Juvenile Cinephile

Mad Men Recap: From Womb to Tomb Edition

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:02:00 -0400

EP. #4.12 “THE QUALITY OF MERCY”

You thought last week was a wakeup call? You thought Don Draper was going to get out of this inferno? You thought Sally Draper catching her father in the act would shame Don to some self-introspection and the self-realization that he needs to get his shit together? You were wrong. Don is not just running in circles, he is waving around a flamethrower as he reaches his bottomless ninth circle. With Don getting isolated by Sally and Don isolating Megan in this episode, the Draper penthouse would not the stage for Don’s most despicable demons to come out (though hiding a morning screwdriver while your wife is telling you to use this day off as a cleansing was pretty bad). Don decided to re-direct his energies to work and to the people who were once or could have been his strongest allies: Ted and Peggy.

Peggy and Ted were also redirecting potentially self-destructing energies too with their transparent flirting and a movie night to re-watch Rosemary’s Baby shakily working under the pretense of their work. But it is distracting and potentially damaging, with colleagues already jumping to the conclusions that they are screwing and that their ‘baby’- a play off Rosemary’s Baby scene for a commercial is over-budget and too off-putting (full disclosure: I liked the idea if just because the storyboards reminded me more of the POV shot of the transformation and ellipses of time in RoboCop, though that is also not the most appropriate reference for a children’s medicine ad). The flirting in fact reminded me of when Don and Megan had the ‘Just taste it!’ bit that annoyed Peggy (as the audience surrogate for when Megan confided to her she no longer wanted to work in advertising) but that of course had the married couple pretense- Peggy is Ted’s surrogate work wife. Don may be right in telling Ted that his judgment is clouded and that he was so not prepared for when a client took him to task for the budget but the way he did it was so off-putting. He let Ted twist in the wind, he never told Ted beforehand how he felt about the ad’s budget, he called Harry about Sunkist- thus ending his competitive ceasefire with Ted- after he saw Ted and Peggy at the movie theater, and he decided to make the late Frank Gleason- the closest confidante that Ted ever had before Peggy- as the crutch for the pitch to the client.

This was a moment from Don that was something you expected from Pete in that it was in theory actually pretty business sound but it was coming from a messenger where the action was so rife with office politics and yearning for power that it was instead petty and mean. Don had lost his power at home and in his family unit from getting caught by Sally and Megan leaving her copy-writing job as the first step toward Don’s descent. What coincided with Megan leaving was Peggy ultimately deciding to leave the agency and therefore Don, an apprentice leaving her master, a child leaving the biggest father figure she had. We remember in “The Other Woman” how much Don was bitter toward Peggy leaving and reminding her that every good thing that ever happened to her is because of him. Don’s possessiveness of Megan sexually was lost while Don’s possessiveness of Peggy was also lost. Not even something like a merger can have him reclaim her- and it kills him. That kind of bitterness has to be seeping through Don whenever he sees Ted and Peggy together, her clearly on Ted’s side. But it has boiled over seeing Peggy have this pretty idealized version of Ted all while Don is reeling from a psychosis and punishment that makes him even more vindictive in his actions toward Peggy and Ted.

Both parties are guilty of bringing their privates selves to the office in potentially destructive manners but Don’s action have more malignant and conscious effects. Ted was shamed on multiple levels and went home to his wife when he was told Peggy wanted to talk to him. This seems like another attempt by Ted to stop the circle of which him and Peggy are going. This may just be another break and redirection, like Ted last episode trying to be more involved with his wife and children. Honestly, I do not know if what Ted and Peggy have can really just stop. This does not seem like something that could wrap up in next week’s finale. The relationship is presented in a way where you really do feel the conflicting feelings of what is right and wrong between them. I am not rooting for infidelity, this show never needed anybody to root for that, but I find it fascinating that Matthew Weiner and his writing staff gave us a romance where potential infidelity is suddenly a line not to cross after seasons of characters taking just one turn around the office to cheat on their wife. Yet, I am hooked on the fate of these two and cannot definitively say I want them apart or together or that Ted needs to face a choice about what he foresees as his future both professionally and romantically.

It is so odd that the one instance of somebody deciding to stop running around in circles or the person to be the one to stop another person from running in circles is Pete Campbell with Bob Benson. Of course, such an action was done so in a way that only Pete Campbell knows how. He finds out that Bob is an upwardly mobile doppelganger of Don Draper; country bumpkin, came from nothing, lied about a lot of stuff (although nothing on stolen identity, which I frankly do not suspect is part of the case anyway). Pete shows his mercy to Bob but in a multi-layered expression where Pete references finding the same thing out about Don without telling Bob about Don- leaving Bob (and some audience members) left wondering if Pete is just saying he only knows about Bob and his friend Manolo’s ‘real secret’ and will not use it against him- except in the instance of Bob ever trying to make a pass at him again. Bob is reeling from his misread of Pete Campbell and sees Pete’s true colors. When Matthew Weiner said in the last ‘Inside the Episode’ that Bob ‘wants to be Pete’, it simply could have just been something of an aspiration than a sociopath Tom Ripley move. Bob made his way up from servitude. He saw a blueblood WASP who he misread as possibly gay and realized the risk he exposed of himself (His phone call from Manolo did not seem like some grifter plan to unleash Pete’s mother but felt like a heart to heart from people knew each other- a relationship that seemed at one point was possibly romantic but still amicable). Luckily, Bob has made allies in the workplace from Joan to Roger to Jim Cutler to Bert Cooper to even Kenny Cosgrove, who seemed annoyed by the guy’s omnipresence in those early episodes that sounded off the ‘Who is Bob Benson?’ alarms, that made him more valuable to the Chevy Account than Pete. Pete saw he had a losing battle and relented- for now. With that said, Chevy is just one account and Pete’s seniority makes Bob at risk with being able to have certain accounts when there is a guy who knows about his story and thinks he is ‘sick’. This cold war dynamic of these two also seems like something that cannot be wrapped up in the finale, which I frank think is great. I hope this continues into the last season.

But we have to address how images of the show- mostly because of it relates to the circular life that Matthew Weiner is laying out there thickly this season- with Don in the fetal position on Sally’s bed and on his office couch. Both images transpired in the aftermath from when he is shamed by those he took most pride in being apart of in his life, with Sally, his daughter and Peggy, his protégé. The circular life of Don Draper has him accepting and embracing the circles he is running in waiting for the next step. Don defaults into this position as if he was in the mother’s womb waiting for rebirth but to everybody else he seems close to death. There are no easy conclusions for Don and you have to wonder if the only real catalyst for change is something out of his control.

Other Things of Note:

Yes, Ken Cosgrove getting shot is up there with Peggy stabbing Abe and the lawnmower incident as one of the most shocking acts of violence on Mad Men. You got to be wondering how car companies now feel about even being mentioned on Mad Men at this point. In the way Don’s toothache foretold of Don’s own rotting moral decay that we got this season, I would say the fact that Ken lost an eye and broke a foot at the hands of Chevy foretells how fucking terrible it is going to be going to bat for the American auto industry in the 1970s. And it could also just be an allegory for the fact General Motors had a lot of contracts in the Vietnam War and Ken’s injuries are the closest thing we are getting on this show to seeing a character in the trenches for the good ol’ US of A in this period. Okay, that last one was reaching but I stand by Ken Cosgrove is going down for Chevy and the agency’s sins as a theme. And the Moshe Dayan poster over Stan’s bed foreshadowing the incident was inspired.

Okay, I really do not know what to say to you people that you still do not think Bob is gay. What warped world do you live in that you think a man will come onto another man as a business opportunity and the man doing the coming on is straight? This is nuts in 2013 let alone in 1968.

Watching Christina Hendricks inhibit her inner Sophia Petrillo/Where’s the Beef? Lady as the ‘old Jewish lady’ in the ad pitch, along with Ted and Don pretending (oh, really like they needed to pretend) to be babies was just a treat.

I think Sally reading Rosemary’s Baby and Megan being taken with Rosemary’s Baby the movie has nil to do with some Sharon Tate internet theory and more to do with the fact that Sally and Megan are getting betrayed by the central male figure in their life like Rosemary does. Simple reading. Not that complicated. Stop talking about the t-shirt! A popular novel and horror movie with a feminist theme amidst the fledgling second-wave feminism of the period being part of the show speaks more to how female characters may go through a change in the realization of their place in the world during the final season. That has always been more connected to the show than a body count.

I always have made fun of creepy Glenn Bishop but Sally’s reactions to things in the episode were the creepiest parts if just because we saw ‘Don’s little girl’ becoming Betty. Her reaction to Glenn beating up Rolo had a sense of thrill, her insistence of getting away from her father and her school drama is going to boarding school where she immediately adapts to a pretty transparent caste system at her stay there, and then her line of ‘My father hasn’t given me anything’ that manages to even spook Betty when they had their first moment as equals smoking in the car. Betty won! Anybody who thought Matthew Weiner hated the character or January Jones got made a fool as bad as those who thought Matthew Weiner vicariously lived through Don Draper and thought Don was cool this season.

If you have not seen the movie Head, then the “Porpoise Song” as the song choice for the end of the episode went over your head. The movie, almost a functioning apology and suicide note by the band The Monkees, was equal parts refutation of the band’s own cynically created pop band riding the coattails of the Fab Four to a group expressing their creative independence and constantly commenting on the very danger of that. Seriously, check the movie out. You get a live performance intercut with Vietnam war footage! But with the “Porpoise Song” in particular, the song at the beginning plays after an impenetrably confusing first few minutes of the movie until the ending contextualizes that the very act of the image to the band jumping off the bridge at the beginning turns out to be the end. Perfectly fits the circular storytelling of the episode and also how the show tends to function where behavior and gestures do get re-contextualized.

A very nice episode sendoff for writing partners Maria and Andre Jacquemetton who have been the closest confidantes to Matthew Weiner. In my mind, they work exactly like Ted and Peggy when pitching storylines. Now, I got a toothache just visualizing that.

Remember when Mad Men made a sly reference to 30 Rock

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 22:40:00 -0400

Here’s just a reminder.

Anyway, I think Mad Men has given us another nod to 30 Rock.

Manolo…..

…. Meet the Generalissimo.

Mad Men seems to have played with the soap opera conventions that critics try to deride the show as really a soap opera behind its prestige, award-winning, critically-acclaimed cable drama surface. Frankly, I think Mad Men embraces such a distinction.

The Other Mad Men Recap for "Favors": The Talented Mr. Bob Benson Edition

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 19:12:00 -0400

Let me just say, I definitely believe Bob Benson is gay. I do not think he is putting up a front to something that is his actual front in being a straight-seeming gay man. I do not necessarily think he can be an out and proud gay man in 1968. Matthew Weiner’s coy ‘not necessarily gay’ but ‘infatuated with Pete’ (note: he also calls Peggy’s relationship to Ted an ‘infatuation’ when characters are explicitly calling that love too) statements in this past week’s “Inside the Episode” comments did at first alarm me but because an obsession with Pete leads Bob Benson alarmists to think we got a Tom Ripley character in our midst.

Let me just say stolen identity is not out of the show’s realm, it defines the show’s central character after all, but to have a second to last season ancillary character occupy that ground this time with a mysterious sexuality side seems like a little much. What is not out of reach for this show, however, are how characters present themselves publicly as opposed to who they really are privately. Don lives with this meditation of private self and public self and lately has been losing grasp of it while in the scene with Pete, Bob lets himself out as much as he can without outright saying it. I disagree with The Orange Couch review of the episode that this gesture was too overt- not in that office especially.

We forget that he is coming to bat for a friend that he recommended to be employed under Pete and he is hearing from the very man he has taken a liking to also say that Manolo is disgusting and perverted. We see a grimace in a cut back to him in that moment. We forget that he drinks before this confession, not unlike both Peggy or Lane last season with each taking a long drink from their glass of liquor before they let their truth out. Bob is walking the thin line of telling Pete in cryptic terms that Pete’s mother is happy with something that can never become romantic and guess what, Bob’s very feelings for Pete can never be romantic even if one of them clearly does possess romantic feelings for for the other. The knee-tap, in my view, was not a come on, but Bob letting Pete know that these great gestures that Bob does for him (and it has been shown as going far and beyond the other acts of kindness to the partners and employees- Joan’s health crisis notwithstanding) have taken on a different meaning. On re-watch, I even spotted Bob nodding his head a little when Pete reacts to the contact and they look at each other in that moment. To me it is crystal clear he is a gay man who just outed himself. Now this could go a million different ways next episode. It was an unbelievable risk to what Bob did and Pete’s reaction seems to be a Rorschach test for a lot of people, but it was a rejection (that said, Matt Zoller Seitz’s theory that Bob read Pete as gay and that maybe- just maybe- Pete could be revealed as a closeted homosexual in intriguing). But the dynamics of Pete in charge and a loving person who worships him seems like a dream dynamic for Pete, even if it is a man in the dynamic. And Bob has said as much that love does not need be to defined as man and woman sexual attraction but no time for speculating. I am with Tom & Lorenzo’s theory that this declaration of love is genuine and really does put the lying, the sucking up, the ambition, and the ability to be on the good side of others as being a front for the fact that he is a guy who cannot afford to act otherwise in his work environment in 1968.

This episode immediately won me with the trinity of Pete, Peggy, and Ted joking and revealing parts of themselves unknowingly to the other that involves a lot of personal and romantic history. I love that Pete and Peggy can put their very complicated past behind them and just be equals. It is juxtaposed to Ted returning to family man and investing time in his family than just telling himself to forget Peggy. Meanwhile, Peggy has become exactly what her mother predicted.

She could give a fuck. I just really want to know how she and Stan reached a point in their relationship that she knows his romantic schedule and sexy voice. These two are at a weird place where it could go either way in them actually becoming a couple or that she and him will have the same dynamic she and Ken have as buddies who watch out for each other. Bottom line, she got over the facade she made of Ted Chaough (although the show seems to really hammer him being an angel to Don’s devil) and can work without being love sick which puts her ahead of a lot of her colleagues. Not everything is what is advertised and that is okay, and I see Peggy being just fine even if she has to deal with real rats and figurative rats she rids of now and again (yeah, I called Abe a rat).

I mentioned in the other half of this recap that Sally Draper fell for the advertisement of her father as much as other people. Let’s all remember when we were kids where we went from being those who get hooked to every commercial product we see to ultimately being jaded. It goes very much in line with how we feel about our parents: believing what they say is best and right until we reach the age where we question everything and, in some cases, rebel. Sally already had questions about her father but let it slide because he was never as personally cruel to her as Betty. She then saw her father doing an awful thing and irreparable damage has been done. There will always be hostility between Betty and Sally just because they are face to face more often but perhaps it softens because Sally has a better understanding of why her mother is so bitter and amounts such venom against her father.

What is great about the episode is it gave you enough to contextualize a whole lot of stuff that have been seasons/episodes in the making while also giving you the urge to want the next episode immediately afterward. Anybody who is still annoyed by the flashbacks or the way Don has become so unlikable or how this affair is boring and retreaded ground (to which I counter is the entire point) or how the show has become more of a fabric in the actual history (if that were the case, Bob would have invited Pete to see The Boys in the Band off-Broadway while also cry about the fact the Stonewall Inn had a riot while he was there) needs to step back and reconsider what this season is saying. People are trying to change but fall back into old behavior, people are getting so old that they see versions of themselves or versions of other people in others, and the main reason people could run into circles is due to living a lie whether they are Bob Benson or Dick Whitman. These are very specific characters in their times (though both of them in contemporary life is still very possible) that are denied a lot by society. If you do not get their behavior and how both are written in their behavior, you are not paying attention.

Other Thoughts on the Episode:

“Not all surprises are bad”- is a line that could only be said by Roger Sterling, of the few comfortable characters in their own skin to really own their failures.

So they are back in school with Sally which means it is at least in the fall (though rather sunny outside in New York- damn that actual California location- and okay enough weather-wise to wear short skirts). But one detail that possibly revealed the date of this episode was Don at a bar with a very low-quality definition of what appears to be track racing that is possibly a broadcast of the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City that took place between October 12th and October 27th.

Both of Sally’s friends this season have been used as plot devices. There was the violinist girl in the premiere that really was so remarkable that I forgot her name but Julie in this episode was bratty and very on-point as the kind of ‘friend’ we all run into.

The actress who played Nan, Ted’s wife, was so on-point period that she looked like Joan Allen circa The Ice Storm’s doppelganger. Good casting, Mad Men.

I do like though that the connective tissue of Ted and Peggy is that she watches the same program as Ted’s boys: Hawaii 5-0, original recipe.

Don is so unaware of his appearances to Ted since about probably the last time we saw Ted as a real trouble-maker in Season 4 and also maybe the last time Don really took his work seriously until about ‘the letter’ when it was more about appearance than work.

And because I find the Sylvia dynamic completely put to bed, may that draft dodging moment for Mitchell really happen as Don seemed to skip several steps Ted laid out when he talked to Sylvia on the phone.

Don’s riff on the Mets while talking to Dr. Rosen only makes me hope that Season 7 of Mad Men does at least have a 1969 New York Mets angle. For Lane!

I also think Megan’s reactions to Julie’s interest to her acting career is basically the kind of weird reaction adults have to teenagers wanting to encroach on their world. To me there is nothing beyond that- I really think she is talking to her agent. And as career-driven as she seemed in this episode, she really needs to address to Don that she believes he has a problem with alcohol. Isn’t that how the she made her power-play with him in Season 4 in the first place in telling him he shouldn’t drink too much?

Since I am throwing my hat out there that this is the season that Don gets caught in the identity theft that maybe he should not worry about Mitchell’s well-being when the agency has contracts with Dow Chemical and General Motors. He has been sloppy enough this year in general that there could easily be a danger. I do think the fact the immediate jump to leave Canada and be on the run being brought up were something of a foreshadowing.

Mad Men Recap: Don Draper's Inferno Edition

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 20:47:00 -0400

NOTE: This Mad Men in particular was pretty loaded with a lot. Later in the week I will break other parts down but this will be more about how the episode relates to Don in past episodes and themes.

“FAVORS”

EPISODE #6.11

This episode illustrates that maybe Season 5’s “Mystery Date” is the Mad Men episode that best explains the current Don Draper/Dick Whitman we see. I have gone over that in this season’s “The Crash” how those maligned flashbacks of the whorehouse re-contextualized a lot of “Mystery Date” in how it was not about Don’s issues of fidelity but his relationship to sex and women. But there is that little moment where Don is actually working and presenting the fairytale theme ad to a client. Wunderkind copy-writer Michael Ginsberg sees a darker, more sinister take to the Cinderella ad they are doing and upends the traditional telling of it in how in how it is really about the deep subconscious of Cinderella as somebody who ‘wants to get caught’. Is there not a more Cinderella story than a Dick Whitman who with a new identity goes to the ball like royalty and sweeps everybody off their feet? I always felt that this was the season where Don would get caught in his sloppy, increasingly disturbing affair with Sylvia. But maybe there is something a little more cosmic and psychological going on. Maybe the clock is striking midnight on Dick as Don and maybe there is a person who wants to get caught- leave the slipper behind- due to his own nature. But before I get ahead of myself (because if you read last week’s recaps I was admittedly off, in hindsight), let’s go over why Sylvia and Don were always going to be the destructive affair that did it in for him.

I think the Sylvia affair was always something that was off even in the context of Don mistresses and previous extramarital affairs. She came at the right time, when Don’s possessiveness of Megan withered but he wanted to still be possessive of some woman, and she needed to be a particular woman. He thought with Megan it had to be someone youthful but realized he needed someone who embraced her maternal side even with a romantic partner. Enter: Sylvia Rosen, a married woman and mother whose Catholic guilt consumed her but worshiped at the altar of a man who actually thought she was attractive. She really has no questions for him beyond that. We never see Don disclose anything to her beyond purring existential crises in bed post-coital. Only her Catholic guilt and reminders of her husband and Megan make her pause. But Don never feels pressure from her to tell her his whole life story but boy does he use her as a canvas and uses her to vicariously relive his most formative years. This is really the first affair where Don is all Dick Whitman, all beast.

We have already seen that Don has subconsciously made connections between Sylvia and the whore who molested him; a moment that for him made sex a power game, a transaction, and a punishment that he has since reversed through her (and many of his sexual partners but never as directly through her). But his tests prove to be near impossible to live out and she steps out. But Don found a woman needy enough to have missed his possessiveness. When Sally Draper and her friend Julie are first making their eyes Mitchell Rosen we see Sylvia in a black dress that does not read as afternoon with her son. She is mourning. Enough time has past that I concluded she was making no concealing of how she felt about Mitchell’s A-1 draft status fate. But she is also a woman resigned to returning back to a normal, boring life with Arnold. Yet Don steps up to the plate to help Mitchell dodge the draft but his possible altruistic intentions after he talked to Arnold also have a vicarious effect, as in Don is Mitchell. That long phone call was cringe-worthy in that it is a total fantasy he gets out of her as she tells him that he was good to her and she misses him and loves him. It is equal parts spurned lover and child wish fulfillment coming to life as somebody forgiving you in the exact words you want after getting hurt- of which Don has displayed he is a mix of both this season. Suddenly, the Sylvia affair got even more oedipal than before.

Don goes from seeing Mitchell as another one of those Baby Boomer brats fighting the system to slowly realizes the other choices once him and Arnold talk at a bar softens his stance. Don chose to leave the life of farms and whorehouses for Korea to make something of himself only to cheat death and get a new identity with another man’s identity. Sylvia does not know this about him nor does Ted Chaough who gives him the favor of getting Mitchell to dodge the draft- telling Don that an authentic letter from Mitchell to an Air National Guard Brigadier General would need to be written by Don. Let’s imagine a young Dick Whitman in the same position. Where else can he go and what would have Dick Whitman have been without going to war? It is back to the whorehouse for him and the call to Sylvia ultimately proves he can never really go back without hurting people along the way.

It is no coincidence that the last flashback to Dick Whitman is getting physically and psychologically punished for the incident with him and the prostitute. Don not only wants to possess Sylvia in the way he never could with that woman but a reconciliation he never had. But Dick Whitman remains the stubborn kid who gets caught looking through peepholes. Whenever there is a sign of too much of a good thing for Don, it means trouble. Although it was clear from the way time was framed that Sally would be the one to walk in on her father and his mistress, it is still a shock to the senses having her point of view on such a Don-centric episode. For an affair that was equal parts carnal, equal parts transactional, Sylvia and Don mostly took place under the covers. But suddenly we see Don in a compromising position with Sally seeing her father with his drawers down. We have never seen Don look this pathetic. It is so stark and different from even how we have seen him before. Because it is new to Sally and the disappointment she feels in seeing that is so fresh and in your face.

The script by Semi Challas and Matthew Weiner and direction by Jennifer Getzinger have Don in a futile state of what is his psyche. Sally last told him that she does not really know about him or his past and the first image of Dick Whitman she sees leads her to be recoiled, disgusted, and horrified. Maybe this is Don’s moment of truth. In losing Sally, there is not really anybody for him to turn to as Sylvia clearly is giving herself 39 flagellations once she stops using the bed as a punching bag. Is Megan too career-driven that she cannot tell her husband has turned to alcohol to cover up his guilt and infidelity in cheating on her? Betty gave him a talk and a fuck and moved along with her life. Don is losing California to movie stars, counter-culture, and power-hungry ad execs and companies alike that would make Lucky Strike tremble. He is embroiled in his own inferno and needs to escape. But who is the Virgil to his Dante?

Mad Men Recaps: Sisters Doing It For Themselves Edition

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 15:41:00 -0400

MAD MEN #6.10

“A TALE OF TWO CITIES”

Let’s start with the heart of the episode, which was the Peggy and Joan dynamic. For the show’s entire run, everybody has been rooting for these two to be friends even when the earlier seasons were at the height of the hostilities between those two. For all the love she gets, Joan operated under a pretty petty dictatorship leading the secretaries that followed the patriarchal structures of early 1960s office culture. Even if Peggy did not have that out in copy-writing, one can only assume she would have left in not being a secretary there at the agency- mostly because she got it from both sides: the men and from Joan.

The whole Mad Men letting its female characters have a feminist awakening has gone admittedly slower than I expected, and I say this as somebody who does not think they should cater to the idealized Boomer point of view of the 60s. Betty still appears to never get there. Megan may have read the feminist literature but her relationship to her husband seems a little mutually dependable at this point (more on that later). Peggy has clearly never read the literature (although maybe Abe insisted she read it because he does seem like that asshole who thinks he knows what feminist literature is good for his then girlfriend). Joan never has and probably never will but both she and Peggy as single women are trying as hard as they can in their success at work being independent of the men in this episode.

The episode, pretty skillfully, still shows Joan and Peggy operating under the expectations of them both at work and in their personal life. When Joan’s friend gets her a dinner with a man from Avon, Joan assumes it is a date that her friend thought would be good for her than the business coupe it became. When Peggy is told by Joan before the Avon lunch meeting that Pete was never told by her to come, Peggy and Joan are at this weird stage where both are completely right in their perspective but also very wrong and have never looked so vulnerable in their work-life before.

Peggy has, almost to a fault, ascended to her position in playing by the rules.   When she sees Joan do something out of character in going around the men at the office and trying to work with this client herself, she is taken aback as are we, the audience. Never have we seen Joan behave this way and look so fledgling in this new role that we find out she has wanted to do rather than being a ‘silent partner’ at the agency (that only got further marginalized when the merger happened). In the way we see Don and Roger become relics to the surroundings of the changing times, we see Joan try to take on the initiative as someone who pitches, communicates, and negotiates with partners in all of the growing pains involved. In that Avon pitch she and Peggy mostly improvise off the cuff, I have never rooted so hard for the agency to land that client in the history of the show. But as Peggy notes, the situation easily could have been a lose-lose for Joan.    You got to hand it to the show that while they easily could have addressed the tensions of Peggy and Joan’s point of views dueling in defensive positions about where they are in the agency while indirectly attacking the other’s ascendance, however conscious, it was great that ultimately it ended with Peggy saving Joan from Pete’s wrath and not entrusting too much with Ted as the ‘white knight’ boss that let her down in the first place. Peggy has been on the receiving end of looking for a fellow female to be the protégé of, like when she offered to be Faye Miller’s friend, but the show has actually had her have get protégés instead, be it helping out Megan, her relationship with Phyllis, and now, with Joan.

I think Peggy has finally realized that she sets the example for any future women at the office and sometimes that does mean giving the other women at the office a helping-hand. The Joan-Peggy moments continue to be the most fascinating and endlessly full of possibilities because for all of the rough patches those two have had and never quite have forgiven each other for those moments, Peggy still saved Joan. But let’s also be real, Don, Pete, Roger, and Ted have done what Joan has done plenty of times even though when it is Joan that does something in the name of the agency along with it also elevating herself, it is treated differently.

The rest of the episode shows an expanding agency and also added mystery behind whether or not that social Darwinism at the agency can have the male partners at the agency get what they want without taking others down a peg. I wonder about what is going on with Ted Chaough and Jim Cutler. Peggy has realized she is not completely the ideal she had in mind both personally and professionally and with his dynamics, with Jim- you wonder if there is something a little more Machiavellian going on behind the scenes. Ted may have stopped Jim from firing the people that stayed on behalf of SCDP’s behest but why were they the ones pushing for the name, Sterling Cooper & Partners? And how did they get Bob Benson (who actually would have been one of those people fired) to be their foot soldier? And what the hell is Bob Benson up to now? I am intrigued by this aspect in that I have no idea this will end in terms of the season and the series itself.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, it becomes clear that Don’s idealized version of California has been encroached on by the rise in synergy of advertising going Hollywood. It makes Harry Crane’s role at the agency seem like a matter of time before he is in charge of an LA branch the way Ken Cosgrove runs the Detroit branch. Don and Roger clearly are the outsiders but I am not sure that was even the point of the party scenes even if it was very Alvy Singer in Beverly Hills in Annie Hall (especially when little Danny Siegel looked exactly like Paul Simon in the movie). I think the party was circumstantial to the events of Don would nearly drown and Roger would be there to save him beyond it being at some hotel. I do not even think that was a drug trip by Don- even if it is likely that marijuana was laced with a million different chemicals that were a far cry from the stuff he had with Midge and the beatniks. I actually think those were his potentially final thoughts while drowning in that pool before Roger saved him. Props to John Slattery’s direction in the episode, as I got some downright Kubrickian vibes in that sequence. What does it mean when Don sees Megan pregnant (and I think it is in reference to the miscarriage than Don foreseeing another pregnancy) and in hippy garb followed by visions of the dead soldier he met and Hawaii and witnessed his wedding? Perhaps it is that seeing people denied what they all really want as opposed to what they do what they believe is right is something that challenges his Don Draper avatar.   He got to do what he wanted because he cheated death in both a literal and metaphoric sense. He sees those two and realizes the selfishness of himself but death cannot be a reprieve of those actions. I think perhaps Wiener is denying Don the bliss of an afterlife, not being reborn but that this is it and he could not be whole if he ended his life right then and there.   Don’s most major life decision is his cross to bear in this life and his own conscience is telling him to deal with it.

As for what those images mean in his head, the possibilities are endless. It is strictly in his point of view so it is hard to manage what he saw in seeing Megan pregnant being what he thought she wanted or what he actually wanted. I do not think she would have gone to the counter-culture so the hippy image to me is his.   But although she tells him to go to California himself, I think there is something going on in that relationship where both have come to the realization of needing each other. I thought that phone call they shared about the Chicago Democratic National Convention was where they have finally been on the same page for the first time in a while. Post-Sylvia, Don has been told what a handful he is as a husband and maybe the fact he insisted on calling her the first thing when he got back to the office should more openness and intuition on his part to make this work. It might not work out in the end but I feel as though the show is setting up for these two needing each other within the context of the end of the 1960s and in the context for how both character’s lives have become isolated and marginalized in their professional spaces. This could all blow up in my face but I am sticking to it.

Other Things of Note:

And if we are keeping tabs on other people in the office for the rest of the run in the season and series, I will be surprised if Pete will still be working at SC & P. He seems to have given up and gone against trying to be nuanced in his approach. For years and seasons, he has had strong business skills and there is something to what he says to Don about the name-change. But he has always been a bad messenger. Him deciding to take up smoking pot in the lounge is white flag. Pete has always been stubborn and he is not bothering to fight any longer.

So what are Bob and Joan? Clearly there is no definition of that relationship yet and maybe because Bob was finessing his way toward the top. When he gets that promotion to Detroit there was nothing to signal that he had any second thoughts because he and Joan were serious and Joan did that meeting with the Avon guy as a date.

And no, Bob being gay would be shocking. But he is a Grade-A suck-up. I have mentioned he is like Pete in one sense but he is also like Don in that sense, given that Pete has always wanted to be Don. But being Don also involves mysterious back-story, so I do get the Bob Benson: Mystery Man that has the interwebs a-buzzing. Still, I think it is just that he is a lot more ruthless in business instincts beyond that All-American, aw shucks exterior. That said, I want Joan with somebody not named Roger.

I also don’t believe any of the Megan stuff for a second. Move along, Redditors. There is a reason these writers have won Emmys and you guys go Room 237 on these supposed subliminal messages.

I am really critical of Alan Sepinwall’s complaints about this season with history becoming too pronounced. I think Andy Greenwald rightfully noted that last season had a more claustrophobic sense of a space becoming deadly but isolated enough that it felt like it was on its own planet that at that point in time became in the 60s is now impossible to be. The MLK thing did riff on an actual event where Paul Newman went political and it was announced there but I really think it is a hostile thing to say in negatively comparing this season to Forrest Gump. And for what, exactly? Both other major historical events that followed the MLK assassination are the characters watching from a distance on TV with the DNC riots and the RFK assassination reporting. It would have been Forrest Gump if Abe went to the DNC and was at the center of the riots or the agency being on business in Chicago at the time or them being in LA during the RFK assassination. I just find it bullshit that something as on purpose as the show examining the privilege and isolation its characters have to the world at large and commenting on it constantly is going over the heads of some critics that I admire for their criticism of the show and that I thought knew better.

Loved the Ginsberg-Cutler fight. It is like the Peggy and Joan fight in both are right but both are wrong. And Stan being silent and deserting the scene was gold because he is actually the guy Cutler described in being the hippy with his head down who takes money from Dow Chemical. Ginsberg at least has shown moral opposition to such projects in previous episodes.

And Bob Benson was listening to How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying, not self-help records. That is a nice nod to Mr. Robert Morse aka Bert Cooper.

Mad Men Recap: Better Together or Apart Edition

Sun, 02 Jun 2013 18:57:00 -0400

“THE BETTER HALF” EPISODE #6.09

Although this show has proven to be a show all about Don Draper, Matthew Weiner does spread it out in story and with Peggy Olson the show is very much her story too. This episode showed that Peggy’s work life the moment the merger happened continues to blow up in her face, but that the merger itself reflected an unraveling home life.

The episode pretty much tells you this is a bookend for Abe Drexler. It ends exactly as it started. On Abe’s first appearance, he meets Peggy and later on gives her a heads up that he will write a story on her. She tells him off and he does not publish and only later do they become a couple. But their relationship ends in Peggy’s stunned silence as he unloads to her in unkind terms of how she is ‘the enemy’ and represents everything he stands against and, whether she likes it or not, will be the subject of his story. I know there existed people who liked Abe (because this is the internet age so you know there is a somebody who likes somebody) but to me he represented in not so kind terms of how the then modern left unraveled (you can imagine that Abe will be among the crowds causing a stir at the notorious 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago). He is so zealous, acts so superior, yet so full of bloodlust (which Peggy called him out on when he showed such thrill in covering the Harlem riots after the Dr. King assassination), his belief that the only way for something to get better in the world is to bring order to its knees (not unlike what Megan said about her father’s opinion of the MLK assassination) and even when common sense says for the good of the neighborhood, the best way for him to be ‘a pioneer’ is to report criminal activity he instead refuses to compromise in instances of misplaced empathy. In a way, Peggy compromising with Abe on moving to the West 80s was their ‘orange sherbet’ moment that Don and Megan had in “Far Away Places”. Abe thought he had a woman to mold and show this side of aspiration and idealism of himself to her- but she rejected it and therefore rejected him. But in neither case did these men of power (and Abe may think that being against the machine had him as a guy who embraced ‘powerlessness’ but the American hippy and yippy movement vanguard was mostly educated white men who basically took their movements down in self-destruction) have their ‘better half’s’ interest at heart. Peggy in her goofy manner, of course, cannot have a conventional breakup or fight. She has to stab her boyfriend in the heart with a makeshift spear as she was cooped up in her apartment in fear of a burglary. As Abe delivers the breakup to her in full persecution complex mode, I have to say that I was not upset it happened except that Peggy was getting it from all sides this episode and when she turned to work (like she has often done) even what she thought was there was not.

The Ted Chaough saga has Peggy realizing that she may have oversold herself on Ted’s differences from Don. He may be a different kind of guy but that does not necessarily make him perfect. She realizes that he can never act out again on his feelings for her and he does have the ability to wipe out the memories of that kiss because he cannot leave his wife. But in strictly a work sense, she sees a guy full of insecurities in his work while Don is only guilty of being way too confident in his work. But in the end she now has complicated relationships with two men who helped her grow but in the cases of Peggy-Don-Ted they really have misread each other at various different times in their careers (but Don warning Peggy that Ted does not ‘know her at all’ also shows a stubborn confidence that he knows the ‘real Peggy’ when the details of what he does know are still from afar).

Peggy knew from the beginning the merger was not a good idea getting swept back into the old stomping grounds but the move to the West 80s, like the merger itself, was out of compromise and impulse for an ideally better tomorrow. Instead the relationship ended in a break-up, boiled resentment spilling over, stubbornness breaking the compromise, and a financial loss. Now it is time to worried about the agency.

We turned to the Don-Betty story and how the tables have turned in that relationship. It was a moment for those of us who began very sympathetic to Betty finally got what we always wanted in Don getting a taste of his own medicine. That said, Betty’s confidence and ability to act like nothing happened because she has returned to form at just the specific moment Don needed that encounter with her is a little too convenient. Is it actually over for Don in returning back to Megan, because even somebody like Betty sees love there, and has he been pulled out of this inferno? Or is the look at the past appealing more to him than the modern world reflect what happened at the end of the 60s when people went back to an old face in Nixon? Or is shit just going to get worse for Don and therefore Megan?

This was a good episode for the female characters, completely recalling Season 4’s “The Beautiful Girls” that heavily featured the female characters. It is when Peggy met Abe, Joan and Roger conceived Kevin, Betty was this looming existential threat to Sally, and the moment Megan entered Don’s conscience. With the exception to Sally’s absence, the female characters were front and center with the men realizing their control and stubbornness kind of limits them but there are more creative ways to get around it be it have breakfast with your latest spouse or stab them in the heart. This show always had a feminist conscience and I like that there was room for four female characters to be up to par (the writing for Betty Draper was sagging).

Other Thoughts:

This show really brings out the dog whistles to alarmists viewers this show. From people trying to connect Megan to Sharon Tate (I mean it could be that the t-shirt was fashion forward at the time) and to Bob Benson being caught in a lie by the audience (that still could just mean he sucks up and the way Mad Men’s social media sites are playing up his mystery the more I think he will just be revealed as ordinary). For all the instances Mad Men is accused of really being too on the nose, the theories over the years that have gotten more intricate and complicated really make me respect Weiner & Company all the more for (unlike some shows over the years) have never indulged on these theories.

Although, as mentioned on other sites, that this was the third instance of a lesbian coming on to a straight woman on the show- I cannot really say in either three instances those moments were really that predatory (in Peggy’s case it was fun and her friendship with Joyce never came back to it while in Joan’s case it was a tragic scope of ‘this was the times a gay person lived in’). Arlene is obviously flexible and Megan and Don’s ambivalence to a spouse-swap was not as explicitly expressed to her face. But I also enjoy Matthew Weiner’s trolling of the Megan haters when in the last episode Betty casually says she was off at a ‘casting couch’ when this shows something more in line with her behavior. She is uncomfortable in being that expressive and full of agency in her career. Let’s remember that her ‘Zou Bissou Bissou’ moment was done for Don and almost of all of the moments she shows agency was in the pursuit of Don. She needs him as much, if not more, than he needs her.

I cannot imagine Joan and Bob working as a surrogate (but photogenic as hell) family at the beach did not also involve those two having sex already so kudos to everybody who rightfully guessed those two being together. And although I have read there is still something off about Bob or that relationship still has too much distance, let’s remember they are colleagues who had Roger unceremoniously stop in and they actually talked about work discussions. Let’s also remember this would be the first couple on the show where their relationship began strictly as colleagues never mind the many instances of secretary and their boss relationships on the show. Obviously this dynamic is going to be different.

Let me also just say that still being in the Summer of ’68 when we only get the alarms from outside is kind of making me feel gypped. I mean, we were told that Bob and Joan were going to beach and saw NONE of it.

I love that Joan reiterated to Roger what she told him 2 Christmases ago in “A Christmas Waltz” that Greg may not biologically be the father or be the present father but as the symbolic father he works for her as Kevin’s father than he does. It is almost melancholic that Joan submits that Greg as a symbol (the symbol she fell for and got an unhappy marriage out of it) works best. It patterns with Don Draper the avatar as the symbol and the greatest advertisement the Dick/Don ever led people to believe about him. That said, I feel like Greg is just the guy to fuck things up for himself and his family name in Vietnam so stayed tuned. Kevin Sterling Harris may just become Kevin Benson by series end.

Roger with children often starts as a great joy to watch until it gets dark. Now taking his grandson to Planet of the Apes may not be on par with Sally Draper walking in on him being serviced but his judgments and instincts not related to work of late have not been good.

There are times that Harry’s casual confidence in being a partner make me laugh and then there are times I think he is exactly the kind of guy who would run things in 10 years. That said, he looks so damn dorky being the only guy who his blazer off and in a short-sleeve dress-shirt. Is that look really partner material?

Oh boy, I really hope that Duck Phillips’ re-appearance as a ‘headhunter’ was a one-episode deal because Peggy has enough exes and trysts in one building to deal with.

The Bobby #5 joke was a great, cute meta joke. I actually think Mason Vale Cotton has settled in nicely to this role. Though I wish we had more Sally.

Who would have thought the man in the agency that Joan would be closest to at a platonic level is Pete Campbell? Seriously, who guessed that? I want names!

Mad Men Recap: The Child is the Father of the Man Edition

Sat, 25 May 2013 17:13:00 -0400

“THE CRASH”

EPISODE # 6.08

I have been sitting on this episode. Not because I had second thoughts about its quality or anything like that (as some other recappers oddly did if you look at a few Twitter feeds the night of the episode followed by their more mixed reaction recaps). No, there was actually a lot to pontificate about how this episode fits into the season and the series itself. I am surprised how many people think this ‘drug episode’ is a stand alone, one-off episode that will somehow hold nothing for the rest of the season or the series. What episode were these people watching?

For me this episode was swimming in references and callbacks to earlier episodes and in fact, seasons of Mad Men. So what if subtext became text that went to hypertext due to a shot from Doctor Feelgood? If anything, this episode gave me total confidence in how self-aware the show is about Don’s place at the office and the show. How could you not laugh at the music that followed Don’s declaration that the office was a whorehouse much to the confusion of Jim Cutler and Ted Chaough? This episode showed that Don’s problems are in trauma and that this downward trajectory into this ‘Inferno’ is in fact, a return to where he believes he came from.

The most explicit and frankly shocking callback to the episode is “Mystery Date”. At the time myself and other critics took the interpretation of Don’s ‘fever dream’ in choking to death a former mistress was him confronting his infidelities after marrying Megan. In fact, it was not. It was a direct reliving of how he lost his virginity in being molested while sick (sick like he was in that episode) from a prostitute who had taken on a maternal role to him before she took advantage of him- when he was only in a position to submit. In hindsight, that episode obviously gets a little sicker. That any woman from Don’s past can be placed into that role of somebody who molested him and that it has led to him subconsciously wanting to kill such a woman who dominates him is disturbing. Even when we have the ‘morning after’ shot of the light that shines on Megan it takes on a darker context with this added information. We sometimes forget that the shot of Megan is subjective, what Don is seeing and not what the show is directly saying. She is not the woman to bring him into the light or the light in his life but that light that shines on her is his image of her. She is the one to submit to him, she appeared to him at that point the antithesis of the women he disposed of as being like that prostitute. Until she asserted her own agency and she was over for him.

When the power games are even threatened to switch Don Draper assumes two things: this woman is like a prostitute who should be shamed and he has to double-down on his dominance. We have seen the dominance being downright cruel, petty, childish, and extremely psychological as it is carnal. He could not entirely just let Sylvia leave like that. He drops cigarette butts at her door like rose-peddles almost as a slight to who she married and giving more than a hint of who it could be to not just Sylvia. The burning question for me, and a lot of viewers, is why Sylvia? What makes her this fascination for Don? I can understand that the scene where he sweet-talked her into bed actually is something laughable and would only appeal to a woman like herself and her upbringing. But, and like many of Don’s affairs, she is a notch on the bedpost. It is a deep notch, however.

Sylvia acts maternal to him in a few ways that initially was the case for that prostitute, until she, like the prostitute, hurt him. Don gets hurt by Sylvia, that he got disposed of as some affair as if she never wanted it to happen (but he knows she has Catholic guilt and will get her to call). In Don’s screwed up world, the punishment and the disposal connect him back to his old life. I know people hate the flashbacks into the whorehouse because it is laid on so thick, but I think that is our mistake as viewers, and I implicate myself in this, in thinking that Don represents a specific male of the period in every facet of his life (Roger and Pete, although both WASPs, are probably better representations for the show, in addition to Harry and Stan). This series has always been about a man posing, advertising himself, in a lie, in plain slight as somebody different from who he was and where he came from. The latter seasons are just showing how it is all catching up to him and this downward trajectory leads straight back to hell.

It is crucial to mention that the first glimpses of prostitution in the life of Don Draper/Dick Whitman, in the Season 3 premiere episode of “Out of Town”, are the very subjective visions of what Don imagines how he came into the world. Don places his mother, a prostitute, into martyrdom and distances himself from his father that he barely knew. As one of the lines from the speed-fueled creatives go, “The child is the father of the man,” and Don’s childhood, father-figure in his Uncle or not, dominates his life despite the new skin in a new identity, the marriages, the kids, and the success. The question I am left with was did he ever have a chance? In Don Draper’s mind, is he eternally damned for coming into a world where the figures of authority and power were so screwed up? In the few instances he reveals a part of himself and his state of mind at work, it is almost as if he is speaking a second language to them- on uppers or not. Matthew Weiner says Don is never going to go into therapy and I am not quite sure what his other options are. Frankly, I prefer not knowing the easy answers to that question because I cannot imagine a season and a half having such a cut-and-dry answer that is so obvious but never explored by the show. And no, not even the therapy is an easy answer. When has Don ever been truthful to somebody, besides Megan, that also did not have him painted into a corner where he could only reveal that about himself? Another shoe would have to drop.

I hate to make this recap so Don-centric but I was surprisingly taken by how the episode really made me question how I viewed Don within the context of the show. The overall episode for me is the best of the season. The script’s scenes that strictly took place at the agency felt like they were commissioned for Joan Didion to write about the advertising world after writing The White Album and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder on a cocaine binge (Am I the only one who thought the exterior lighting and the shading of the room in the scene between Don and Frank Gleason’s daughter felt a little Querelle?). This episode was a throw of acid in the face of anybody who thought the merger was this great moment in Mad Men history. It instead has revealed itself to be a potent cocktail with SCDP’s offices (or whatever name of the new agency is going to be); a circle of hell now with more drugs and testosterone in the building. The show had too many cheeky lines of Ginsberg calling out Stan for thinking just because he is on drugs he is suddenly interesting and just about every line coming from Peggy’s mouth to make this episode’s brilliance hinge on it as a ‘drug episode’ (although, I am living for those Ken Cosgrove tapping GIFs). This is not about learning about drugs being terrible for you, drugs being a gateway to romantic overtures or one-night stands, or drugs leading to painful confessionals because there is somehow more honesty when on them. It represents the false sense of power and energy the agency had in merging into something more powerful. In a way that goes back to Don Draper, the false sense of a new skin and identity gave him an energy shot that ultimately fades and levels back into being Dick Whitman. Dick Whitman was always there but the power and energy of the shot of being Don Draper felt like a rebirth.

Other Thoughts:

On ‘Grandma Ida’ and Sally: Oh, boy. I get it. Mad Men and race. It is not the most nuanced. But was I really the only one who believed her for a moment or at least wanted to believe her? With the flashbacks being so frequent in this episode, I was expecting to see a woman of color in young Dick Whitman’s life to re-appear after her introduction until she said she knew of ‘Donald’. But Sally got cold read. It speaks to her ordinariness in that anybody could guess what her mother and father are like from her perspective. And from Sally’s mind her guesses in who her father was could also be linked to her memories of maternal Carla, her former nanny/housekeeper. Anyway, Grandma Ida’s appearance and increasingly more sinister growth when it became clear what she was doing was the drug crash aspect of this episode that is why I felt I can understand why the reaction to this episode, positive and negative, was so visceral (with Linda Holmes of NPR serving as the annoyed designated driver of the drugged out tweetbeat of TV recappers and shook her head at anybody who liked the episode).

I love that the fact there was no Joan or Bob in this episode had many people assume they are now boinking.

And it was not just people who thought the merger was a good idea got acid thrown at them in this episode. As somebody who loves the idea of Stan and Peggy, the show giveth and then taketh in such cruel ways. My heart is broken and it is not the stethoscope.

Peggy having to get tipsy to at least feel part of the atmosphere while Ginsberg stayed cold (because Ginsberg on drugs sounds like a fire hazard) seems to really just emphasize how Dawn characterized the office, except now including needles and syringes in addition to the bottles. I have an odd feeling there is going to be a body count joining Lane Pryce.

We have no idea what month of the year this takes place. July or late June? It seems like vacation time which makes it seem probable why so many staffers were not present in the office.

Oh, poor Ken. I hope he at least is doing freelance science fiction work again.

And I will say, and I rarely am this because I actually like this character, that I was really disappointed in Megan turning her not quite friendship, not quite parent relationship with Sally into a transaction into her trying to availability for acting gigs. Although I think Betty was just being slight in calling it a ‘casting couch’ (which plays into the people always sounding the alarms on Megan’s every move- much like Bob Benson) but she was correct. This is just teetering Sally toward the Francis family because at least Henry has a family unit she knows about, he is familiar and kind to her, and for better or worse, Betty acts like her mother.

My Favorite Works of Cinema in 1991

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:05:00 -0400

POST-THATCHERISM RECOVERING

Life is Sweet directed by Mike Leigh

WORKING WITHIN AND AGAINST THE NORMATIVE STRUCTURES

Silence of the Lambs directed by Jonathan Demme

Terminator 2: Judgement Day directed by James Cameron

Defending Your Life Directed by Albert Brooks

Barton Fink directed by Joel & Ethan Coen

Point Break directed Kathryn Bigelow

Raise the Red Lantern directed by Zhang Yimou

BECAUSE I LOVE YOU…. YES, I LOVE YOU

A Brighter Summer Day directed by Edward Yang

The Lovers on the Bridge directed by Leos Carax

Beauty and the Beast directed Gary Trousdale & Kurt Wise

Dogfight directed by Nancy Savoca

Embrace the Fringe

Naked Lunch directed by David Cronenberg

My Own Private Idaho directed by Gus van Sant

Slacker directed by Richard Linklater

Poison directed by Todd Haynes

Throwbacks of Mannered Conventions

The Rocketeer directed by Joe Johnston

Europa directed by Lars von Trier

Irresponsibly, Messilly, Quintessentially, Oh So American

JFK directed by Oliver Stone

Thelma & Louise directed by Ridley Scott

Mad Men Recap: Sick of the Vicious Cycles Edition

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:12:00 -0400

“MAN WITH A PLAN”

Episode #6.07

I liked what this episode was doing. Was it the best Mad Men episode? No, not in this season especially. But it was a welcomed relief. Through the writing done by respected Matthew Weiner confidante, Semi Challas and Weiner himself along with John Slattery’s maturing skill and eye for direction that is equal parts dramatic and cheeky, this episode let us in on how we are really supposed to think of Don Draper in both relation to the show’s world of its characters and time period. But I also was surprised that this show reciprocated my theory that Don Draper and Adam Sackler are actually the same type of person.

I have mentioned before in my recaps of GIRLS that there was definitely something Don Draper-like about the show’s male lead Adam Sackler. In a way the Don-Sylvia plot is a mirror of the Adam-Natalia moment in the show’s most infamous episode when Adam reveals a part of himself to Natalia by ordering her to crawl to his bed ‘on all fours’ and it really goes down from there. Don is testing his dominance and power of Sylvia. It felt gross and demeaning to watch. There was something to Don overhearing Sylvia and Arnold fight and despite Sylvia’s rage at Arnold seemingly wanting to uproot his life and hers to Minnesota she never reveals what she really wants or just outright spill her affair with Don. I think Don realized there he got a huge break there but also hearing her in that dominating way wanted him to assert that such a side to her is never brought out in him because he is the dominant one. In their scenes when he orders her around from getting in bed, not answering the phone, putting on a dress, taking it off, and putting on shoes, it is as if time stops. Slattery’s direction is so aware of how toxic, off-putting, and redundant those scenes are. This place and time for those scenes are in this almost mythic, unattainable world that look even more off juxtaposed to Ted’s life, Pete’s life, Joan’s life, and the real world of 1968. Don’s fantasies are lost when Sylvia, although I feel she really should have left somewhere in-between the shoes and the red dress bullshit, finally tells him his classic fairytale isolation of her (Hello more La Belle et la Bete/Beauty & The Beast references as he took her copy of the novel The Last Picture Show. Is Belle/Beauty not defined by her lover of books?) still did not rob her of her mind and conscience that is dripping with good old-fashioned Catholic guilt. Don looked like a lost child feeling punished for what he has done. He thought he found his Megan substitute that was a little more personalized to him than any prostitute could be and had a level of intellect but the dominance and possession is too weighty for really any reasonable woman.

When last’s week episode showed how people at work really thought of him, being all about the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ but not the ‘we’, I knew there were some people finding these characters stating this about Don at this time to be too convenient. But in this episode, we really do see it. Ted Chaough clearly has the upper-hand in really getting into the minds of his creative underlings and feels more like one of them than a man who pontificates alone in his office to booze. When Ted ends the meeting on the scheduled time and not on Don’s time, Don exudes his power that crosses over from the bedroom into the office with Don controlling Ted, who admittedly felt out of his league when he and the rest of his agency moved into the building, through alcohol. It is a pretty low act. I would say akin to when Roger bedded Jane in her new apartment; unconsciously doing it to really make her feel shitty about the whole transaction in the end. But Roger felt bad about it and Roger sought help. Peggy, who knows what it is like to work under Don in multiple roles, sees this and it disturbs her. Whatever feelings they shared in “The Staircase” are long gone and she still sees him as a man who drinks too much and threw money in her face. Peggy wants Ted to influence Don in a positive way not just in work but how he carries himself. It is almost hard believe this is the same dickhead from earlier seasons who wanted to be Don but Ted’s version of Don is just not a sustainable life choice. Ted figured this out in a hurry after getting drunk once, which all things considering is pretty quickly brushed aside as a lesson learned. It has taken Pete years to go through the same motions and still has yet to figure it out.

It is one thing for viewers to figure out that Don is out of step and in his own world but this episode also shows the reasons why he is getting marginalized and it is probably never going to get better. Not just because he looked scared shitless while Ted played Mr. Cool flying an airplane with his aviator shades but the scenes of Ted’s rap-session in the room that really caught the SCDP creative copy-writers by surprise. Don no longer has Peggy on his side and surely not any of the surviving copy-writers. Bert, Joan, and Pete agree he is only interested in money. Roger saved his ass looking for new business, Don was only interested in ending a business relationship because the game cheated him. Don was never always going to be a winner, top of his game for the rest of the decade but him being marginalized continues the Nixon narrative of how the ’70s burned out for a certain type of man out of step. They may have had the power but they lost public trust when trying to keep grip to that power. Don is a powerful man but feels smaller and is not to be trusted as he had before. I am basically riding the Don is Nixon theory until the show ends which means the fall of this character in my mind is never going to really change course.

Other Thoughts:

Loved the call-backs of Joan leading Peggy around in the office to “The New Girl” but this time character history has these two in unspoken simpatico terms of where both are as women in this workplace.

This Week in Bob Benson: A potential Joan love interest? Or, is he merely saving his neck from getting the Burt Peterson treatment and decided to ingratiate himself with one of the partners? I actually thought he was very sincere and genuine to Joan in assisting her to the hospital. It was oddly when he decided to give her son a football that I thought he was back to being a brown-noser. But there is something there. For me, you do not cast James Wolk, who is begging to break out as a major TV actor, for being a center of comic relief. Him being paired with Joan works and although the impression he left with Ken was long ago it still sticks with people into thinking that this guy is up to no good. I disagree. I think on some level both at the very least need an ally in the office, a person to not be cynical of. Benson is over-eager to a fault and has gotten into some dirty business but his ‘fly on the wall’ persona seems to have no ulterior motive than of just moving up or in this case, surviving. Joan seems separate. Dammit, Mad Men is such a terrible show to root for with any couple. I just do not want Joan stuck with terrible men on this show, okay!

I thought the handling of the RFK assassination was really well-done. First, Pete’s mother (who had not yet understood dementia) being the person to wake up Pete in the middle of the night and saying ‘they shot that Kennedy boy’ perfectly represents the confusion, dread, and terror of that moment. It happened again. It happened to that family again. It happened a month after another beacon of hope was shot. The people we thought could stop this madness are gone. Who is there at the end? Not the men who stuck out their neck but instead the Nixons and the Drapers. Don barely looking at the TV screen as Megan is falling apart in front of the TV harkens back to the “Lady Lazarus” ending in that the audio of the news bulletin keeps playing as Don avoids much like he stops “Tomorrow Never Knows” from finishing- except when the credits roll the music defiantly and relentlessly goes on. There is a disconnect and for Don at least his fantasy world was an escape. But it can not stop. Like the Beatles tune, the broadcast feed continues through the credits audaciously.

I loved Don just tuning out Megan. It was sort of a call-back to the opening episode where he just was silent to her in Hawaii and now he also is not listening. What other ways can he isolate himself from her?

“Reach Out of the Darkness” as the closing song was a great choice. It is one thing to roll out the canonical classics of the period but I dig when songs like this and “He Hit Me (And it Felt Like a Kiss)” are just these complicated songs that are fighting and wrestling its own period. I do not think Weiner and co. are re-appropriating this song. There is this desperation in the song. Groovy may be in the first verse and it is upbeat but they are also telling people to come out of the dark. Essentially it echoes Peggy’s call for Don to evolve. He may not be that song’s target audience but he is playing it safe as are several others when they see the costs of being a force for change.

Is Ted Chaough too perfect? Forget the aviator sunglasses moment, him letting the secretary have his seat almost makes me question why were we ever introduced to his character being such a worm in the first place.

Ken is in the Detroit office. Although he has the Dow Chemical work and family baggage out of his mind, the Chevy Vega was not exactly the superstar car. In fact, getting an American car for the ’70s as your big fish is what really made me think Matthew Weiner does not want this victory for the agency to be taken as an entirely positive development.

So was Don just twisting drunk Ted’s arm when egging him that although Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy were the superstars of the primary it was Humphrey who had the delegates? Or is Don, a man who admits to being against the war in private, a HHH guy? By the way, this does nothing to my Don is Nixon theory.

Okay so now that Phyllis and Dawn are both safe and great secretaries in Peggy’s eyes, can we please get screen-time to both of them?

So everybody wants to play Ted’s game of how the Gilligan’s Island Formula works with Mad Men characters. Honestly, I think everybody needs to stop applying Don to any Gilligan’s Island character. Even for Ted, Don is an unapproachable, enigmatic figure that stumps him. He fits nobody, although at this rate he might as well be Thurston Howell III.

So no Mad Men Recap for Tonight

Mon, 13 May 2013 00:11:00 -0400

Saving it for later this week.

But I hope this week’s episode turned alarmists around on Bob Benson, Accounts.

A minor but major point of contention in Film Comment's Laurence Anyways review

Sun, 12 May 2013 19:38:00 -0400

It is great that queer cinema has moved out of the ghetto and that Xavier Dolan has continued to mature as a filmmaker of melodrama by going beyond the simple binaries of gay and straight. His third feature, Laurence Anyways, deals with transgenderism. Dolan should be commended to give visibility to this particular queer story. I recommend Calum Marsh’s review of the film to read.

What is refreshing about that review is Marsh’s observations do not condescend or portend about the titular character of Laurence, the professor who comes out as a transgender woman. This is impressively articulated in this paragraph:

“To stop and actively stare at another (or an Other) presumes a position of privilege that Dolan here sharply criticizes: He gleans that “just” looking is itself an imposition, a reduction of a person—their being, their space, their privacy—to something contained, examined, scrutinized.”

This idea that Marsh finds in Dolan’s storytelling seems lost on other reviewers who are guilty of exactly what Marsh and Dolan avoid and criticize. In the somewhat positive review of Dolan’s movie in the May/June issue of Film Comment the reviewer, unfortunately, seems to have trouble articulating what is happening on screen and separate the story from casting. The review does highlight the only possible flaw of the movie in the limits of telling this kind of queer story where the changes of living out your true self is such a physical change for transgender people. But that is to no fault of Dolan at all.

The review gets a bit sticky right in the very last paragraph that it really threw me off when the review otherwise never read as problematic as below:

“There’s also quite a bit of Fassbinder here: like Elvira/Erwin of In a Year of Thirteen Moons, Laurence looks more like a man with long hair in a dress than a convincing woman; in a scene reminiscent of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, shortly before making his announcement, Laurence takes shelter from the pouring rain while returning home from work and finds himself surrounded by women and girls; and, of course, there’s that pervasive sense of futility. Despite the excessively pretty packaging, it’s clear that there is no Hallmark resolution for the couple’s problems. Fred loves Laurence, but longs for “a man’s arms”; Laurence needs Fred, but can’t continue being a man (or apologize for his decision to become a woman). They remain true to their desires, because that’s the best they can do.”

Laurence looks like a man with long hair than a passing woman because Laurence is not played by an actor who is actually doing a transition on-screen with the softening hormones that help transwoman pass in society. I doubt actor Melvil Poupaud and Dolan ever planned to have Poupaud even soften his looks in a similar way (though his makeup work as he transitions certainly does soften his features). In a Year of 13 Moons is a pretty complicated, rough comparison in text that I understand is irresistible because it is the most visible transgender story in world cinema because of who directed it. That said, it was made at a time that little was understood about transgenderism and Fassbinder regarding any queer stories are at a level of complication where you could write a whole book on breaking down the inconsistencies, embraces, and self-loathing of being queer film-to-film. Dolan has never come across as that kind of filmmaker who finds futility and destruction in the lives in which his characters want to lead (or at least shown in such a negative way as Erwin/Elvira). He is too much of his generation of queer kids to think in such a way while Fassbinder was also very much of his generation. It is safe to say the movies centered around characters on the LGBTQ spectrum made decades ago would look very different today much less if any of those movies would be made today. Fassbinder’s movies are among them as well as several that are hailed as classics. They are not bad movies by any stretch but so many are of their times that applying them to modern times is misguided. To that point, comparing Laurence Anyways to those movies does not really serve Laurence Anyways well because these are apples and oranges comparisons of a different time and environments for these characters and stories because of how society and various communities have changed in attitudes toward these characters. Dolan still shows the complications and prejudices involved in transitioning with the old structures rearing their ugly heads and of course the relationships formed by Laurence with others feeling like lies and betrayal, but I never thought he saw Laurence in a futile life. I find that the comparison not only lazy but a bit telling statement to make from Lucca.

And as for the second bold statement, it gets sort of close to making those mistakes about using the correct pronouns with transgender people. From Laurence’s perspective, she was always a woman. ‘Being a man’ was pretending. Becoming a woman is again the physical transition than the actual state of living. What both Fred and Laurence desire are their living truths that they can no longer compromise. I think Lucca understands that but almost cannot help but separate she is watching a man play a character who goes from man to woman in a transgender story but the limits to actually inhibiting the physical changes can not be fully bought on-screen. She is writing on the otherness of Laurence and is incredibly reductive in her observation that in the context of transgenderism is actually a very ignorant one to have and can easily be picked apart in a simple statement as, ‘Poupaud is not transgender, Laurence is.’. Calum Marsh’s review not only articulates the issues filmmakers get themselves into when they take on these stories, still seldom represented in film, but also occasionally the stances held by reviewers who mean well but should know better.

Little bit of a time consumer. Reveal all of my favorite releases by year since I was born.

Thu, 09 May 2013 21:39:00 -0400

No real strong reason why doing this. Again, a good, fun time consumer. I am not devising it by alphabetization or enumeration. I will place them in certain sub-categories. Some times there are trends of releases in a calendar year. It is not studios going mano-a-mano or all from the same studios but it could easily be a similar trend of indies or even an indie sharing a connection to the biggest blockbuster in America. But mostly these movies are just random pairings. The pairings speak more of my taste and my cinephile brain.

Anyway, I will just start today in 1990. This will be a weekly entry.

MEN ON TRIAL

Goodfellas directed by Martin Scorsese

Close-Up directed by Abbas Kiarostami

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Metropolitan directed by Whit Stillman

Paris is Burning directed by Jennie Livingston

SENSORY OVERLOAD

The Killer directed by John Woo

Total Recall directed by Paul Verhoeven

Wild at Heart directed by David Lynch

Jacob’s Ladder directed by Adrian Lyne

Dick Tracy directed by Warren Beatty

The Witches directed by Nicolas Roeg

(UNOFFICIAL) ADAPTATIONS AS TEMPLATE

Miller’s Crossing directed by Joel and Ethan Coen

Joe Versus the Volcano directed by John Patrick Shanley

CONCEPTION AND AN UNHAPPY ENDING

Trust directed by Hal Hartley

Ju Dou directed by Zhang Yimou

PALPABLE MISCHIEF FROM BEHIND THE CAMERA

Gremlins 2: The New Batch directed by: Joe Dante

Cry-Baby directed by John Waters

MAD MEN RECAP: I LOVE PUPPIES EDITION

Mon, 06 May 2013 01:43:00 -0400

NEW YORK CITY

MAY 17TH, 1968

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE…….

MAD MEN #6.06

“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE”

Was this a true return to form Don Draper or a ghost? The impulsiveness of him at work, with the company gives him satisfaction, that he is in charge rather than idle. But that impulsiveness plays into his whole mythology and avatar. For the clear echoes of “Shut the Door. Have a Seat” that closed Season 3, this seems to perfectly capture the trajectory of not just Don Draper the character, but Don as a representation of the 1960s. It may seem like a turning of a new leaf, but let’s wait until that other shoe drops on these impulsive decisions.

Don dumping Herb and Jaguar is the closest that comes back to his childhood and existential crisis. Herb is a rooster. Herb also represents somebody who cheated Don out of what he thought was his greatest pitch. So of course, leave Don and Herb alone and you have the end of either doing business with the other ever again. The last great impulse Don did to a client was his letter about tobacco to The New York Times. This is not as wide-spread, turning heads. It is personal. Personal to Joan.

Don may not like roosters, but his impulse and disgust for Jaguar make her work for naught. Of the million different things going on in her at that moment she articulated that Don thinks he is this ‘great man’ who does not treat the agency as a collaboration, the ‘I’ and not the ‘we’. Joan learns her potential worth in the company possibly going public at the beginning of the episode makes her close to a millionaire. Don consciously, purposely dumping their flagship client even objectively would have her angered, but that it is Jaguar and how did Don ever think he would not get an ear-full between Joan Pete just shows his hubris.

In returning to Don, his comeback is set up for him on a platter this episode. Megan behaves to impress him at the urging of her mother, Sylvia is a distant memory, while Roger is the guy who brings Chevy into the conversation with his own footwork (as Roger Sterling only can). There is a sense of invisibility to what he is doing, including the unholy marriage of him and Ted Chaough in Detroit to merge their competing companies. Meanwhile, the man he admires in Dr. Rosen has quit his job and ambitions, where the idea of playing God is burst by the fact he is in a business at a hospital and wants to escape it. Don reveals he believes he can control his own destiny and he does not believe in fate.

Don Draper is the avatar of the lie of the American dream. He did come from nothing and made something for himself but under another guy’s name, cheating the system. He is sort of cheating at life and in a business where it is Darwinist to the core, cheating, beating, stealing, and now, merging. Don’s way of solving problems now is impulsive but there is something to the merger with Chaough that is deeper than impulse. Don and the agency rising as the big agency it deserves to be, as it was in the beginning mirrors Richard Nixon in 1968. After losing to Kennedy, Nixon fell, retreated and returned back into the fray. How did he win? His views did not change much. So what was it? Nixon had Southern Strategy, forging an unholy alliance with the forces largely responsible for his downfall in 1960. Ted Chaough and his agency are the Dixiecrats who prefer this alliance to the alternative of losing out to the bigger, more youthful voting blocs in America. Suddenly this was an unstoppable force as their competition fell apart. These two forces may not like each other, their partnership is cynical as hell, but it will work to get the most American client they could possibly get: A Chevrolet car account. Don’s strategy is Nixon’s strategy. Combine forces and suddenly something that feels so static and old-fashioned feels a lot safer and more comforting.

This idea of comfort versus serious change is driven home by Peggy. Her relationship with Abe was not on impulse, far from it, but even as she has opened herself to his world and view of what is great about living in New York, she turns back to work and Ted Chaough. We were led to believe that Ted’s crush on Peggy was unrequited. Instead, Peggy likes Ted. A lot. After they share a kiss she now imagines herself kissing him when she kisses Abe. Peggy is not tied to progress outside her office walls, it just makes sense she might feel more personal and emotional connection to somebody who works in her office.

But seeing the ghost of Don Draper at Ted’s office had to have her suddenly feel trepidations toward that. When she left SCDP in “The Other Women”, The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” was her exit music. It truly felt like an act of independence and a necessary separation from the down-trodden, cynical, morose attitude the agency turned into. Now Don’s impulses have brought her back too. She is no longer free and the man she admires and has a crush on is tangled in this web. When she tries to tell a drunk Ted before they kiss how much see admires him and how different he was from her previous work, he is not listening to her until she is speaking of him. Her words get lost and I think this episode really showed that this merger is a false flag of real change to the agency. Like Nixon in 1968, what feels like comfort but different in approach still is not that different than before. It feels like another trap. The building is bigger but that only means the falling man will just fall farther and faster.

Now this may sound like I am shitting on this episode. Far from it. It is my favorite Mad Men episode since, coincidentally, “The Other Woman”. I think this show is very aware of what it is doing and this episode really unloading quite a lot in story is still a very rewarding viewing and engaging episode that even if my portrait is damming was admittedly a pretty chipper, snappy episode. It does not feel overwhelming and even if the theme of ‘impulse’ is pretty much thrown everywhere in this episode, the script and direction is clearly done in the making of creator Matthew Weiner, who wrote the episode.

Other Thoughts:

So Pete’s father-in-law Tom Vogel is like Don in that he punishes Pete the way Don punishes Megan but that will not stop him from having extramarital affairs. Megan endures it even if the equivalency is false, and of course she does not know the half of it. Pete, however, believes he knows all of it and rubs it in Trudy’s face in a very evil, embarrassing, calculating way. I still contend Pete is not racist but I think the shock and otherness of his father-in-law’s choice was a specific twist in the knife to Trudy. Pete’s impulses are ugly when he brings it home which again, mirror Don.

The way Pete goes from King of the World who has masterminded SCDP going public to a guy who also loses a client but has no Roger to come back with a back-up for Vicks, is the Pete Campbell story. When things do not go his way, watch out. He not only self-destructs but he takes as many people down with him. Him tripping down the stairs angered, rightfully, at Don is this season’s ‘Lane punches Pete in the face’

Speaking of the trip:

I have no idea why but I will always have a soft-spot for Julia Ormond as Mrs. Calvet. Did she serve any real purpose? No, not really. But she was the French-speaking Greek Chorus as Herb’s wife would just not stop clucking.

This Week in Bob Benson:

His is pretty much Pete’s goofer at the agency. Following him all the way to the whorehouse. But it is strictly professional, as he fails to recognize Pete’s father-in-law as anything other than a client. That said, he gave that black hooker a look. Does he have a certain preference? Sorry, I might be setting people in the office up with Dawn.

The most Roger Sterling robs the cradle moment: Danielle Panabaker (age 26) as Daisy, the stewardess in Mad Men.

No Sylvia this week, which is surprising. Can she and Arnold really afford to live on Park Avenue if he quit? Did he really quit? I am not sure. That said, I did not miss Sylvia. Sorry, Linda Cardellini.

Peggy loves Bobby Kennedy. Kennedy revisionism (no thanks to the actual progressive work by the flawed Ted Kennedy) left people with the impression he was this great progressive folk hero. Not really. His progressive bona fides came in really late. He seemed like the worthy successor to LBJ but not somebody who would really have broken down the system like Gene McCarthy. He, carrying the JFK legacy, was a total comfort choice and it helps that he is Catholic for Peggy.

Mad Men Recap: Our Name and a Molotov Cocktail Edition

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 01:33:00 -0400

SEASON #6.05

“THE FLOOD”

This seemed like an inevitable event that Mad Men would have to drop its Updike/Cheever novella episodic storytelling for history to take over. I am more than fine with that. “The Flood” is not necessarily Season 3’s “The Grown-Ups” that dealt with the JFK assassination head-on. Despite the Baby Boomer conflation of the three assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK, Mad Men shows that the largely white cast and largely the White America had a different reaction to Martin Luther King’s assassination as opposed to JFK’s assassination.

For one thing, a President versus a ‘Great Man’ of a movement being taken down meant different things for a country. JFK had a successor while there was no immediate successor just based on the structure of the country (although Roger quipped a couple of episodes ago that Lyndon Johnson, who at this point in the show’s chronology already backed out of seeking re-election, was chasing Kennedy’s ghost much like Richard Nixon) to Dr. King and in the end there was not one to step in except to merely follow King’s legacy. There is also the other thing that I thought this show plainly revealed about America’s reaction to King’s assassination: distance.

This episode through Dr. King’s assassination showed distance, naivete, idealism, ignorance, and deep-seeded opinions from characters that we did not quite see from before but overall maintaining very much in-character traits. Roger revealing that he thought King’s methods and skilled public-speaking could work- for a guy who in Season 3 put on blackface at an event to charm his then new wife along with not being one to avoid an off-color joke was pretty surprising. Harry proclaiming that the race riots in reaction to King’s assassination were ruining the city (and maybe not just the race riots, but a great thing to leach onto) and being ticked off that primetime programming is wall-to-wall assassination coverage and costing the agency revealed a lot. When I am on Pete Campbell’s side in being disgusted, you have to done or said something very awful. You have Henry following Mayor Lindsay trying to deal with a pressure cooker of the race riots but only speaks about how Lindsay handled it and the exhilaration of coming out of the city with crisis averted. Bobby Draper telling the black usher at the movie theater that watching a movie is a good thing to do when you are sad after watching Planet of the Apes (and given that you had Star Trek on TV and two of the biggest most mainstream genre movie hits of 1968, Planet of the Apes and Night of the Living Dead dealing with race, albeit from a white male’s perspective, metaphors for race was everywhere). You have Abe Drexler covering the tensions in Harlem and Peggy calling him out on him really ‘loving this’ misery and martyrdom for putting his experiences on the written word. You even have the bizarro property insurance client who claimed to have talked to Dr. King in a dream (William Mapother, you were almost too well cast for this). Basically, all of the white characters are no different from the cultural tourism of Paul Kinsey on the Freedom Rides. You also, of course, have the awkward instances of Dawn and Phyllis, the two black secretaries in the different offices, having work as a refuge and getting a lot of awkward looks, reactions, and hugs for just being there.

It may have been too cynical to have this episode be the one where we explored more of Dawn’s perspective, mainly because I feel like her character still serves as audience surrogate. She is not a character defined by her race despite the fact she is so defined by her race in the place she works. It is an interesting tightrope but she does prove to be a good secretary that could be molded by Joan and maybe could be of the next generation at SCDP than just a fly on the wall. I think there is more for her as a character and am sort of grateful this was not the episode to do that.

With the whole issue of a major event like an assassination you still had reminders of where the characters are in their relationships. Peggy is moving on up, ideally to an apartment on the Upper East Side that never came to fruition (and neither did that Second Avenue Subway). She and Abe are apparently at a relationship where he casually mentions kids and where they want to raise such prospective children geographically in New York City. That said, they are on different planes in income and he likes to run into danger (you do not suppose the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that year tickles his fancy?). Part of me still agrees with Mrs. Olson that this cannot work out in their living arrangement, but as of right now, Peggy has nothing to worry about. Michael Ginsberg is being set up into dating nice Jewish girls by his father which has possibly planted a seed in him to start looking. But given that it is Ginsberg, things are awkward from the get-go and this seems largelydue to the fact he never has put himself out there because, like Peggy, the job is his marriage. But again, Morris’ Noah’s ark reference seems like a seed-planting. I hope to check in on that story-line again.

But of course you have the mirrors of Pete and Don. Pete calling back Trudy to check in on her and mostly to check in on his daughter Tammy is in hindsight a really devastating scene. Trudy wants nothing to do with Pete and will not let the event be the reason he ever returns to Cos Cob. It echoes the Betty and Don calls, revealing the growing distance of Don and the children over the years since their divorce (ironically off the heels of the JFK assassination). I remember how the defenders of Don and the Betty haters (not defending her as her classification of Megan as Don’s ‘girlfriend’ is Grade A passive aggression) pointed out time after time that at least Don was a better parent than Betty. I think an episode like Season 5’s “Commissions & Fees” should the tables had turn in that instance regarding Sally but now we see how Bobby might as well be a different kid to Don. Don’s fears of not really connecting to Gene in “The Summer Man” are finally shown to have already happened to his oldest son who considers Henry his father, the man he worries about could be next in getting shot (and this is before he knows of Henry’s political ambitions). This had to be our first real interactions we have seen with Don and Bobby this in-depth or at least interactions that felt like it all stood next to any Sally and Don interaction.

In the end we get another revelation from Don that for the last few episodes felt a little redundant in his whole personal history and behaviors. He does not connect with his children and his feelings about his children feel spontaneous rather than something he was always supposed to feel. You almost want to return to “The Carousel” moment again. How doubly fraud that all meant in retrospect. How maybe in a way Dick Whitman with the Don Draper avatar almost just wanted to fulfill all of the obligations and background of a man of that time than something of his own actual desires. That maybe Dick Whitman was always the man who had affairs to balance off this check-list of having a job, being married, having kids, and being in the suburbs. It is a pretty shocking thing for Don to say, especially when we saw those moments he has had with Sally, but I think the fact he has been apart from their lives for quite a while and never really fought ever with Betty to see them more, makes me think that Don’s distance from the children adds to another group of people he is isolating himself from. That Don reveals this to Megan is more shocking. Megan felt like she avoided a disaster in being pregnant with that miscarriage (and felt a little ashamed for feeling that way), imagine how she feels now that Don is at that stage with his children?

This was an episode where a lot of place-tables seemed to be happening. This season has been criticized for not having the ‘knock-out’ episode as of yet (Frankly, I thought the premiere was that episode) but to me that exchange between Don and Megan was a knock-out. Almost any Dick Whitman flashback can now be exorcised because Don just talking about his feelings in the now while also obliquely mentioning his past is way more interesting to me.

Other Thoughts:

Henry’s political aspirations (and what a time to have them) and Betty as the supportive wife seemed like last-second add-in story-line but I think that moment of Betty looking in the mirror and looking at a dress that is now too small for her was another great table-setter moment. I am not sure if the character actually lost any weight from Weight Watchers or the makeup on January Jones got simply better but she is not at her fighting weight. Being a politician’s wife does seem like an interesting story-line for her and giving her character an urgency (since there was no real weight-loss obsessive culture like today) to lose weight is potentially interesting. The operative word is potentially, as I am always on guard for how they write Betty.

So that Paul Newman moment, according to Matthew Weiner, really did happen. Personally, although I wished they had a better more accurate actor with Newman’s vocal cadence since that was the only thing we got, I did love the fact Joan brought out the glasses to see him closer.

This is not a show where you should or could ship couples. That said, if Ginsberg and Dawn randomly became a couple, I would approve.

Random Mad Men guest-star alert: In addition to William Mapother you got Harry Hamlin as an ad guy who knows Peggy who flirts with Megan.

Call me a millennial, but damn, they said the term ‘Negro’ a lot on on TV in 1968.

It should be noted that Planet of the Apes is an awesome movie to have you mind blown apart as a child. Bobby Draper (in his fourth incarnation of the show) was a good choice.

I am glad that the show finally did give Bobby Draper his due. My one issue with “Commission & Fees” is how shoe-horned in Glenn Bishop was as a re-emerging character on the show when some of those story-lines could have been Bobby Draper himself. That moment of Don and Glenn driving back to school easily could have been Don and Bobby. I give the show credit for perhaps answering the criticisms of those complaints.

Any Great Films with Great Soundtracks?

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 23:40:34 -0400

ministryoftruthfilmratings:

This is a fun topic, so please offer up a film choice!

flicksation:

For the Podcast on Saturday we want to know a film you love that features an awesome Soundtrack or Score.

Send us an E-Mail @ FlicksationPodcast@gmail.com

A Voicemail @ (608)535-9302

or Leave Your Pick Below this Post and it will be part of the “K-Billy’s Super Sounds of the Cinema” Feature Segment on the show.

Soundtrack:

The Big Lebowski

Something Wild

Married to the Mob

Repo Man

Reservoir Dogs

Rushmore

The Royal Tenenbaums

The Last American Virgin

Dazed & Confused

Batman Forever (I am very serious about this one)

Trainspotting

Do The Right Thing

Harold & Maude

Quadrophenia

Tommy

Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas

Score:

The Third Man

Amarcord

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

The Master

Hanna

Lawless

Attack the Block

The Battle of Algiers

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

And I will stop now before I really hurt myself.

MAD MEN RECAP: WORK AND PLAY EDITION

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 02:14:00 -0400

EPISODE #6.04

“TO HAVE AND TO HOLD”

Even in an episode with the least amount of Don Draper, you will get a lot from Don Draper in this episode. But it starts and ends with hypocrisy. In a way that nods to his past. In seeing his wife have any sort of fulfillment, particularly in career, he sullies it. In Betty’s case he pulled the plug on the modeling career which he had some control with. He had already helped Megan get a career through that very same power but even in giving her that freedom the viewer saw he abandoned any level of emotional trust and attachment to her in the process. When watching her do a love-scene for her soap opera, you at first see it as a callback to young Dick Whitman watching women ‘perform’ in the previous episode. Then you realize it is that for another reason.

Don’s got load of issues with women and when he sees women close to him who take these jobs where they are to be looked upon he jumps quickly to the label of prostitution. On one level that is prudishness (as we find out in this episode, perhaps key parties are not in Don Draper’s future) but on another level it is about power. He can no longer possess that power but again, he had already ceded that power to Megan for her career. It is almost as if Don wanted an excuse for him to go back to his old ways because he knew she would still be in the mode of wanting to be open with him and that it was a one way street where her openness is largely their marriage now. But he waited months for this to happen, to finally actually see the moment Megan has a role in kissing another man. It is kind of a sick thing to do, worse than the Betty incident. The ‘brush your teeth’ comment was a new low for Don, especially when you think about the fact that in the premiere episode he is shown going back to bed to Megan after a tryst with Sylvia when he clearly had not taken a shower. Don is an asshole and because more people on the show are more open about stuff in their lives the moments where Don is all the more jarring if scary to see. He thinks there is still a dignity in keeping things behind closed doors, that his form of cheating in both work and in play is better. He lost at both tonight and comes out looking weaker. Luckily, this episode had a bunch of stuff that counter-balanced the Don stuff that was a little over-stuffed but it included a lot of good stuff.

First, Dawn. Finally. Don Draper’s secretary hired under the false premise of equal opportunity employment feels like a fly on the wall in the office than an actual member of the office. Her otherness in the office is dealt with in a frank and forthright manner that actually gives me hope for this story-line that seemed to stop cold last season. Dawn feeling walked all over while seeing the anxieties of people but not really experiencing it, mainly because she is a competent employee who represents more than just herself in the agency (note the ‘throw the brick’ line regarding her race), is expressed with Harry’s secretary Scarlett pretty much taking advantage of her in the time-card incident. They both get caught by Joan and Joan punishes both, Scarlett initially getting fired only for Harry Crane to make it just a very public embarrassment for Scarlett, but leaves Dawn with a responsibility and a fair warning not to do it again. You see a possible good work dynamic possibly sprouting between Dawn and Joan and I will approve of such a thing. If just because it may give in to a possible feminist awakening at the office instead of Joan being stuck in the same secretary office that she has had for years despite being a partner.

Which leads to Joan. I think the feminist awakening moments are not unfounded but I also am a bit annoyed in that with Joan has never really had a feminist bone in her body up to that point. She is a Darwinist in wishing to weed out the weaker, slogging, dragging aspects of the agency, which is commendable, but she also has never been the nicest. Her nastiness to Peggy in the series’ inception has always kept me no closer to an arm’s length toward Joan and the fact she sees the wives of the other ad men as operating out of a playbook while she was always too dignified to do something like marry Roger always felt messed up in that being her source of pride. But now, she is married to the agency. Yet she still feels under-appreciated and that sort of has had her almost disqualify the significance of having a partnership (it does not help that weasel Harry Crane seems to give off that he had an idea of why she got the partnership in a really shaming way). It takes her friend Kate to tell which is sort of annoying in that the feminist perspective for Joan in the agency is not really self-realized. I often joke about the women characters on the show need to read The Feminine Mystique (and if I had to bet on any character who did, Megan pops up first and likely at the behest of her familial or friendship circles) but that is not necessarily a requirement for there to be a feminist awakening. But I feel like with Peggy, who did see a glass ceiling that she would like to plow through because she thinks she is among the best, there is something feminist going on that Joan never saw for herself because she is a little old-fashioned. Now, her role is expanded and what some see as a ‘petty dictatorship’ viewers see as the only person at the office with a clue and yeah, that does need to have Joan take an initiative. I just wish she did not have to have an admiring friend (although nice to see Marley Shelton working) to get her to realize some initiative and pride is required.

But back to the fact work was heavily featured with ‘Project K’ in full swing that works vis a vis Don’s story line that is very much the same thing. Betrayal behind closed doors. But it also forebodes a problem. People will find out. Peggy knew about Heinz Ketchup by accident and so did another agency that came out of nowhere to steal it (showing that Heinz Ketchup’s version of privacy is different from SCDP’s version of privacy). Heinz Beans found out SCDP was in on Heinz Ketchup and left. Don is going to get fucking caught being with Sylvia and how consciously or not consciously he is aware of this, he needs to realize whatever idealized privacy and dignity in that is going to be blown apart sooner rather than later.

Other Observations:

On Harry Crane: Listen, I do not like Harry Crane. Never have and so help me, never will. I thought his pitch to Dow Chemical was hokey as hell, terrible even. It can easily fall apart in a million different places be it Julie Andrews, John Wayne, Camelot and its central casting of Joe Namath doing musicals. But it worked because Roger, Bert, and the Dow Chemical people are out of touch squares who know no better. That said, his selfishness in turning Scarlett’s employment into an opportunity to raise up his status and importance in the agency was surprising. I always thought since he went to California he always had one foot out the door, eager to leave. Now he wants a partnership? Technically, Ken Cosgrove could do the same thing since Dow Chemical was also his responsibility but you do not see him threatening to leave (this may also be because he is not that proud of what Dow Chemical is doing and will not be holding it up for the highest bidder would he ever leave). But now Harry is walking around with an edge and at the very least he is good foil for Joan who I very much enjoy having enemies (like that Joey Whathisface from Season 4 who said one of the most shocking lines in show history directed toward Joan).

Don overhearing Peggy, some will say he is mixed because for one thing it is great to hear a former protege use the lines you used before but it iss at a moment when you are both competing for the same prize. Don’s behavior this episode also reminded me how in “THE OTHER WOMEN” and “THE PHANTOM”, Don let go of two very significant women in his life and the effects of that moment are front and center in his story this episode. I noticed a chilled distance between Don and Peggy (notice she looked at Stan first as she gave herself away to only him in that scene) and the fact Don’s nasty speech to Megan reminded me a little too much of the fact when Peggy privately announces her leaving the agency to him, Don throws it back in her face that her success and every good thing that happened to her belongs to him. Don’s possessiveness of both Peggy and Megan were lost and in Peggy’s case I am not even sure what exist there now besides distance.

Good to see another agency pick up the Heinz Ketchup stuff if just because there is cover for Stan in spilling the beans (mind the pun) to Peggy about the Heinz account when that was a secret operation. Plus the few lighter moments for Don Draper in this episode had him and Stan smoke pot together thinking about ketchup. It is no coincidence that they share a kinship in an episode where Don reveals he is against the war despite reminders he has Dow Chemical as an account (and gave a speech to them last season that endorsed their activities) and Ginsberg feared Stan was working on a ‘killing machine’ project (read: war) because he has no moral compass (callback to Season 4 where Stan although proud of an un-aired anti-Barry Goldwater ad admitted he is about the highest bidder than anything else).

Other symbols of infidelity, cheating, and transparency in this episode if others were not obvious enough for you:

-Pete’s apartment in the city where his own wife Trudy revealed approved of him having affairs there for piece of mind is the place where Don and Pete the Heinz Ketchup guy.

-Megan’s soap opera ‘TO HAVE AND TO HOLD’ having her sub-plot be cheating.

-I am positive Scarlett and Harry are screwing and it seems pretty obvious that is happening. If not, then she is the biggest kiss-ass in the history of Mad Men secretaries.

Just how Catholic is this season? Very much so. Don is never going to therapy and at this point I think his moments with Sylvia are like Catholic confessions (hello, cross necklace). They are private but not deeply introspective so safe enough for Don to vent on stuff and have somebody pray for him and it being entirely a one-way street. It should be noted that as a lapsed Catholic it fully makes sense why Sylvia would be such an interest and drawn in such a way to Don because we Catholics and psychoanalysis have never been on good terms. Confession was and has for many always been the way. Will Don do something elaborate like convert to Catholicism (note Megan is also Catholic so there is cover)? I don’t know. But I think by now just the whole set-up of their relationship and Don’s need for privacy, her religion despite being married to a Jewish doctor makes a lot of sense.

Whoa to dropping Serge Gainsbourg on us with “Bonnie & Clyde”, Mad Men. Having that be in Joan’s sub-plot of her and her friend hooking up with strangers and one that followed Megan and Don being propositioned to swing by Megan’s co-workers had the perv-levels of the episode go off the charts into a different stratosphere. Somehow in the perviest episode of Mad Men yet, Harry Crane was not involved.

Kudos to Mark Harris for figuring out the date on the episode. A brief radio news report had this episode on March 27th. That date is interesting as on March 31st, Lyndon Johnson announces he will not run for re-election, to the shock of everyone, and of course, on April 4th, Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated. I do not recall such a short time-jump between episodes so I feel like these moments will have to be mentioned in passing but in one particular case it feels like an unavoidable topic for the show.

This Week in Bob Benson: Shadowing the creatives in figuring out the mystery of Project K which everybody gave their hopes up on was super-political and related to the war. That seems a little desperate but given that Stan slipped it to Peggy about Heinz ketchup, although when the chances seemed minimal, it seemed reasonable that out of all of the departments at the agency the place with the loosest lips is definitely creative. Now what does this say about Bob Benson? Brown-nosing, boot-licker or is there more to his story.

I really enjoyed the fact that the agency has been politicized. Nobody seems for the war and those who are sticking with Dow Chemical, Don and now Harry, are for cynical, business purposes. Roger and Bert cannot even talk about the war and express disappointment in Nixon as a retread candidate competing against a ghost than a reality. Oh shit, is Don, retreading into old territory, the Nixon of the show?

cinephilearchive: On the set of “The Last Movie” directed by...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:34:42 -0400

cinephilearchive:

On the set of “The Last Movie” directed by Dennis Hopper

The American Dreamer (1971), a documentary portrait of Dennis Hopper is one of the great lost films of the early seventies. Made in 1971, as Hopper was basking in the glory of his Cannes winning film Easy Rider, and before the release of his second film The Last Movie (which would turn out to be a colossal bomb), The American Dreamer was filmed mostly around Hopper’s ranch in New Mexico and finds the bearded director (who could have strayed from the cover of The Band’s second album) baring his soul (and his ass) for the camera. Hopper’s musings on art, filmmaking, photography, sex and politics are wonderfully pretentious, including an incredible sequence where Hopper, with the need to feel “self conscious” strips off his clothes and walks down a sleepy LA suburban neighbourhood, balls naked. In between bouts of Hopper firing off various hand guns and rifles, and indulging in some softcore grappling with 2 girls in a bathtub, we see a pensive Hopper overseeing the endless editing on The Last Movie, while trying to stave off Universal who are anxious to see what Hopper did in Peru with all their money.

The American Dreamer remains commercially unavailable today; apparently the film has been kept out of circulation by Hopper himself, which is not surprising as the film is hardly a flattering portrait. In one unnerving sequence, he indulges in, some rather Manson-like group sex with a bunch of groupies, (which he calls a “sensitivity encounter”), and at one point, Hopper mentions that he has visited Manson in prison. In a cringe worthy sequence, Hopper declares he is a male lesbian — I’d rather give head to a woman than fuck them… Basically, I think like a lesbian. The American Dreamer was co-written and directed by L.M. Kit Carson who would go on to write Paris Texas and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre Part 2. The soundtrack is composed of awful folk songs, written for the film — at one point the track The Screaming Metaphysical Blues goes — Here’s to Mr. Hopper who traded in his chopper (?) with the two best songs, Outlaw Song and the title track are by The Byrd’s Gene Clark. The film may not be officially available but can be found through the usual channels, and for Dennis Hopper fans and students of American independent Cinema, it is required viewing. —Plutonium Shores

Previously on Cinephilia and Beyond:

Easy Rider LaserDisc Commentary with writer/director/actor Dennis Hopper

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Mad Men Recap: Collaborators, Partners, and Immolators Edition

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 01:48:00 -0400

“COLLABORATORS”

Episode #6.03

You know how some Mad Men episodes after the premiere are filler until you get to gems like “The Suitcase”? While not being on par with heavy-hitters like “The Suitcase”, “The Other Woman, and other pantheon episodes, “Collaborators” was a pretty packed episode in getting through the private and professional lives, their intersections, and the rules that have been set or made up along.

One complaint about last season was how not until very late in the season there was not much dedicated to accounts. But here the accounts that mattered most to the agency were heavily featured in this episode. Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce survived on the Heinz Beans account, which has Don playing loyal to them even when there is flirtation with Heinz Ketchup that has to be in check for now because the Heinz Beans account hates playing little brother. But then you have the Jaguar account where what is not said says a lot about how each partner involved in that account really considers that account and the face of that account, Herb. Don, despite rallying behind Heinz Beans and giving that pep talk last season in “Christmas Waltz” still finds the Jaguar account tainted. He throws a pitch down in Herb’s terms right back in his face showing just how bad it was that manages to leave a bad impression- but Don does not seem to mind that. His best work was thrown back in his face at useless because Joan’s consent to being propositioned mattered the most. Pete, of course, still holds the account in high regard and will bend over backwards because of what it meant to the agency, not realizing how dirty it made the other partners feel because he is that shameless (more on him later). And although she only has those few scenes, Joan having Herb throw it back in her face going into her office along with her exchange of glances with Don when she went into his office (how much does Don know and is it even discussed beyond glances pertaining to Jaguar?) showed somebody who although at a significant status in the agency would rather not be reminded about how it happened.

We move from the professional side (I will get to Peggy potentially pouncing on Heinz and other stuff in my musings section) to the personal. Seeing Don and Pete both operate as philanders shows an old pro versus a guy who somehow one-ups himself in another ‘mistake’. It speaks about the environment with Pete’s affair with neighbor Brenda, although happening in the city (his safe-space apartment where Trudy knowingly allowed to have the piece of mind it could not happen under her roof), leads to a domestic blow-up with Brenda and her husband that leads to a monumental moment in ‘Lady’s Got Her Agency’. Those scenes of Brenda, bloodied from her husband’s hands escaping to the Campbell residence and getting more and more direct that she wants Pete Campbell to be this chivalric figure to her with Trudy with yards of them, shows how bad Pete has gotten at this despite being haunted by Beth Dawes. Has he learned nothing? A kinda crazy woman with a terrible husband who is also your neighbor is just asking for terrible consequences which did happen. Brenda and her husband revealed it to the whole neighborhood (and although suburbia got more transparent from the ’50s that was pretty scandalous) and Trudy now wants a divorce. This was basically who much of the audience wanted to see from Betty rather getting the more grounded out card of just being betrayed by having proof of Don’s secret past. Trudy wants none of it. She does not want to be a failure and you saw how that party the Campbells had bordered on proto-key party levels of mutual flirtations for both of them. Trudy can get it and it would not surprise me if she got another husband: I just hope she reads The Feminine Mystique in the mean time.

We move to the Don and Sylvia affair. They have rules, codes, and signals to work with in their affair despite the fact both of them reveal to like the other spouse’s company. They are also under one roof but they seemed to have it figured out although Don came pretty close crossing a line knocking on the door with Sylvia luckily answering the door despite her husband being home. I was not too sure they were on the same page at first in what they wanted from each other. It seemed when they were in bed and Don told her how guilt-free he was how close they were as separate couples caught her off-guard. It was also when Megan revealed to Sylvia that she had a miscarriage revealed not just a level in trust Megan has of Sylvia but also how little Don revealed to Sylvia in how active his marriage with Megan really was. Sylvia is smartly written in her default table for two with Don as somebody who although she reveals nothing about the miscarriage knows that Don knows that she interacts with Megan enough to get an idea about their marriage and begins to feel a certain amount of guilt. But Don insists on being guilt-free and, of course, she finds him too irresistible that she even agrees in the door knocking incident. At first, it was a little surprising that Don had no burden of guilt even as Megan revealed to him about the miscarriage but then it all comes back to the fact how much he cheated on Betty. That could never make Don feel guilty (his “you should’ve told me” look and response basically said as much) and pretty much a plot-point straight out of Megan’s soap opera could only possibly get that out him.

Now what do those flashbacks of Don (who once said he ‘grew up in a whore house’ which led to viewers thinking he created this mythology of himself because his mother was a whore- except he seemed to be the voyeur who soaked up the atmosphere that he said he was) say about him? It does say something about his first possible curiosities about sex, about his inner-beast in watching his father-figure inhibit his carnal side with the woman who served as his mother that few get to see, and that maybe his fears that he is father’s son being realized if just because his birth-mother (as imagined in his visions of her in Season 3’s “Out of Town”) is this mystery to him. He could never be shaped by her as profoundly as his Uncle Mack, who he once remarked was a good man in a way that was different from how he talked about his other family members, had.

If this episode could be described as filler it is with rich seeds to plant for a good harvesting.

Random Thoughts:

So Peggy is a little apprehensive about being too aggressive (in a classic, ‘I don’t want to be the bitch but I want to be assertive’ line that many working women still struggle with) and also wanting to play nice when she gives Ted Chaough that information Stan gave her over the phone about Heinz Ketchup. Honestly Pegasus, if you can get the Heinz Ketchup account you can bitch out and have as high of expectations as you want. There is still growth in there for her to be the next Don let alone the next Ken Cosgrove, who practically specialized in that method of phone-charming.

Loved Pete not getting how hilarious his response to Roger and Don invoking the Munich Conference was.

Bob Benson has moved to charm the pants off his 1960 doppelganger, Pete Campbell. I think he can do it. Pete is at a place where his vanity professionally is sure in need of a boost.

That was one hell of a Carson clip for Matthew Weiner and co. to choose with Carson saying his interview Jim Garrison, who was the first real public figure on the Kennedy Assassination conspiracies, would be preempted due to a special news report on Vietnam. They did news reports that late? Sorry, I come from a generation where Nightline only did that shit.

I would guess we are in the beginning February 1968 if the Tet Offensive is the hot news item at the moment.

Also, Stan and Peggy are so happening (if just on a professional level in the immediate future). Do not deny it.

I was a little disappointed that I had a double-take in thinking SCDP got really progressive and hired another African-American secretary but no, Peggy also has a secretary with killer make-up named Phyllis. I get way too happy when Mad Men gets diverse.

Another sighting from my youth: Kip Pardue aka Sunshine from Remember the Titans as the hot-shot at Heinz Ketchup.

Jon Hamm’s second directorial effort was much smoother this time around (I am not talking about the story either, although this was stronger than “Tea Leaves”, Hamm did not have to deal with trying to cut around January Jones and a body-double in a bath tub scene).

Mad Men Recap: Shut the Front Door!!!!!!! Edition

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 01:33:00 -0400

“THE DOORWAY”

#6.01

Congrats to all in their betting pools who had Don go astray in the first episode. Not only is he banging the wife of a close friend and a guy who lives under the same roof, but that whole lovely rendezvous in Hawaii with Megan being their romantic vacation hideaway was a sham. Some experience. Not with the opening dialogue being voice-over of Don reciting the book Inferno, handpicked by his mistress (Hi there, Linda Cardellini- it has been a while). Don still has a part of the darkness of death from Season 5 on his brain when he connects the book to the near-death experience the doorman of his apartment building- the first image we see that caused many a confusion on the interwebs, myself included. Don is not that sophisticated to notice this. Even in his supposed ‘experience’ (said not unlike the way Roger Sterling talked about his LSD trip, in my opinion) is that it creates this image in his pitch to the Sheraton account that stills carries this edge and anvil of death. He shoots himself in the foot saying that before you get to heaven, something bad has to happen to you. Nobody is going for that type of evocative ad. Not with Americans dying left and right in Vietnam (or dare I say it, not in 1968 America in the Summer of Love hangover either).

Speaking of Vietnam, although Peggy’s storyline is more of a set-up, check-in on the character than a deep, introspection (although the fact she laid out her entire family history minus the dark stuff to an unknown pastor over the phone was hilarious with Elisabeth Moss once again scoring in her comedic scenes), it was great to see her brave through middle of a panic related to what some comic said on Carson relating to Vietnam threatening an ad she was doing. Peggy is a demanding boss but we have seen enough from her, especially in Season 5, to know that it also very much applies to herself. And she soars with flying colors in that respect, changing the ad but keeping it in her own vision with a ‘Eureka!’ moment by way of Jewish David Crosby, Peggy’s beau, Abe, impressing her boss Ted Chaough in the process. Stan Rizzo (Peggy’s lifeline back from the old office) overhears this and suspects a crush developing for Peggy by the married Chaough. Now honestly, that would be more surprising and worthy of ‘the affair of the year’ literature in the promos. Peggy seems like the person who would date somebody within her workplace yet it has never happened and she seems fine with Abe being an unconscious source of inspiration so I will not jump. Yet.

We move to Betty Draper Francis who is actually just fine in this episode minus the rough introduction of her implicating Henry while fantasizing a sexual assault against Sally’s violin prodigy friend. I know, that was hard to swallow for me too. But when Betty fears the worst for that girl after not getting into Julliard, Betty decides to get maternal in all the wrong places. I suppose it invokes her also remembering the time she lived in the Village as a model. When she meets the Dickensian teenage squatters she operates in this odd Wendy and the Lost Boys dynamic that seems to go smoothly until, much like in Peter Pan, she is called out on her manners, her authority, and her not belonging in this place. She ripped her coat as she left. She feels a little dangerous if a little insecure about being called a ‘bottled’ blond. She dyes her hair. Henry likes it, but then again, Henry told her he could not see her weight gain either. I kind of like this Betty in a midlife crisis mode, then again I am convinced ‘Fat Betty’ was great for the character. But she needs to still keep her imagination not so seedy, especially when it involves her husband and an underage girl. Now Sally Draper, I am starting to feel Season 1 Betty Draper vibes and it is scary the shit out of me. Her talking behind her supposed friend’s back is such a Betty thing and the way Kiernan Shipka recited her dialogue just seems straight out of the Betty Draper playbook. On one hand, I am very scared at this passive aggressive master/monster and on another hand, bring it on.

Back to Don, his sense of responsibility with PFC. Dinkins as he sees a guy convincing himself of this idealist GI life when very few were buying it at the time, had Don near tears. He has seen it. I am sure when he was just Dick Whitman he had this idea- and then he went to war. The symbolism of the lighter is obvious. How could it not? It was a life-altering signifying object. Don is not one to hang out in the VFW or American Legion but his connections to a fellow man in uniform was pretty touching. It made him face himself all the little more in the aftermath that further made this paradise, dream trip all the more fraudulent if just because Don is technically a fraud. But Don seems to know some of his own problems. He admits to them in the face of committing them.

When Don refuses to over-use the term love in an ad by his creative team it is not about the Summer of Love ‘hangover’ as much as it is about him. Looking back at the episode, I am sure it is something of a defense mechanism. He loves Megan, not his mistress. If he used the term ‘love’ on his mistress, he will have completely embraced ‘the beast’ (hello, Jean Cocteau movie) which he is avoiding at all costs.

We get to Roger as well who is embracing as much professional help for his introspection as possible, be it a therapist or LSD. He is scared shitless over being an empty man and is incredibly self-aware about it. But he is on good terms with a lot of the woman in his life that he feels he has all disappointed. For all of the brunt Roger is now placing on himself (partially since Miss Blankenship’s unexpected and partially since losing the agency’s ‘deal with Death’ Lucky Strike account), he seems to be the most attuned to his problems at the agency. Roger refuses to hide behind liquor, like Don, in the face of mortality at the funeral of his mother. He has his own fit and makes a scene but that seems way healthier than what Don is doing.

This was a pretty confident, controlled episode. This did not have the Mad Men all-stars, ‘Zou Bissou Bissou’ vibes of last season’s 2-hour premiere but it was a place-setter and a return of where the characters are while introducing new people around the agency unnamed or in little spurts. I know people are bound to complain about lack of screen-time among favorites but let’s not lose our heads. 1968 is happening, and we have plenty of opportunities to do that. Especially if the shock toward the fashions in this episode is any indication.

Passing thoughts:

Stan and Peggy phone-gossiping includes the detail that they knew about Roger and Joan. Now do they think he fathered Joan’s baby or do they think that their relationship is what gave her the partnership? It would not surprise me if Stan speculated that.

So James Wolk plays the ambitious, Wharton-grad, Bob Benson from accounts who is brown-noising to Don and Roger with Ken Cosgrove calling bullshit and putting him in his place. I like Wolk and hope he stays for a while as a Jr. Pete if because I think Pete with a carbon-copy of himself with the tables turned would be fascinating.

Peggy got the Super Bowl, that was not that glamorous of an ad spot even if Peggy was selling it short with her lack of sports knowledge.

And Peggy being told what a guy saw on Carson both over the phone and through a half-assed re-enactment shows the pre-internet investigations by ad agencies over the potential backlash to their ads. I am sure Peggy would not be so trusting of these bozos if she had a search engine.

Roger’s daughter is doing her husband’s bidding for him at the funeral of Roger’s mother. Something about trucks having refrigeration. Seems like a table-setter.

Megan is a successful enough actress to be on this fictional soap but playing the jealous, hysterical woman who pushes people down stairs. Somewhere a corner of Television Without Pity exploded during those moments and I am loving it.

On the subject of whether or not Megan would dump Don if she found out about his cheating. Hm… maybe not with company but then again the blonde at that little house party they threw also laid a pretty suggestive look at Don without Megan batting an eye. Somehow I think Don is still the man with the problem of a woman getting hers when he gets his, as seen by the look on his face when that Hawaiian Island dude seemed to really enjoy Megan’s presence.

I cannot be the only one seeing the swinger anvils with Don, Megan, Dr. Rosen, Don’s mistress Sylvia, and the other two people. I blame the fondue pot being there. That is just asking for a key party. I can dig a Mad Men twist on the Ice Storm, actually.

Joan was used sparingly though the photographer openly regretting she would not be in color was such a wonderful Joan moment.

Jane Sterling and Roger are happily divorced and I find it kind of wonderful. Also she is dressed to the nines. Damn.

Favorite style evolution: As much as I liked ‘Jewish David Crosby’ from Abe along with ‘America’s Bear’ from Stan Rizzo, Roger’s style was my favorite. His hair is a little loose, he is flauting the polyester and double-breasted blazer.

Least favorite: Well, Pete is overcompensating with those sideburns due to his thinning hairline. Harry Crane, however, remains a disaster. Ginsberg, that mustache is pretty awful too.

We get the ‘Carousel’ reference in the slide show of Megan and Don’s trip to Hawaii but I think it is significant that at that point, Don did not want to. He is not even in the mood to lie and fall in love with the mythology of the photos the way he did in the original ‘Carousel’ or even in his original, mythical experience he thought he had. Not with Sylvia right there, especially.

Don watching The Donna Reed Show alone. Again the correlation between Roger and Don is, Roger’s out is doing LSD to “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” while Don seems to be staring at being out of step right in the face and not having a clue what to do.

Harry still operates like a TV insider dropping knowledge of Megan’s work schedule to Don. Don knows too much of the reality though and once again, Harry is put in his place.

I like we got scant to no introductions to new creative. Seeing as how we also saw Peggy’s creative, it would have made things a little more confusing.

Megan wanting to be high on pot while having sex with Don felt very Annie Hall-Alvy Singer with the contention that Annie needed to be high while having sex with Alvy. Don’s smoked pot, he just is not into that being the purpose.

Scavenging the Corners of the Internet to Figure Out what the Mad Men premiere is about

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 19:13:00 -0400

2 hour episode like Season 5 premiere “A LITTLE KISS”, which show creator Matthew Weiner actually had to have his arm twist on this one. He was given an option: 2 hour finale or 2 hour premiere according to the New York Times interview he gave.

Those Hawaiian photos of Don and Megan are definitely in the premiere, but there’s a catch. This is not some vacation but it appears to be work related. According to the NPR preview of the show, Don may be there to do work on a Hawaiian vacation resort that the agency.

Last 2 episodes had Don totally on his game with the Jaguar pitch and then totally breathing fire, rather desperate, plea to Dow Chemical? Is he back or not? This episode appears to show a man still at a loss but there also seems to be a meta-commentary going on about the show that also happens to reveal Don’s subconscious. If you listen to the NPR preview, there is an audio from the premiere where what Don pitches what he believes connects Hawaii to the resort makes the clients think death (by way of James Mason’s end in A STAR IS BORN). While I think it also shows Don’s guilt about Lane still remains, I also think the show is being a little playful with its audience, with the fact the clients are not really into the potential macabre interpretation of the imagery.

Photos have part of the premiere take place during Christmastime. Is it 1967? Cannot imagine them passing through 1968, though they pretty much did with 1964 being the in-between passage of time between seasons 3 and 4. But 1968 aligns so well with the show’s tone. I will be shocked if we even make it to 1969. Shit in ‘68 was just that heavy. But that ellipses of time from when Don waited at a bar for an old-fashioned when a young woman propositioned him on behalf of her friend seems to not have impacted Don or Megan the way we imagined/feared it would. But who knows.

Some characters will get there screen-time while others will not. In the NYT interview, the interviewer mentions in passing Betty Draper Francis (arguably the most polarizing character on the show) will have an arc to start the season (though although the Season 6 promo photos show her back at her fighting weight, I do think it is significant that she is not featured in the photo gallery for the episode so I do think whether or not she is still overweight, which was never revealed in the Season 5 promo photos, is still a mystery). This may also connect her to Sally, who is photographed in the episode photo gallery.

And according to Matt Zoller Seitz on HuffPost Live, Joan, although in the episode photo gallery, is not in the episode too much.

The agency did indeed get the second floor they were browsing last season. But it is unclear what is the name of the agency. Is Pryce still in the name? How about Harris (or Holloway)?

James Wolk (Best known for the shamefully short-lived Lone Star and Political Animals) has a guest-appearance according to the AV Club review. And since Matthew Weiner is that secretive, we have no idea in what way he is part of the show. Is he a potential client with a recurring role like Ray Wise as Ken’s father-in-law and Dow Chemical big-shot? Is he a one-episode deal? Or is he a potential Ben Feldman jump-to-regular status for Season 6? Could he be another creative? Lord knows, the guy needs work beyond being the good-looking object of affection for girls and guys on network shows.