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, At times I have to check my enthusiasm against the complaints of its detractors. One consistent criticism is that the series operates too much from the vantage of winking, condescending hindsight. I’ll have to save the full length of my counterargument for another time, but for now,  the skinny: this critique is based on a presumption that such a thing as an authentic historical viewpoint is fully possible, much less more fruitful than one whose subjective filters are out in the open. For me,  is less about achieving verisimilitude than it is about the making and misleading of desire, and not just among the show’s characters. There’s a fascinating dynamic between the show and its audience as they collectively explore the nature of nostalgia. Our longing for a romanticized era gets refracted in the characters’ Pyrrhic pursuits of happiness.

. What I find shocking about the film – and what has me wanting to board a time capsule to check my own take on period sensibilities – is that there’s no moral virtue to the affair between Kirk Douglas’ architect and Kim Novak’s housewife.  They’re basically horny and bored.  The electricity between them is not based not on mutual understanding but lust and desperation. The feeling of tragedy and loss that cascades over the ending isn’t over the failure of a true romance, but of a life built upon shifting values and ethereal desires, doomed never to be fulfilled.

Who knows how audiences at the time reacted to this (maybe after , made the same year, and yet there it is… there’s a ).  They’re breeding grounds for bad behavior among a class that’s grown accustomed and entitled to getting what they want. They’re also the sites for some remarkable acting, each character treated with sensitivity to a shared plight, even as they become adversaries. Kirk Douglas gets to smash Walter Matthau’s jaw after catching him trying to cheat on his wife (Barbara Rush), but the horny neighbor is really the philosophical standard-bearer of the whole block. The only thing really separating the two are degrees of tact and consent with their targets.

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