The evolution of Peggy disengaging from Ted to her kind of dismissively loathing him has been enjoyable
― a strange man (mh), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 13:54 (ten years ago) link
ted is sympathetic though. good casting
― socki (s1ocki), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 14:02 (ten years ago) link
Yeah he just has a likable manner.
― the joke should be over once the kid is eaten. (chap), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 14:08 (ten years ago) link
he projects intelligence in a good way. imo.
― socki (s1ocki), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 14:09 (ten years ago) link
the screenshots tumblr has been real hit or miss as of late, but oh man this one:
http://24.media.tumblr.com/7936bfe050386dc6cf0e11aefef046b5/tumblr_n5wduyj08A1qdbluio1_500.jpghttp://31.media.tumblr.com/cc7028aa45fb3c5109c8694e6a3b0984/tumblr_n5wduyj08A1qdbluio2_500.jpg
― Damnit Janet Weiss & The Riot Grrriel (C. Grisso/McCain), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 19:44 (ten years ago) link
I think it's Pete's facial expression that pushes it over.
― Damnit Janet Weiss & The Riot Grrriel (C. Grisso/McCain), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 19:45 (ten years ago) link
Pete's weird insistence that he can have someone but Trudy can't because they're technically still married is some annoying bullshit, but his waiting at the house until she got back so he could act all jealous and smarmy put me back in the Pete-as-asshole camp
― a strange man (mh), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 19:47 (ten years ago) link
shit dude, can't you show a little confidence for more than a few episodes
haha
Don will never get w Joan, you think he's gonna get between Sterling and their love child? gtfo
xp
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 19:50 (ten years ago) link
Wait, Don doesn't know does he? Joan and Roger keep a tight TIGHT lid on that shit.
― Johnny Fever, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 19:51 (ten years ago) link
idk, if anyone thought about it for more than a few minutes they might figure it out
― a strange man (mh), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 19:54 (ten years ago) link
shit, Bob probably has, he could drop it as he leaves
― a strange man (mh), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 19:55 (ten years ago) link
he's the type who'd flush though
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 19:56 (ten years ago) link
if anyone thought about it for more than a few minutes they might figure it out
yeah I don't think Don knows but anyone doing the math on when she conceived/delivered would figure it out. Also yeah Joan obviously not into Don lately.
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 19:59 (ten years ago) link
It has taken years for Joan to ascend to this level, years during which she's walked a pushy interloper like Peggy rise. She's not sullying herself for the likes of Draper.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:00 (ten years ago) link
Or solidifying her personal life by marrying a gay man for the sake of appearances
― a strange man (mh), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:02 (ten years ago) link
Yeah, how long was Joan at the original Sterling Cooper before Peggy's first day (the pilot)? Long enough to already have a fully developed and comfortable relationship with Roger.
― Johnny Fever, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:02 (ten years ago) link
Pete's weird insistence that he can have someone but Trudy can't because they're technically still married is some annoying bullshit, but his waiting at the house until she got back so he could act all jealous and smarmy put me back in the Pete-as-asshole camp― a strange man (mh), Wednesday, May 21, 2014 2:47 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― a strange man (mh), Wednesday, May 21, 2014 2:47 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
this is completely consistent w/ pete's character over the seasons.
i still have mixed feelings about this show, i feel like all the portentousness and critic-bait (like obvious, "meaningful" repeated motifs, bombastic episode closings) is just getting worse but from scene to scene or moment to moment the show is still capable of cagey little observations/revelations of character that are deeply pleasurable. reading the commentaries on each episode the next day make me hate the show, because all the speculation as to "what was this episode about?" or "what is this season about?" just recapitulate the worst tendencies of film criticism.
personally i feel like this show could actually be one of the best on TV ever _if_ it stopped trying to be one of the best on TV ever. there's a level of self-consciousness, of playing to the critics, that makes it just as annoying as it is great. but my idea of great TV is "taxi," so YMMV.
― display name changed. (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:13 (ten years ago) link
i really think they just need to cut off the betty character, I guess they can't at this point but what a waste of time her subplots are.
stan is the most entertaining character on the show not to really have had his own subplot. even ginsberg had a few scenes to himself (or with his dad, etc.).
― display name changed. (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:14 (ten years ago) link
all we know about stan is his moshe dayan poster.
I'm totally cool with Stan remaining a mystery.
― Johnny Fever, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:18 (ten years ago) link
i still have mixed feelings about this show, i feel like all the portentousness and critic-bait (like obvious, "meaningful" repeated motifs, bombastic episode closings) is just getting worse but from scene to scene or moment to moment the show is still capable of cagey little observations/revelations of character that are deeply pleasurable
Agreed, although this season is an improvement (he season after Draper married Megan taht opened with his reading Dante on the beach almsot made me hurl the remote at the TV). What's left are less offensive portentous bits like the women's-lib/Friedan dialogue with which Betty is saddled.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:20 (ten years ago) link
yeah, i'm fine w/ it too, just interesting that the writers haven't chosen to do anything with him plotwise even though they've slowly made him into something like a rounded character.
― display name changed. (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:20 (ten years ago) link
xpost
I like that Stan has stayed on the outside. He has his own life, girlfriends, whatever, and his job is just his job. So he gets to be perpetually amused by all the drama without being part of it.
― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:21 (ten years ago) link
amateurist are you saying the show feigns at meaning but isn't meaningful or that it's meaningful but clumsily so or that it should avoid an aesthetic of meaningfulness altogether.
― ryan, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:22 (ten years ago) link
for me the show is at its worst when it shows what its most ardent fans believe about it.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:24 (ten years ago) link
like, when it succumbs to fan expectations about how Deep and Meaningful it is.
Some of you people (won't name names) prob shouldn't be watching this show
― famous instagram God (waterface), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:25 (ten years ago) link
He's probably said this before, but when Weiner was on Colbert Report last night he said it was a story about the sixties that's not about or for boomers, but people on either side of that generation to observe without rose colored glasses. Narrative detours aside, I think he's done a pretty good job of doing that over the course of seven seasons. Nothing about Mad Men is sentimental. (It's not a documentary either, but y'know...it does a good job of stripping away the reverence often associated with the decade.)
― Johnny Fever, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:29 (ten years ago) link
so glad the boomers' parents finally have a show about the 60s to watch oh wait
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:30 (ten years ago) link
I guess they could be watching it in hell
Pete's behaviour is consistent with a lot of men's characters at the time. But OTOH my mother went APESHIT when my dad introduced us to his new (unconnected to the split) GF before their divorce was final, and that was in 1982.
Having gone through parents' separation/divorce in the mid-late '70s, I can remember some married mothers not allowing their kids to play with kids whose parents were divorced. Does anyone else remember people being like that? The woman in our neighbourhood who tried this shit was, in fact, born illegitimate and according to my mother, who was her friend when both were kids, totally ostracised through most of the '50s by other girls' mothers as a result.
― baked beings on toast (suzy), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:32 (ten years ago) link
some girls mothers are meaner than
― famous instagram God (waterface), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:32 (ten years ago) link
it's just portentous. it means to Mean Something, but it often telegraphs that too obviously, and too narrowly, in a way that ultimately diminishes the episode's interest (to me, anyway).
. or rather, it's pitched in a way that's both coy (in that the meaning isn't explicitly recited by a character) but also rather obvious (in that you'd have to not be paying attention at all to miss it). in that way the episodes often seem constructed specifically more those critics who post lengthy exegeses the day after the show airs. they can pat themselves on the back for having recognized the implicit meanings of the show without having to really think about it too much.
I generally abhor when people flatten art into fabricated Meanings ("Bergman's film is ultimately about how when one loses sight of God, God loses sight of us"), so it bothers me when films or TV shows seem to deliberately court that kind of thing.
which as I noted is hardly _all_ that mad Men does. there's a lot to compensate for it. but it's a problem shared by much if not all "quality television" these days.
xxposts
haha yeah boomer parents are now, what? between 75 and 95? that's probably not the demo AMC is seeking.
― display name changed. (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:32 (ten years ago) link
man the shots of Pete with his daughter were so bleak
I don't remember divorce having that kind of stigma, feel like I grew up around a lot of kids w divorced parents
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:33 (ten years ago) link
i mean in terms of that kind of implicit meaning being a key part of the show, Mad Men is very what-people-used-to-call-"middlebrow." which is not a bad thing!!!! but it does have its limitations.
― display name changed. (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:34 (ten years ago) link
more xposts
im not trying to debate this point with you or anything, i've just seen you bring this sort of formalist (my word) critique against the show (and other things) quite a lot. i want to understand it better.
i suppose the distinction you're getting at is that while a show set in the 60s is gonna be "about" the 60s in some meaningful sense it doesn't have to add a meta-layer of "this is about the 60s" if that makes any sense. i guess i just find that distinction hard to process!
― ryan, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:39 (ten years ago) link
I didn't mean to say Pete's behavior was inconsistent with his character! Only that I have been hoping he'd somehow evolved a little bit.
― a strange man (mh), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:39 (ten years ago) link
that 60s show
― a strange man (mh), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:40 (ten years ago) link
he has, he just can't be around Trudy
― famous instagram God (waterface), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:40 (ten years ago) link
basically the show (for me) is at its best when it concentrates on its characters at work; in action they best reveal themselves, the times, etc. Betty Draper auditioning for a draft of Diary of a Mad Housewife is bleh.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:41 (ten years ago) link
oh know, I wasn't arguing w/ you! i was just noting that although pete's been relatively nice lately, his behavior in that scene was consistent with what me know about him more generally.
further xpostsssss
there's nothing in my critique, ryan, that I would think of as "formalist." except perhaps the idea that meaning is just one part of an artwork, not the be-all and end-all. but I guess I'm talking less about that and more about how meaning is contained and revealed and constructed.
― display name changed. (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:41 (ten years ago) link
btw ryan i should come up w/ examples to illustrate what i'm trying to get at but i worry about misremembering or misdescribing something i haven't seen for months or years. i have a bad memory for details.
― display name changed. (amateurist), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:42 (ten years ago) link
Don't understand how anybody could think this.
― tsrobodo, Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:43 (ten years ago) link
ditto
― famous instagram God (waterface), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:43 (ten years ago) link
Betty is one of the best characters on this show and always has been
So let it be written. So let it be done.
― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:44 (ten years ago) link
lol
http://itself.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/living-in-the-prequel/
One last prequel: this half-season of Mad Men will be ending just as I’m temporarily pulling up roots — and it will come to full completion during the summer when I will have finished my probationary period at Shimer and will be wrapping up the devil book and my most major Agamben translation. This is especially appropriate given that the first season premiered on my birthday, during the summer when I was writing my first book.These are the kinds of echoes that, at a previous stage of my life, my parents might have cited as pointers to something like “God’s will.” They’ve given up on talking to me in those terms — mercifully, they don’t even tell me they’re praying for me, though I’m sure they are — and I like to think that I’ve given up on thinking in those terms as well, even unconsciously. It’s as though I’ve suspended the intentional fallacy for the story of my life: whatever meaning it has emerges contingently from the text itself. Recently Carol Levine wrote about the “literary” quality of Mad Men that keeps her coming back, even though much that she found appealling about the show has faded into the background, and it struck me that its “literary” quality is weirdly what makes it so deeply personal to me — it resonates deeply with the way I experience my own life.
These are the kinds of echoes that, at a previous stage of my life, my parents might have cited as pointers to something like “God’s will.” They’ve given up on talking to me in those terms — mercifully, they don’t even tell me they’re praying for me, though I’m sure they are — and I like to think that I’ve given up on thinking in those terms as well, even unconsciously. It’s as though I’ve suspended the intentional fallacy for the story of my life: whatever meaning it has emerges contingently from the text itself. Recently Carol Levine wrote about the “literary” quality of Mad Men that keeps her coming back, even though much that she found appealling about the show has faded into the background, and it struck me that its “literary” quality is weirdly what makes it so deeply personal to me — it resonates deeply with the way I experience my own life.
not sure i can understand ppl w/ a deep personal connection to mad men
let alone mad men broadcast schedules
― j., Wednesday, 21 May 2014 20:44 (ten years ago) link