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

"Space Oddity"--ugh. The rest was good.

Was that the proper Space Oddity? Bowie sounded a little off, or maybe memory fail,

Sounded right to me at the time, but I was more concerned about how long it would be before Don gets killed by a hippie drifter.

the scene where Don realizes McCann does nothing innovative and their research is outsourced to some guy who does a summarized pseudo-scientific view of the pitches he used to do

I thought it was as much Don realizing that he does nothing innovative...that he's just one of a ton of the same people who all do the same thing and were all told the same thing and are as good as each and there's nothing special about him or his work and hey, there's an airplane flying outside, I wonder if this glass is as secure as the glass in my office?

I loved Shirley telling Roger he was "very amusing." Don eyeing the window twice during the episode...I'll take that as a sly joke addressed at the goofy idea that the series will actually end with him falling out of one.

Before he took his interstate exit, I thought he was looking at overpass bridges for jumping potential.

i didn't expect joan to go forward with getting a lawyer and going after mccann because that's almost unwinnable.. they would go through everything in her past and drag her name through the mud. not worth it
she took her rolodex. i'm hoping she's going to start her own agency and take her clients with her

i thought don was looking out his mccann office window for jumping potential earlier on, and then the show credits sequence would be real

Weiner's not a sentimentalist about these characters, so I hope that wasn't Joan's exit from the series. As much as I enjoyed her big moment, leaving in defeat isn't how I want her story to end.

wonder if those mccann guys will underestimate her & not even bother to make her sign anything promising not to go after clients etc

I don't think that'll be Joan's exit--too depressing.

If the totally uninformative tease from next week is to be believed, it's about 50% Pete and 50% Sally.

brain fart, I meant Betty (though Sally was in a snippet too).

This was a great episode overall -- the Joan stuff was sad, but she handled it as well as she could. Roger + Peggy in the ghost-town office was designed to feel like a classic moment, and it did. And Don -- has he ever been more useless in his life? His bosses don't need him, his kids don't need him, Betty doesn't need him, he doesn't even have a place to live. I like how he keeps trying to take decisive actions, but they just fizzle out.

It irritates me the way they say "Only ONE EPISODE left -- until the series finale."

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"Did I mention I was in the Navy?"

Diana's ex husband was Mackenzie Astin! I knew that face looked kind of familiar.

The Guardian:

"Not only was that pulled rising shot allied with the pre-chorus howl of 'Space Oddity' (first released in 1969) the finest musical moment in the show since Don tuned out with 'Tomorrow Never Knows,' it also drew a neat line between the Kerouac references."

British.

lol

http://i.imgur.com/N8n7oWk.gif

love peggy walking dead center down that narrow hallway!

and oh my god, every joan sexism scene made my flight response kick in something fierce. i might've puked during the joan/jim hobart scene if they hadn't already suggested that bruce greenwood could have him killed.

I thought it was as much Don realizing that he does nothing innovative

most definitely! after all that talk about how he's won and how they can't wait to have that Don Draper magic, it turns out they don't need or give a shit about his ability to be creative, they just want him as an Important Man to shake hands and sit in meetings

Great, and the Road Trip to, uh, Racine, goes with the aforementioned uselessness/anticlimaxes of current Draper activity, insofar as it almost seems like an arbitrary destination. Although he may some incoherent notion of stirring up some shit with her ex, that Heartland Man, glimpsed in the debriefing of the massed "Creative Directors." Ghost Burt says, "You always want to be The Stranger," which may be true: let's go blow some minds in Racine!
But the ex is much more focused, in a grimly clean-and-sober, AA-like way, than lost horndog DD (makes it sound like Diana the pagan huntress of hearts has left a long and twisted trail of males; get in line and Get Saved [somewhere else]).
Diana told Don she'd just finalized the divorce, right? But obviously that's not true, since there's already a second Mrs. Bauer. Did I get that wrong?

Although it's been several months since she told him that, hasn't it? Suppose the second marriage might well have been ready for launch. ("Space Oddity"is too obvious here, unlike most MM closers; it worked a lot better on Breaking Bad.)

Was "Space Oddity" even a hit in the U.S.?

Yes, but not till '73. Weird, but they've used two songs this half-season ("The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" the other) that were released in '69 but not hits until two or three years later. Maybe "Nights in White Satin" will turn up next week, released in '67, a hit again in '72.

how great is this show that the only thing we're complaining about is a bowie song

Seriously, how great would it be if that's the last we see of Don? The last two episodes are just everyone else getting wrap ups but Don's whereabouts remain unknown.

it would drive a lot of viewers absolutely batshit, which would be intriguing, and absolutely no possibility is out of the question with weiner

that said, this show ultimately is and has always been don's story so I'd be pretty surprised if we didn't get any more of him.

Don moves to Texas, starts the Church of the Subgenius

have y'all seen the D.B. Cooper conspiracy theorists? pretty crazy stuff

http://i.imgur.com/m6iMgvP.gif

re: the don disappearing from the show completely possibility, he is mentioned in the official synopsis for next week's episode, "The Milk and Honey Route:"

Don has a difficult time sleeping; a taxing friend blind sides Pete; Henry arranges a family reunion while facing a new challenge.

wonderfully vague! as expected. also it's slated to be a 61 minute episode (so maybe 54/55 actual minutes)

finale, "Person to Person," is listed as being 65 minutes.

Hah is Pete going to get punched again?

we can only hope so.

There's still that first act/third act gun thing to consider.

hmm, perhaps

speaking of mad men conspiracy theories - on pete campbell being eaten by a bear http://uproxx.com/tv/2015/04/it-is-not-too-late-for-pete-campbell-to-get-eaten-by-a-bear/

i think that's intended as a parody of how crazy some of the reddit shit (anyone remember "BOB BENSON IS PEGGY & PETE'S TIME TRAVELING CHILD?) was regarding this show, but who knows

i like that meredith has despite her goofiness (and contrary to betty's diss) developed into a hypercompetent secretary. which seems very necessary when don is your boss.

i also liked how ed, who as far as i recall has had no distinguishing characteristics before now, seemingly spent his final days in the office making phone calls to japan.

i loved the suspense of the organ + peggy before she discovered roger was in the office. the show quickly switched gears and turned into a thriller for 10 seconds. the scenes always have felt open enough for anything to happen, and this specific instance played to those strengths.

basically flexing that it could turn into something completely different at the drop of a hat, but upon showing roger w/ the organ chooses not to.

the don driving scenes were pretty eerie too

i also liked how ed, who as far as i recall has had no distinguishing characteristics before now, seemingly spent his final days in the office making phone calls to japan.

Yeah, for a weird minute I wondered if he was conversing with Lou

i liked the use of space oddity.

also liked peggy's carnival of souls tribute

Chris Mol@anphy and I among others were debating the "Space Oddity" point earlier today. It's possible local FM stations played it in 1970.

"the don driving scenes were pretty eerie too"

they reminded me of Eyes Wide Shut. I figured he'd wind up at a secret orgy.

I loved the keyboard blast of Space Oddity, it worked very well as the endcap to the episode.

possible local FM stations played it in 1970 Yeah, especially in Manhattan. Also, promo copies would circulate in Advertising. That reminds me, re what I posted a while back about Joan using her contacts elsewhere (and yay she's taking the rolodex, as somebody noted this week), could see Peggy going to print media or record companies, bribing reviewers with fabulous press junkets: "Hey, and your sister lives out there, doesn't she? If you'd like to stay and visit with her family for several days, that'd be cool too."----Geoffrey Stokes, Star-Making Machinery, a great book about a lost world.

And when she finally strolls into McCann, what's that cig hanging out of her smirk? Looks like a Krupa.

Would so much have rather heard "Kooks" last night; that would have been brilliant. ("Queen Bitch," too, but Wes Anderson already grabbed that for Steve Zissou.)

As Don was talking to Bert and fighting sleep, I started thinking, "PLease don't tell me he's going to crash...You're not really going to have him spend the last couple of episodes in a coma, are you?"

really the best thing for this show is to drop its characters, one by one, episode by episode, with Sterling the last man standing in the office.