In the wake ofThe Help’s retro-good intentions,cleaning house against the usual servings of August action flicks—Conan the Barbarian? Cowboys & Aliens?—looking back is pretty much what we have to look forward to this fall. The Hour has been successfully conjuring a bygone era when TV news was trying to get at the truth; meanwhile, much of the Republican field are doing their best to entertain us with rhetoric not heard since the coffee-tea-or-me days of Pan Am,The Playboy Club, and Hilly Holbrook’s bridge games. Will Skeeter Phelan guest-star in next season’s Mad Men?
