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

it's kinda creeping in w/ the comics shows and maybe will never be a real problem just because of budget concerns (not as big a problem as w/ the movies at least) but there's been some blockbuster effect as a result of game of thrones and walking dead i think a la jaws and star wars back in the day maybe. hbo definitely seems more interested in genre type stuff.

It's hard to keep up with everything now, between Amazon and Netflix and the premium channels and the basic cable channels (lol, broadcast networks, not you). There's probably a lot of quality drama tv out there I'll never even get to.

yeah it's weird, peak tv and all that but there's very little that i really feel i need to see or that i'm like 'shit i need to get on that' w/ any real urgency, partial exceptions for the two big fx dramas but even w/ them it's not like how it was when i waited til the second season of breaking bad to jump on board. part of that might just be a reflection of how much tv ppl think is really good now than a mark of the quality of those shows though. there's this thing w/ cord cutting becoming a real factor (espn is freaking out)(fuck espn) and what it will mean for peak tv (apologies for using that phrase again, i hate it so much) but the two venues that make up a huge chunk of the tv i care about - netflix and hbo - are poised to survive it no problems.

Bill Backer, the creative mind behind what is considered to be the world's most famous advertisement, died last week at age 89, his wife confirmed to the New York Times.

http://mashable.com/2016/05/18/coca-cola-hilltop-bill-backer/#YtL9jb3jG8q1

Interesting! This remains maybe my favorite ILX sequence of posts ever:

Or Don discovers his true self and ... he's an ad man! Gets home refreshed, sits in on the Coke meeting and says, "Picture a bluff, overlooking the ocean ..."
― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra)

lots of people seem to think it was implied Don went back to McCann and made the coke ad, but that doesn't make sense. Don has never been responsible for an actual, historical ad before, why start now? i dont think that was the implication at all.

Yeah, that seems like a cornball reading of the last moments.

(Not aiming that at the people who disagreed--just again applauding tipsy for getting it exactly right immediately.)

not sure who posted what there but yeah I did not like the literal "Don achieves enlightenment and actually creates the most famous ad ever!" interpretation, preferred to think of it as being an indication that nirvana, for Don, is the feeling of living in an advertisement.

regardless of what Matt Weiner says

don was responsible for actual ads before

nirvana, for Don, is the feeling of living in an advertisement.

I like that too, but for me the Don-makes-the-Coke-ad interpretation (which I'm not sure counts as as interpretation once the creator says "Yes, that's it, and we knew that's where we were headed as early as the third season") is just perfect. I didn't like everything about the last episode, but I absolutely loved both that and the encounter-group speech from that lost soul (Leonard?).

Doesn't the pilot feature Don inventing the Lucky Strikes "It's Toasted!" slogan? Makes sense that the finale circled back to him making history again.

it's kind of wryly tragic in that don has a breakdown, gains some understanding about the human condition, finds some way toward peace and then figures 'i can use this to sell coca cola'

At least the coke one really was created around that time. It's Toasted was first used in 1917.

xp

pilot feature Don inventing the Lucky Strikes "It's Toasted!" slogan?

iirc that's historically innacurate, Lucky Strike had already been using that slogan prior to when the series starts

or what moodles said

Superseded "the cure for the common cigarette"

lol shoulda had some of that legendary draper fingerbanging...and that's how he came up with l.s./m.f.t.

fyi fwiw I posted the Coke ad a month before Tipsy made that comment. I've scoured the internet and believe pretty strongly that I'm the first person anywhere to have called that and I'm still waiting for my accolades.

I accoladed you!

http://heardjustwhatiseen.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/you-come-looking-for-the-light/

Oh yeah. Thanks!

Reince Priebus = Don Draper.

Will Priebus have his Don Draper moment? Draper, a smoker himself, finally renounced cigarettes — he would sell out no more.

From what I remember myself, seems like a rather distorted interpretation. Wasn't Don's 180 on cigarettes a scheme to get back his job, rather than some principled stand?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/reince-priebus-fool/2016/05/16/dece58a-1b88-11e6-9c81-4be1c14fb8c8_story.html?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-b%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&tid=a_inl

The Coke ad seems out of character for Don, even an enlightened Don. I never interpreted that he made it either.

Damn. 1500 Mad Men props up for auction next week

So that WAS Helen Slater at Esalen. I thought it looked a little bit like her, but shrugged it off. Of course, the last time I saw her in something was probably 25 years ago.
― Johnny Fever, Monday, May 18, 2015 1:54 AM (one year ago)

Didn't know who that was when I watched the last episode...Just watched Super Girl from 1984. Slater is the sole reason to bother: good performance, very beautiful. Must be at the front line of films I've ever seen where you have no idea who certain characters are--how they relate to each other, why they do what they do (even at the rudimentary level of logic you might expect for such a film). Brenda Vaccaro's character: ??? It's completely nuts.

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/CFeRkzpUgAA5ss9.jpg

A little less goofy looking from the same film:

http://josephmallozzi.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/supergirl-linda-lee.jpg

Helen Slater is now playing Supergirl's Earth mom on the new SG TV show.

I'd almost quote Kael verbatim, describing Reeve in the first film, on the appeal of Slater in Super Girl:

"Christopher Reeve, the young actor chosen to play the lead in 'Superman,' is the best reason to see the movie. He has an open-faced, deadpan style that’s just right for a windup hero. Reeve plays innocent but not dumb, and the combination of his Pop jawline and physique with his unassuming manner makes him immediately likable. In this role, Reeve comes close to being a living equivalent of comic-strip art--that slang form of simplified storytelling in which the visual and verbal meanings can be totally absorbed at a glance."

Back to Mad Men. A friend bought me the Matt Zoller Seitz book for Christmas, which looks at every episode. I think I'll start re-watching the whole series in a month or two, reading his entries after each episode.

got that book a while back, can't say I'm very happy with it. Each entry doesn't go very far beyond summaries, I think he could have dug a lot deeper into the material. Plus, there's a horrific amount of editing/proofreading errors.

Thanks. I like reading him online about various things...I'll give it a go, anyway.

Finished both the series and the Matthew Zoller Seitz book yesterday. I was initially going to post after each season, but I got so caught up in everything once again, as soon as I finished one season I immediately moved on to the next.

In general, one thing changed second time around. The middle seasons are busier and funnier and filled with more weirdness, but this time my favorites were the first two, which are moodier and more sombre, and I thought the last half-season (which initially seemed slow to me) felt like a nice return to that mood. The waitress Diana, for instance, who (like lots of viewers) I was impatient with two years ago as she seemed to take time away from the regulars whose stories I wanted to play out, her presence made perfect sense this time.

Something Seitz writes in his afterword: “The main draw is behavior, observed with such exactness that one can imagine the show transported to the forties or eighties--with different clothes, slang, and inebriants--and still delivering the same basic satisfaction.”

I’m very biased on this point, but I don’t think that’s true: I think the show’s single greatest decision was made at the outset, to retell the ‘60s through the frame of a Madison Avenue advertising agency (instead of the countless more obvious routes), and that anything else wouldn’t have been as good. There’s a line drawn there between Don--born in the Depression, locates his alter-ego’s sense of self in the ‘50s--and the changing world around him that wouldn’t have been nearly as resonant in any other permutation. A ‘70s guy struggling with the ‘80s, say--that’s not especially interesting.

Generally, I found the book very useful after a slow start--he'd catch a lot of connections I missed, sometimes within an episode, sometimes going back several seasons.

over the past couple months i've watched everything up to the beginning of s7. the first few seasons of this show were incredible but i've been feeling bored since s4. i just watched ep1 s7 and i'm wondering if it is worth it to continue. is it?

the show peaked w/ don's trip to california in s2 imo. after that it the returns have mostly been diminishing.

Seasons 5 and 6 are probably the worst seasons. I thought season 7 was very good, especially the second half.

Agree that the s2 trip to California is probably the high point of the series.

There are some absolutely great moments in season 7, so I'd say finish it. Also, it's better than season 6 I think.

I'll set aside my S5 stanning and just say that I found the S7(a) premiere really disappointing at the time, but that it did pick up and that season--along w/7(b)--is worth finishing.

I love season 5 as well. And will stan for the idea of season 6, which is running in circles by design. It is still running in circles, though.

I agree w. Οὖτις upthread that the series finale is much more satisfying if taken non-literally

Season 6 is the only not great one imo

disagree with a lot of this. found the first season good if a bit hammy when it came to highlighting the social mores of the time. nearly gave up with S2 because it started off with more of the same and I was bored of Don Draper having yet another affair. But it's not until the lawnmower incident in s3 (which some could see as a jump the shark moment but I don't) where for me the show kicks up several notches and really comes into its own. After that I was p much addicted to the end

5 the weakest yeah but 6 was a return to form of sorts and 7 is great, bordering on amazing.

there is a lot of hamhanded stuff in s1 - Pete's serial killer-esque speech to Peggy about hunting (after being shown literally using the office pool girls as target practice), Betty's psychiatrist literally calling her a child, the constant Harry/Crane/Kinsey fratboy sexual harrassment, etc.

Show is still amazing, of course. The characters are so rich.

i just feel like i've been watching draper at rock bottom since s4 and it's getting old

its bad

hey it's a long way down

my wife remarked that this show is essentially the ascent of Peggy mirrored by the descent of Don, with tons of great arcs for the supporting characters as well (Pete, Joan, Roger, Sally, Betty)

I can tell you who this show *isn't* about: Bobby! Many lolz re-watching this counting the many Bobbys.

xp

wtf mates, season 5 was great.

season 6 was a step down even tho it was good to see people finally confront don about his jackassery.

anyway, all seasons of mad men are good. even season 6 has "not great, bob!"

^^ yep

feel like this really benefitted from the year-gaps between seasons. breaking bad is built fer bingeing but this felt more special doled out in small portions.

also [finale spoilers coming] i still feel kinda "not great bob" about the peggy/stan last scene. not that i didn't enjoy the characters or the performers, or even the idea that they'd hook up - just that felt like an unusually fake note to end on

and also that guy's speech in the final five minutes, like stfu where is don

Also also, Weiner's novel is so bad (from the excerpts I've read) and he seems like such a shmuck, I kinda wonder how he even managed to make this (co writers?)

idk writing for tv seems to be his main skill (haven't read his novel, but his movie is baaaad). he wrote some of the best latter-season sopranos eps.

His new thing sounds like it could be interesting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Romanoffs?wprov=sfti1

Weiner had a *great* set of writers and directors, many of whom had been around for awhile and established reps for quality in their own right - Tim Hunter, Lesli Linka Glatter, Phil Abraham. Just like I don't think you can rightly attribute everything awesome about the Sopranos to David Chase, I don't think everything awesome about Mad Men is because of Weiner.

totally agreed. the Sepinwall "Revolution was Televised" book seemed to indicate that he had a pretty hands-on approach to writing and editing tho.