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

also i often feel like the writers of mad men are kind of too engaged in shadowboxing with expectations, and thus the show increasingly feels like it's being written as a series of knight's moves. a conscious resisting of expectation, but in an equally consciously unpredictable way. i think that was refreshing for a long time but--and maybe this is just the burden i'm bringing to it as a particular viewer, who knows--leaves the show feeling like its run out of narrative gas and is coasting on its (typically impressive) feel for surface texture, dialogue, etc.

feel/feels/feeling blergh

weasel words!

it's never really had much narrative gas.

I agree, it's why I've never really cared whether they write a 'good ending' or not. Like if Don or anybody else dies it hardly matters, and would probably be less interesting than if they just take the characters as far in time as the remaining episodes permit without seeming jarring.

rooting for a St Elsewhere ending

whole thing took place on a television show

Don, Pete, Peggy, Roger, and Joan in a jail cell.

Roger: "Now, that top button--I don't get that at all."
Joan: "Haven't we had this conversation already?"

Don flying off in a helicopter, looks out the window to see Peggy speeding around on Honda bike, the words "You won't believe how much this didn't happen" written on the ground.

I wouldn't mind Draper's glacial pace at all if he didn't get so much screen time. Weiner said several seasons ago that Hamm had similar concerns.
My ancient fan fiction ending (although now I think DD's too introverted for this);
Anna's niece gets busted bad, pressured to flip on somebody. She chooses Don, telling herself that his identity theft/desertion was so long ago, it won't be that big a deal. But J. Edgar or somebody else up there doesn't like him, wants to discredit the renegade Mad Man who flipped off patriotic Big Tobacco in that op=ad. Yadda yadda, he comes out of the slammer, goes to Cali and re-invents himself in the Human Potential Movement of the early 70s, like used car salesman Jack Rosenberg became Werner Erhard, founder of EST. (Maybe last scene: he's holding forth in a geodesic dome, with Peggy and her new hubby as his assistants)
Does that seem too Happily Ever After? Wouldn't have to be---this is from the early 80s:
http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20088728,00.html

Loved this episode. I even got my wish for more Ken.

Brian Krakow is all grown up!

waow!

"She's a very sexy lady!"

"I thought you were queer.'

The parting glance over the shoulder at Betty with the kids and their chocolate shakes struck me as obvious.

...a lot of things in this one have been obvious

Megan's family is not amusing and it's played like screwball on 'lude speed.

that sucked

Nice to see Moshe Dayan again.

Not so nice to see more Elizabeth Reaser, ughhhhh.

hopefully that's the end of it

Very odd. I'm baffled that Sally hasn't been in either of the first two. I'm not enjoying watching it on AMC at all (as opposed to DVD)--AMC has a really ugly look to it. And it was much better when, after a mediocre episode, I could just move on to the next one.

Meredith's reference to "the Manson brothers" might have been the only really good line in the episode. She seems to have had a premonition of the Hanson brothers from Slap Shot, still a few years away.

Still not used to the idea of Julia Ormond being old enough to play mom roles.

I didn't rewatch the first half of S7 before the new eps started, so maybe I'm not remembering the Don/Megan relationship going sour. I thought they were on amicable terms? And why was Marie so extremely vindictive towards him?

The transition there has indeed been clunky. They are amicable at the end of 7-a; the end comes over the phone, and it's sort of sad and sweet.

I didn't know the song over the end credits tonight, but enough. It's 1970--the statute of limitation on that kind of thing is long past now.

I'm an unabashed megan draper partisan and am hella bummed by this

"i'll pull my sleeves up and throw my tie over my shirt, they'll love it"
"they probably will!"

could watch a whole episode of don and pete golfing.

Yeah, I felt cheated that nothing came of that besides a humdrum conversation in Pete's car.

Oh yeah, in case anyone forgot, Harry Crane is THE WORST.

stan & pima oh hell yes

pima + peggy :D

MIMI ROGERS!!!!!

...and 20 seconds of Sylvia in the elevator!

this was a good, entertaining ep, and I still would've prob traded all of it for 40 mins of don & pete golfing

Harry = human garbage. Don't know if I needed to see Don & Pete golfing, but seeing Roger and Megan's mom together again was great, and Mimi Rogers hitting on Peggy was hilarious, especially when Peggy tossed it at Stan at the end. "I don't believe you." "Which part?"

It seemed better by comparison with the previous ep (low bar), especially the way obvious bits, like what Hanna Rosin called "the Raymond Carveresque air of realist unreality" re Diana The Waitress led to her mention of the one daughter who didn't die--and she stops just short of describing that daughter in the present tense, in way that led me over the brink of weighty narrative, her Avon shampoo bought in the living room of her ranch-style house-is-not-a-home-with-the-two-car-garage, where she once maybe thought everything might work out etc etc--to the implication that it's not just the death of one daughter she can't live with (or without, since she discovers that Don is a drug she doesn't deserve, taking her mind off her guilt). It's also the--something about the quality of her surviving daughter's life....
And! Peggy was going to tell Stan about old Pima The Cougar ("with her Susan Sontag hair," Rosin points out)putting the moves on, but seems shocked, and maybe even demeaned, by the revelation that Pima did the same thing to him---maybe Peggy already had a revelation of another possible future, when Pima touched her (which she might not have had when the Mamet daughter licked her face). Suddenly burned away on the morning after, like the dream of running away, of being with Krakow in Paris. Or maybe she's just not used to *female* hustlers in the ad biz (Pima seems kinda desperate in this commercial terriotry; the psychological insights/zingers are defensive-optimistic-aggressive---and me? I studied with Dr. Joyce Brothers,I'll have you know.)
But damn, Peggy really is all shook up. Maybe something more happened in that darkroom, after the camera cut away.
So there's a couple of strong spaces for implication (incl. maybe potent dead ends, considering it's MM) tucked into all the folds of plottiness.

I also like that, unlike the prev ep, this one has Draper not just going through the ancient circles, but trying to be the responsible/dutiful Dad and divorcee. That's a new part of the attraction to Diana, that she's going where he's been---he thinks---actually, maybe that's why she seemed familiar from the first; she had a certain shell-shocked/seeking stare.

Of course we've seen him starting over before, but this time he doesn't want to repeat the part where he's doing penance in a grubby cell, for inst.
He relates to and comments on her own stage-set dump that way, but of course also she's an economizing waitress, after all: more show-don't-tell evidence of the differences he doesn't want to dwell on, in the rush to bond, and maybe save her as he saves himself.

It's like Don met a sadder version of himself, someone who would rather hold onto it (grief/sadness) than escape it

Yeah I was curious at first as to why Don is so attracted to Diana but I guess they are quite alike. I was a bit surprised with Megan's anger towards Don. I thought they had left on amicable terms too.

honestly, i felt like it context it was presented as displaced anger over her own failures. not that she's not right to be upset with don, but "sacrificing her youth" or however it was put gave it away that it wasn't just about don.

in context

they've never made it totally explicit, but it seems to be implied that megan is a bad actress and quite desperate.

Pete's disgust at Don being so much innately cooler than he is remains one of my favorite sources of humor on MM

otm

also "manson brothers" made me lol

Would be happy if that's the last we ever see of Pima--she seemed like such a caricature to me.

I connected with nothing in this episode.

beardy stan speaks to me

but otherwise yeah it was meh

Stan's resentment/jealousy/self-consciousness about showing his photos was believable; that might have been about it. And I agree with Ryan about Megan--more and more, her career path seems very suspect. She seems to have aged about ten years in two, I guess just because of the bitterness.

i could have lived with the part about how even when don tries slumming it he can't make a meaningful human connection, but for one of the last episodes of the series everything else seemed redundant. we already know megan's family is awful, we already know harry's a predator, we've already seen a woman hit on peggy, etc. etc. why on earth would now be the right time to introduce stan's unremarkable gf?