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 Guy On Mad Men: Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh (S6/E8, “The Better Half”)
After last week’s tour de something that left half of all Mad Men fans wondering what the hell just happened, and the other half digging through the rubble to try and find some little artifact or writing on the wall that foreshadows what will be, we have a return to as close to normal as the show gets.
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 […]
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 Guy On Mad Men: Now I Wanna Be Your Don (S6/E7, “Man With A Plan”)
Sometimes I think it would be interesting to sit down and pull a Michiko Kakutani by reviewing every episode of Mad Men in the voice of some fictional character. If I was to do that with last evening’s episode, “Man With A Plan,” I could only see myself doing it in the voice of Bobby Moynihan’s reoccurring Saturday Night Life character Drunk Uncle, lamenting that Don’s got his Fifty Shades of Grey…whatever that is, and then singing off key that “Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes” are stil taking place in a big way.
A Guy On Mad Men: Reunited And It Feels So Good? (S6/E6, “For Immediate Release”)
Week after week I find myself wondering who exactly is the worst person on a show full of horrible people. Don is the easy answer, Pete almost equally so. Harry’s insufferable, but not the worst. I don’t know Megan’s mother well enough, but I assume she takes baths in the blood of virgins. Yet somehow I still I don’t think she’s the worst.
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 […]