MAD MEN on AMC - Season 6

i'm not even going to try to articulate this that well but...

there's something about this season, and much of last season, that rubs me the wrong way. i think the show (or its "creator") seems to have been infected by a sense of self-importance (no doubt due to its enshrinement as the cardinal example of contemporary "quality TV"). the result is that too many scenes feel either/both ponderous or/and portentous. too many sequences, lines of dialogue, odd shot combinations feel like they are too obviously angling for exegesis. i wonder what someone coming into the show fresh (although weiner has all but said he's not making the show for such folks) would make of it.

minor note: was surprised that the pete thing came to a head in a single episode.

what is creator in scare quotes?

JHVH

what what what

TBF the portentous quality of some scenes made part of the season premiere very hard to watch.

re. jon hamm's directorial effort: there were a LOT of mismatched shots and continuity errors. watch people's facial expressions, hand positions, etc. between shots. it was distracting. reminds you it ain't easy to direct.

what is creator in scare quotes?

― balls, Tuesday, April 16, 2013 4:19 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

weiner is the "creator" of mad men in most accounts. i put it in scare quotes b/c given all the other input this show has, that job description sometimes feels a bit grandiose.

ARTIST: Any performer, of whatever ability.

weiner's said a few times that one of the things the show is about is the coarsening of american life and that any on the noseness or whatever is deliberate, whether that excuses or not is another question but change in tone toward less subtlety is deliberate.

I liked most of last season's episodes: the good ones were quick and trashy. But I'm either bored of Don Draper's schtick or Weiner is. As for these first two episodes, amateurist is right about muddled the scenes and writing are.

i'm assuming affair w/ lindsey weir will end esp disastrously but do find myself hoping it doesn't take til the end of the season.

leaving his job to follow Grateful Dead on tour?

lol just realised lindsey weir's daughter goes to michigan, i wonder if that's deliberate

"coarsening of american life"

what does he mean by this

foreigners, women in positions of power swearing

"coarsening of american life"

what does he mean by this

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist)

The fallacy of cutting NPR funding.

boy if you don't know what he means by that maybe the show is too subtle

'men don't wear hats anymore'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiP1z9qfojA

re. jon hamm's directorial effort: there were a LOT of mismatched shots and continuity errors. watch people's facial expressions, hand positions, etc. between shots. it was distracting. reminds you it ain't easy to direct.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, April 16, 2013 5:20 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is more of an editor thing

I didn't notice a thing

I think the show's specific appeal lies somewhere in between an exegis-demanding portentousness (and is it really so bad to find that element pleasurable?) and a rather lynchian approach to melodrama. I don't think I've ever seen anything that's quite like it.

sopranos on occasion is the only thing i can think of

x posts...or the, um, continuity person.

"coarsening of american life"

what does he mean by this

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, April 16, 2013 5:39 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Think Weiner covered it with "HERE'S A NEWS FLASH ON THE RADIO ABOUT THE TET OFFENSIVE" shoehorned into Don and Lindsey's post-coital bliss.

I mean the opening episode contains quotations of Dante, yet more drunken barfing, and roger petulantly yelling "it's my funeral" and delivering a pitch perfect 60s style disquisition on existentialism to his shrink. It's great!

"this is more of an editor thing"

yeah, but since every episode has the same set of editors, it's likely hamm wasn't giving them good stuff to work with, no?

"good stuff" = shots where stuff matched

tempted to start a draper victims of love poll but suspect midge would run away w/ it

lol at amateurist scoffing at auteurism w/ regards to showrunner but doubling down on it w/ regards to episode director

???

!

you really have to explain that. it's snarky but i'm not sure where you find the inconsistency.

if a show that normally does not include mismatched shots that often suddenly includes a burst of them in a single episode, isn't it more likely that it's due to a new element than the same element that has existed since the show began?

or maybe there are new editors

i mean, i know nobody cares about this stuff, i'm just sort of plagued by noticing mismatches.

i never ever ever notice that stuff myself

but maybe the continuity guy or gal had a cold that day or something

ballsplaining weiners

no matter how cinematic a TV show gets I will always think about the writing 8000 times more than the editing, especially on a Cable Drama

I wasn't impressed with this episode either. For some reason halfway I found myself not being engaged the way I normally am with the show. It all seemed so 'flat', two dimensional. I don't know if that's to do with the editing (didn't notice any mismatches myself), it just didn't pull me in like MM normally does. And I really had no complaints about last week whatsoever.

It just wasn't very good. The brothel stuff coming through twice, and a for his standards poorly acting Pete in the scene where his mistress was beaten up... I don't know, it seemed sloppy to me.

I don't like how this Bob guy has been sneaked into the series either. Last week he was getting on everyone's nerves hanging around, and now he's already taking notes for them? Come now.

mad men babies photos accompanying this writeup are hilarious

http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/74169/mad-men-episode-2-the-medium-is-the-message-and-the-message-is-cheating-on-his-wife

That is awesome, and a fantastic writeup

to be clear my problems with the latest episodes isn't really related to the editing, that's just something minorly irritating that i picked up on in the last ep.

the previous Hamm-directed episode had a lot of really "on the nose" match-cuts iirc

mad men: the story of one man traveling further and further onto his own nose

the previous Hamm-directed episode had a lot of really "on the nose" match-cuts iirc

― HIGH-FIVES TO ALL MY COWORKERS AT THE QBERT SEX SWING (silby), Tuesday, April 16, 2013 11:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

YOU MIGHT EVEN CALL IT HAMM-HANDED

whatever you do, stop staying on the nose pls

am going hamm

xxpost lulz.

Betty at the squatter house - what the fuck was that

off to a good start. love don's palpable disdain for pete.

which we could have said in 2007.

so far so brisk though