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 […]
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: Tonight We’re Just a Couple of Young Secretaries (S6/E4 “To Have and to Hold”)
When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.
A Guy Watching Mad Men: Young Hearts Be Free Tonight (S6/E4 “To Have and to Hold”)
For what it’s worth, the lives of the women on Mad Men tend to be more nuanced and interesting than the men on the show, and that’s especially noticeable when the powers that be do things like dedicate more time in each episode to them. We know Don is messed up in the head, we know Pete is a worm, and we know Roger has a lot of being honest with himself he has to do. Joan and Peggy are the two […]