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

nothing noble or graceful about death

like I said, Betty handled it exactly as I expected.

no, there is nothing noble or graceful about death. which is why it comes as a surprise that someone of Betty's impermeable, almost child-like temperament would handle it with such nobility.

the crux of her power as both an actress and character on the show was a result of the dichotomy between her maturity and sheer immaturity. when this contrast worked, it was because it was presented with complexity. there was nothing at all complex about this ending.

for me, Betty has been a secondary character for so long that i have difficulty recalling the values that she is supposed to represent. it doesn't help that they were so complex and contradictory to begin with. most of the characters have grown more familiar to me over time to the point where their actions and responses are defined by how true to character they are. Betty, on the other hand, has grown progressively distant. i rarely feel like i have a firm grasp on what she's angling for or where she's arrived.

imo betty's like a pissed off madam bovary, more or less.

the 'pissed off' part is what i was missing. i mean, i didn't cry. i was ready to cry, and i cry at everything. it was mother's day, and i didn't cry. if that doesn't say something, i don't know what does!

actually i take that back, betty is pissed off because she bought into the whole marriage/kids/suburbs thing and was miserable anyway. she spent most of her life being the object of other people's fantasies, and rarely articulated her own.

feel like betty doesnt mind dying (maybe its a relief?) as long as her kids are going to be ok. her main concern by the end of the ep is literally leaving a good looking corpse.

i cried a little at the last line of her note to sally, tho. whoever said it upthread was right, that this is about betty having no choices in life but getting to choose how to die, whether to fight death, etc

Betty may yet revert to petulance, strained terseness etc as her illness continues, but in the scene with Sally, she managed that rare Betty balance, which the last scene with Glen may have helped her to achieve here (dovetailing with their scenes of long ago, esp. when lost boy put his hand on her knee, and she gently dissuaded him).

Gotta go to work, so no time for lists (awww), but let's be thinking about all those awesome Duckpoints in Mad Men history. We may not have seen the last of him yet!

Finale is two hrs., or did I hear that wrong last night?

Ducktales spinoff

finale is not two hours! Unless there's an hours worth of ads

looks like running time on AMC's website says hour and 15 minutes-

i heard 65 minutes somewhere

wow duh the irony of Pete going to work for an airline totally eluded me until just now

DEADLINE: Is there a special song at the end?
WEINER: I can’t tell you that. There’s music in the whole show. There always is. It is a Mad Men episode, the finale. That’s all I can tell you, and it’s a little bit longer.

DEADLINE: Really?
WEINER: It’s about 10 minutes longer than a regular episode. The last two have longer running times. Number 13 is about five minutes long and 14 is 10 minutes long.

Man, it would have been awesome if the finale was literally ten minutes long.

just a montage set to American Pie

slow-mo shots of people drinking + smoking

Roger = the father, Don = the son, Bert = the holy ghost. Lots of candidates for the Jester--Pete, Duck, Stan, too many (including Roger).

i think another way to look at betty accepting death is that her character has always been, at least in part, about self-denial -- from her giving up a modeling career to marry don, to her denying herself multiple affairs that she was well entitled to, she's frequently come close to freeing herself but has always at the very end re-chained herself to her husband or her family or the morals of the time. so now she is accepting death as a way of finally giving herself permission to act selfishly (slash freely) for once, i.e. henry being surprised that she's happily bouncing off to school because he expects her to be wallowing in her fate.

like the last shot -- she's happier wheezing her way up the school steps, knowing she's gonna die, then she's practically ever been at any other point in the show?

the fact that she had to die at all was unnecessary; it's become all too common a cliche in television insofar as last seasons are concerned

gimme a break

I doubt we're going to see her actually die

she could live forever WHO KNOWS

this show has what, 15-20 regular characters? having one of em shuffle of fis entirely reasonable.

yeah idk why betty of all characters had to die but no death in mad men -- a show about upper/middle class people who live exceedingly normal lives -- was ever going to be necessary. in that it feels wantonly sad is not unlike life itself!

cancer does not pick its victims reasonably

otm

surprised they don't all have lung cancer frankly

^^^^

last episode could always be more of a bloodbath than the breaking bad finale

if they do have her die it will clearly be for narrative/dramatic reasons connected to don being the main character; deaths of others have usually been a big thing for him and this would be up there with anna, burt, and rachel

it would be sorta weird if the finale skipped ahead 9 months tho

I'm picturing Don settling down somewhere in California, then seeing everyone one last time when he flies back for Betty's funeral.

Don looked so hot last night.

the one shot of him inside the car looking up from the passenger seat was incredible

can't imagine Don will leave his sons w Henry tbh

xp

from the AV club recap. i didn't catch this so I have no idea if it's true or not

Betty’s letter to Sally is dated October 3, 1970.

I dunno if anyone agrees, but Draper dresses too fucking awesome for 1970 (the sunglasses bother me). Campbell's combover and bloated face and lazily cut suits reflect the times.

Well Don is receding further and further into the past. That's why "Everyday" was apt closing music, his road trip has taken him back to 1950s small-town America (and reminded him why he got the hell out). I don't know if that trajectory ultimately takes him all the way back to his own actual origins, or if he kind of breaks free of all of it and charges off into the future. Maybe lands in early Silicon Valley, meets some kids tinkering with computers in their garage.

or he just goes from town to town, pulling small cons and fixing soda machines

Betty’s letter to Sally is dated October 3, 1970.

Read that piece this morning. Was curious, so I checked a couple of dates: Joplin died Oct. 4, 1970, Hendrix on Sept. 18. Both have had end-credit songs. Not reading any significance into that, although Weiner has had interviews where he called "Piece of My Heart" the song that sums up 1968 best.

in any case, the constant lip-service of weiner to Peggy as the secret lead character makes me think this is mostly gonna be her and don's (separate) story
but i really am holding out hope for mutant alligators or some other spectacular fuck you

Like #2 here?

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2015/may/11/how-will-mad-men-end-four-best-theories

Was this an actual theory, or are they just making that up?

Betty’s letter to Sally is dated October 3, 1970.

Read that piece this morning. Was curious, so I checked a couple of dates: Joplin died Oct. 4, 1970,

The Wichita State University plane crash that Easy linked to upthread happened on October 2, 1970.

It's all a rich tapestry.

surprised to see all the complaints about Trudy+Pete reconciliation upthread - this was pretty clearly telegraphed in the past few episodes, and yes while Pete was a horrible douchebag to Trudy for several seasons, let's not forget all the pre-Cos Cob seasons, where they were shown to be one of the few (only?) functional relationships where it seemed like a partnership of equals with genuine affection for each other. (they were both still horrible wasp-y douchebags, obviously, but they complimented each other perfectly)

It's all a rich tapestry.
― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat)

Could easily be the one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDm1xD_Kwyc

god that was sad.

somehow the adults still relying on sally way too much.

That was an incredible episode, all my doubts about the show have disappeared, its had rough patches but its still something I will think about and refer to for the rest of my life and the last few episodes have done it justice, give or take a misstep or two. I was in tears several times during that episode. You hear about ideas such as "A woman's medical problems would be dealt with through her husband" and it sounds appalling, of course, but to see it in action is something else entirely different and something I'll never forget.

― .robin., Monday, May 11, 2015 7:26 AM

otm. I loved everything about this episode. Except, maybe, the Duck stuff. That was just okay.

yeah the stuff with the doctor talking to henry while betty just stood there was p hard. and the letter just tore me to shreds.