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

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

was kind of hoping they would go for a more obvious megan-turns-into-betty thing. would've been fun to watch.

i mean not, like, vertigo-level transformation. just... she becomes an embittered housewife who takes out the fact that any ambitions she might have had were dashed before they even rose fully to a conscious level on her family and others around her.

I got the feeling she was!

Note the efficiency with which she dispatched Draper's "niece." Even Betty might've been impressed.

yeah, that seemed like a nod.

Could never see Megan shooting a bird

was just scanning the death wish thread and maybe they should consider taking the show in that direction.

someone shop jon hamm into this

http://cf.badassdigest.com/_uploads/images/deathwishfinale.jpg

maybe Ginsberg comes back and murders everybody

with Pete's rifle

you know what they say about a rifle in the drawer in the first season...

...everyone forgets about it by season 7b.

when were the Manson murders in relation to where we are now in the timeline?

can't tell you, since we don't know when the last episode took place

Spanish. I think it's still late spring '69 on the show.

Soon-ish. Stupid phone.

Manson Family starts offing folks in May '69 tho fwiw

let me guess, a montage with numerous characters glued to their TV sets

David Crosby and Stephen Stills show up at Megan's brandishing guns and telling her, "They're killing everyone with estates!"

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Not-1983/dp/0571119603/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1387266627&sr=1-1&keywords=not+1983

http://uproxx.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/madmen-emmy-poster-pete.jpg

more pretty incredible Emmy 'For Your Consideration' ads right here

http://uproxx.com/tv/2014/05/mad-men-just-launched-a-vintage-for-your-consideration-emmy-campaign-that-would-make-don-draper-proud/

no-one seems to have mentioned that the guy Megan was dancing with looked a bit like Manson so i'm guessing that means it definitely wasn't meant to be him.

no, that was dennis wilson

yeah Manson is tiny. that dude was not tiny

a montage with numerous characters glued to their TV sets

they've never done this iirc?

btw did kiernan shipka's voice drop six octaves between season 6 and season 7? or even between the last episode and several episodes before it?

http://i.imgur.com/mVM83nF.jpg

haha okay that does seem intentional

or even between the last episode and several episodes before it?

This, I think.

Part of me hopes Weiner totally skips the moon landing between 7a and 7b.

i guess this makes don draper roman polanski

xxpost

I hope there's an episode where we learn how Ken is dealing with one-eyed life

xxp yeah i totally hope he just skips the moon landing.

more kinda fascinating/ kinda lol Manson connection stuff here
http://uproxx.com/tv/2014/05/matthew-weiner-is-still-trolling-mad-men-theorists-with-even-more-charles-manson-allusions/

to wit:

In last night’s episode, we also see that Stephanie is 7 months pregnant, and she mentions to Megan that the father is a musician she met in the Bay Area who spent some time in jail. This describes Charles Manson (a musician who lived in the Bay Area who was arrested in 1968 for possession) perfectly. This doesn’t fit the timeline exactly, but interestingly, Charles Manson did rape and impregnate a woman in 1967.

They need to end an ep with "Never Learn Not To Love".

I kinda doubt Dennis' estate would let that happen...? altho I dunno who owns the rights to that one exactly.

"You shouldn't be with a woman."

"A clean well-lighted place"

http://www.mrbauld.com/hemclean.html

Even though Pete Campbell is gross, I did get a nice feeling with the three of them sitting at a table together.