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Echoes of a Movie Legend in the World of Mad Men

Started by tomwatson · 9 months ago

It’s been a week of certifiable madness.
Stock market insanity; bank and company failures on an epic scale; the dollar amount of 700 billion said with a straight face.
And now the maddening reality of the loss of Paul Newman, who embodied the sea change of generational sensibility ... Continue reading »

45 comments

  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    Yes, Betty is coming across as the most believable portrayal and storyline.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Hey, she's coming out of it - look, she's at a ranch in Souther California. A trip was just what she needed!
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    Tom, dark times indeed at Shea. But booing Mr. Met--that just ain't right.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    The end of days for poor old Shea - I'll miss the dump.
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  • David Ehrenstein

    9 months ago

    Don Draper would want to be Paul Newman, but underneath it all he's George Grizzard.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Well, George Grizzard was pretty damned good actor - which Hamm, at least to judge by Mad Men, is not yet. Not that i blame the actor - the role of Don Draper is, with some exceptions, poorly written and his character just doesn't hold together. It's the great failing of an otherwise good show that is really developing well in its second season.
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  • David Ehrenstein

    9 months ago

    Oh I couldn't disagree more. What's most interesting about the show is the number of "sides" the long-form narrative allows for characters. Don and his wife are both a Golden Couple AND flaming neurotics. One doesn't cancle the other out. See also Todd Haynes' <i.Far From Heaven
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Yeah, I enjoy the show - especially the ensemble cast at the agency - it's just the emptiness of the Drapers that detracts. (For me, that is!)
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Don surprised by Peggy's business acumen - what a dolt. She's only the smartest person at the firm.
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    Good opening---where is Don waking up? MM. Didn't see the Marilyn thing coming.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Yeah that was a good one...
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    Contact! A defining decorating element of the era.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Ship of Fools, Betty Draper's summer read....
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Ha - Betty in the Dead Marilyn pose on the couch - how obvious!
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    So who is the model for Freddy's case?
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Yeah good question - you can safely assume all is derivative in Mad Men, it's part of the charm to deconstruct it.
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    Roger not understanding, before the cult and dark side of celebrity was better known.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Exactly!
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  • James Wolcott

    9 months ago

    I've seldom seen a more implausibly staged, crudely handled scene than the pissing himself/passing out bit in the office, with Closet Case chortling away. It's as if Matthew Weiner has never witnessed recognizable human behavior or at least recorded it in memory for later dramatization. The Marilyn Monroe memorials are also stiltedly written and delivered.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Freddy - a strange episode that proves, what?
    The Marilyn stuff was incredibly stilted - it had me on Roger Sterling's side of things.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    I love the shot of St. Patrick's over Roger's shoulder....
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    "Only drinks beer now" - good one.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    OK, who can sense the suicide?
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    Boy, they just don't fire people the way they used to . . .
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    The foreshadowing of losing somebody you care about...the yang to Marilyn's yin.
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    Yea, but Roger doesn't care that much about Freddy--
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Until he's gone - and weirdly, the soul-deprived Don Draper does....
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    "If I stay with the clear liquor I know where I stand"--I love Roger.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Wow - Peggy gets the step.
    The firings are a lot nicer than the promotions - which are insanely creepy.
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    Peggy, talk salary NOW.
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    Pete should play a sub-lieutenant in that new Tom Cruise Nazi flick...
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    I want a couch in my office--
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  • tomwatson

    9 months ago

    The ending was like the ending of an unrelated episode....
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    Yea. It's certainly not the seamless integration of storylines a la Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire, etc. How did this win Best Drama Series, and Deadwood was never nominated.
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    I didn't even know Don's secretary's name. Did that all happen since Joan tried to fire her? Roger broke the bro code---maybe Neil Patrick Harris will make a guest appearance.
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  • James Wolcott

    9 months ago

    I'm surprised they didn't stick Father Gill in that gambling dive--everybody else seemed to be there.
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  • Steve Paradis

    9 months ago

    He's a Jesuit, remember?
    They're all straight percentage players, who know there's no such thing as an honest house game.
    Except for Pascal's Wager.
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  • nicki

    9 months ago

    Wait -- who's Margaret? I thought Dons sec's name was Jane?
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  • Too-Ticky

    9 months ago

    Don served in Korea, not WWII.
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  • davemb

    9 months ago

    Margaret is Roger and Mona's daughter, who IIRC is about to get married. Mona said that Roger would have to explain the proposed separation to her.

    Does "Don Draper" have a college degree? We can probably assume Dick Whitman doesn't. It's a big social-class marker, and correlates somewhat with official/enlisted in the armed forces, so my first guess is that the real Draper went to college and Dick has had to fake it (probably easier in those days, particularly if Draper went to a large state school and doesn't have to play the do-you-know game with the private college grads he runs into). Anyway, that's part of Jane's problem with Don and with the rest of the office, I think -- Jane is a college grad in a pink-collar job and considers herself Don's social equal.
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  • shirley

    9 months ago

    For a show with such a long incubation period, it's odd that it feels so much like they're making it up as they go along. Implausible and lurching and too heavy-handed with "significance" and facile irony. And, throw us a bone, people: the appeal of having to read into Don Draper's relentless silence is losing its swoon. Does Matt Weiner think real people weren't invented until the 70s?
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  • joeangier

    9 months ago

    I agree that the scenes of the secretaries crying over MM's death were stupefyingly stilted, and though people were shocked, I doubt that that kind of lachrymose grief over her death was that widespread in 1962. Also, my memory (well, I was eight) was that at the time it happened everyone was calling her death "accidental" not suicidal. One more nitpicking question: in the bar scene between Don and Roger, the shot pulls back from a bust of JFK. Again, my memory is that people displayed JFK busts only after he was assassinated. Am I wrong about this?
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  • FigaroFigaro

    9 months ago

    Yes, Don served in Korea, not WW2, but he and Paul Newman are exactly the same age. Don was born in 1925, since at the beginning of season 2, he tells his doctor that he is 37, and it's 1962. Don would certainly have been old enough to serve in 1943-45, but somehow missed out and went to Korea instead. He's out of the service and married to Betty and living in Manhattan by 1953 (the year the Rosenbergs were executed, as Betty remembers at a party a few weeks ago).
    John Hamm is surely great, but Bryan Cranston's performance in Breaking Bad was a tour de force.
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  • James S.

    9 months ago

    Um, I'm sorry but Don Draper died in Korea. Dick Whitman swapped his dog tags with Don and assumed his identity. Remember when slime ball Preppy Pete tried to blackmail Don? He said Don looked much younger than his age.
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  • MaPeel

    9 months ago

    "Again, my memory is that people displayed JFK busts only after he was assassinated." Unless you are in Ireland :) Even 20 years ago during college travels I was astonished at the number of photographs of Kennedy that were hanging in average people's homes, and I had the feeling they were left over from the glory years, not the commemorative ones.
    reply
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