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

enduring this entire show was worth it just for "not good, Bob"

Yes, that's true of Roger. I'll amend that to say that I think he'd be successful anyway, because--well, because I like him.

https://themindlessphilosopher.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/not-great-bob.gif?w=300&h=164

Roger did say at some point that Pete was keeping accounts, so he was good for the company despite disliking him a lot. Pete basically said his own job was ass kissing clients and you do see him being more careful with them than some of the other guys are willing to be.

Realistic, good actor or not, I love him without reservation. He's my favourite character in the show by a long way.

Like, I'm actually going to miss Pete when this is over and I really hope I see Kartheiser in good stuff after this.

lookit this lovable douchebag

http://media.giphy.com/media/tBb19fjelFEnjSHfkNq/giphy.gif

Love it so much.

http://media.giphy.com/media/KXD1pSzGb3Khi/giphy.gif

I was trying to think if there's an obvious Sydney Falco (Sweet Smell of Success) character in Mad Men--they've got certain affinities; when Pete explained to Megan's father what an ad man does, he was a lot like Sydney explaining what a press agent does--but Sydney's probably distributed among a few characters, Pete being one of them.

oral history

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/mad-men-uncensored-epic-never-780101

ooh nice.

I still haven't cleared the time to read the Facts of Life one.

love these kinds of things, so many lol quotes

It's super slow, it's about advertising, everybody smokes, everybody's unlikable and it's period

When AMC plays new episodes, do they repeat them later that night, or at least at some point during the week? I bought a film ticket for the documentary festival on May 3 at 9:00, completely forgetting about Mad Men. (It literally hasn't been since Twin Peaks or Larry Sanders when I made it a point to watch a network TV show at a designated time.) That'll be about halfway into the concluding shows, and I won't even consider watching them out of order; if AMC doesn't play repeats, I'll have to suspend watching till the DVDs come out. Although I guess it's on torrent sites immediately? My brother-in-law could get it for me that way.

I can't imagine tv viewing without a dvr anymore.

they repeat it multiple times the night of airing and at least once directly before the new episode, or at least that's what AMC does with every single one of their other shows.

They repeat them all through the week, I think. Also you could always buy that individual episode via a streaming service (Amazon or whatever Canada has instead of Amazon for buying Mad Men).

Yeah I have always watched Mad Men via Amazon.

Thanks, that's what I was hoping (about the repeats). Forgot about streaming, but hopefully that won't be necessary. I'm sure this all must seem laughably antiquated...I watch so little TV, I haven't had to consider these things. Now that I'm starting to catch up on some shows, I may have to.

season 7a has just been added to Netflix, Facebook informs me.

pro and con analysis (not endorsing as i've only seen the first eight eps)

It’s one thing, it turns out, to ask those responsible for the texture of fictional TV worlds to re-create the 1960s, quite another to get them to take that re-creation and make it scruffier, meaner, more disappointing, more real; to accept that while the ideal 1964 might contain artefacts and costumes from 1964 alone, the perfectly real 1964 would be packed with the fashions of 1963 and 1962 and the distressed remnants of the purchases of the 1950s; to accept that banal interiors, clashing colours, tawdry novelties and dull messiness are also ideals in their way, ideals whose incorporation into costume drama might deter the viewer’s suspicion that the designers of Mad Men are answering a bigger share of the question ‘Why am I watching this?’ than the writers would like....

The writers of Mad Men consistently smother racial and gay storylines. They’ll start them, but they won’t follow through. The ugliness, mean-mindedness and contemptuousness of the things people say in private about groups they feel allowed to hate, the epithets, the jokes, the vicious folk legends – they’re not here. Mad Men’s enactments of past racial prejudice and homophobia are more vinegar than acid, and when they have power, they peter out.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n07/james-meek/the-shock-of-the-pretty

The ugliness, mean-mindedness and contemptuousness of the things people say in private about groups they feel allowed to hate, the epithets, the jokes, the vicious folk legends – they’re not here.

all I have to say is "blackface"

Towards the middle, in and around Civil Rights legislation, I think the show is very good on the kind of polite-but-cutting racism that I imagine was the norm at places such as Sterling-Cooper. Things like the water balloon from the window, or Bert's alarm when they put Dawn in the front lobby. And the show doesn't let Draper off the hook; when tasteless jokes are made behind closed doors, he usually laughs along with everybody else.

They didn't really dodge anything with Sal Romano's story; they just, unfortunately, abandoned it. (Even though it's been made clear he'll never return, I still hold out hope he'll turn up in the spring.)

Don's politics are entertainingly inscrutable - he'll privately acknowledge that the Vietnam war is wrong or that certain racist or sexist practices are wrong, but then in practice/public he'll happily go along with/profit from these very things. standard white American male hypocrisy/denial I suppose...

#ad exec

after all, in one of the s1 beatnik episodes he sez "There is no system. The universe is indifferent."

(count me in on thinking, at least at first blush, the literal hidden identity is too leaden a metaphor, and a gothic touch that doesn't belong on this show)

I've never cared for the secret identity either. He's better as a cipher than as a Gatsby type who recreated himself.

and yet there is a good joke by one of the Campbell Mafia: "no one knows Draper; that guy could be Batman." Well, he is! In a grey flannel suit.

I like the secret identity mainly because the Dick/Anna scenes are really nice and peaceful (for the most part). I think their relationship is one of the most moving parts of the show.

He's better as a cipher than as a Gatsby type who recreated himself.

the latter is kinda of required for the former to work tho

I like secret identity shit generally, and I think in MM's case it serves as a nicely melodramatic counterpoint to the more placid and subtle plot threads.

by which I mean his being a cipher to a lot of other people - his family, his coworkers etc. - requires that he be hiding something critical/never discusses his past etc. But that kind of secrecy wouldn't make sense if it was extended to the audience, as that would be exceedingly difficult to maintain for the main character of a show

xp

but I know quite a few ciphers who aren't blessed with secret pasts. They're bores and prigs whose aim is to be as conventional as possible.

He could have a different secret that the audience DOESN'T know about! omg.

Robert Morse will do a Q&A for How to Succeed at this Brooklyn mini-MM/film fest next month; Weiner will appear at the other two.

http://www.bam.org/film/2015/mad-men-at-the-movies

How to Succeed was such a smash on Broadway, btw, that Jack and Jackie went to see it.

Some of the best lines in season 1 are throwaways or scene-enders, like when Pete and Trudy are cabbing to their new Park Ave apartment, and after being all chirpy she frowns out the window and blurts, "The Armory... When are they going to tear that dinosaur down?"

(It's still there, amazingly.)

That was a great article.

pretty good read on Pete in it.

AV Club week. I dunno if i can take those plaids.

http://www.avclub.com/article/its-mad-men-week-v-club-217224

Saw the Mad Men exhibit at Museum of Moving Image yesterday. Never seen that place so crowded. They were also showing the Godfather and some No Wave Movies, I figure one of those may have contributed to the crowds.

Still, some surprisingly fun stuff for a fan.

I was at the 6pm No Wave movies, struggling to stay awake.

Despite having music supervised the movie Blank City, (and designed the poster/DVD artwork) and having a history of working with the music side of no wave, I have not made it through many of the actual no wave movies.

Young Willem Dafoe is very beautiful in The Loveless. Sort of a '50s fetish object (but none of it was shot in NYC, i don't think).

man i wish some of that museum stuff would come to the UK. mind you hardly anyone gives a stuff about the show here.

That's not entirely true...

Weiner on MM and the Jews:

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/30/matthew_weiner_on_mad_men_and_the_jewish_experience_it%E2%80%99s_the_same_story_as_don%E2%80%99s_identity/

the Rachel Menken character was really well drawn and acted btw

Despite having music supervised the movie Blank City, (and designed the poster/DVD artwork) and having a history of working with the music side of no wave, I have not made it through many of the actual no wave movies.

Oh cool! Loved that documentary a lot - and admittedly, most of the no wave movies I've seen were only because they were playing in the background at the old Amok Books in the 80s.

thanks!