. Take last year’s Traffic Light. The Fox show was based on Ramzor, a hit show in Israel. Now in its fourth season, the Israeli show follows three men at different stages in life: Itzko is married with a kid, Amir lives with his girlfriend, and Hefer is the perennial bachelor of the bunch. The show won an Israeli TV Academy Award for best comedy and became the first Israeli TV series to win an International Emmy Award for best comedy series.

Fox heavily promoted the show, which premiered in February 2011, but with dismal ratings it only lasted through May. Looking at the source material, one could guess why the show failed. In one episode, Itzko’s wife gives him two bags—one filled with old clothes to donate to African refuges and one with a Prada dress she needs dry cleaned. If you have ever watched an episode of Home Improvement you can easily guess that he gives away the wrong bag, his wife finds out, and hijinks ensue as he is forced to go down to the refugee shelter to get it back.

This doesn’t mean that all Israeli dramas are good, and Israeli comedies bad. Arab Labor, for example, the first Israeli sitcom to center around an Arab-Israeli family is both radical in its subject matter and riotously funny. But it may be a sign that the American audience is on the hunt for television that seems non-prepackaged, something that Israeli dramas are able to offer. And once Israeli sitcoms find their own voice, they may succeed here as well. And if anyone from Keshet is out there, I’m pretty sure a comedy centered on a multigenerational family that runs a Sabich stand in Tel Aviv is pure gold—remember to thank me at the Emmys.

The post Is That a Falafel in My Situation Comedy? appeared first on Jewcy.