For better or for worse, Mad Men has had a close relationship with dramatic irony. Sometimes the writing in that vein will prompt a cringe: season one, for example, with little Sally Draper covered in a plastic bag. At other times, the viewer gets a feeling of uneasiness, like when seeing season three’s wedding invitations bear the date of JFK’s assassination. But there are also moments of poignancy among these bits of foreshadowing and finger-wagging. I’m thinking about the moments […]
The Reading Life: Winona Ryder’s Book Store And Clark Gable’s Legend
There was a copy of Vogue in my car the summer before I graduated from college, and some afternoons, when the gridlock was so hopeless I might as well have shut off my engine, I leafed through its thin pages and dove far into a daydream, too far to actually, you know, read it. That summer I had driven my car to meet my friend Abby at a North Berkeley Albertson’s, where we got snacks and this copy of Vogue, […]
A Girl on Mad Men: Be The Man that I Admire (S6/E10,”A Tale of Two Cities”)
When Don has gone to California in past seasons, his trips have taken on redemptive qualities. He’s out of his element, but never entirely. He has gone to parties where the protocol is not totally unlike the one in this episode, where women flirt with him and the sun and refreshments wipe him out. In season 2, Don dallied with a woman named Joy and went for a swim in the ocean, and this pattern of sin and absolution has […]
A Girl on Mad Men: They’re Two Halves of the Same Person (S6/E8, “The Better Half”)
I don’t know that I can write this recap without gushing over how excellent Elisabeth Moss and January Jones are as an actors. Mad Men has often put their characters at odds, though rarely in the same scene, not just as Don’s wife and Don’s protege, but also as icons of what a woman could do with what she had in the 60’s. To cheapen the distinction: Peggy has brains, and Betty has legs. (One’s a Marilyn, the other’s a….) […]
A Girl on Mad Men: That’s Everyone’s Question (“The Crash,” Season 6, Episode 8)
Lately I have been wondering why I like to watch Mad Men. This show infuriates me sometimes, even thrills me occasionally. But the worst is when it bores me. I sometimes don’t go for “the bargain,” as Don calls it during a speed-induced (yup) rave. I don’t go along with all the seduction, all the hip swiveling, all that comic relief. I can think of plenty of mistresses I’ve been unmoved by, I don’t always feel endeared to whatever wacky […]
The Reading Life: Vivian Gornick and Pet Psychics
Vivian Gornick’s memoir Fierce Attachments competes with other books in your bag if you bring it with you on your commute. It’s tough, it’s rude. It’s harsh and pretty. It’s down-on-his-luck Warren Oates, behind the wheel of a large automobile. You choose its toothy grin over whatever else you’ve decided to lug around, because the stories within are short, punishing. With Vivian, five minutes on the train feel spent.
A Girl on Mad Men: It’s Time to Go Home (S6/E7 “A Man with a Plan”)
You know how, when you’re watching Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (like you do), you can usually tell when the credits are rolling who did it? It’s always the D-list celebrity making a cameo that week. Or, if the guest didn’t do it, she’s the victim, tearfully remembering a gruesome trauma. Either way, for a viewer this sort of tell is a letdown. Once you know what’s coming, how fun it is to watch is never as satisfying as […]
A Girl on Mad Men: You Never Fail to Overheat, Do You? (“For Immediate Release,” Season 6, Episode 6)
This was one of those Mad Men episodes where so much happened that I got angry when the stream I was watching cut out. Which is saying, well, something for an episode that comes after the one where MLK dies. The only history we are really dealing with this week is the history of these characters letting business get personal. We begin with a plan thwarted by the impulses and emotions of hypocritical men; prime Mad Men material, in other […]