MAD MEN on AMC - Seasons 7(a) & & 7(b)

I think the point of those respective scenes is a bit different. With the Sopranos the scene is supposed to be genuinely heartwarming, a family remembering "the good times" in a local neighborhood joint, the simple pleasures etc. Fucked up as they are, they really are a variation of the traditional American family unit that Peggy questions the existence of in Mad Men. Whereas with Mad Men the artificiality, the corporate facade, is made out to be more welcoming to these outcasts and losers who don't really have families at all, who are willing to settle for this shiny, plasticized version of a vague ideal that they have accepted as beyond their reach. I think in the latter there's kind of an obvious point being made that once the breakdown of the ideal 50s Eisenhower post-war nuclear family unit was complete, corporate America stepped in to fill the void, to replace it.

yeah I did get the who-can-tell-the-dancer-from-the-dance intention

of course there's tension and irony in the Sopranos scene too, since it's staged and shot like someone is about to get murdered. I don't think anyone's about to get murdered in the Burger Chef (unless Pete brought his rifle)

xp

Bob Benson stabs him to death in the Men's Room.

One of the best things about Mad Men is the complicated relationship it has with fakeness. Because Don and Peggy dancing to My Way is fake as fuck - and they aren't going to have mended all their dificulties next week - but still it was so real. I love Bob Benson proposing to Joan, because in a way he is completely wrong and insensitive towards her, but in another way he is right. She says that he should choose love, but there is still like, forty years until that would be possible. She wants for them both to have something real, but his realness is so much more difficult than hers, so it's not really a fair comparison.

The show refuses to choose pat answers, so it has to return to these questions over and over to further complicate/refine them. It really frustrates me that so many people confuse that with the show going in circles or something like that.

yeah the pain of that scene goes way deeper than "Joan is lonely" or "it was hard being gay in the 60s", not least because each of these people has been repeatedly rejected and humiliated and stifled in the cruelest ways

"Say what you will, but he's very loyal"

lol Don shilling for Harry after he got clued in

Swear Pete's girlfriend let rip with an unbleeped 'fuck' in this episode, first I've heard on Mad Men.

wasn't unbleeped

at least not in my recollection

They've had a couple. I think the first came from Roger when Pete (& Don) lost that defense account.

Was unbleeped on my torrented copy, I went back and checked.

it was bleeped on AMC, unbleeped on my torrented copy as well. i thought that was odd.

It was masked on itunes.

Bleeped on AMC where I am.

Masked on iTunes :/

masked on my dvr

Most of this show just washes over me lately but those last two scenes were pretty gold

Don & Peggy dancing didnt feel like a capitulation to me. It was both of them admitting exactly who and where they are & taking comfort in that. ...they just get to be real with each other one more time, like that night in the diner whenever it was a couple of seasons ago.

The new wrinkle is that this time around Don seems much smaller, Peggy bigger.

To me, anyway.

Bonnie's f-bomb goes uncensored on the Google Play version of the episode

xpost yeah it's the first time they've been able to talk to each other as equals, more or less.

Peggy stopped trying to assert herself in order to ask Don for help, Don admits that his life is a mess and that he's feeling insecure about everything.

last few eps have been great, this season at its peak has been as good as it's ever been.

i like how they faded My Way just as Frank was about to go into last verse crescendo mode.

since when were Megan and Peggy so happy to see each other? i sorta forgot they got along so well.

Didn't realise My Way was new in 69! I would've pegged it as at least a decade earlier somehow.

Not quite as big a hit as I'd have thought: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_singles_of_1969

So unusual for a male/female relationship (Don/Peggy) on TV to last this long without the show taking the easy way out.

Ron and Leslie on Parks & Rec is another really great platonic relationship.

It's not over yet.

Bob could still blow Don.

ha!

As much sex as Don has, he still seems fairly vanilla. He branched out a little bit with the neighbor lady last year, but he was probably less into than she was.

And he wasn't super into the idea of the threesome at Megan's place in Cali, but hey...hard to turn down if it's happening.

He's into being slapped

I don't see how a man like Don Draper could turn down Bob's request.

i'd take a bet on Don and Joan at this point; Don saying he has no-one, Joan saying she wants love. i mean..

http://unaffiliatedcritic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Don-Jon-Hamm-and-Joan-Christina-Hendricks.jpg

Now that I think about it, he doesn't outright say "no" to much.

Joan and Don may have happened at one point, but I think after he was pretty flippant about cutting loose the client she had to sleep with to get her partnership, she's got zero time for anything Don in her life.

Right. Joan hates Don still and seems on the fast track to hating men in general.

actually yeah they've barely spoken since.

was that 'Sweet Charity' on the in-flight movie? it was a real blink-and-you-miss-it moment.

tasty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=814QdW4oDqI

Given that title, something that should be but won't be part of that ep:

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

Ted Chaough's had a lousy season thus far.

xp maybe this is the big time-jump we've been waiting for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj_9CiNkkn4

i enjoy ted's misery tbh

If the point is that Ted somehow somewhere became a halfway decent person and is paying the price for it, sure.

i never really found him to be halfway decent

he's a real dick to Don at first

ted jumping in on the speaker phone was a+ comedy

No, I meant he used to be a grade-A asshole in the earlier seasons, but somewhere along the way during S6 he became only a B-minus dillweed.

he's slept with Peggy, he's married, he thinks he's better than all of them (because he doesn't drink or whatevs but he's not)

The evolution of Peggy disengaging from Ted to her kind of dismissively loathing him has been enjoyable

ted is sympathetic though. good casting