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

that said if this is ken's swan song then god bless him, so happy they kept him around

I ain't worried about it! was simply commenting on how it could be perceived xp

I'm watching the encore and it is already playing better. reminds me sort of the s6 premiere "the doorway," which was also v hallucinatory and death-obsessed

Pretty detailed rundown, including the video of Nixon's Cambodia speech that plays on TV:

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/mad-men-severance-217550

I agree with both of you guys--yes, there's still lots of time, it's just that everything's magnified when it's a quasi-premiere instead of just another episode. Something I hadn't thought about and should have: after seven-and-a-half seasons of Mad Men and two of House of Cards on DVD, I was reminded of what a drag commercials are (ditto not being able to back up every time I didn't hear a line clearly).

yea I am taking full advantage of my cable box's DVR rewind thing to like check that I heard lines right

Roger's stache tho

From the AVC rundown: "Ken’s father-in-law is quite proud of himself for making a Pop-Tart."

I thought this was a brilliant joke. I lolled.

that Diana waitress was someone from a flashback though, right?

she really did look like someone

and I liked Peggy's date, it was super cute

that was Elizabeth Reaser, who has never been on the show before. good/underused actor tho

She's been on so many shows I honestly couldn't remember if Mad Men was one of them.

Yeah, I had to check.

Drunk Peggy is still the best.

(Post 13,000 Yay!)

I absolutely loved this - can't believe they never used Is That All There Is before. That last scene in the diner was just perfect - and the waitress's glazed look.

lol @ Leland Palmer's pop tarts

aw Peggy. Brian Krakow is all grown up!

Brian Krakow is in this? Fresh from iZombie!

During which I couldn't help hearing Jordan Catellano saying "Brain Krakow?" Cos zombies.

Nixon's Cambodia speech has been mentioned in almost everything I've read about last night's episode, and there is a subtle connection between that and Kenny's reemergence. If you accept Kenny's Chevrolet misadventures as a Vietnam metaphor--not my idea, obviously, but one that I've come to agree with--then him signing on with Dow just as he's about to walk away from it all and write parallels Nixon's own worsening entanglement in the war (while publicly pretending that he too is walking the country away from Vietnam). Between that and the allusion to the Weathermen bombing buildings, they did (glancingly, as always) capture some of the World Out There. (But no Manson--after all the theories about Megan, they skipped right past Manson.)

couldn't help but think from pete's "I may have to buy an office bldg, and then I have to be a landlord!" that he'd intersect w/ Robert durst (and prob be murdered)

Nixon's speech was April 30, 1970, so I guess that's where we are? I was trying to figure out how many months had passed in the interim.

moon landing was july '69 right?

yep, and it is now april 1970

generally each episode is divided by about a month but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if we started doing some serious time jumpin', like year to year. (that said, I also highly doubt that we're going to see decrepit don playing sad solitaire in a retirement home.)

I didn't quite understand what the waitress meant with the final lines, "not to lead you on but next time bring a date"? Did she simply mean "don't come here alone again so I don't do what I did the other night"?

also, I'm glad they didn't jump ahead to 1976 like they were claiming they were going to.

she was announcing that she wasn't playing a teasing game, she meant it

I thought it meant, "When I say this, I'm not looking for a threesome."

I remember hearing "Is That All There Is?" on the radio when I was a kid - early 80s - and being shocked that a song that dark and fucked-up could have been written back in the "old days."

Overall, I didn't really like this episode. Even the whole Kenny plot was just like something out of The Good Wife - "I used to work with you, but now I am your enemy!"

When I was rewatching the last couple of episodes of 7-a, noticed something I missed the first time: how Dawn called Shirley "Dawn" and vice versa. Could just be a silly thing they liked to do, or could be their way of ridiculing how, to everyone else in the office, they're essentially interchangeable. Also the clear contrast between Dawn--nurturing, go-along-to-get-along, hair done up like the Supremes--and the less accomodating Shirley. (However you want to phrase that--she's not exactly militant, but she points in that direction.)

Sterling's mustache is horrible

The writing for the Rachel-waitress tryst was muddy.

or could be their way of ridiculing how, to everyone else in the office, they're essentially interchangeable

this is how I took it. v funny little bit imo.

I remember hearing "Is That All There Is?" on the radio when I was a kid - early 80s - and being shocked that a song that dark and fucked-up could have been written back in the "old days."

Apparently the songwriter's wife wrote the lyrics, she was reading a lot of Thomas Mann at the time. True story.

The song was inspired by the 1896 story Disillusionment (Enttäuschung) by Thomas Mann. Jerry Leiber's wife Gaby Rodgers (née Gabrielle Rosenberg) was born in Germany, lived in the Netherlands. She escaped ahead of the Nazis, and settled in Hollywood where she had a brief film career in films noir. Gaby introduced Leiber to the works of Thomas Mann.[3] The narrator in Mann's story tells the same stories of when he was a child. A dramatic adaptation of Mann's story was recorded by Erik Bauserfeld and Bernard Mayes; it was broadcast on San Francisco radio station KPFA in 1964.[4]

One difference between the story and the song is that the narrator in Mann's story finally feels free when he sees the sea for the first time and laments for a sea without a horizon. Most of the words used in the song's chorus are taken verbatim from the narrator's words in Mann's story.

Coolest truth ever. (Though I kinda prefer the Tony Bennett version.)

Definitely more Goose than Rollie.

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/roger_zpsxqce9u4u.jpg http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/goose_zpss02v5byw.jpg http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/rollie_zps14sgw9lc.jpg

xxxp - very hallucinatory, yes! Especially the waitress scenes. Something very Lynchian about a lot of it- which coincidentally everyone thought was the case of the last episode I remember Ken in, where he dances.

Loved this though. It ramped up the sleaze as we go into the 70s. Good to be back.

haven't watched this yet but kinda surprised they skipped the last half of '69 and went straight to spring of '70

Don bought an authentic guitar for the first time in June of 69

I was very surprised--no Manson, no Woodstock, no Altamont, no My Lai (happened in '68, but the story didn't surface until Nov. '69). I always assumed that at least one or two of those would turn up.

yeah that was my instinct to

too

altho I guess Manson trial is still to come

Kent State still to come

did anyone beside the Stones, Hells Angels, the casualties, and the rock press care about Altamont? Serious question. I've asked music fans around at the time and they give me blank looks.

Don't know the answer to that. Over time, its symbolic significance (arbitrary thought that may be--it just kind of works well in that capacity) has spread to the general culture, but right when it happened, I don't know.

film didn't come out til December 1970

xp

I would expect few people would know about it if not for the film

Here's Ralph Gleason's Esquire story, August 1970:

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a6197/altamont-1969-aquarius-wept-0870/

1) Esquire wasn't the rock press
2) Ralph Gleason was

So that doesn't answer your question one way or the other.

Concert Security became more of a thing after Altamont.

agree about the Lynchian stuff, which has always been my favorite thing about this show. especially how it seems to be so subtle, refractions and bendings of a recognizable reality, as if the show aspires to a more standard soap opera but gets caught in some liminal dreamscape. good ep.

No shortage of stuff out there to read. I wasn't paying attention until I crash-coursed over the Christmas break--was there always this much analysis after every episode?

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/sarah-larson/mad-men-final-premiere-another-day-at-the-office

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2015/04/06/mad-men-and-the-radicalization-of-joan-holloway/

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/6/8354127/mad-men-severance-recap

P much

I'm with the New Yorker on one point: I want most everyone to end up happy. Even Pete, I guess.

pete's journey to self-knowledge is almost the (Shakespearean) comedic double to don's.