Coke. Is. It. And Mad Men Ends.

“I had a dream I was on the shelf in the refrigerator. Someone closes the door and the light goes off, and I know everybody's out there eating. And they open the door and you see everyone smiling and they are happy to see you but maybe they don't look right at you and maybe they don't pick you. And then the door closes again, the light goes off.”


This epiphany-inducing speech by Mr. Average at the Esalen-like retreat is strange, as dreams often are, until you realize that he dreamt he WAS—Kafka-like—a bottle of Coca-Cola. And he was worried that people were going to go for the Chablis on the door instead of him!

Yes, the entire Mad Men series was about Coca-Cola, pure and simple.

SPOILERS.

I appreciate that the Mad Men finale has been analyzed from every angle known to man, and a few that may be extraterrestrial in scope.

So in my week-later piece,  I'd like to start with a solecism in the all-hallowed Hilltop Coke song that everyone has blithely chosen to overlook:

And that is the bizarreness of "honey bees" and "snow white turtle doves" as direct objects of the transitive verb "grow."

"I'd like to build the world a home
And furnish it with love

Grow apple trees and honey bees
And snow white turtle doves"

Come on people, this syntax makes no sense!
You "raise" honey bees and turtles dove, you don't "grow" them. 

And insult to injury: the the meter of the underlying jingle throws a stress on the word "snow" equal to the word "grow"--on top of the natural word rhyming-- making it seem as though it's a parallel verb construction:  "grow tress" and "snow white turtle doves."

Just wanted to put this out there. It's really has been bothering me since I was a kid.

Reverse Angles

Don's unlikely lotus position immediately brought a  reverse angle image into my head: Michael Keaton's opening scene of Birdman. For me Don chanting Ohm in Big Sur was as surreal as Riggan Thomson levitating in the same position in his dressing room.

That said, the interesting thing about the big reveal of Don as the creative genius behind "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing"--called one of the greatest commercials of all time--is that it illuminates for people their own view on advertising itself.

Me: I've never given advertising much of a thought one way or another. I accept the premise--"they" are going to try to sell me something--and I move on. I don't contemplate if they are toying with my emotions, because I don't invest enough in the ads.

People who see the finale as cynical have strong feelings about the evils of advertising. That what was a "real" moment of life as Don chanted at the Esalen-like retreat became perverted to peddle colored sugar water to the world. Hence Don has not changed, when if he had not created the ad, and stayed away from advertising, he would be changed/redeemed.

I like how Tom and Lorenzo put it in their recap:

 *Don took a week of depressed middle class white people and turned it into a minute of hopeful, ethnically diverse teenagers.

*He went from selling cancer to the American public to selling obesity to the American public and he did it using a message of brotherhood and tolerance that he himself would never experience because of his upper middle class trappings.

*This is what we mean when we say the ending is a cynical one. We don’t necessarily mean that as a bad thing. Mad Men has always been a particular combination of capitalist-fueled cynicism and family-based hope.

Matthew Weiner defended the ad at the New York Public Library event:

“I think it’s the best ad ever made,” he said. “That ad is so much of its time, so beautiful — I don’t think it’s as villainous as the snark of today thinks it is.”

So Weiner doesn't worry about the multinational corporation that is Coca-Cola and its impact on Don's soul. That they try to sell "happiness" as carbonated water in a bottle.  That they pervert the whole concept of "it's the real thing."

I don't worry either. I am Coke fan myself. I love the refreshing taste. I know it's not great for me, but I don't drink coffee and everyone picks his own poison. When I first started traveling to Europe 30 years ago it was hard to find "Coca Lite" but every once it a while you would run into it in a little epicerie in the middle of nowhere, and you bet it made me smile. And it usually made the epiciere smile too, at the American who found the Diet Coke. Commerce is not all evil.

As for the finale and the series: From a character angle,  I had trouble with Don's epiphany coming from the refrigerator speech. The dream thing is too weird except as an allusion to Coke bottles,  and I don't think it earned Don's breakthrough connection.

But then I never felt compelled by Don Draper the character. I enjoyed the artistry and style of a TV show that started with the distinct evocation of the 1950s and lead us throughout the decade.

These last episodes for me were a collection of Matthew Weiner's favorite things: particularly the enormous homage to Hitchcock.

But what Mattew seems to have loved most of all was the Coke commercial he saw when he was 6 years old. It's quite a story, especially why it's in Rome (it's because it was raining in England).  More details on Coke's own site.

I applaud people who are able to bring their passions into their work of any kind, and share it with the world, maybe even with a coke and a smile.

Read More

 Mapeel     5/23/2015     Film, Mad Men, TV   

Mad Men: Where Hitchcock Meets Lawrence of Arabia, and We Say Goodbye to Don

In the beginning there was Alfred Hitchcock. He liked mystery, intrigue, issues of identity, Cary Grant, and cold, cool blonds.

Quite the blueprint for Matthew Weiner. 

Mad Men opened with the the intriguing "falling man" while it's Roger Thornhill in Hitchcock's North by Northwest who is the original falling man (with what I think is a much more closely matched "fall" than the oft-cited Vertigo poster) and an advertising man to boot who can't get people to believe who he is once he gets mistaken for a spy.  And so we know whence Don Draper sprang fully formed from the head of Matthew Weiner.

Much of the magnetism of the series came from the evocation of the 1950s (which the series rightfully depicts as continuing on well into the 1960s). North by Northwest opened on July 28, 1959; Mad Men debuted on July 19, 2007. Weiner brought us the great visual quotes of the NxNW cornfield scene in "Lost Horizon," and the "Thornhill at bus stop in the middle of nowhere" quote in "The Milk and Honey Route." Weiner has elegantly achieved the homage to the Master.

The Plot: Through the series we've learned a bunch about how Dick Whitman became Don Draper, taking on the identify of his lieutenant in Korea, after he accidentally killed him.

And why did he want to change his identify? He had a difficult childhood. For me, none of this was why I watched. I've watched because of the visual beauty and artfulness, a distinct place on the TV landscape to spend an hour a week, sporadically through the years.

Everybody Loves a Mystery
So how will it all end? Don has been stripping himself of the Don Draper identifiers: his beautiful wife Megan; their apartment (and furniture, which her mother took); his advertising career; his first family; his car.

And . . . we last saw him at a Thornhill-like bus stop in the middle of nowhere. (h/t Michael Beschloss for the Cary Grant screen grab.)

WITH A SMILE. A SMILE.

Hmm.  Happiness, at having little left to lose, made me think of one person . . .

T.E.Lawrence.

Thomas Edward Lawrence struggled with identity his whole life.  His father, Sir Thomas Chapman, was married with four daughters. They hired a nanny, Sarah, to help, and Tom fell madly in love with her.

He left his wife and daughters, and started a new life with Sarah, under the name Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence. He never divorced his first wife, and he had five sons with Sarah, of whom T.E. was the second.

T.E. had an enormous intellect, which is what propelled him to great heights in leading much of the war in Arabia during WWI. He idenfitied with the Arabs, and believed he was fighting for their independence.  That's not what happened: Arabia was portioned off between the English & French. He felt he had been a fraud (this is all in enormous shorthand.)

When Lawrence returned to civilian life we was given a teaching gig at Oxford. Perfect, right? But he enlisted in the R.A.F. under the name John Hume Ross, to lose himself. When it was discovered who he really was, he was thrown out. Then he enlisted in the Royal Tank Corp, as T.E. Shaw. He didn't really like that and he petitioned to be let back in to the R.A.F, which happened in 1925. He served until 1935.  Two months after he left the service, at the age of 46, he was mortally hurt in a motorcycle accident, and died.

Lawrence wrote about his time in the RAF & the Tank Corp. in The Mint, which was published after he died. It is a tortured telling of wanting to be a complete non-entity.  Shedding all identity was the only way he could find peace, dare we say happiness. That's why he popped into my head when I saw Don's smile at having nearly nothing.

I don't think this has anything to do with the actual ending, but I did find Weiner made a reference to none other than David Lean's movie in a Washington Post interview on the idea of Jewish-ness & Other-ness. . . .HA!

"So when you start making a decision to represent people, and you have Ginsberg’s father, who’s a Holocaust survivor, who is from Poland, you’re gonna have him talk like Lawrence of Arabia?"

Clues That Have Been Dropped
John Slattery is on record as saying that the ending is "Of course."  I believe that Weiner has said that he's known how it will end since he started.

I love the D.B.Cooper idea.  Such a creative exercise, to take one of the great mysteries of the 1970s, and trace it back to who D.B. was before he disappeared.

Other than that, I'll just be happy with almost anything as long as it doesn't have any completely illogical occurence: like a man who clearly is dying of frostbite, in a car enclosed in ice with a dead battery, and then miraculously turns up in a kitchen in sunny Arizona . . .

Read More

 Mapeel     5/16/2015     Film, literature, Mad Men, TV   

Easter Sunday 2015: And Mad Men's Era Begins Its Descent into TV History

This is not today's table, but a picture of the lovely dining room of the bed & breakfast I stayed in in Antrain, France, for my polyphony workshop. It captures a chic Easter-ness for me, in that effortlessly French kind of way. Happy Easter to all who celebrate (and to the Jews, "nice try"--funny line on Saturday Night Live Weekend Update last night!)

The Madness Starts to End

Today is a unique Easter Sunday in the annals of this Christian celebration because it is also the premiere of the second half of the last season of Mad Men.  Don & company certainly look dressed for Easter, circa late '60s/early '70s. 

As a fan of Burn Notice, I found an interesting comparison between the series when I was researching Michael and Fiona, not Don and Betty/Megan/Suzanne/Midge/Faye, etc.

Burn Notice  made its debut during the first summer of Mad Men (AMC), with .006 percent of its buzz but an audience many times its size. 

Gina Bellafante, Jan. 2009, The New York Times

And that audience size has remained relatively small: 

        'Mad Men' brings prestige, if not powerful ratings, to AMC

        Frank Pallotta for ABC, April, 2015.

What the audience lacks in size it makes up for in passion.  Personally I found the first two seasons excruciatingly slow.  All style, with a very compelling & tantalizing lead in Don Draper and the early, interesting 'who is he?' but overall the storytelling lacked momentum. I enjoyed the later seasons more, but have never loved the series. 

What I love is the community around the series, starting with the live blogging that my good friend Tom Watson and I did at the beginning, way back in 2007 before Twitter took over. I have written 25 posts on Mad Men, covering a lot of pop culture from many angles. And I still eagerly wait for recaps from Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall, and for the comments on both sites.

As for Don? Of all the Sundays that Matt Weiner could have brought back MM, it turns out to be Easter Sunday, the very definition of redemption. The series has not explored much of Don's spiritual side, maybe this coinciding signals redeeming of some sort will be a theme for the end of the story.

And of course, we're all very interested in what that final episode will be, how Weiner will end his story, though I am a firm believer in the Wimsatt's Intentional Fallacy: the author is not the oracle. What he intends, is not necessarily what happens, or what a reasonable audience reads. For me,  there is no question that Tony Soprano is dead.  I also believe that Walter White died in that car in New Hampshire, and the eerie, oddly lit last scenes where he visited key people in his life and tried to make amends is in his head as he is freezing to death.

All to say that I don't care as much about the character of Don Draper as I do the ending of one of the most distinct series on the TV landscape.

And because it still is Easter Sunday, I share a picture of my dad, back in his own #MadMen time before the crazy plaids descended. (I seem to be under siege by a very big bow.)

Read More

 Mapeel     4/05/2015     holidays, Mad Men, television   

What's In a TV Title? For Mad Men, It's Finally Facing a Waterloo of Some Sort

 

 My, my, at Waterloo Napoleon did surrender
Oh yeah, and I have met my destiny in quite a similar way
The history book on the shelf
Is always repeating itself

From a creative perspective, episode titles are baffling elements. TV professionals refer to each script by its production code. Yet most series have actual titles for episodes, even though those titles are more often than not, not a part of the opening credits and therefore not a part of the viewer's experience, and—in the old days before the Internet—not a part of our knowledge.

Who knew that there were Brady Bunch episodes 001 and 075 called "Dear Libby" and "The Tiki Caves," and Bewitched's "Serena Steals the Show" and "A Vision of Sugarplums," since no one saw them. So creatively, why bother.

The first titles I remember seeing were for Remington Steele—all plays on his name "License to Steele" and "Thou Shalt Not Steele"—and Moonlighting "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice" and "Big Man on Mulberry Street." Those titles felt like a small literary flourish, subtly giving the episode a short story feel within the larger collected work. ER ran episode titles, though by the nature of the medical drama they did not have a literary feel to them. The classic Valentine's Day "Be Still My Heart" does not prepare you for one of the most devastating final shots in television history, of Carter and Lucy, while "Chaos Theory" almost seems like an apology for the insane combination of events that lead to the loss of Dr. Romano's arm.

Then TV entered its deeper "literature of our times" era, with The Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire, etc., leading to the cottage industry of scrutinizing every frame, every music cue, every camera angle.  And still: the titles of those episodes are not part of the experience of the viewer.  The Sopranos episode where Christopher is in a car crash is called "Kennedy & Heidi" after the 2 girls in the car who hit him. Does that title add to the ideas in the plot? Probably not. The next episode is "The Second Coming," the Yeats poem that A.J. is studying in college. Pulling it out to be the title emphasizes its importance. If you know that it is the title.

And that leads us to Mad Men midseason finale.  Script 707, aka "Waterloo."

We know the title in advance because of AMC and IMDB websites. Which means it's a part of every article being written about it. But it still won't be a part of our viewing experience, only our reading experience. AMC has kindly listed all the episode titles to date here.

But the question remains:  how much importance is there to a creative element that is not a part of the show? And what is behind that decision not to make it part of the viewing experience? Some day someone will explain this to me.

For now, it's the biggest "clue" we have to the midseason finale.

Mad Men: "WATERLOO"

Of course there is the Battle thereof. Appropriate on Memorial Day Weekend, given Wikipedia tells us about 40,000 soldiers died fighting it. Napoleon had escaped from his first exile on Elba, raised an army, and was defeated by the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo. It ended his reign as Emperor of France. He was then exiled to Saint Helena, a horribly remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean, where he died six years later.

In the Mad Men universe, Don has come back from his first exile. If Pete and Peggy constitute him raising an army, then "Waterloo" could signal that it's not going to go well. He may be going to a defeat, from which he will have to surrender, be exiled and then die.

Or Weiner could be thinking about the great ABBA Waterloo. The story is 5 years from them winning the 1974 Eurovision with the song, but we know that he uses music before its time all the time.

The history book on the shelf, is always repeating itself.

Is that Don's Waterloo, that he can't change?

My, my, I tried to hold you back but you were stronger
Oh yeah, and now it seems my only chance is giving up the fight
And how could I ever refuse
I feel like I win when I lose

Waterloo - I was defeated, you won the war
Waterloo - Promise to love you for ever more
Waterloo - Couldn't escape if I wanted to
Waterloo - Knowing my fate is to be with you
Waterloo - Finally facing my Waterloo

"Knowing my fate is to be with you."  Hmm. Who could that be? And Don receives a troubling letter. Hmm.

Sing us out Anni-Frid, Benny, Bjorn, Agnetha

Read More

 Mapeel     5/24/2014     current events, Mad Men, television   

Why Don't More TV Characters Talk About, Well, TV? Don't They Watch the Hit Shows Too?

Scottie: "I know we got into a fight last night, but drinking before 10am, is that really the answer?"
Harvey: "It is on Mad Men. Who does that guy think he is?"

Catching up on USA's Suits, this line of dialogue in the season finale "No Way Out"  hit my ear.  Why shouldn't Harvey Specter watch TV, and why shouldn't he make a reference to it in his everyday speech?

No reason on either count, but it illuminates that it's a relatively uncommon occurrence. As a kid I remember thinking that there must be a rule that TV characters don't watch TV the way we do, or else they would talk about it more. (Truly I was destined to work at The Paley Center for Media.) It was a first inkling of understanding the conventions & boundaries of the fictional worlds of TV.

The examples that I'm looking for are not meta-references and the series built around them like The Simpsons and Family Guy. (Oh, look what they have in common: adult series animation.) Nor do I mean characters that we see watching TV, like Tony Soprano and his History channel or Don's recent TV watching while he's spiraling down. Nor do I mean when TV characters meet each other, a la the Law & Order franchise crossovers, roping in their colleagues down in Baltimore, Homicide: Life on the Streets, or the CSI interstate meet-ups.

I mean references in "natural" conversation between characters, like the scene with Harvey & Scottie.

The the Darrins, the Beckys, and the Lois Lanes

The first time I remember hearing a direct TV-watching reference was in Roseanne. I didn't watch it religiously, but I caught the 1993 episode Homecoming, when daughter Becky returned after a long plot-related absence. And when she came back, it was Sarah Chalke in the role, not Lecy Goranson.

There was a tag scene over the closing credits, in the Conner living room, with the family watching TV. You hear the unmistakable music from Bewitched, and then this dialogue:

Roseanne: "I cannot believe that they replaced that Darrin."
Jackie: "Well it was a hit show, they knew they could get away with anything."
Becky: "Well, I like the second Darren much better."

Yes meta, because of the actress switch, but also natural that a family watching the series together would note the strange change in actors with no explanation.

Before the Beckys and the Darrins there were the Lois Lanes.  Phyllis Coates played the role for the first year of the series, replaced by Noel Neill.  Both were put into syndication in the 1970s, which is why I saw both. But I've never heard a reference to it.

The Big Bang Theory has lots of references to TV, particularly the entire Star Trek franchise, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon Five, and other classics in the nerd cannon. But dialogue in the recent "Relationship Diremption," April 10, 2014, written by Chuck Lorre, Eric Kaplan & Steve Holland, was different. It was more casual to friends watching hit shows, not plot points specific to their identities.

Sheldon responds to why he hasn't proven string theory yet: "I have a lot on my plate. We're in a Golden Age of Television."

Sheldon: "Am I wasting my life on something that can't be proven?"
Wolowitz: " Maybe,  but how great is Game of Thrones?"

Sheldon: "I couldn't sleep."
Penny: "I told you those Walking Dead pillowcases were a bad idea."

These casual references simply illustrate that the characters watch TV, not a meta "wink wink, nod nod" (thank you Monty Python). Which could be seen as the next step in the evolution of TV's narrative journey.

I can't find the citation, but I remember someone pointing out that Samantha Steven's pregnancy in Bewitched was the first time that episodic TV had a connecting thread.  Hill Street Blues was the first time that nightime prime time used the multiple, interconnecting, long story arcs of soap operas. And that lead to the glories of The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, etc.

And decades later now TV characters are free to watch TV show with no meta overtones. They continue to become more and more autonomous in the most interesting ways. Hmm.

Here's a great fan video of TV & film characters reacting to the Purple Wedding of Games of Thrones, because of course everyone watches it.

Read More

 Mapeel     4/27/2014     Mad Men, television   

Weiner: Missing Classic Ad Doubleness & the power of "Retsyn"

The Mad Men recap factory is enjoying the doubleness Weiner wrote into the Mad Men episode "The Better Half."  But for a guy whose show is about advertising, he missed the chance to evoke his themes using the products and classic ads he grew up with, and that his characters would know very well.

Certs: Two, Two, Two Mints in One
Certs is the product embodiment of this episode's theme, as summed up by Alan Sepinwall: "The Better Half" was an episode about the two sides of ourselves — the person we think we are versus the person others see, or the person we are at work versus at home — and yet another sixth season episode loaded with doppelgangers and time-displaced versions of the same characters." 

The twin blondes in the 50s polka dots dresses is one of the early Certs commercials. The classic line remembered is

"Two [click] Two [click] two mints in one"

which was used for the campaign for years.  I never really knew what that meant, what are the 2 things? Here is the answer:



Twin #1: "Certs is a candy mint"
Twin #3: "Certs is a breath mint"

Voiceover: "Stop. You're both right. New Certs is two mints in one. Stops bad breath in seconds, the tastiest mint of all"

This of course lead to one of SNL's golden-age sketches:
"It's a floor wax"
"No, it's a dessert topping"

"Calm down you two. New Shimmer is a floor wax AND a dessert topping"



The specifics of the two sides of Certs were dropped in the 1970s versions, except for the all-important Retsyn, which is one of those ridiculous things that has stayed in my head.

Certs has a "golden drop of retsyn, the miracle breath purifier that makes your breath clean and fresh"

Certs: The Date
I have no memory of this side of the Certs campaign:

If he kissed you once, will he kiss you again? Be certain with certs. The delicious tasting candy mint that makes your breath as sweet as your smile

With Certs, if you kissed you once, he'll do it again. Make certain with Certs.



Doublemint Gum
The glory days of the Doublemint Twins started in the 70s, but the idea and an early version of the jingle were around in the 60s:

Double your pleasure, double your fun
With doublemint, Doublemint, Doublemint gum





I Can't Believe It's Not Butter
The episode opens with Don & Ted are in a creative thrown down on how to approach the new account, for Fleischmann's margarine. Weiner has consistently withheld the creative successes of the era from Don: no American Airlines; getting Chevy, but for the Vega; and now Fleischmann's, when history dubbed that these ads would be remembered.

Imperial Margarine
"It's flavor fit for a king"





Chiffon Margarine
"This can't be margarine. It's too sweet, too creamy" 
"Oh, It's not nice to fool Mother Nature"



And, for the record, the pich for both is solidly built on taste, not cost. Point to Don.

Read More

 Mapeel     5/27/2013     Mad Men, television   

Season 6 of Mad Man: Teasing Images

My original 2013 post: The community comes back together at 9:00 pm ET as Don Draper and his circle re-enter our pop culture present. Images have been stacking up in my mind.

We've been teased by a poster of two Dons, going in opposite directions. One Don is holding the hand of some woman in a swinging sixties gown or peignoir; the other Don is holding a briefcase.

The illustrator is the 75-old-old Brian Sanders, who had that sixties-era that I vaguely associate with Pan Am and early I-Hop. So he's the real thing.

As is Cary Grant, and Roger Thornhill, seen in a still from North by Northwest above and could be the actual model for the poster, who in a matter of speaking, the original falling mad man.

I don't know what it all means . . . . Yet.

Updated 5/11/15, after The Milk and Honey Route.

Kudos to Michael Beschloss for tweeting this still during the penultimate Mad Men episode, The Milk and Honey Route. The original Mad Man, Roger Thornhill, again.

Read More

 Mapeel     4/07/2013     Film, Mad Men, television   

Madness Contained Until Tomorrow(land)

Some thoughts from back when we last left Don, a year and a half ago. And the Mad Men tag will take you to posts from various specific episodes over the last four years. It helps to be reminded why people are making the season 5 premiere an event. More about that later.

Another season, another reason, of Mad Men whoopee is over.

It began with a reporter asking “who is Don Draper?” and ended with this answer: A father of three who fell in love with a French-speaking, child-loving 25-year old Maria Von Trapp of a brunette, while he seemed to have saved his business by a stunt ad in the NY Times about Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce not taking tobacco advertising.

I’m glad to see Don find focus. He hit rock bottom this season, with the vomit on his shirt. Then he began the journaling and swimming, and the man regained some of his beauty and charisma. He’s much more interesting as a man interested in his life than a drunk trying to throw it all away.

Betty continued to be a damaged, cruel, lost woman; Joan chose to be a mother rather than not; Peggy is horrified that her work still is undervalued; and Sally is the best actress on television.

We’ve come a long way from seasons 1 and 2, when Weiner’s love of style trumped his ability to tell a story. Now the storytelling is compelling, and we may all be with these characters for the long run, into the seventies and beyond.

Other moments:
•The real Don Draper’s engagement ring coming to our Don Draper

•So many pop culture references: The Sound of Music; Hogan’s Heroes; Beverly Hillbillies (swimming pools, movie stars), Abe Beame!

•Poor Faye. She starts the episode with Don, but It’s not to be.

•Don roping Peggy into his happy news. Megan reminds him of Peggy! Megan admires her the way he does. What's that about.

•Bobby’s desire to ride a jet in Tomorrowland, and Don’s wistful look at the window at the end. Is he feeling The Graduate (the blank stares at the back of the bus), or truly Sonny & Cher (and then look what actually happened to them)

Not a cliff hanger, but a nice plateau for the characters to rest on until next season.

Read More

 Mapeel     3/24/2012     Mad Men   

Professor Grampy Meets the Mad Men

This Mad Men episode tells us "Christmas Comes But Once a Year." So, Christmas in August. SCDP is breaking all the rules, even the one that usually puts Christmas in July. What iconoclasts.

The title of this holiday bonbon is such a specific cultural reference: it’s Max Fleischer’s 1936 animated short "Christmas Comes But Once a Year" (with that really catchy eponymous song) about the children in the orphanage. The tots wake up on Christmas morning, all happy because “it’s Christmas!” When they play with the toys left in their stockings, everything is so old and patched that they fall apart, and the little ones start crying. (The teddy bear that disintegrates in the little girl’s arms has to be one of the saddest sights in toondom).

Professor Grampy, from Betty Boop’s universe, is passing by, hears the sobs, and stops to see what he can do. He creates imaginative toys from the appliances, dresses up as Santa, and saves the day. The orphans all become truly happy with the new “toys” and they have a very Merry Christmas.

It’s a short that would be part of the childhood of all the adults in the Mad Men universe (along with World War 1, for Cooper, at least, and the Depression). The theme of desire and happiness is an underpinning of the entire series--Dick Whitman desired to be Don Draper; Joan desired a doctor/good provider for a husband; Pete desired to be taken seriously as an account rep. etc. The attainment of these desires has had mixed results.

The idea of Christmas just makes the theme more focused. The episode title reference is then paid off with Lee, Mr. Lucky Strike, a bore of a man who has everything and wants to manipulate others, like making Roger wear the Santa suit. When he opens his present, it’s a Polaroid camera. He says “As a kid, you ask for something and you get it and it made you happy,” betraying a sense of nostalgia for his own childhood, when getting something actually made him happy. The orphans playing with the vacuum cleaner and the kitchen-made sled know more real joy than he does. It's not an original idea, but the presentation of it is unique. And I think it's great for Weiner to bring Fleischer back into the spotlight, even if it's just for Maddicts.


And Beneath all the Tinsel

•Dr. Atherton and Faye Miller are brought in to ride the wave of psychology-based market research, juxtaposed against psycho teen Glen, who is vandalizing the Draper house to express his feelings Sally. Shades of the turbulence that will rock the decade in just a few years.

•We don’t know the exact date of this office party, but it’s worth noting that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was first shown on Dec. 4, 1964, and the party was probably later on in December than that. Could have been a nice reference.

•I LOVE Roger’s office. The white tulip tables, the vortex art, the bright orange and green accents. Wow. That’s the 60s. Don’s office still has paneling.

•Don is losing it. When Phoebe comes over, he pretty much insists that they haven’t met before (maybe you weren’t wearing your uniform), and with Allison the next day, he is unbelievably cold. All that drinking isn’t good for the grey cells.

Read More

 Mapeel     8/02/2010     Mad Men, television   

Mad Men, a.k.a. Weiner’s "Interiors"

The faithful gathered back together tonight for the 4th season premiere of Mad Men. I updated my party look for the occasion. (The avatar choices still not yet far enough in time to offer the classic long straight locks for Emma Peel.)

“Who is Don Draper?” This question from the Advertising Age reporter opens the episode, the script finally catching up to that obvious Atlas Shrugged motif that many of us saw back in season one.

But it’s our first look at the new offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce in 1964 that is the first “wow” of the season, that stunning Modernist style. Specifically and in general sensibility it looks like it's based around the Barcelona Collection designed by Mies Van der Rhoe, Eero Saarinen’s Tulip chair, and Marcel Breuer’s Wassily chair. The whole place looks like Knoll and Herman Miller showroom (both places which I have recently visited), down to the glass walls of the conference room.

It’s a sleek, fresh environment, and while Don’s inner life continues in chaos, he has landed in a place of order and beauty for his professional creativity.

UPDATE 7/26. The Mid-Century Modernist has an excellent feature on the Furniture of Mad Men (h/t Basket of Kisses). The look also derives from the Eames chair of Herman Miller.

The SCDP logo is great—-the bold Helvetica (?) letters in their independent quadrants. Some echo of Robert Indiana’s 1964 stacked LOVE, and of the Pop Art sensibility in general.

UPDATE 7/30: The font is Akzidenz Grotesk, with comparisons to Ariel. Burn Down Blog shows the comparison.

The costumes for the series have gotten a lot of attention, but this season more attention needs to be paid to the graphics and interior design. (Design Observer, this means you.) UPDATE 7/30: Great roundup of design and font posts from DO's Michael Bierut (thanks very much Michael) as well as his own Jerry Della Femina, Mad Men, and the Cult of Advertising Personality.}

Here’s where I will be joining the conversation, as we groove our way through the sixties:

Alan Sepinwall

Matt Zoller Seitz

James Wolcott

Basket of Kisses

Read More

 Mapeel     7/26/2010     Mad Men, television   

Madness Concludes: "Don’t Act Like a Stranger, We Have Tea”

Man, these Mad Men seasons are going by in the blink of an eye. Here we are already at the end of season 3. I have enjoyed it much more than the previous 2 because the storytelling pace is tighter and more things are happening. The minutiae of details finally feel in service to a narrative, rather than for their own sake. The wry dialogue is also very appealing, particularly in the mouth of Roger Sterling. That said,the series is still the most depressing hour of fiction on TV.

SPOILERS

This season finale was the ultimate workplace fantasy (to go along with the ‘when white men ruled without compunction’ fantasy.) Don got to take all the people he likes at the office and start a new company with them. “Shut the door and take a seat.” Who hasn’t had the thought of running off to work with just a core a people who “get” it. Who hasn’t daydreamed to get away from TPTB and become your own PTB.

The finale also showed Don having his consciousness raised in terms of relationships. He finally sees the light that he hasn’t valued what Roger Sterling does, or Pete and Peggy’s talent.


Betty’s life is in motion too. She is going forward with the divorce, with the lifeboat named Henry. But alarms are going off in everyone’s head about him. Getting divorced in the sixties must have been very painful, with the society condemnation on top of the individual emotional piercing.

The episode gave us 2 Don/Dick flashbacks. One showing how his dad stood up to the farming collective, not to sell his grain at a low market value; and the other showing how Mr. Whitman dies via the family nag. A strange death, echoing the 1960 Dean Martin song from Ocean’s 11, “Ain’t that a kick in the head.” Not so funny I guess when it really happens. One of Alan Sepinwall's major points about the finale is that it had the aura of a "caper," like Ocean's 11. Hmm.

Deconstructing for Our Times

What I find MOST enjoyable about this series is its online community. The program for me does not have the power of The Sopranos or Deadwood, but its fans are deconstructing it with a verve and gusto that is a wonder to behold. Why is it that so many people are that interested in the exegesis of this hour drama? What’s going on in RL that is leading to this?

The TV landscape is an interesting indication of the mainstream national psyche. For instance, in the seventies we still had variety shows, a cultural vestige of the forties that showed we still valued being entertained by song and dance.

The current landscape is dominated by police and medical procedurals of all types, with the strange subgenre of forensic dramas. An entire subgenre devoted to figuring out how people die and who is responsible. That fascinates me. Isn’t that a projection of the desire to be able to make sense out of chaos? If we just understood the clues, if we just applied science to the facts, we could KNOW something. We could dispel some of the mysteries that enshroud our days. We all want to KNOW what’s going on, then we will be happy, then we can be at peace.

That desire for knowledge, for making sense, is part of the microcosm of watching Mad Men. We watch, and since it’s an artful work, there are ideas and tropes within the piece that we can mine. And now with the community at our fingertips, it’s instant gratification if we are right about an idea---the community agrees---or if we are off, the community tells us that too. No visual or aural clue goes unexamined. The patience that the online community has for the minutiae of MM is astounding.

And so we leave Don for a third time. It’s Christmas time, 1963, and he’s moving in to a furnished room in the city. The Beatles arrive in 3 months. That’s a lot to look forward to. I’m hoping that Matt can find a way to give his characters and us some moments of joy when the Fab Four start to play.

Until then, Dino, swinging the 1960, Jimmy Van Heusen/Sammy Cahn tune from Ocean's 11.

Read More

 Mapeel     11/09/2009     Mad Men, television   

Madness Approaches

Frank Rich has an interesting piece that relates the anniversary of Woodstock to 2009's own version of the mud-in: AMC's screening of Mad Men's third season premiere in Times Square, the crossroads of the world. Each generation gets the communal experience it deserves . . .

Tom Watson and I won't be live blogging this year, but lo and behold our blog godfather James Wolcott is taking on the real-time Sterling Cooper reactions himself.

Lance Mannion has a rogue's gallery of blog buddies now inhabiting the Don Draper universe. Very well done, everyone.

I have not read a single word of preseason hype, so I don't know what year we will find Don in tonight. But I do hope that Matt Weiner has gotten control of all the storyline and storyarc weaknesses that undercut the exquisite moments of season two, so that we really can luxuriate in this sultry summer fare.

Read More

 Mapeel     8/16/2009     Mad Men, television   

Live Blogging Mad Men: Crisis Management 101

It is possible to undergo a profound crisis involving non-ordinary experiences and to perceive it as pathological or psychiatric when in fact it may be more accurately and beneficially defined as a spiritual emergency. -- Stanislav Grof

The end of season two of Mad Men finds us all in crisis.

Crisis. It’s a very powerful and distinct word in the English language. It’s married to certain other words: the Cuban Missile Crisis (more about that later), the Energy Crisis of the seventies, the Savings & loan crises of the eighties, today’s Wall Street Crisis, the generic midlife crisis and spiritual crisis.

As we prepare to leave Don and the gang at Sterling Cooper, this is what we find:

Betty is in crisis from being forced to acknowledge Don’s cheating; Roger’s crisis is the classic midlife variety, with a woman younger than his daughter; Freddy Rumsen’s is the crisis of midlife unemployment; Pete Campbell has had several, from the death of his father to that of elusive parenthood; Joan’s is the most horrific--sickening proof her fiancé’s abusive nature—and not running from it.

And then there’s Don.

Don has finally been thrown out of his marriage by Betty, and while on the run in LA, he watches an aerospace presentation that portends the potential for Doomsday. There’s nothing like the reality of nuclear warheads to call attention to the meaning of your life.

From there, Don joins the Euro-grifters in Palm Springs, where he spends a lot of time lying down. In the final scene, he is nearly naked as a new-born babe, when Dick Whitman calls the first Mrs. Draper. This begins a series of flashbacks and present-day confusion, as he continues to be Dick Whitman, until he wanders into the ocean, either as Norman Maine, or as a seeker looking for the cleansing water of baptism.

Don is a living identify crisis-—not something you often see on television. I have vague memories of some characters in the seventies saying things like “I don’t know who I am” (oddly enough, Karen Valentine from Room 222 is popping into my head here, as is Ellen from Thirtysomething), but nothing that compares to the turmoil in Don’s borrowed soul.

I knew a priest who once told me that all crises after 30 are spiritual. (I was 26 at the time, but it still seemed reasonable.) And so it is that Don’s crisis is deeper than identity, it’s spiritual.

In today’s self-help language, it might be called a spiritual emergency. There are many blogs with personal transformation stories, like this one:

“I am an individual who has undergone a transformative experience that in this culture and setting would be identified as psychosis or schizophrenic. Other cultures and settings have other names for the same experience: kundalini awakening, shamanism, mysticism, gnosis, the psychotic-visionary episode, the dark night of the soul, ego death, the alchemical process, positive disintegration, post traumatic stress disorder with psychotic features, spiritual emergency, etc.”

I don’t know if Weiner knowingly tapped into this world of transpersonal psychology, or if he just had the creative idea of a man who takes another’s identity, and then plotted what he thought would be the emotional fallout from that. Either way, Frank O’Hara’s Meditations in an Emergency is an interesting touchstone.

As for the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis: there’s very little I can say about that. My parents, who both worked for Pfizer, sold a considerable amount of Pfizer stock when the market tanked in the uncertainty, and for one reason or another they didn’t get back in. The way they always spoke of it, I would have been a Pfizer heiress if the missile crisis hadn’t happened.

It’s art imitating life, all around.

You don’t want to miss the last live blogging of the season with Tom Watson and myself. Sunday night, 10:00 ET at newcritics.

Read More

 Mapeel     10/24/2008     Mad Men, television   

Mad Men: EST, aka Even Suckers Transform

When we last saw Don, he was in the glow of sunlight through the window of DC8 on his way to Los Angeles to get away from his domestic travails. It’s the primal tactic of flight when fight doesn’t work. Good old running away. After the week we have witnessed, we should all be so lucky if we could escape from our economic travails by a geographical shift.

The most we can do is visit our fictional world of choice, where our hero is sitting on a jet plane. Hmm. An East Coast man, who is dissatisfied with his life with his wife and children and who has a penchant for reinventing himself, is heading out to California. Real-world thoughts start seeping in, and Werner Erhard pops into my head.

Why is that? Let’s see. John Paul Rosenberg was a used car salesman born in Philadelphia. He married and had 4 children before he decided he didn’t want that life. He went cross country with another woman, and reinvented himself as Werner Erhard in St. Louis. The Erhards bounced around the country for 10 years, but of course the important date is in 1971 when Werner held the first Est weekend in San Francisco after he created a personal empowerment program by putting multiple world philosophies into a cuisinart and turning it on high. Rosenberg/Erhard is a tale that would have much resonance for Whitman/Draper, the time shifting notwithstanding.

Rosenberg/Erhard actually relied heavily on an earlier work by Napoleon Hill called Think and Grow Rich, which came out in 1937 and which Dick/Don could have been familiar with. He certainly is acquainted with its three main principles: every achievement begins with an idea; plans call for their implementation and; what you think is what you do.

Don is a unique character on television in that reinvention of himself. We’ve met characters with 2 identities: Bruce Wayne/ Batman; Tony Soprano, suburban Dad/Mafia boss; Samantha Stevens, housewife/witch; Christian Slater now topping all that, with Henry/Edward.

But I believe Don is unique on our tv landscape in the very serious business of opportunistically shedding your identity and assuming another man’s life. It has dark undertones of metaphorical cannibalism, twinged with that most modern of nihilism: Don’s mask brings him no happiness.

But that’s depressing, and who can be depressed when we will all be visiting LaLa land together.

Stop by newcritics on Sunday night when Tom Watson and I will forget about the stock market long enough to feel Don’s pain.

Read More

 Mapeel     10/10/2008     Mad Men, television   

Echoes of a Movie Legend in the World of Mad Men

It’s been a week of certifiable madness.

Stock market insanity; bank and company failures on an epic scale; the dollar amount of 700 billion said with a straight face.

And now the maddening reality of the loss of Paul Newman, who embodied the sea change of generational sensibility that is rocking Don Draper’s world.

The gang at Sterling Cooper don’t drop many film references. Do none of these New Yorkers go to the movies? By 1962 they should have all seen Someone Up There Likes Me, The Long Hot Summer, Cat on a Hat Tin Roof, Exodus, and The Hustler. Paul Newman was in his early powerhouse years.

There are lots of interesting intersections here. Jon Hamm as Don Draper has that old school, classic movie star handsome look. Paul Newman did too, especially in his early roles. But he also was the energy and charisma of the new generation that was sweeping into the culture, the antiheroes of Butch Cassidy and the defiance of Cool Hand Luke. Newman did not win an Academy Award until 1986; many people thought Hamm was robbed of the Best Actor Emmy last Sunday.

The character of Don Draper and Paul Newman were born around the same year, served in WWII, and came to power in the changing postwar culture.

Draper has some of the detached cool of Ben Quick and Fast Eddy, and he has reinvented himself like Rocky Graziano and Ari Canaan did. Still, he is conservative in his worldview, except where his mistresses are concerned. They speak to a piece of him that wants to be freer. When his wife buys a yellow beach ensemble at the country club, he tells her it’s “desperate” of her. The wife/mother role is inviolate for many, but that’s still a pretty square thing to say.

This week’s episode is “Six Months Leave.” When last we saw Don, Betty had told him not to come home. Maybe she is giving him a six-month leave from their marriage. Come over to newcritics as Tom Watson and I live blog the unfolding story, Sunday night at 10.

Read More

 Mapeel     9/27/2008     Mad Men, television   

Mad Men: "Tears rise in the heart and gather to the eyes"

“God, I miss the fifties.” Roger Serling

“I miss the blacklist.” Harry Crane

“I missed not live blogging with you all last week. Thank God my Norwegian ancestors kept me from being sad about it.” M.A.Peel

Okay, so I have now seen “The Benefactor,” where Roger and Harry had throw away lines waxing nostalgic for their own recent past. The episode did not follow much of the story lines from the previous week-—we learned nothing more of Pete and the loss of his father.

Instead, it was Betty’s day. From her horseback riding to being the show horse on Don’s arm, inquiring if the dinner at Lutece is one that she’s supposed to talk at or not.

We can compare and contrast her to Don’s new dalliance-—she doesn’t qualify as a mistress—-the wife/manager Bobbie Barrett. Much blogbabble ensued from Don’s ladies room move on Bobbie, when he grabbed her nether reigns to get her to do what he wanted. It was crude, because of the time and place; it’s not heat between lovers, but the violence of a desperate, frustrated man toward a woman he doesn’t much like.

Bobbie acquiesces, while it is Betty who ends the evening in tears in the car. A woman doesn’t cry genuine tears like that in from of her husband if she can help it. The anguish is SO out of context for the average man that he will have no way to process it. As it was for Don, who, when he asked why she was crying, believed the “I’m just so happy” line.

But Betty isn’t happy. We see her being fairly detached from her children. She tried to go back in to modeling, but was boxed out by the stratagems of several mad men. Her husband cheated on her, and she must have given him an ultimatum, which has kept him home. But it feels like a forced victory. It’s not that he much wants to be home with Betty, but he is doing it out of obligation. That would leave an emptiness where Betty wanted to find the core of her life.

In Alex Witchell’s NY Times Magazine article, this is what January Jones had to say about Betty: “She’s so lost. She’s supposed to be this perfect Grace Kelly wife of a businessman, and it’s just not going the way she imagined.”

It’s sadly ironic that she draws the analogy to Grace Kelly. There have been many stories about how difficult her fairytale marriage to Prince Rainier was. That he was cold and not very interested in her outside of his heirs, and how as a young bride his family did little to help her.

This Sunday brings us the episode “Three Sundays.” The advance clip on the AMC website has Betty saying that it is Palm Sunday, a designation you don’t often hear on tv episodes. Tom Watson and I will be back in the live blogging chair over at newcritics. Come spend your Sunday night with us.

Read More

 Mapeel     8/14/2008     Mad Men, television   

Mad Men Season Two: "Flight 1"

Our thoughts take flight tonight in live blogging over at newcritics.


For all of today’s hypermobility of every kind—from the ubiquitous air travel we take for granted to the iphone culture that lets us take it all with us—we are a comparatively earth-bound people. I don’t think our society’s collective thoughts and imagination fly, not the way they did at the dawn of the sixties.

The National Air and Space Museum tells us that Pan American ushered in the Jet Age in 1958 with the Boeing 707.

American Airlines set a new speed mark when it opened the first regularly scheduled transcontinental jet service in 1959.

On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy spoke to a special joint session of Congress with these fateful words:

"I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.”

And on February 20, 1962, six days after our Sterling Cooperite’s Valentine Day doings, John Glenn became the first American in orbit.

In this one little slice of time we see man’s first concerted efforts to lift his body into the firmament and suspend it there, for the length of a trip crosscountry or around the earth itself.

That’s quite a powerful parallel revolution to the forces afoot on the ground between the sexes and the generations. For some, I think it will help propel the spirit of the Age of the Aquarius---the light, heady feeling that leads to dancing in the park as we’ll see in Hair. The ideas of liberation that seized the imagination of various strata of society were fueled in part by the achievement of the commercialization of flight and the dawning of the space age. So much energy, so much hope and momentum all around.

Don Draper, however, is not flying to the stars. His body is weighing him down, as we see at the doctor’s, and he has come to some arrangement with his wife that tethers him home at night. (Although I didn’t get that plot point clearly until Matt Weiner explained it in the post-game session.) An arrangement that is making him feel leaden.

His feelings get some lift, some charge, when he reads Frank O’Hara. In the last scene we see him looking like a stodgy middle-aged man in his old-guard hat, enshrouded by the domesticity of walking the family dog, mailing a copy of O’Hara’s poems to someone. Midge? Rachel?

We’ll see. And we’ll see if Don takes flight of any sort— either to run away, or opening his spirit to the forces of the decade.

Come watch episode 2 of the new season with the newcritics, Sunday night at 10:00 pm ET. We love/hate the show in the very best way.

For another great perspective on what's going on with Mad Men, go see our own Lance Mannion and his experiment with The Naked City.

And as a bonus, it just so happens that Frank O’Hara wrote a poem called “Quiet Time” that speaks to the mystery of flight.

When music is far enough away
the eyelid does not often move

and objects are still as lavender
without breath or distant rejoinder.

The cloud is then so subtly dragged
away by the silver flying machine

that the thought of it alone echoes
unbelievably; the sound of the motor falls

like a coin toward the ocean's floor
and the eye does not flicker

as it does when in the loud sun a coin
rises and nicks the near air. Now,

slowly, the heart breathes to music
while the coins lie in wet yellow sand.

(Photo: The Douglas DC-8 was designed to replace the piston-engine DC-7 on long-distance routes. Credit: National Air and Space Museum Archive.)

Read More

 Mapeel     8/01/2008     Mad Men   

Mad Men Second Season Premiere: Live Blogging Tonight!

You've seen articles about Mad Men everywhere. Now you can take part in the phenomenon yourself. Join us in live blogging each episode over at newcritics. 10:00 ET. "Those Who Think Young" will usher us all into 1962.

Read More

 Mapeel     7/27/2008     blogs, Mad Men   

Mad Men: The Dawning of Those Who Think Young

When last we saw the enigmatic Don Draper, he was sitting on the bottom of his living room steps on Thanksgiving, 1960; his wife and children have gone to her Dad’s for the holiday. He didn’t want to go, since he’s not really participating in his marriage or his fatherhood. But he was affected by his own presentation for the Carousel—filled with photos capturing the sentimentality of his faux life—and thinks maybe he can engage with his façade self, only to find that Betty and kids are already gone. And so the hollow man is alone as season one ends, with Dylan consoling him “don’t think twice, it’s all right.”

When we next see him, it will be Valentine’s Day, 1962.

While we may not learn exactly what he has been doing in the year and a half, we know that Jon Hamm, his alter ego, has been busy garnering awards, along with Matt Weiner and the whole crew: three Golden Globe, a Peabody, and 16 Emmy nods, including outstanding actor, supporting actor, writing, directing, and series.

Clearly it’s a show filling a hunger of the tv-watching audience of 2008. What are we finding there?

Well, it’s one heck of a kaleidoscope of recent history. The past forty years have seen powerful societal revolutions. MM gives us a chance to see these revolutions--which some witnessed first hand, and others, including the brainchild Weiner, inherited--all recollected in tranquility (and saturated color). Yes, the series is the poetry of our summer.

For instance, TV viewers born in each decade from 1960 on know there was a feminist revolution, but for nonboomers, we never saw exactly what it was trying to correct. MM dramatizes what women faced in the workplace when they entered it after the war. That’s not to say that women don’t still face sexism, but most of us don’t encounter it to this degree: “It’s like watching a dog play the piano” Mr. Rumsen on the thought of Peggy Olson writing copy.

Drugs are entering daily life—the beats are getting high, and it’s the beginning of the “us vs. them” with the police. Don’t trust anyone over 30 is on the horizon. Music is energizing the postwar crowd. When the Twist comes on at PJ’s in the party for Peggy, a primal scream of delight goes up that we can all relate to.

The overarching revolution that’s coming is not old versus young—it’s old order versus the new waves of energy of those who think young, challenging that order. And Matt Weiner is giving us a front row seat to the sea changes, layered with personal details of characters amid the revolutionary swells.

I am not a complete disciple of the Mad Men. I thought the storytelling itself was weak and disconnected; there were lots of strong, interesting moments that did not build together well in larger arcs.

James Wolcott’s early post also voiced the minority vote: that the series isn’t as good as people think it is, and we wish it were.

But it’s still the perfect summer fare, and the sixties are the place to be. Which may be why New York is experiencing a full revival of Hair. . .

This Sunday night, July 27, at 10:00 p.m., Mad Men second season premieres. Tom Watson, editor extraordinaire of newcritics and I will be your hosts for live blogging of the episodes. Tom leads off this Sunday. So turn on the lava lamp and join the fun. Can key parties be far off?

Read More

 Mapeel     7/23/2008     Mad Men, television   

Mad Men: TV's Own Box of Chocolates

As we bid goodbye to the gang at Sterling Cooper until sometime next summer, this 1994 New Yorker cartoon by Lee Lorenz popped into my head.

In case we have forgotten, Forrest Gump polarized film critics and audiences. As Entertainment Weekly noted in 2004, "Nearly a decade after it earned gazillions and swept the Oscars, Robert Zemeckis' ode to 20th-century America still represents one of cinema's most clearly drawn lines in the sand. One half of folks see it as an artificial piece of pop melodrama, while everyone else raves that it's sweet as a box of chocolates."

Roger Ebert: “What a magical movie.”
‘Dirty Harry,’ Libertas: “. . . . it should be mandatory for any article about lousy Best Picture winners to include the words Forrest and Gump”

Mad Men has unassumingly assumed the small screen mantle of such passion. There is no grey area for this world of saturated colors: you either love it or hate it. And that striation, because it is so extreme, is itself something of a phenomenon.

The general critical reception in July for MM was glowing. Then on a weekly basis Alan Sepinwall and Andrew Johnston's "Mad Men Fridays" at the House brought us beautiful, engrossing encomiums, speaking to every character and plot idea. An outsider could only wonder what amazing piece of art could inspire such response.

On the other side were the skeptics, one of whom was Diane Werts of Newsday: “Very little in this critically adored AMC series feels spontaneously genuine. After I ended up in the minority of negative reviewers at the drama's July debut, I figured I'd check back in down the road to see if I was missing something. But as "Mad Men" unreels its sixth episode tonight at 10 on AMC, I'm still left cold by the plethora of precision on parade.”

There are 7 comments to her piece: 4 say MM is absolutely brilliant, “best show on television,” 3 agree that she is “right on the money.”

It’s not that people don’t disagree about other shows, but there is something special, more passionate about the disagreement over this one.

I think it all goes back to the period-piece fantasy at its roots. We are witnessing women struggling to be taken seriously in the work place while men are exercising their primacy and trying to cope with the forces of change around them. How you relate to those themes will play in to how you relate to the series. And the debate between the “I was there, it was nothing/exactly like this” is an interesting subgroup within the camps.

Beyond that, it is the most cinematic, sustainable prime-time hour on the landscape (since Pushing Daisies can’t last). It ably quotes film, and it sometimes finds a lyrical sensibility that actually serves the storyline. I thought not having commercials in the final episode strengthened everything about it.

Now we have ¾ of a year to think about dandy Don Draper, and what—-dare I say like Scarlett O’Hara, who also realized what she wanted just as it walked out the door—-he’s going to do when he gets up off those stairs.

Read More

 Mapeel     10/18/2007     Mad Men, television