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

Really liked how the moon landing was handled, and how genuinely caring and supportive Don was with Peggy as he guided her through Burger King. (Great line that broke through the tension between them: that when he's stuck, he mistreats everyone he needs, then takes a nap. Peggy smiled.) Scrolling back, I seem to be a minority of one on the ending--didn't like it at all. I wish Bert's exit had been his beautiful "Bravo" instead. I'll give it credit for completely confounding expectations, but I didn't want to go out on cute or whimsical or whatever it was they were after.

I have a crush on goofy Meredith. She reminds me of Lucy from Twin Peaks.

Amazing to see Robert Towne's name in the credits.

So....bob benson had pete's mom murdered, right?

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would really love for bob benson to come back in 7b

I was looking at some stuff on imdb earlier today, and I noticed Ginsberg is listed in the credits for the 7(b) premiere.

Seriously guys - in the penultimate s6 episode, right after Pete's initial confrontation w Bob and immediately after Pete finds out he's a fake, Bob is angrily yelling (in Spanish) into a phone, "i don't care how nice she is! He's messing w my future!" In the next scene pete's mom unexpectedly shows up in the office to announce that she is leaving on a cruise w manolo. Next ep = she's dead.

That detour with Lou's comic-strip was excellent. Stan's "You?" reminded me of a similar moment in The Social Network, where Sean Parker says "You know what's cool?" and Eduardo pulled out the same "You?"

my lai, altamont, woodstock, nattering nabobs
― set the controls for the heart of the sun (VegemiteGrrl)

Yes--and, as pointed out, Manson and the Mets. I don't know the exact timeline, but I would have thought Stonewall would have turned up. (Someone suggested Bob bailing out the exec covered that. Maybe--I thought a radicalized Sal would reappear. Eric or somebody said on one of these threads that Sal's life would never have intersected with Stonewall. But didn't Harvey Milk emerge from a Mad Men-type background?) Chappaquidick, maybe, in passing anyway? (I liked when Don was staring at the JFK-assassination headline among the things Megan was taking out of storage.) If things move into '70 (do they? I don't know), Kent State, obviously.

Trying to guess music, too. "Crimson and Clover," I hope, although they've tended to avoid the obvious. So much great Sunshine Pop from '69: "Dizzy," "Smile a Little Smile for Me," something weird like the Free Design. I'd love for "Everybody Is a Star" or "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" to turn up. They could go anywhere. I just hope they retire the '50s and show tunes and such for good.

They've said repeatedly that sal's story was done

Didn't know that. Don't know why--they've brought back so many characters, and his would seem to be one story that was just getting started.

I agree (so do a lot of other folks evidently) but thats the way it is

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/dr/hln/www/release/sites/default/files/static/images/sterlingcoopergifs.gif

can we have a thread for mad men gifs? not that i don't want to see them in these threads - i would just love to have a bunch of them collected in one place

FYI for anyone who hasn't seen it

http://madmenwiththingsdrawnonthem.tumblr.com/archive

I just hope they retire the '50s and show tunes and such for good.

I actually love that stuff like this still crops up on the show, since not everyone in the '60s was listening to the music we now associate with the '60s.

Yeah, I kinda don't see Cutler or Lou checking out what's going down over at the Fillmore or Max's Kansas City (which reminds me that if that get to the Summer of '70, who from the agency is going to attend the Velvet's residency?)

I didn't really piece that together about Bob Benson. I thought it was just going to be an inexplicable weird thing that happened and Bob appeared increasingly sympathetic so I kind or forgotten about him possibly being a bad guy.

I'm hopeful about Ginsberg getting another bit because I thought that would have been a shitty way to end his character's part with him just taken away and nothing more. I hope that's developed just a tad more because I thought it was not the best development for such a good character.

I looked harder at the imdb cast list for the upcoming "Episode 7.8" (I just looked at Ben Feldman yesterday to see he was credited), and they actually list the whole main cast, including Robert Morse, for that episode alongside an unbilled actress playing a "model". So salt grains. I do hope they pull a "Breaking Bad" of sorts and bring back a few absent characters for a last check in.

I liked the '50s candlelight-and-wine stuff through the first three or four seasons, but there's so much pop music I want them to work in, I find most anything else a disappointment now. (I liked Waylon Jennings in season 7, though--unfamiliar, had to look it up.)

I was thinking, though, triggered by Don and Peggy dancing to "My Way"--nice scene, lousy song--that they missed the one Sinatra song that was made to order: "It Was a Very Good Year." I think that's an incredible song: middle-aged guy adrift in 1965, nostalgic over a disappearing world. When Peggy laughs at their Burger King work and calls it out for being so 1955, Don says "Hey, 1955 was a good year." That song captures Don perfectly--Roger, too, LSD and group-gropes aside. (Was also thinking that they already had their quasi-Chappaquidick episode a few years before the fact: Don and Bobbie Barrett's car accident.)

I don't wanna ruin anything but I find Ginsberg's arc possibly the most depressing of all in a show with quite a few depressing character arcs

I've probably forgotten someone, but I'd put him in the top three right now with Midge and Faye. (Many would say Lane. You did get to see him happy a lot.) Faye's end seemed especially cruel to me.

Apparantly, Matt Weiner said years ago that he felt it was very important that when we get to 1969 something like My Way could still be one of the biggest hits of the year. It's an incredible scene, for sure.

I would say that girl who got lobotomized would be the worst fate.

And presumably stayed with her asshole husband. I even felt really bad for Pete.

Apparantly, Matt Weiner said years ago that he felt it was very important that when we get to 1969 something like My Way could still be one of the biggest hits of the year.

1969 is interesting that way. Somewhere I have a Life magazine column from that year wherein one of their Pop critics takes down "The Self-Love Song"*--crooners having hits with songs like "My Way", "I Gotta Be Me", and "I Take A Lot Pride In What I Am". It's kind of the last gasp for that type of old school Pop music. Sinatra would go into temp retirement the next year, while others like Dean Martin and Bing Crosby gradually moved away from recording, and Streisand started recording more Contemporary Pop.

*http://www.quickmeme.com/img/27/279af1e2564b709adc8adb7bf4c2df3605906c143c472dd1df3b0027af5dacb0.jpg

It Was A Very Good Year was used prominently in The Sopranos, maybe that put them off using it in Mad Men.

yeah i was gonna say. that song is as associated with The Sopranos now as Be My Baby is with Mean Streets. or sumthin.

That makes sense. (Plan to get to The Sopranos one day.) I associate it with The Simpsons!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA7p5VwAXk0

Jared Harris returns to direct!? http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0364813/

I watched so much in such a short space of time--seven-and-a-half seasons in a month--that I'm wondering if everything will seem a little artificial after a few months away. You really enter the show's world when you immerse yourself like that; that's good, but I expect that the break and the experience of watching it week to week rather than three or four episodes at a time will feel very different.

I think there is a growing consensus that these shows are better experienced in large chunks instead of weekly. I've heard that some streaming services release a whole season in one go, for the exclusive shows they own.

Something I knew but had forgotten (from Joshua Glasser's The Eighteen-Day Running Mate):

"Haldeman had begun his career at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, working his way up to become a vice president in the firm's Los Angeles office, where he oversaw the accounts of 7-Up and Walt Disney Productions."

In trying to figure out where all of this is headed, I don't think the show ends with the intimation that Don (or maybe Pete) is leaving advertising to pursue a career as a political hatchet-man, maybe even Nixon's hatchet-man specifically. (Besides which, Haldeman had been working informally for Nixon as far back as '62, and joined up full-time in '68.) But that part did catch my attention.

Pretty interesting:

http://www.glamour.com/entertainment/blogs/obsessed/2014/05/mad-men-season-7-episode-4

(I love the writer's description of herself: "Entertainment writer. I love talking about TV so much, you'll eventually back slowly away from me at a party.")

NY area fanatics may want to get to Queens this spring

We are thrilled to announce Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men, our new exhibition opening on March 14. On March 20, we will also be hosting An Evening with Matthew Weiner.

http://www.movingimage.us/exhibitions/2015/03/14/detail/matthew-weiners-mad-men/

http://www.movingimage.us/films/2015/03/14/detail/required-viewing-mad-mens-movie-influences/

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This brief little bit of Pete in the new teaser trailer is cracking me up.

XP Good to see The Bachelor Party in that lineup. They've borrowed loads from that one.

Pic of Pete is so schmaltzy

My only regret that Mad Men isn't going on indefinitely is that we will never get to see the further erosion of Pete's hairline.

I wonder at what point would he opt for a toupee?

sometime in 1974

Maybe two years ago I heard that the final season of Mad Men was going to be set in the 90s played by different (3 decades older) actors as the same characters. I thought that was a brilliant idea.
Was this just a rumour or was this something that writers were actually considering?

There's basically no chance at all that was ever a real option.

lol @ Don living three more decades

feel slightly conflicted w/ this ending in the 70s. especially since some media outlets are reporting it'll actually jump to the mid 70s.

mad men for me is very specific in its 60s allure, associating it with another decade, especially for its finale will be an interesting feat.

They should do the China Beach thing and have the final episodes take place in multiple eras...or not.

Fun Fact: John Slattery played a Sterling-esque doctor in the series finale of China Beach.

they should create a spinoff for Pete a la 'Better Call Saul'

Pete to the Beat (disco era)

surely this 'leap forward to the mid 70s' thing is just your PR hype story? no way the actors can look suddenly 5 years older?? i mean i'm all for it i.. guess. no way Sally's gonna look 20 or whatever.

There's this wonderful called Makeup...

*squints* hmm

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