MAD MEN on AMC - Seasons 7(a) & & 7(b)

... one man ...

Can I be a pedantic print geek and suggest that it looks like that invitation is letterpress printed, which is currently the trend and no doubt a fine way to present yourself (Sheffield Product) but back then for people like that, and even now, I'd think it would be much more likely to be engraved.

it's like kennedy's braaaaains before yr wedding day
a free riiide in a rusted chevrolet

I keep (apparently mis)remembering Megan having told Don to fuck off for good, but it seems not.

Like every time I see them being all lovely I'm like 'surely this marriage ended a few episodes ago'.

I keep (apparently mis)remembering Megan having told Don to fuck off for good, but it seems not.

She did exactly that, but he kept calling and after a while she started not hanging up and then began listening to him talk and then started responding. I think the show has left it up to the viewer to connect the dots, because there wasn't any pivotal "Okay, I'll you back, shitty husband I love!" scene.

after months of thinking i was kinda over this show i just sessioned the last five episodes over the course of this evening so i guess i still like it. it's both quite comforting and increasingly disorientingly odd. poor ginsberg, a presumably permanent disappearance even less dignified than that of sal.

also i had a mild mad men quip retweeted by molly lambert and my notifications went craaazy for a few minutes, dunno how people with lots of followers who produce actual good tweets can keep up with the twitter experience.

Yeah, he's gone. He's got a show in the fall. On NBC. So...he may be back.

I like how this show is structured, how characters kind of flitter in and out of the story. But it's been very disorienting to follow and I think binge watching may end up being the best way to see the show when all is said and done.

Though watching it as they slow-drip out the last season it pretty fun. Each episode is like an episode of musical chairs.

i want a spinoff buddy comedy starring the computer and ginsberg's nipple.

Good catch w the IBM/holocaust connection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

In other news, Bob Benson's show w/Buffy & Popeye got cancelled, so he could return w/coffee, Vegas, Pete awkwardness etc.

Although I have enjoyed him as an unseen presence this season.

i'm wondering if the split-season was planned before the writing. if so maybe there'll be a cliffhanger.

anyone know the significance of the 'New York Film Festival 1964' poster on Peggy's office wall?

a token of handjobs of yore

saul bass design, presumably a tip to the master

and there's an xp for you

hahaha i'm imagining a vo on tcm: 'nobody could give a handjob like saul bass' *clip from the man w/ the golden arm plays*

Poor Ginsberg. He had always seemed so sliiightly-fragile, the computer was all he needed to collapse totally :(. The homosexuality stuff was weird/sad too

As soon as he held out that box i knew it was a body part. tbh this is awful but I fully expected him to suicide after leaving Peggy's

Geez, if I were Ginsberg I'd go publicly insane too -- considering how little he has been given to do these past couple seasons in favor of a bunch of tedious bland characters, when Ginsberg is clearly one of the best characters on this show

Man, the scenes with Megan+Stephanie were like watching a fucking bad acting competition. Could Stephanie sound more stiff and square spouting all of that "far-out, man" dialogue? Could not wait for those scenes to end.

She's even worse in Arrow, if you can believe it.

People watch Arrow?

nah

i don't get all this talk about they handle the 'counter culture'; the Roger/ LSD bit was amazing.

*how

I thought the stiffness was kinda the point. not sure anyone sounds natural saying that stuff, it's a pretty transparent affectation--and I imagine it was in 69 too. oh well, discussing acting is sort of a bottomless hole.

also how awkward the encounter was in general, like they should be a little stiff given the circumstances

motherfucker shows up in a doublebreasted suit, starts peeling potatoes, shit gets weird

yeah just like January Jones' terrible acting is now at the service of an increasingly forlorn and helpless woman.

She's a great actress

to play Betty Draper--I can't imagine anyone else playing her

Her weaknesses are well exploited.

http://37.media.tumblr.com/3870bf5f8f63561c1be983defe62a3c5/tumblr_n5hcqge6BT1r6epwko1_250.gif
http://24.media.tumblr.com/7a77095dba86a74eea2598d4184e0241/tumblr_n5hcqge6BT1r6epwko2_250.gif

http://media.tumblr.com/b6ba19f39516f0af78dc672ddd43843c/tumblr_inline_mq8semIPCg1qz4rgp.gif

sweet rundown of the 2001 stuff. with pictures! http://uproxx.com/tv/2014/05/these-gifs-showing-the-parallels-between-mad-men-and-2001-a-space-odyssey-are-neat-as-hell/

the lip-reading shot was pretty inspired

tbh i think january jones is pretty terrible by the standards of super-successful actresses. betty seems to be one person in one scene, another person in another scene. jones seems to struggle to play anything but the surface of the scene, unless there's a close-up pointedly designed to signal some kind of prevarication. but when she plays out a section of a scene in a longer two-shot or master shot (that is, when she has to interact in the frame w/ other actors), she's seldom inspired.

i think the character of megan is just kind of underwritten.

also everything else i've seen january jones in (which isn't much) she's kind of a void.

i should add that one a show this long-running every actor is going to have good days and bad days. although I can scarcely think of any episode where John Slattery isn't in top form.

yeah, the cast in this in general is really high quality. Hamm always brings it. Hendricks, Kartheiser, Morse, these guys deliver in every scene imo.

she's a fucking monster

JJ

kartheiser doesn't really create a character that makes much sense in realist terms (or at least, he plays his dubiousness much closer to the surface than any functioning person would), but in its coherence and LOLness it works for me.

with january jones i feel like betty as this screenwriters' conceit is just bared every episode b/c jones doesn't have the chops to integrate the different facets of betty in a way that feels like it has an overarching coherence. i could see playing a sociopath like that but that's hardly what they intend betty to be.

She and Megan lately talk in thesis-paragraph mode, but the actress playing Megan can pull it off thanks to her insouciance.

JJ is serviceable portraying Betty as an adult child, and you can see the brittle chilliness that is going to atrophy as she gets older but yeah I think she's one of the weaker links in the cast.

don't like Megan at all, looking forward to her getting killed off

Megan seems to exist for obvious plot mechanics reasons (need someone to relate Don directly to 60s wacky cultural upheaval, and that certainly wasn't going to be Betty, and the opportunities were limited with Sally due to her age), but she's not compelling as a character

The actor that plays Megan is way way way worse than the actor that plays Betty Draper