A Guy Watching Mad Men: A Desk Into A Business (S6/E13 “In Care Of”)

We, or maybe just I, sort of expect bad things to befall the people of Mad Men at this point. Maybe I’m a little more of a fatalist than most, but I’m working with a “and then they all die in the end…” scenario that includes Roger’s heart finally tapping out, Pete comically falling down a very large flight of stairs one last time, and the earth opening up and just swallowing Don whole. Somehow Bert avoids these disasters, lives forever, and […]

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A Guy Watching Mad Men: The Real Bob Benson (“The Quality of Mercy,” S6/E12)

Last night’s episode of Mad Men could have only been topped if the whole gang attended a wedding where Joan was to be married to a partner at Gray, only to be ambushed and slaughtered by a battalion of Gray copywriters in the name of J Walter Thompson resulting in Don and Joan’s death. Instead Don Draper, after helping his neighbor’s son avoid a court martial, slept with his neighbor’s wife in front of the all-too-mature eyes of his daughter. […]

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A Girl on Mad Men: “You Killed Everything. You Can Stop Now.” (“The Quality of Mercy,” S6/E12)

It took me a second to recognize it, but I laughed once it came to me: the song that closes this episode of Mad Men is from Head, the 1968 cult film starring the Monkees. Critics like Renata Adler and Pauline Kael trashed it upon its release, but the film has found its aficionados like all hypnotic messes tend to do. Critics like J. Hoberman have contextualized it as a significant, albeit disastrous, part of counter-culture cinema, at least as […]

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A Guy on Mad Men: Messing With The Recappers (S6/E8, “The Crash”)

  Sure, Mad Men was bonkers, but did anybody catch Twitter last night? Because while “The Crash” made about as much sense as the useless previews we’re given at the end of every episode, one eye on the television and another on Tweetdeck revealed that the episode had people confused, angry, excited, calling the race card, saying the show had jumped the shark, and I noted more than a few people saying versions of, “I can’t wait to see what the Monday […]

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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 […]

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