October 2010
6 posts
4.13: Don't Cry Over Spilled Milkshake
Here we are, folks. A season marked by change ends on the cusp of more change for our main characters. I feel a bit misty-eyed for the definitive end of some key relationships in the show - Don and Betty, Carla and the kids (thanks a lot, Betty), Don and Faye, Joan and Roger (we think), Bert and the agency. But I’m also heartened to see hope and happiness in Don’s eyes; a welcome...
Matt Weiner Looks Back on Season Four →
“We talked about Don, and Don and Peggy, and the great child acting of Kiernan Shipka…”
4.13: Best line from the finale
Peggy, who’s reeling from hearing the news that Don is getting married to his secretary Megan, burst into Joan’s office to gossip about it. Joan simply asks, “Whatever could be on your mind?”
-John Taylor
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4.12: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
As usual, the season ends way, way too soon for us MadMenaholics. Somehow we’re already nearing the Summer of Love, and this season more than the rest we’ve gotten to see real evolution. SCDP is no Sterling Cooper (though the new company is failing), Peggy’s become a bonafide working gal who can equal Don in creative talent and emotional restraint and coolly hang with the...
4.11 - "As Don Said, Nothing Is Going to Change"
“We’ve had a pretty good year. We’ve gained more accounts than we’ve lost, a lot more, because our work is thoughtful and effective. Even Lucky Strike said so. Which means that nothing should change. Nothing will change. We’re going to push ourselves, shoulder to shoulder, and we’re going to succeed ten-fold and it will be exhilarating.” - Don Draper
...
4.7 - 4.10: Don Draper Travels the Lost Highway
I’m a rolling stone, all alone and lost / For a life of sin, I have paid the cost When I pass by, all the people say / “Just another guy on the lost highway”
Season 4 is still answering the question, “Who is Don Draper?” As everyone else has pointed out, we’ve seen Don change this season, evolving and adapting to all the other change surrounding him. The good...
September 2010
7 posts
9 tags
4.10: Hide and Seek
In an episode full of revelations, the main secret driving the the show’s central character gets kept under wraps - for everyone besides Faye, a new member of the Draper/Whitman inner circle. But let’s review everything we learned about the rest of the characters: Lane is involved with a “negro”! Joan is preggers with Roger’s baby! Joan gets a secret abortion! Roger...
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4.9: Girls, Girls, Girls
While I didn’t love this episode, the young versus old, male versus female conflicts we’ve been observing all season come into full focus. And as Walton mentioned, the season-long “the education of Peggy Olson” continues…
I was especially struck by what Walton observed in his “wounded knee” post regarding the gradual disappearance of people like Bert and...
4.4-4.8: The Wounded Knee Episodes
I haven’t been writing for a few weeks while nursing my right knee after an injury and surgery. But I’ve been following Mad Men closely, thinking about what the show’s writers and actors are trying to illustrate.
Mad Men is now in the process of describing the set of cultural changes that revolutionized American life.
1) downtown hipster culture versus midtown, WASP male...
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4.8: Power of the Poontang
It’s quite a predicament for women at SCDP - and women in the workplace everywhere, isn’t it? You’re either just a sexy secretary or you’re an overzealous climber bitch. (Monica vs. Hillary, anyone?) As Joey the freelance art director becomes more and more misogynistic toward Joan, (because apparently his mother was the same way), Peggy steps into to save the day and show...
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4.7: On toughness
“So, Bert has no testicles?”
Friends, it is with a heavy heart I write this post knowing we’re now more than halfway through the season. These episodes keep building on each other so well; I expect we’ll be watching episodes 11 and 12 with our mouths agape.
Episode 7, aptly titled “Suitcase,” returns our main characters to the suitcase motif from the end of...
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4.7: 5 things that are not fight-related
1. I loved the interaction between Don and Peggy. Don saved Peggy and Peggy is saving Don (again). But I wonder if Don ever would have opened up to Peggy in the first place if he hadn’t saved her to begin with. He knows he can trust her, but would that be the case if she never got pregnant?
2. Roger said that he didn’t like hanging out with the AA guys because they start out telling...
August 2010
13 posts
4.6: Danny Zuko's Chump Brother
First, Elise: thanks for keeping my non-contributing self on the blog until mid-season. I’ve been keeping close watch of the show’s developments, but every Sunday night presents an obstacle of Greek-level proportions to my Internet access.
This week’s episode let me down a bit, especially compared to last week’s stellar, tightly-written turn. Episode 5 contained that...
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4.6: The Lost Weekend
I think I’m going to save the recapping to the others and focus instead on the idea lingering with me since the episode’s end. Did Roger Sterling ever really hire Don Draper?
We explore in this episode the continuation of Don’s total free fall. His drunkenness is now all out in the open, and seriously affecting his work and personal life. When we saw that glimpse of known-drunk...
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4.5: On the Couch
Mad Men’s at its best when the principals are scheming something, like for instance plotting the start of a new rogue agency. So watching Joan, Don, Peggy and Joey team up to set up that fake commercial shoot (cue Peggy riding a Honda around on an empty set) brought me nothing but joy.
But besides that, what a tough episode. It marked the first time we’ve seen Roger get serious since...
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4.5: I'm So Ashamed
“A man is shamed by being openly ridiculed and rejected. It requires an audience.” -Don, quoting The Chrysanthemum and the Sword
I’m fascinated by the way this episode dealt with the concept of shame. Sally does something considered shameful, Don’s ashamed of Sally cutting her hair, Betty’s ashamed of her daughter masturbating, both parents are ashamed they have...
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Recognize Ted?
Actor Kevin Rahm, playing the rival Creative Director (I love rivals), was in one of my favorite commercials of all time.
—Tim
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4.4: NY Mag Recap (I like this one in particular) →
“Everyone in this episode (which picks up where we left off last week, with more explicit talk sex talk and profanity) is looking through a frame at someone else and thinking that they understand who they see. Don and Peggy stare through the focus-group glass and have no idea what’s going on with Allison, who’s distraught over Don. Peggy peeks through her office window to see what the hell...
4.4: My vagina rent is overdue
They really played out marriage this episode, didn’t they? Don’s marriage is in tatters. Ken is getting married (don’t tell Sal). Lane’s marriage has fallen apart. Peggy wants to get married. Pete is leveraging his marriage. And Freddie is angling his entire campaign around the idea that Pond’s will help you get married. Oh, and DID YOU GET ANY PEARS?
It’s...
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4.4: Swellegant
I’m so going to start using “swellegant” now.
Anyway. What a fine episode. I found it to be just a breath of fresh air after last week’s contrived first half in California. This one injected so much more humor into dark situations:
Peggy peeking over the high window to get a look a Don, which aptly mirrored the focus group through-the-looking-glass situation
“You...
4.2 & 4.3: Humiliation, Nostalgia, and the Swiftly...
I’m still turning over the image of Lee Garner Jr. humiliating and emasculating Roger Sterling, buzz-killed, Santa Claus-ed, and cornered.
A
I think that Sterling’s moment of humiliation will become a recurring motif in the story threads for many characters — Don humiliating his secretary; Lane humiliating Joan; Joan humiliating her husband; Joan and Lane humiliating his...
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4.3: Only the Lonely
This was like two episodes packed into one: Don in California with the one woman grownup who really loves him, and Don back in New York, on his unforgettable drunken man-date with Lane Pryce. Joan’s story arc is placed throughout, and that intersection with Lane and the flowers… pure gold. That Lane Pryce kills me!
THE SAD STUFF
Anna Draper, who said so herself in this episode, knows...
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4.2: Is Don Draper a Bully?
Here’s what bullying looks like, in the world of Mad Men:
Lane Pryce was bullied into having a Christmas Party, when finances didn’t warrant it.
Pete Campbell was bullied into not staying in NYC for Christmas, b/c Trudy wanted to go away.
Off-screen, Roger bullied someone off the wagon at a lunch (apparently).
On-screen, Roger bullied Joan into wearing the red dress w/ a bow.
Lee...
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4.2: Our Expectations of Don
I’ve read a few critiques of Sunday’s episode now, notably the TV Club on Slate, the Onion AV Club, and Alan Sepinwall from HitFix. They each mention how rotten Don was to his secretary Allison after their drunken couch tryst, and how deplorable and unlikable Don has become. But the truth is, he’s never been a protagonist we can collectively root for; we just WANT to because...
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4.2: A Blue Christmas
I don’t know about y’all, but I found this Christmas episode to be oddly uneven. Perhaps I’m just missing the subtext that’s supposed to bind it all together. That said, my initial stray observations:
More Grey’s Anatomy/Mad Men cast crossover
Phoebe (the neighbor nurse) looked familiar right away, but I couldn’t place her until her second appearance. The...
July 2010
13 posts
5 tags
4.1: We Chat About Self-Loathing
(“Me” in this chat is Elise.)
walton: It is a funny thing about the self-loathing
me: but then id have to determine: what’s self actualization for don?
walton: It stems from his class insecurity
me: yes be already got past that problem. Self-actualization is truth, right, or being as close to your truth as possible (at least that’s what it would be for me)....
4.1: Advertisements of Myself
I’ve been stewing over the first episode since Sunday and have few good ideas to communicate. I can say the obvious: the opening teased with threads and patches that will be sewn into whole cloth as the season progresses. Additionally, the premier was a reminder that Mad Men is founded on principles of beauty and narrative — the glassy, new, open and bright office spaces, Joan...
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4.1: The Lost Year of Mad Men
Did you know that on Jan. 11, 1964, the U.S. Surgeon General said — for the first time — that smoking may be hazardous to one’s health. And later, on Jun 24, the Federal Trade Commission said that, starting in ‘65, cigarette companies have to put warning labels on their packaging. Given that Lucky Strike is 71% of the firm’s business, isn’t that huge? Is that...
What the Journal Would Really Ask Don Draper →
If we could have our hour with nothing but Mr. Draper and a spiral notebook, here’s what we would ask him:
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4.1: That Blowup with the Bikini Guys
That blow up with the Jantzen (bikini, er, two-piece) men represented an important transition for Don, and a signal of the time we think about more commonly as ‘the sixties.’
His whole point, in storming out after they insisted his campaign be more “modest” was that customers are going in a certain direction (smaller bikinis), and you should catch the wave - not with...
This AdAge Interview is Boring
But relevant.
http://adage.com/columns/article?article_id=145094
“No. 1, we never did interviews over lunch; No. 2, we didn’t take notes in shorthand; No. 3 we didn’t ask cute-ass questions; and No. 4, our pictures were never bigger than our stories.”
Boo Urns.
-Tim
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4.1: How Cosgrove Will Come Back
Re: Thought #5: That’s how Weiner will write Ken Cosgrove back into the show! I mentioned in my stray observations that Aaron Staton’s name still appears in the opening credits (but poor Paul Kinsey’s does not). When Tim mentioned the firms going head to head, I realized that’s the most natural way to bring Cosgrove back into the fold. But…now that the old SC is...
4.1: Five Quick Thoughts
1. Favorite line of the night came from Harry, not Roger. “I wish we really did have a second floor so I could jump off it.” 2. When Don came home to drop the kids off and had to wait, I immediately assumed he’d open the garage and find Betty and Henry dead in the car from carbon monoxide poisoning. Um, I guess I was wrong about that. 3. Seriously, if this guy is walking around...
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Alan Sepinwall interviews Matt Weiner →
Alan Sepinwall of HitFix.com spoke with the show’s creator about the premiere, some leftover business from last season and his latest thoughts on how long the series might go.
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4.1: Whoa, we're not at Sterling Cooper anymore
“We had this catastrophic end to the first season, and there were consequences to it, and these are what the consequences are.” -Matthew Weiner
I’m glad most of the gang is back, but geez, I felt so out of sorts in the new setting and in the new time. Season three’s finale - the start of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce - was just before Christmas 1963, and we’ve ...
“It’s almost like this first episode is a new pilot.”
– Jared Harris, on the fourth season
Season Four
Just in time for the premiere of season four, I’ve summoned my friends Walton and Reeve to start arguing with me throughout the season. We haven’t set up the style we’re going to use yet, but I think we’ll include the episode we’re writing about in the post titles from now on so that it will be easy to keep track of what we’re talking about.
My background is in...