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

lol

sesame street showing up was telling -- one of the first significant cross-cultural groupings of people in a mainstream pop culture product, and then the coke commercial rides its coattails in a way.

the "integrated" cast of sesame street was a big deal and really did make a lot of people uncomfortable! and obv civil rights advances are making people uncomfortable. so it's an interesting climate for teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSIXreOEmzU&index=42&list=PLVY6n7Jrvk_RV_cvTfCW6vtnao1AztWpX

Would McCann have had to pay Don off at least some of the substantial sum he was due? Given he disappeared for ages I dunno, but if they were resolved to having to pay him a few million either way (especially given they've already done so in buying the agency), it's conceivable they might have gone "fuck it, let's see if we get anything at all out of this". Otherwise in their mind they're basically paying however many million dollars for Ted Chaugh.

In any case it's been fairly well established that Don can talk his way out of virtually any professional hole of his own making.

he could've just sold them the idea freelance as a piece of intellectual property, like what freddie rumsen was doing once he got sober (with his own ideas, and then don's when don was on his enforced SC&P hiatus)

Would McCann have had to pay Don off at least some of the substantial sum he was due?

they already paid Don. If he walked away (which he did) he owes THEM money.

i thought this argument was boring

One thing that's cool about this show is I don't see people talking about much is it didn't stay past it's welcome and in fact seemed to end just at the right time

idk this argument is boring, you guys aren't gonna convince me that this is anything more than hypothetical
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 20 May 2015 17:17 (1 hour ago)

I think right now, until it fades, it's a really interesting argument. Not being able to convince you, that's a different thing.

x-post: weeell, actually Mad Men is kinda the longest running of the major shows. 92 hours (tv-hours of 45 min each). Wire is 60, Sopranos is 86, Deadwood only 36, Breaking Bad is 62. The idea that Mad Men didn't overstay is more about it being consistently good, than about it not running too long. It ran a looong time. And it was awesome to the end!!!

Mad Style is up:

http://tomandlorenzo.com/2015/05/mad-style-person-to-person/

omg @ the kittens on the Hokusai in Peggy's office, totally didn't see that

i liked the mad style write-up but one costuming note that struck me that wasn't mentioned: don's white shirt in the final scene. on one hand, it's the same white shirt he's always worn, iconic don draper. on the other, given it's setting and how he wears it -- no tie, untucked, collar & cuffs undone -- it almost looks like a spiritual garment as he chants. i thought it was very smart way of illustrating the confluence of a capitalism and new-age spirituality happening in that moment, both in the show's narrative arc and in american culture at large.

also can't believe I didn't recognize Billie Jean in the Esalen scenes - gah!

great T&L piece as usual

"they already paid Don. If he walked away (which he did) he owes THEM money."

This is incorrect. The amounts are contingent on fulfillment of the contract (see Joan).

It's pretty clear that if Don wanted to come back Jim Hobart at the very least would welcome him with open arms.

i'm not sure if "amounts are contingent" is exactly right.

if they fulfill their contract, they get a certain amount (joan's share would have been $500,000). if t hey walk away, they get bupkis. joan was offered $250,000 if she dropped her threats to sue, and she took it.

btw $250,000 in 1970 is $1,512,384 in 2015. in other words, pretty sweet, but not enough for joan and her kid to live on for decades, even though she seems to be frugal by the standards of her colleagues.

Paul Johansson is a prick, apparently:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/susancheng/paul-johansson#.puadZgLgy4

Mad Style so good, and the only interpretation of the fridge guy scene I've read so far that rings true to me. It's about Don feeling intense empathy not just for that one guy, but for all the people that see his ads. I don't see why him going back and making the Coke ad has to be a cynical move, at least in his mind.

"if they fulfill their contract, they get a certain amount (joan's share would have been $500,000). if t hey walk away, they get bupkis. joan was offered $250,000 if she dropped her threats to sue, and she took it."

That seems pretty contingent on fulfilling the contract, but whatever.

halfway through the new batch.

eff mccann

what is the deal with this waitress? why is don in racine?

joan is so fucking cool

oh no it's fuck dillips

(sorry i was drinking before watching)

i like how advising people to abandon everything, even their children, and "move forward" is such a "thing" with don

this new guy with joan is so needy and pass ag he sucks

spoiler alert:

http://time.com/3891861/mad-men-finale-don-draper-jon-hamm-matthew-weiner-coke-ad-recap/

damn that's a surprise, i thought they'd skillfully duped the 95 per cent of people who weren't willfully contrarian enough to assume the flagrantly obvious literal ending was in fact what happened, just for the hell of it.

can they confirm betty did actually have cancer though? and that lane is dead?

i mean did we see lane being buried?

"But he did ask David Chase about if Peggy would ever confess to Pete about the baby, and if it’d be difficult for her to then look at kids. “She will have a psychological scar,” Chase told Weiner, who then decided that Pete would stay in the dark."

Wait what? Doesn't she reveal this to Pete way way back in Season 2??!?!?!

If you look at the clock on the wall when Stan and Peggy are confessing to one another, you can see it's clearly wrong which proves they have passed into an alternate timeline.

Also, Stan is Peggy's baby.

maybe weiner is bluffing

i'd like to actually hear him saying the words in that interview - it's hard to detect nuance in text, we can't be sure he wasn't telling mad men truthers that we're on the right track, i mean if you read between the lines.

"Meditations in an Emergency" October 26, 2008
Don finally returns from his trip to California in the middle of the hysteria generated by the Cuban Missile Crisis. Betty receives the news that she is pregnant, but before reconciling with Don and telling him the news, she engages in a brief sexual encounter with a stranger. Pete tells Peggy that he loves her and in response, Peggy informs him that he fathered a child with her, and she gave it away.

text message received: "She will have a psychological scar"

hmmmm. nah.

"thanks david, your advice is a guiding light for me."

it's here starting @ abt ~19m -- bad job by the Time recapper -- he never sez anything close to pete will stay in the dark afaict

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSgXSWj6shk

Shitty Time transcribers.

this paragraph does not compute, sorry:

Yes, Don Draper created the Coke ad. The last scenes of the series features Don hugging a stranger at a retreat and meditating with hippies, before the episode cuts to the 1971 Coca-Cola “Hilltop” commercial, to infer that Don returns to McCann-Erickson and creates that ad. “I have never been clear, and I have always been able to live with ambiguities,” said Weiner. “In the abstract, I did think, why not end this show with the greatest commercial ever made? In terms of what it means to people and everything, I am not ambiguity for ambiguity’s sake. But it was nice to have your cake and eat it too, in terms of what is advertising, who is Don and what is that thing?”

god just stop

And the idea that someone in an enlightened state might have created something that’s very pure — yeah, there’s soda in there with a good feeling, but that ad to me is the best ad ever made, and it comes from a very good place.

ha ok

"This article was originally published on Hollywood Reporter"

love this part from the Mad Style recap:

Like his ability to predict Kennedy’s electoral win because he was a rockstar and his ability to see that African-Americans were a viable and extremely important market, typically forward-thinking Pete dropped an absolute truth bomb on Peggy. It’ll take ten years, but eventually, society’s going to catch up to where Peggy is and recognize her for the insane talent she possesses.

I never thought about his comment to Peggy as being just another example of Pete's progressiveness, but yeah it's actually true to character.

v much so

that was not actually shot at Big Sur, even though it was supposed to be Big Sur

?

http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/blogs/arts_culture_blog/jon-hamm-sightings-and-mad-men-shooting-in-big-sur/article_fbec2678-fd59-11e3-94e5-001a4bcf6878.html

that part near the water didn't look familiar. other parts of those scenes did.

Or Don discovers his true self and ... he's an ad man! Gets home refreshed, sits in on the Coke meeting and says, "Picture a bluff, overlooking the ocean ..."

― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Sunday, May 17, 2015 11:33 PM

If you weren't looking in the night of, tipsy had this figured out within 15 minutes. I missed it altogether until his post.