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

someone a few weeks ago mentioned that mad men doesn't get enough credit for being really funny and i was reminded of that with this episode a few times. one of the funnier episodes over all, even. especially the peggy scenes.

i think this is probably true of most successful television drama, due to the form. i think it would be interesting to compare not-so-funny 'prestige' programming to not-so-funny long-form network serials (like i dunno 'ER'? something less procedural would be good too though), i suspect the 'prestige' programming gets its cachet partly from being able to exploit more conventional modes of 'seriousness' (death is looming, everything is gloomy, etc.) and not having to suspend them indefinitely slightly-removed episodic stories which are hardly ever e.g. tragically bad for the main characters (who go on).

xp Inspired by Stan's nightly White Castle runs.

I want a loop of Stan saying random things into the phone and Peggy responding with "what?!" to each of them

Well hopefully nobody will ask him what the ambiguous end of his massively popular TV show means.

that is not what I said, but I can rephrase it a few dozen more times if you like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XvFb_tvkJg

Eh I didn't mean that as a barb towards you. Just meant this kind of thing is to be expected, given the facts.

video otm

A+ awesome

I mean, Weiner could say it is completely unambiguous but he is too busy to explain his television show to people and I would enjoy his subtle trolling

MW said it's easier to get a laugh in a drama bcz anything that breaks the tension gets an outsized reaction. Obviously there were lots of laughs in The Sopranos too, so he's used to that dynamic.

entertainment weekly interviewed the coke ad guy. he said he didn't give a shit and he stopped watching the show when it became about the characters personal lives.

― ryan, Monday, May 18, 2015 1:56 PM (

Coke ad guy otm

Still waiting for someone to do the fart edit on that last shot.

at the moment i'm having trouble thinking of many good tv shows that aren't funny

The Americans is generally not funny.

Wolf Hall. Daredevil. Game of Thrones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlaLh8sqCEc

Ha! Any idea when that would have come out?

thrones has its moments, mostly in zings

the leftovers is never funny, although a lotta people hated it (kinda loved it tbh) and tried to call its seriousness unintentionally funny

I thought there was a funniness in it's absurdity, esp of the "remainders" or whatever they were called. And the daughter's friends. It wasn't a hilarious show, but it had it's moments.

I think I remember the German commercial running in the late '90s or early aughts.

The Leftovers was absurd, which made me smile a lot through my tears. But it was rarely haha-funny.

I also saw the ending as kinda ambiguous. But there are two things I would claim are unambiguous: 1) Don get's an epiphany of sorts while meditating b) that epiphany is then undercut by a coke-jingle. The implication is pretty clearly, that whatever Don's epiphany was, it was something that could be used to sell coke. Whether or not Don actually goes back and makes that ad, or whether it's meant to be more abstract, the implication is hippie-epiphany -> coke-ad.

Like, all epiphanies will eventually be boiled down and used to sell coke.

to rich retirees in Florida

one thing that points toward a more literal don wrote the coke ad reading is

https://scontent-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xtp1/v/t1.0-9/11251123_10103901493552542_1014640173074657122_n.jpg

hmm

Something that links the ending to the first episode (which I've been meaning to go back and watch--I didn't start watching the "marathon" this week till Season 3):

http://www.businessinsider.com/mad-men-finale-explained-2015-5

http://i.imgur.com/g3EfSY3.jpg

As a finale I thought it was great. All of the women of Mad Men seem to be taking control of their lives-and in Betty's case her death and children's lives as well. I can only really compare this show to the hamfisted "The 60s" miniseries from the 90s, which I saw at the height of teenage Beatle-worshiping and somehow managed to snap me out of that spell despite being a fake Hallmark card to a mythical VH-1 special that my parents lived through. Since then we have had the internet for everyone, cell phones, and a sharp increase in communication, and it all gives "Mad Men" a very real feeling. It's a golden feeling. It's like when you listen to retro 60s bands that recorded in the 90's, they invariably sound like they were recorded in the 90s. Whereas if you listen to anything remotely retro now, our experience w writing, production design, sound design, motion graphics, post-production, etc. can make it sound real and authentic.

Not that "Mad Men" is a real story about real people, but it knows that, that's why the ending is the way it is, it is the way the show is. We know we can't re-create the past, but we can focus on the defining moments, paying attention to the smallest details, and using modern writing and production create a hyper realism by USING that ambiguity and abstractness. Characters float in and out, like a soap opera. Like a space opera.

Don is The Fool. The Drifter. The Third Man. Don has always been a drifter, it is why he drifts from woman to woman. I love the way this show saved his soul, by tearing him down. Losing his wife, his apartment, his car, his kids, his last remaining links to the past. He is literally standing on the ends of the earth, and breaks down, his ego being stripped of all its material signifiers. Andy Warhol comes up and offers him a golden phone that calls God (Doors reference) and he calls, crying incoherently. Peggy answers. Is she God? She saves his soul and offers him his job back, it is the one thing that still remains, anchoring him to Spaceship Earth.

The woman that sees Draper slumped down beneath the telephone asks if he is on anything, and he doesn't answer in the negative. The behavior of post-ecstatic Don is highly affirmative. He could easily move to Texas and start the Church of the Subgenius. It's actually very close to scripture.

I really love the way it ended, it felt very hopeful.

People realize that Don writing the jingle probably doesn't mean that he would be in charge of costumes, though, right?

he had a magical vision of all the people in the ashram singing and dancing about Coca-Cola, and it became a real advertisment.. in our universe, not the Mad Men one

2001: A Bum Don Odyssey

People realize that Don writing the jingle probably doesn't mean that he would be in charge of costumes, though, right?

― Frederik B, Monday, May 18, 2015 4:06 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

don is in charge of everything if he wanted there to be a girl with yarn braided into her hair he wld just say to the ppl who work for him "put a girl with yarn braided into her hair in there"

"I am the man who drinks."

Janie Bryant (Mad Men costume designer) said on twitter the braids girl is not a coincidence.

Some people I know who know people at Coca-Cola say they knew the finale would have something to do with the ad because they had to clear it for use.

Someone should collect all these post-episode analyses into a book. I read the theories, and constantly find myself thinking "Yes, yes," even when they're not entirely compatible with each other.

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-original-resonant-existentially-brilliant-mad-men-finale

If the show had been set in the '70s and ended up around '79, it all would have pointed towards Heinz's "Anticipation" commercial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoLoyg3JKRQ

yeah, counterculture, '70s Carly Simon, same resonance.

First thing I've read where someone just flat-out disliked the finale:

http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/features/coke-and-sympathy-10-thoughts-on-mad-men-series-finale-20150518

I can't embed all these, it would take forever, but here's a nice gif set of first and last appearances on the series by all the major characters.

http://flavorwire.tumblr.com/post/119297646089/mad-men-first-and-last-appearances-oh

xp no conceivable finale of this show would ever satisfy Rob Sheffield, c'mon. He called it the greatest drama ever on television without any sense of how ridiculous that sounded.

Also, in that gif set they got Sally's final appearance wrong, but hey. Still good.

rob sheffield is a garbage critic

man, the '60s hit a lotta ppl with the Ugly Stick.

(xpost) Disagree majorly--I'll leave it at that, except that I do think he's wrong about the finale.

all tv criticism is the worst thing, a clue that the golden age of tv isnt that good

tbf clemenza my major basis for this is music-related, & i dont know him personally or anything

xp some of it's good, just like there's (some) good criticism of every art form, but i'm assuming your issue is with the tone of a lot of it, especially that which is created by or heavily influenced by the av club

The gif page technically got Lane's last appearance wrong too, which I assume was in the interest of decorum.