Kenneth Cosgrove’s Short Story

Mad Men spinoff idea: Kenneth Cosgrove becomes a famous short story writer, a contemporary of Raymond Carver, and a favorite of MFA teachers for years to come. And it all starts with his famous Atlantic story that you can now read, “Tapping a Maple on a Cold Vermont Morning.” Follow Vol. 1 Brooklyn on Twitter, Facebook, Google +, our Tumblr, and sign up for our mailing list.

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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 Girl on Mad Men: You Make Me Sick (S6/E11, “Favors”)

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 […]

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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….) […]

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