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

"have your actors stand stock-still in one place for an entire scene."

there's actually far too much of this in TV in general, as well as Mad Men in particular. actors maintain fixed coordinates throughout a scene. which is not only typically not very "realistic"... more important, it's often not very dynamic.

funny that you brought this up - I thought that scene w/Betty, Sally and Glen really suffered from this in the last episode

yeah, i was beginning to think they were glued to the carpet. i mean, especially given how uncomfortable the encounter was, you'd think at least one of them would be squirming or just fidgeting or something. the only character to move, really, was glen's date, who kind of shrunk back toward the door as the conversation got heated.

What're the odds the final scene of the series is Don throwing himself off a building in a live action version of the title sequence

I'm joking but this episode was all about Don looking to the future and seeing nothing there, so what is there left for this handsome man without character to live for?

Golf

Chicks, money

still time to pine for miss farrell

*sigh*

don should run for office

Then his war record gets investigated

Awkward staging for an awkward moment. Worked for me.

no one investigated war records back then

I think Jones is very good in quite a lot of episodes. I remember hearing that she said she was grateful to Ashton Kutcher for bluntly telling her she was a terrible actress, apparently that was a turning point for her.

lol he should talk

I thought it was kind of eye popping too but I don't think I've ever seen any of his films so I can't really say.

she is fine as betty - never seen her in anything else. but tbh v few people are acting below the chin in this show or any other, or any movie - i don't see the static thing as a sin of matt weiner - truly physical acting is something you p much only see in theatre.

I can't speak for January Jones in anything else, but I think she's mostly excellent as Betty. There have been points along the way where I thought she was the most interesting and complicated character, and--giving them credit for setting that up in the first place--I'm not sure the writers have completely followed up on that.

I agree.

say what you will about ashton kutcher, he seems pretty comfortable in front of the camera, at least in comedies. that's harder than it would seem. jones doesn't usually seem very comfortable, e.g. in that x-men movie. she can't really be blamed, i guess, for not serving as much besides eye candy in that film. but she seems pointedly one-note when called upon to do much more in "mad men." IMO.

and i agree that betty's character as written is often pretty intriguing, a bundle of seeming contradictions that point in interesting directions (if i haven't mixed metaphors too badly). but i don't think the credit for that seeming complexity is due to jones, who has never owned a scene in the way that the character as written could have.

- i don't see the static thing as a sin of matt weiner - truly physical acting is something you p much only see in theatre.

well i'd blame the director of that episode, not weiner. but i think mad men, when it triumphs, is mostly a triumph of art design, writing, and acting... but it typically neglects staging. i think the slattery-directed episodes are exceptions, he seems to be interested in exploring that more than other directors.

it's a broader problem than mad men of course. i think most directors of TV and film these days don't pay a lot of attention to staging.

"What're the odds the final scene of the series is Don throwing himself off a building in a live action version of the title sequence"

that seems to be a common assumption and it's so stupid that if they did that I'd hate the show forever. Nothing about Don reads as suicidal. Maybe he'll drunkenly fall out a window.

I'd be okay if final shot is Draper throwing Harry Crane out a window

i don't think those windows open.

I'd say "Let's assume things are good" is kind of a tell.

last line of the show: whoopsie! aaaaaaahhhh....

i don't think those windows open.

final scene is

http://theredlist.com/media/database/settings/cinema/1990-2000/the-hudsucker-proxy/010-the-hudsucker-proxy-theredlist.jpg

no idea what VOX is but this is interestin

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/22/8466657/mad-men-plan

I feel like we've seen this episode three or four times already.

eh, sorta, but repetition is one of the show's primary issues, like the psychology behind why they try to preserve the status quo albeit sometimes under the slight guise of not doing so

so it seems sort of appropriate to be in one final loop

Co-ca Co-la.

yea that was a monkey wrench to say the least

"It is not a normal day. Everyone's living in a fright."

It did take a left turn--I thought it was going to be one more "Let's put on a show" scheme to save the agency, but it wasn't that. Strange ending. (Dean Martin, very big in 1971...I know I'm the only person who cares about the music enough to complain.) Loved Roger's toast to Lou Avery. Still not sure what happened to Harry Hamlin.

Dying at the MacDonald and Campbell feud.

xp jim cutler (hamlin) took a buyout but did not want to be involved in the company, it seems like?

or he'll show up randomly like avery did a few eps in

Dying at the MacDonald and Campbell feud.

YES! That's not at all where I expected that scene to end up, but it was brilliantly absurd.

The end seemed slightly unrealistic to me. If I'd just been informed my company had been absorbed and we'd be moving to a new office, I'd have a million questions.

(xposts) That was the punchline to the buyout, though, Cutler voting yes and sheepishly saying "It's a lot of money." I don't remember a word after that--maybe I missed something.

Agree the ending has an unreal quality to it, but thematically, there may be something there. It felt like the world that's so important to these five people is losing its grip on everyone else...although Meredith certainly didn't behave that way.

Undoubted significance that someone will uncover tomorrow: the reappearance, during Peggy and Stan's big scene, of "Stranger on the Shore." (Maybe it was used on one of the episodes concerning Peggy's pregnancy?)

Checked it out, and yes--it goes back to "Meditations in an Emergency," which ended season 2 and where Peggy told Pete that she'd had his child and given it away.

Good catch.

http://i.imgur.com/qaRE8pt.png

Cryptic tweet from IRL McCann.

Diana is Ted Chaough's new girlfriend

I said that as well, though I don't believe it, just thought it would be funny.

I did decide that Ted is basically anti-Don, or bizarro world Don. He wants and gets exactly the opposite of Don. He slept with Peggy. He went to California. Then he doesn't want to go to California. He's satisfied with the pharmaceutical account. There was more to that I thought about last night but now I've forgotten.

Sayonara, my friend! Enjoy the rest of your miserable life.

Speaking of circles 'n' cycles (the California subsidiary office did seem like a good idea at the time; never did quite understand how they avoided that no-compete clause when outright splitting from the Brits), Betty and Glenn's farewell scene perfectly matched her best moment ever, sweetly dissuading the younger Glenn, way back when. He now reveals himself to feel as lost--trying to re-orient by her light--as in the first scene, despite all his wised-up confidence and advice to Sally in the years betwee. Not a fake confidence or wising-up, but his system has broken down, in confused and traumatic times, the burnt cusp of the 60s and 70s, as some things just get even worse (Sally reminds him that he was in tears after Kent State, for instance). Yes, they were standing still in profile, with no distractions; it worked.
Struck by how much of last night's ep was about women being gratuitously reminded of limited options.

Maybe Draper could teach a New School course on advertising: analysis, expose, how-to---students can take it as they please, though McCann wouldn't be pleased. Maybe, like I always figured, he'll go to California anyway. Teach or do something just beyond the no-compete bit (publicity, artists' agent? He's got contacts out there).

He'll kill Harry Crane and assume his identity.