New Thing #7: Old Fashioned, please.

Now that I have to measure every TV show against The Wire, it’s hard to start watching new ones.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like The Sopranos, Weeds, Big Love, Deadwood, The Office. Hell, I’m not above watching a Friends rerun.

But when a TV show is as hyped as Mad Men, all I can think is, “It’s not The Wire.”

Not until last night did I see my first episode.

I made an Old Fashioned to celebrate. That’s how hyped Mad Men is: I know the main character’s drink before I know what he looks like.

Sorry, no fruit.

Well, now that I’ve seen him, I gotta say: I’ll be watching more Mad Men.

You probably already know it’s about sleazeball advertising in the 60s. As such, I’m guessing it will join the teduim of obligatorily “risque” not-TV television, in which most of the edge comes from some shadowy culture and characters who don’t really develop from episode to episode but just stay amoral or whatever to the point that it’s mostly schtick.

At least the dialogue is good.

I’ve only seen one episode, so I really can’t tell yet whether the show is ever going to stretch my first impressions.

But I’ll keep watching, for sure. The cocktails are just so pretty.

I’ve joined the rest of you

It started while I was waiting for a phone to be answered.

See, I have to call like 30 police agencies at the end of each night for my job. Usually I check Facebook and Twitter at the end of the list, just before I go home. But the other night, I tried something different.

I watched Glee.

I was predisposed to hate Glee. Their “Last Christmas” filled my mouth with bile.

But the show is … likeable. Hey, it’s network television. For the masses. Of course the plot is idiotic. Of course the songs are auto-tuned beyond all personality. Of course the vastly superior black singer will be featured only when the cute white girl can’t hit the big notes.

Still, the cheerleading coach is awesome, and the caricatures of high school types are so over-the-top that they kind of work.

I know because I was one of them.

In the last episode I saw, that white girl is trying to persuade the glee club to be in a yearbook picture so she can have more yearbook pictures than anyone in the history of the school.

Yeah, I was THAT girl in high school.

Oh, I had a 4.0 and reminded people of it almost every day. I was in every activity — and all but fabricated some of them. Those five mornings I made crafts with the church preschool kids so I could skip the sermons? That made me a “Sunday School Teacher” on applications. Other kids actually had me examine their scholarship forms, like an H&R Block guy at tax time, to suggest extra “activities” they could claim.

I was an impossible snot. My friends from high school are clearly some of the most tolerant people ever.

Have I changed? Do I still look for ways to hold myself above others? Do I still cry when I lose at Boggle?

Sometimes. But I don’t take myself quite so seriously anymore.

You learn something talking to 30 police agencies a day: Backstory matters.

They don’t have scholarships for people who stay out of trouble even though their families beat each other with truck parts and hold up gas stations with underwear on their faces. They don’t have yearbook pages for people who graduate even though they had their heads whacked against walls when they were babies.

Those people were the real overachievers. Even if they now watch Glee.

Oh, wait.