The Madison TV Show works if you don’t ask questions.

When you and your friend like the same show, you might talk through each episode.  This is like that.  My brother wouldn’t stop yakking about The Madison, so here we are.  I’m more skeptical of Taylor Sheridan’s show.

Catwoman does one of those dramatic, “so I guess I’m a bad mom”, routines.  It’s supposed to be a trap, because the daughters can’t say that they have a terrible mom without indicting themselves, but it never works.

When my brother was explaining the premise for The Madison, I was skeptical that a loving wife wouldn’t have made the trip out to Montana at least once to share a place that was so important to her husband.  I still think that is unusual, but Catwoman is a singularly inattentive wife. 

Catwoman is also a shit mom and shaping up to be a shit grandmother.

The older daughter is divorced with two kids and has no plans to do anything productive.  Prior to his death, Snake and Catwoman discussed the situation.  Catwoman thinks enough is enough, and it’s time to cut her off.    Snake realized that they screwed the pooch with her, and at 33 years old, the older daughter is not going to suddenly get her shit together.

They are about thirty years too late on instilling some character into that one.

Catwoman has to pick up Snake’s truck, and as she’s driving, she pokes around and finds his revolver.

Early in my time at North Royalton, two of my colleagues were over to my house.  While Jeff was upstairs using the bathroom, Jess saw my shotgun case, and asked to see my Mossberg.  She was holding it when Jeff came down the stairs.  The gun was safe, and Jess was handling it appropriately.  It wasn’t pointed anywhere near Jeff.

Liberals can be weird with guns.  It’s hard to describe Jeff’s expression.  Something like smutty terror.  Frozen.  Want to run, but can’t move or look away.  I don’t know what could put me in that state.  Maybe if I came to visit, and while I was in the bathroom, you decided to screw a raw chicken or probably any chicken, or tie off your arm to shoot heroin. 

Catwoman had that reaction.  Guns are taboo.  She doesn’t say it, but seem like she might shoot herself with it.  She doesn’t, but the show is doing a good job of portraying a certain type of high society liberal with few redeeming qualities.. 

Episodes 3 and 4 deal with the practical aspects of funeral and estate arrangements, so some people in the family don’t have a role.  They aren’t in a position to offer advice, emotional support or guidance.  The show does a nice job of portraying that.

These are the two children of the older daughter and the husband of the younger daughter.  He is their uncle-in-law.  The older and younger daughter aren’t particularly close, so the uncle-in-law probably doesn’t know these kids well.  He does a good job of keeping them occupied. 

On a nature walk, the youngest kid doesn’t act like a kid at all. 

She tells the uncle-in-law that she can’t remember what Snake looks like.  “It’s only been a couple of days, and I’m starting to forget.”

I call bullshit.  The girl is precocious, but an 8 year-old doesn’t think about death like that.  A kid would just try to stay out of the way and away from the drama.

And what drama!  Catwoman seems to be completely performative.  One wonders how she would act if there was no one around to witness the depth of her trauma.  Here she sits in the creek.  She isn’t even doing this to take a piss or to wash out her swamp-ass.

I hate shit like that.  I mean in real life with real people. 

Wisely, the family is staying away from her, and finding local friends and neighbors to pal around with.  Since she doesn’t have an audience for her sackcloth and ashes routine, Catwoman calls a dear friend to come out. 

Family is an accident of birth, but a friend is a choice.  When the friend shows up, she has to stick around for the drama.

I assume that this is the friend who Catwoman should have brought out thirty years ago to sleep with Dr. Jack.  The friend is kind of a dingbat, so roll-in-the-hay material with no long term commitment.  The jaunty stripe in her hair indicate that she’d be DTF.

Like Catwoman, she is a rich socialite.  I suppose it’s possible that when rich people travel, they are in such a pampered bubble, they never encounter what we used to call ‘adventures in travel’.  Everybody, everywhere, does the same stuff, but they don’t do it in the same way. 

The seasoned traveler knows that in a foreign environment, it’s best to pay attention, observe how this place operates and play along if the local custom isn’t offensive.

I had an engineering project in Wichita Falls, Texas.  I was there for several months.  The department secretary was youngish and pleasant, so asked if I wanted to go to the Boot Skoot bar with her and some friends.  She was just being nice.

When we got there, I went to the bar to get drinks.  I couldn’t get a bartender’s attention.  It was moderately busy, but not packed.  I noticed that the cowboys were queueing up at the bar to get served.  It was a country and western bar, but the boots and cowboy hats seemed real.  That’s how they do it in Wichita Falls.  I didn’t get mad or frustrated, I got in line.

When we were at our table, occasionally a cowboy would come by the table, and say something like, “Hey Versaille.  I wonder if you’d like a dance.”  Then the cowboy would turn to me, and say, “If you don’t mind of course.”  I didn’t mind.  The third time this happened, I said, “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”  The guy nodded, then I said, “I’m only kidding.  Go ahead, we’re just friends.”

That cowboy looked at me like I was a piece of shit.  And I was.  My jape offended their local custom.  They are nice people, and I had mocked the courtesy.  Nobody’s ass got kicked, but I’m sure my stock dropped with Versaille.

Dingbat friend goes into a county office to assist with some sort of paperwork.  There is a woman at a desk and no other people.  Dingbat takes a number like she’s at Baskin-Robbins, and sits down to bury her face in her phone.  The clerk is nonplussed, but eventually gets her attention.

That’s just not how a worldly person behaves. 

By that evening, everybody comes back together at Snakes cabin.  They have all had adventures away from Catwoman, so it’s a joyous dinner as they act like the loving family they could have been.  It’s nice.  Nobody is moping.  They trade good-natured banter because you can’t be sad all the time.  A break from the dreary business is welcomed by all.

Then the Dingbat just has to sabotage the dinner.

She could have excused herself with something like, “I’m sorry, drinking all that unfiltered creek water has given my giardia or some other intestinal parasite, so I’m going to go wreck your outhouse. ” 

Or any plausible excuse.  She’s an old lady, they are good at that sort of thing.  Instead, she says, “Snake would have loved being here and seeing that constantly escaping to the office or Montana hasn’t left you all cripplingly dysfunctional.”

I’m paraphrasing, but good Lord.  I’d have sent her home.  “I made a mistake by not having you come out thirty years ago to toss Jack, and I made a mistake having you here now.  I love you, but you are poison.”

This next part come from episode 5.  It’s the first scene and thematically fits here, even if that is not entirely fair to the show.

Adopting a play from Dingbat, Catwoman chooses to insert drama and trauma, where there was none.

Catwoman is on a nature walk with her youngest granddaughter.  The little girl shows off the tracking skills she learned from the uncle-in-law.  Catwoman and the little girl had been fishing the day before, so they have bonded over their pursuit of bushcraft skills.

Catwoman asks the little girl if she has any questions about today, implying questions about the funeral arrangements and the death of her grandfather.  This is where Catwoman goes for the terrible trifecta.  Bad wife, bad mother, and bad grandmother.

This generates an implausible discussion about death, heaven, souls and related topics that Catwoman hasn’t thought about for 10 minutes in her entire life.

Little kids don’t think about death the way adults do.  They don’t have the maturity, experience or perspective.  Forcing that conversation doesn’t help.  The little girl’s mom is a downer cow, but it’s possible that she’d want to have a hand in her daughter’s spiritual growth.   

Catwoman, and everyone in the party, would be best served by thinking and talking around Snake and Dr. Jack’s death.  Keep busy with the practical tasks or distracted with new people and activities, as the brain slowly adjusts.  Constantly rehashing the anguish is torture.

The behavior of the little girl is the only character that isn’t plausibly written.  The uncle-in-law is surprisingly useful.  Catwoman and Dingbat are self-absorbed and useless.  Local people are kind, generous, practical and centered.

At this point, I’m most curious about where this is going next season.