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

I liked Don and Peggy. Of course I wanted a confrontation between them, I always want the blatant exposition "Don, they don't trust me, you're undermining me!" but I'm glad they're not that obvious. When Peggy said "what would you do" and Don said "first I abuse the people's whose help I need", that was such a good line, cleared up years of baggage between the two. In one simple phrase Don acknowledges both how difficult a boss he was and how important she was, and how the rolls are reversed here and allowed it to be ok.

A bit soap-opera-y though, back to back with Joan's "I don't want a beard I want love!" and peggy's "what have I done wrong". Then Don's stark acknolwedgement "haven't done anything or have anybody). Both Don and Peggy did it their way, the only way they know how, and they're both unhappy and that's the series. I've been waiting all season for this because the history of the show has always seemed to be about Don and Peggy so for them to finally come back together in this context I think is getting us set-up for the final episodes.

Don peggy and pete definitely had a bit of that "get the band back together" vibe.

love this exchange:

Pete: "Don will give authority, you will give emotion."
Peggy: "Don has emotion. I have authority."

I saw the Don and Peggy dance scene as an answer to her question "what did I do wrong?" You fell in love with advertising/an image/an idealized projection as personified by Don (who, as pointed out, is also not happy).

The closing shot with the 50s nuclear family replaced by a corporate chain restaurant facsimile was amazing

I want the poster in Roger's room, does anyone know the name of it?

it's http://www.weidmangallery.com/cgi-local/poster_detail.cgi?i=2930

My God it's even more amazing up-close. I love the pixelated mouths. Humanity screaming into the future, Satan as salesman, the fires of hell engulfing all.

wow

Here's another of his, for Forbes. LOL at "Capitalist Tool" being the tagline!

http://p2.la-img.com/1021/23072/8125905_1_l.jpg

Seymour Chwast of Pushpin, which was cofounded by current Mad Men poster artist Milton Glaser.

Still with the Dante references...

Stan's beard is reaching Beach Boy proportions

I barely even remember this Stan

https://scontent-b-atl.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t1.0-9/10341578_10152103569422078_475685226318574831_n.jpg

was surprised by the reappearance of Bob but this was a great way to close out his character arc - that short early opening scene with Joan and her mom and Kevin telegraphed that something about her domestic situation was on the horizon and then when Bob showed up I immediately thought "oh no he's going to make a bid for Joan to be his beard", the whole actual scene of which was just heartbreaking to watch, so well done.

chwast is great btw, currently doing "Great book" adaptations in semi-comic form

also lol'd at I Am Curious Yellow ref

"Trust Megan to see a dirty movie!"

Grumpy Peggy owned.

Oh man, both those zooms were amazing. Got me misty-eyed, both of them. Don and Peggy believing in My Way. Don Peggy and Pete enjoying fake burger chef. So fantastic, so cynical (they know it's fake, we know it's fake, but it's still SO GOOD) so heartbreaking and -warming at the same time.

This is still the best show on tv right now/ever.

yeah my wife and I could not agree if this is better than the Sopranos or not (I'm reserving judgment to the end), the characterizations are so rich on this show, it's insane.

well, the trio in Burger Chef was like the Sopranos in the diner but no Journey, right?

I think the point of those respective scenes is a bit different. With the Sopranos the scene is supposed to be genuinely heartwarming, a family remembering "the good times" in a local neighborhood joint, the simple pleasures etc. Fucked up as they are, they really are a variation of the traditional American family unit that Peggy questions the existence of in Mad Men. Whereas with Mad Men the artificiality, the corporate facade, is made out to be more welcoming to these outcasts and losers who don't really have families at all, who are willing to settle for this shiny, plasticized version of a vague ideal that they have accepted as beyond their reach. I think in the latter there's kind of an obvious point being made that once the breakdown of the ideal 50s Eisenhower post-war nuclear family unit was complete, corporate America stepped in to fill the void, to replace it.

yeah I did get the who-can-tell-the-dancer-from-the-dance intention

of course there's tension and irony in the Sopranos scene too, since it's staged and shot like someone is about to get murdered. I don't think anyone's about to get murdered in the Burger Chef (unless Pete brought his rifle)

xp

Bob Benson stabs him to death in the Men's Room.

One of the best things about Mad Men is the complicated relationship it has with fakeness. Because Don and Peggy dancing to My Way is fake as fuck - and they aren't going to have mended all their dificulties next week - but still it was so real. I love Bob Benson proposing to Joan, because in a way he is completely wrong and insensitive towards her, but in another way he is right. She says that he should choose love, but there is still like, forty years until that would be possible. She wants for them both to have something real, but his realness is so much more difficult than hers, so it's not really a fair comparison.

The show refuses to choose pat answers, so it has to return to these questions over and over to further complicate/refine them. It really frustrates me that so many people confuse that with the show going in circles or something like that.

yeah the pain of that scene goes way deeper than "Joan is lonely" or "it was hard being gay in the 60s", not least because each of these people has been repeatedly rejected and humiliated and stifled in the cruelest ways

"Say what you will, but he's very loyal"

lol Don shilling for Harry after he got clued in

Swear Pete's girlfriend let rip with an unbleeped 'fuck' in this episode, first I've heard on Mad Men.

wasn't unbleeped

at least not in my recollection

They've had a couple. I think the first came from Roger when Pete (& Don) lost that defense account.

Was unbleeped on my torrented copy, I went back and checked.

it was bleeped on AMC, unbleeped on my torrented copy as well. i thought that was odd.

It was masked on itunes.

Bleeped on AMC where I am.

Masked on iTunes :/

masked on my dvr

Most of this show just washes over me lately but those last two scenes were pretty gold

Don & Peggy dancing didnt feel like a capitulation to me. It was both of them admitting exactly who and where they are & taking comfort in that. ...they just get to be real with each other one more time, like that night in the diner whenever it was a couple of seasons ago.

The new wrinkle is that this time around Don seems much smaller, Peggy bigger.

To me, anyway.

Bonnie's f-bomb goes uncensored on the Google Play version of the episode

xpost yeah it's the first time they've been able to talk to each other as equals, more or less.

Peggy stopped trying to assert herself in order to ask Don for help, Don admits that his life is a mess and that he's feeling insecure about everything.

last few eps have been great, this season at its peak has been as good as it's ever been.

i like how they faded My Way just as Frank was about to go into last verse crescendo mode.

since when were Megan and Peggy so happy to see each other? i sorta forgot they got along so well.

Didn't realise My Way was new in 69! I would've pegged it as at least a decade earlier somehow.

Not quite as big a hit as I'd have thought: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_singles_of_1969

So unusual for a male/female relationship (Don/Peggy) on TV to last this long without the show taking the easy way out.

Ron and Leslie on Parks & Rec is another really great platonic relationship.

It's not over yet.

Bob could still blow Don.

ha!

As much sex as Don has, he still seems fairly vanilla. He branched out a little bit with the neighbor lady last year, but he was probably less into than she was.

And he wasn't super into the idea of the threesome at Megan's place in Cali, but hey...hard to turn down if it's happening.

He's into being slapped