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

saw a pic of the pete combover, that is some 1989 Rudy Giuliani shit

duck stuff was just okay (i kind of didn't understand it, what exactly is pete's new job?), but duck glancing around to figure out where he was while pete closes the door on his face was great

Yeah, the Duck subplot was kind of cloudy. It seemed like he was working about three different angles to put himself in a better position and if Pete Campbell benefited it was just a byproduct. It is funny, though, because Pete always fancied himself as enlightened and metropolitan when really he's been a displaced midwesterner all along.

I hope they spin the show off. Better Call Sal, anyone?

From what I gather, Pete:LearJet::Ken:Dow (he's the guy they have to deal with ad agencies)

That makes sense. Duck must have really worked that deal hard, though, for Pete to get roughly the same compensation he'd be getting for serving his sentence at McCann.

I think they were saying 100k a year...which in todays' money is like, $600k a year, which seems preposterous

I'd love it if he remarries Trudy and they buy a house in Wichita and then he finds out they've rescinded the offer.

But the McCann main man *really* has the hots for Lear Jet (maybe more as service for fellow CEOs than celebs, but serious opportunities for main man networking and/or social climbing either way)(and remember McCann big dudes expressed butthurtness by Cosgrove's quite open snobbery re Black Irishness of McCann). At least, Duck said etc. had the hots for Lear. We'll see.
Pete & Trudy really happy in early 70s Wichita, even with big money? What will they spend it on, the biggest house in Flatland?

"open snobbery re Black Irishness": so social-climbing might be an interest!

so I have a friend who works as a producer on the show and I guess she jumped out of some stars and stripes cake this weekend?

#namedropping

Can't find a video clip, but here's the ending to a Sept. 12, 1970 release that I think provides an excellent possible ending for Don (even if his differences with Bobby Dupea far outnumber their similarities).

http://www.isleyunruh.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/5-easy-pieces-ending.jpg

Don falls in love w/waitress who refuses to sell him toast

"I won't take any more of your smartness or sarcasm...Mind you, you are rather good-looking."

When did Don turn into Strunk & White with the grammar?
― clemenza

I read this as the first sign of Don appearing ready to help out the kid as a fellow smalltown hustler/con. By correcting his grammar he wouldn't be betraying his roots with that sort of shibboleth and maybe stand more of a chance making it in the big city if he were to follow in Don's footsteps. Also Don projecting insecurity/fear, masterminding other people's destinies under the guise of positive influence.

The increased sentimentality may have been an effort to counterbalance the excessively farcical tone for some of the characters in recent episodes. Pete certainly seemed to have become more of an object of ridicule again, more ineffectual than he had shown to be previously, but this time it was done less smirkily, less of a cheapshot deflation of pomposity, more of a revelation of deluded romantic complicity. They're the most Rev Road of all the MM characters. Pete was right about the timing in a sense, Trudy just so happened to be sympathetic to his vision and he said exactly what she had wanted to hear, even it wasn't true to how things had been between them. But his attempt to characterise the situation as some sort of destiny was his way of refusing to acknowledge that Duck had engineered the deal while he hadn't even been there to close it.

that was one hell of an episode, i really didn't see where the don story was going but i think it was more than appropriate, as was the pete and betty stuff.

so Don kissing Roger drunk in a bar was the last scene we may see between the two? i'll buy that if so!

or Roger kissing Don i should say.

it'd be kind of nice if don wasn't in the final episode at all. they gave him a nice ending, i think.

J Jones giving very subtle hints here back in March

“I know some people don’t like the end of Sopranos, and I don’t think it’ll leave people that frustrated. I definitely think all these characters deserve some sort of happy ending or closure, and for the most part, we’ll get that. But I just don’t think it is realistic to say that there’s a happy ending [for everyone].. "

http://www.ew.com/article/2015/03/11/january-jones-mad-men-farewell

Even if the episode is only 85 minutes (minus ads), I think there's plenty of time to tie up a lot of loose threads or at least give it an impactful resolution. Some 60 minutes episodes of this show have felt twice as long as that, so I know it's doable.

everybody gets five minutes, even if their story is fifteen minutes

I have things to say about Betty's death
Most of my thoughts come from v personal feelings but fuck it

She didn't "give in". Betty maybe childish & silly and vain on the surface but deep down she is practical, coldly so. What she saw in Henry's actions was those of a child, tilting at windmills to prolong the inevitable; she saw her diagnosis as a reckoning.

In death she is owning her life, the way she never got to own much else.

To be told you are dying, to hear that, understand it, be afraid ... and still stare it down cold. That takes ridiculous amounts of courage. Crazy amounts.

Beneath her coiff and her favorite lipstick she is is tougher than marble, and I love the writers for giving her that, but to show that toughness in a way that has real meaning in the context of death.

And for her to show her love for Sally in the most repressed child-of-Depression-era-parents, most Betty way possible, letter of instructions, that really drove it home for me.

Yeah, for her to trust Sally with such a monstrous responsibility after years of treating her like a toy doll was really revealing. She didn't give Henry that list. She didn't track down Don and give him the list. She gave it to Sally, and that was one of the most raw moments of emotion in the whole series for me, even if Betty was still very buttoned up and stern as it was happening.

Sally was reading the letter like, the next day, right? We weren't meant to think time had passed and Betty had died?

It certainly felt like that was the last we'll see of Betty, that scene of her walking up the stairs while Sally was reading the letter was so perfectly done, it would almost spoil it for them to show her on her death bed or whatever.

Also highly appropriate in a show that began with two scenes about the marketing of cigarettes.

My other immediate thought was "Don is going to have to stop running now".

Yeah, there's no way Sally didn't open the letter the second she got back to school.

There's been a cancer strand all the way through the series, which is more interesting when you realise Matthew Weiner's dad was eminent in oncology, and 1970 differs from earlier because at least they tell the patient she has cancer, rather than tell the loved ones who then hold back the terminal diagnosis from the patient in the belief that it's less painful that way. Cancer had only just become acceptable in polite conversation because of a few celebrity illnesses; women were agitating for equal rights and power over their own bodies *because* of things like doctors waiting to discuss a diagnosis with a husband, rather than his patient wife. My illness (and initial terminal diagnosis) came about two years after this, so I just watched this, boggling about how much noise my mother must have had to make at some very patriarchal men, and how many feathers she was prepared to ruffle on my behalf. We were lucky, but she made that luck.

She didn't give Henry that list. She didn't track down Don and give him the list. She gave it to Sally...

Hadn't really thought about that--well stated. The relationship between Claire and her mother on Six Feet Under was also very rocky, very emotional (even more so for me), and while I don't remember the exact details, they also reached some sort of closure before the show ended. Nice posts VG and Suzy, also (I figured there must have been some sort of link to Weiner's own life).

"Even if the episode is only 85 minutes (minus ads), I think there's plenty of time to tie up a lot of loose threads or at least give it an impactful resolution."

There are really very few loose threads at this point. It seems like Betty, Joan, Pete and Ken are largely wrapped up (fuck Harry). So I would think next week will focus on Roger and Peggy and Don. Feels like we could see a substantial flash forward in time too.

roger showing harry contempt one final time was the perfect goodbye for harry

"I'll make them build another floor between us if I have to." loved that.

Feels like Joan's story isn't 100% over, but mostly tied up. It's all about Peggy and Don from now on. Hoping for lots of Roger activity but it's not like he has a big story arc that needs to be tied up (although there is the small issue of the baby he doesn't know about).

The writers may have a final kick in the teeth re: Harry. Either his teeth or ours.

Feels like we could see a substantial flash forward in time too.

Yup.

I thought it was understood between Joan & Roger that Kevin is his child -- unless you're talking about some other kid? Maybe we'll get a glimpse of how Roger's relationship with Marie is working out. I don't expect to see Mona or Margaret again, but who knows?

What if the last episode had no Don content and the last we ever saw of him was the bus bench?

This won't be what happens, but it'd be something.

http://d1oi7t5trwfj5d.cloudfront.net/98/bd/2b3e4fe44752b5ad9812cfc0c48c/mad-men-season-7-episode-13-jon-hamm-2.jpg

Next episode will see Don being chased by a crop duster plane.

whoa!

I think Don has finally become a drifter. His last act will be to carve a "Tell a Sad Story" hobo code sign onto the entrance to McCann

guilty lol

An insightful bit from the Tom & Lorenzo recap:

Betty’s had a lot of scenes over the years where her petulance and childlike nature made her hard to take, but in our minds, one of the worst scenes was when her own father tried to talk to her about his funeral plans, knowing his death was imminent. She wouldn’t hear a word of it. “Can’t you keep this to yourself?” she asked him coldly. “I’m your little girl.” Here she is, eight years later, as emotionally mature a woman as anyone could ask for, accepting her own death and forcing her own little girl to handle the plans for her upcoming funeral. And yet, despite all the ways Betty has grown and changed over the years, her final words to her daughter were mostly concerned with how she wanted her hair, what gown she wanted to wear and what lipstick she wanted applied to her. Betty was able to change to the effect that she was able to celebrate her daughter’s uniqueness and tell her she loved her – but she had to do it in a letter concerned largely with appearances and coldly listing a series of demands. That’s pure Betty Hofstadt. She couldn’t perch on Sally’s bed and give her a hug and talk about love and looking down from heaven. That’s not who she is and that’s not what that scene was for, in Betty’s mind. It was Betty’s last declaration of self. “I’ve fought for plenty in my life,” she tells Sally, Now do as I tell you. And make sure I look pretty. She’s grown, but she’s still the Betty we’ve always known.

Seriously, how many times is Don going to get propositioned by dudes this season?

I'm wondering at this point if Don is just going to abandon his Don Draper personality and live out the rest of his life as Dick Whitman somewhere in the mid-west

he really does have all the hallmarks of a semi-closeted dude of the era

https://snapcracklewatch.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/tumblr_n4dvcbfzhy1s5e5bko4_400.gif

:(

I did really like the Betty/Sally stuff in this ep, and that moment when Sally takes her little brother onto her lap was a rare and quietly tender moment for this emotionally chilly household.

Maybe he's gonna change his name to Dick Whipman and whip people with his man dick

he really does have all the hallmarks of a semi-closeted dude of the era

Always bringing people coffee.

Seriously, how many times is Don going to get propositioned by dudes this season?

― Norse Jung (Eric H.)

that scene with the gay couple in the apartment was a sop tbh

Don's never coded gay; he seems like a typical guy from any era who's seen and done terrible shit, doesn't care to judge, but don't dare put your hand on his thigh.

Next episode will see Don being chased by a crop duster plane.

In something I read, they compared the North by Northwest imagery of the last episode to the Hitchcock/Bass-like opening credits. I also thought of "if I could get Betty in the ground" the other night--added some extra poignancy to Sally's reaction.

Especially resonant since the occasion for the "Betty in the ground" comment was her roommate's mother dying.