When Mad Men covers big history, it’s a dual-edged sword: while often touching to see how they face elections, assassinations, and the culture of the day, it can also play as a reenactment at Plymouth Plantation. After forty-two minutes and change about the week of Martin Luther King, Jr’s assassination, I wished I was filling in for recaps on one of the nights in which this show is about issues of bed-and-barroom deceit and betrayal, those of sex, liquor, and […]
A Girl on Mad Men: Everyone Likes to Go to the Movies When They’re Sad (“The Flood” Season 6, Episode 5)
This might seem like a shallow way to start a recap, but hey, as Ginsburg’s date Beverly says, I’m shallow, so here goes. Guys, Peggy is wearing my coat. Or really I’m wearing Peggy’s coat. I bought it when I was 17 years old: a powder blue trench with brass buttons and a modish collar. And there she is, the day after the news of Martin Luther King’s assassination breaks, wearing it because it has started to rain. I bought […]
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 […]
A Girl Watching Mad Men: Dancing with the One Who Brung You (S6/E3 “The Collaborators)
There was a theme of infidelity being batted around in this episode of Mad Men. Did you notice? Everyone is literally coveting their neighbors’ wives. Pete cheats on Trudy (and she knows it, too, which is amazing and awful at the same time) with the lady across the street, and Don cheats on Megan with Linda Cardellini one floor down. The consequences of these actions vary: domestic violence on Pete’s end, breathy warnings against falling in love on Don’s. I […]
A Guy Watching Mad Men: This Affair Sucks (S6/E3 “The Collaborators)
The affairs on Mad Men used to be so much cleaner. Don used to enjoy the women he cheated on Betty with, filling some void in his twisted soul. Now we have this new Don, somehow a worse person than the guy we knew the last few seasons; colder and focused on…something. He’s sleeping with the neighbor, and unless Dr. Rosen suddenly says the couple is moving, I really don’t see how that will end well. Pete’s affairs, on the […]
Don Draper Descends: Talking Mad Men’s Season Premiere
The sixth season of Mad Men has started, and our own Jason Diamond and Jen Vafidis will be sitting down to dissect every episode. Since this week we were treated to a two hour season premiere, we figured we’d just let the two of them go ahead and simply discuss their thoughts on Don and Megan in Hawaii, facial hair, Roger in therapy, and Betty’s rape jokes. Next week we will resume with individual recaps, but, after an evening spent drinking […]
Nora Ephron Fanclub Unite: A Documentary is Coming
Nora Ephron’s son, Jacob Bernstein, has lined up some seriously heavy hitters to help produce a HBO documentary on his beloved mother. We’re going to have to host some sort of viewing party for this with Katz’s Deli and lots of kleenex. In other news: HBO loves writers more than just about any network on television. Follow Vol. 1 Brooklyn on Twitter, Facebook, Google +, our Tumblr, and sign up for our mailing list.