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

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?).

Doesn't the pilot feature Don inventing the Lucky Strikes "It's Toasted!" slogan? Makes sense that the finale circled back to him making history again.

it's kind of wryly tragic in that don has a breakdown, gains some understanding about the human condition, finds some way toward peace and then figures 'i can use this to sell coca cola'

At least the coke one really was created around that time. It's Toasted was first used in 1917.

xp

pilot feature Don inventing the Lucky Strikes "It's Toasted!" slogan?

iirc that's historically innacurate, Lucky Strike had already been using that slogan prior to when the series starts

or what moodles said

Superseded "the cure for the common cigarette"

lol shoulda had some of that legendary draper fingerbanging...and that's how he came up with l.s./m.f.t.

fyi fwiw I posted the Coke ad a month before Tipsy made that comment. I've scoured the internet and believe pretty strongly that I'm the first person anywhere to have called that and I'm still waiting for my accolades.

I accoladed you!

http://heardjustwhatiseen.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/you-come-looking-for-the-light/

Oh yeah. Thanks!

Reince Priebus = Don Draper.

Will Priebus have his Don Draper moment? Draper, a smoker himself, finally renounced cigarettes — he would sell out no more.

From what I remember myself, seems like a rather distorted interpretation. Wasn't Don's 180 on cigarettes a scheme to get back his job, rather than some principled stand?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/reince-priebus-fool/2016/05/16/dece58a-1b88-11e6-9c81-4be1c14fb8c8_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&tid=a_inl

The Coke ad seems out of character for Don, even an enlightened Don. I never interpreted that he made it either.

Damn. 1500 Mad Men props up for auction next week

So that WAS Helen Slater at Esalen. I thought it looked a little bit like her, but shrugged it off. Of course, the last time I saw her in something was probably 25 years ago.
― Johnny Fever, Monday, May 18, 2015 1:54 AM (one year ago)

Didn't know who that was when I watched the last episode...Just watched Super Girl from 1984. Slater is the sole reason to bother: good performance, very beautiful. Must be at the front line of films I've ever seen where you have no idea who certain characters are--how they relate to each other, why they do what they do (even at the rudimentary level of logic you might expect for such a film). Brenda Vaccaro's character: ??? It's completely nuts.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/CFeRkzpUgAA5ss9.jpg

A little less goofy looking from the same film:

http://josephmallozzi.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/supergirl-linda-lee.jpg

Helen Slater is now playing Supergirl's Earth mom on the new SG TV show.

I'd almost quote Kael verbatim, describing Reeve in the first film, on the appeal of Slater in Super Girl:

"Christopher Reeve, the young actor chosen to play the lead in 'Superman,' is the best reason to see the movie. He has an open-faced, deadpan style that’s just right for a windup hero. Reeve plays innocent but not dumb, and the combination of his Pop jawline and physique with his unassuming manner makes him immediately likable. In this role, Reeve comes close to being a living equivalent of comic-strip art--that slang form of simplified storytelling in which the visual and verbal meanings can be totally absorbed at a glance."

Back to Mad Men. A friend bought me the Matt Zoller Seitz book for Christmas, which looks at every episode. I think I'll start re-watching the whole series in a month or two, reading his entries after each episode.

got that book a while back, can't say I'm very happy with it. Each entry doesn't go very far beyond summaries, I think he could have dug a lot deeper into the material. Plus, there's a horrific amount of editing/proofreading errors.

Thanks. I like reading him online about various things...I'll give it a go, anyway.