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

I might be able to persuade husband to watch it with me from the start now that he knows the whole thing has a satisfactory ending.

wouldn't mind watching the whole show from the beginning (I've forgotten a lot of s1-3) but I can wait

we started this last year after our baby was born and we had many hours of sleepless exhaustion at our disposal. it was good! we got as far as S5 and are now giving that a ""rescreen"".

Man how can someone put so much work into designing that "Not Great, Bob!" poster but still misspell FOUR of the actors' names, including one of the ones above the title?

Not only that: "putting the fun in dysfuctional."

Perhaps he's called Bob and it's actually quite meta.

Had a dream last night that Matt Weiner had trolled us all by secretly creating a REAL final episode, and airing it with no great fanfare in a different timeslot. I spent much of the broadcast complaining to my fellow viewing companions about the deception to really pay much attention (and they were talking a lot as well) so I can only remember three scenes:

- Sally and a bunch of her friends in a family-style restaurant, trying to find a table
- Dow Chemical guy explaining to Roger that when two snakes are trying to eat each other, you don't want to be the one that's smiling while the other's too busy EATING to smile
- Final scene Don and Betty driving away on motorcycles, through the outskirts of Phoenix or somewhere. Don wearing his denims, didn't notice Betty's outfit.

Clem--pick a final song for this dream.

I've never heard Genesis' "Return of the Giant Hogweed," but I've been making jokes about it for a couple of decades, so now I want to put it to use.

i've suspected for a while and had my suspicions confirmed by the final episode that matthew weiner himself was the least interesting/most frustrating part of mad men. so much onscreen and behind-the-scenes talent and insight always threatening to be brought down by sentimental boomerism.

i *love* my cynical interpretation of the ending and weiner being like "oh, you hipsters with your negativity, that coke commercial is EVERYTHING" -- sigh.

"- Dow Chemical guy explaining to Roger that when two snakes are trying to eat each other, you don't want to be the one that's smiling while the other's too busy EATING to smile"

Is this a classic story or something?? If not that's a very cool thing to think in a dream.

That whole post is great, but I especially hope a show does this sometime:

Had a dream last night that Matt Weiner had trolled us all by secretly creating a REAL final episode, and airing it with no great fanfare in a different timeslot.

It's like doing a Beyonce on a TV show. Like, just sneak another one in on a Tuesday at 11 a.m. on AMC and see who notices.

xxpost

No, I guess it's something my subconscious thought up. But it does faintly recall Don's convo with Conrad Hilton where he mentions snakes that choke on their prey after months without eating, so maybe that's a subliminal source.

xp i think that's part of what what got everybody so hyped on too many cooks

i thought this was good: http://michaelmaslin.com/inkspill/new-yorker-cartoonist-joe-dator-tells-us-about-the-cartoons-on-peggy-olsons-wall/

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CHP0vmCUYAACDxt.jpg

http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/news/mad-men-creator-coke-ad-finale-planned-from-beginning-20150821

Emmys all round tonight right? surely has to be. funny how The Slat isn't nominated.

Hendricks snubbed.

WHAM BAM THANK YOU HAMM

Continuing the AMC Dynasty...

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81VcMuEiPKL._SL1500_.jpg

Contained inside the box:

All 92 episodes on 22 high-definition Blu-ray dicsc
Extra Blu-ray disc with over three hours of bonus content, exclusive to this box set
Beautiful hard back 20-page book containing 23 Blu-ray Discs
16-Page episode guide
Reproduction of Don Draper’s ‘Why I’m Quitting Tobacco’ letter
Letter announcing Sterling Cooper + Partners new logo
Sterling Cooper, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and Sterling Cooper + Partners headed notepaper
Six character art cards
Photo Montage art card
Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce office plan

I've got them all on separate DVDs (except for the last half-season). Still, if I saw "Dinner with Miss Farrell" on that list, I'd buy. (I like the idea of the tobacco letter.)

entire package soaked in whiskey for six days before shipping

Kiernan Shipka reviews the Bobbys:

https://li.st/l/7UUcBiRlFQppDn3WTnqkf4

lol @ Buckethead Bobby

He loved Sizzler and eating packets of straight sugar.

That's great. I must not have paid very close attention on that front--I would have guessed three or four at the most.

We've been binge watched S2-7 over the last few months. What a fantastic show. Had to immediately go back and watch S1 (we both watched that one years ago and kind of gave up after it). Kind of amazing to see what a difference in tone there was when it was first starting out. I know it was lauded at the time for being highly discrete, but S1 feels like it's constantly jackhammering early 60s attitudes and telegraphing characters' intentions non stop.

You're probably using the wrong "discreet", and also misremembering reaction to the show.

Woah, I've never noticed that discreet and discrete were separate terms. Certainly watching the pilot is a very strange contrast to the rest of season one too.

Woah, I've never noticed that discreet and discrete were separate terms.

They are discreetly discrete terms.

I'm still kinda pissed that we re-watched the entire run only to discover that the last half of s7 is not available on Netflix streaming

as noted here: can we talk about MAD MEN on AMC on this NEW thread ('cause the original one's getting way too long)

(if we're gonna be discussing previous seasons it should be there imo)

I was glad to see 7B in the video store a couple of weeks ago. I've got all of 1-7A on DVD, and once they released the complete box set, I wasn't entirely sure they'd put out 7B separately. Also saw this book that came out late last year.

http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/madmen121815.jpg

i can't justify it really but of all the golden age of tv prestige dramas (and this is pretty clearly the end of that run that began w/ sopranos imo, don't talk to me about game of thrones or whatever) i think this is my favorite. it's a pretty tight grouping though.

is that period officially over now? kinda feels like it

I haven't watched either season of Fargo, but the way people were going nuts over S2 makes me think it might be of that ilk.

I watched the first episode or two of that and just was not engaged at all, maybe I should go back to it

yeah i'm not dissing the silver age or whatever, love better call saul and can believe the good things i've heard about fargo and the americans but i do think the landscape has shifted

it's kinda creeping in w/ the comics shows and maybe will never be a real problem just because of budget concerns (not as big a problem as w/ the movies at least) but there's been some blockbuster effect as a result of game of thrones and walking dead i think a la jaws and star wars back in the day maybe. hbo definitely seems more interested in genre type stuff.

It's hard to keep up with everything now, between Amazon and Netflix and the premium channels and the basic cable channels (lol, broadcast networks, not you). There's probably a lot of quality drama tv out there I'll never even get to.

yeah it's weird, peak tv and all that but there's very little that i really feel i need to see or that i'm like 'shit i need to get on that' w/ any real urgency, partial exceptions for the two big fx dramas but even w/ them it's not like how it was when i waited til the second season of breaking bad to jump on board. part of that might just be a reflection of how much tv ppl think is really good now than a mark of the quality of those shows though. there's this thing w/ cord cutting becoming a real factor (espn is freaking out)(fuck espn) and what it will mean for peak tv (apologies for using that phrase again, i hate it so much) but the two venues that make up a huge chunk of the tv i care about - netflix and hbo - are poised to survive it no problems.

Bill Backer, the creative mind behind what is considered to be the world's most famous advertisement, died last week at age 89, his wife confirmed to the New York Times.

http://mashable.com/2016/05/18/coca-cola-hilltop-bill-backer/#YtL9jb3jG8q1

Interesting! This remains maybe my favorite ILX sequence of posts ever:

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)

lots of people seem to think it was implied Don went back to McCann and made the coke ad, but that doesn't make sense. Don has never been responsible for an actual, historical ad before, why start now? i dont think that was the implication at all.

Yeah, that seems like a cornball reading of the last moments.

(Not aiming that at the people who disagreed--just again applauding tipsy for getting it exactly right immediately.)

not sure who posted what there but yeah I did not like the literal "Don achieves enlightenment and actually creates the most famous ad ever!" interpretation, preferred to think of it as being an indication that nirvana, for Don, is the feeling of living in an advertisement.

regardless of what Matt Weiner says

don was responsible for actual ads before

nirvana, for Don, is the feeling of living in an advertisement.

I like that too, but for me the Don-makes-the-Coke-ad interpretation (which I'm not sure counts as as interpretation once the creator says "Yes, that's it, and we knew that's where we were headed as early as the third season") is just perfect. I didn't like everything about the last episode, but I absolutely loved both that and the encounter-group speech from that lost soul (Leonard?).