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L.B. Jefferies Live Blogs Mad Men

Started by tomwatson · 11 months ago

Last Thursday was the great Mad Men fake out, when AMC, without warning, ran a repeat. But we will not be deterred in our journey to see “where the hell this series is going.”
Last week I was interested in how MM was channeling some of the great film directors, from ... Continue reading »

47 comments

  • Tom Watson

    1 year ago

    Any suspicious Raymond Burr looking characters in the building across the alley from ya?
    reply
  • M.A. Peel

    1 year ago

    No, but then there are no Cary Grants over there either.
    reply
  • steverino

    1 year ago

    Blow your brains out?
    reply
  • steverino

    1 year ago

    Unseemly
    reply
  • Tom Watson

    1 year ago

    Good catch Steve...
    reply
  • steverino

    1 year ago

    Uh oh...even the ad agency stuff boring this week...
    reply
  • Tom Watson

    1 year ago

    Wow I dig Miss Holloway's dress
    reply
  • cgeye

    1 year ago

    when I see Nixon, I see myself.

    Oh, make it easy, why don't you?
    reply
  • Claire Helene

    1 year ago

    I was wondering if The Apartment was ever going to be referenced.
    reply
  • Tom Watson

    1 year ago

    Another gratuitous pop culture reference - how 'bout that crazy Psycho, eh?!
    reply
  • steverino

    1 year ago

    Who's the actor playing the dad?
    reply
  • steverino

    1 year ago

    "The day you sign a client is the day you start losing them."

    Indeed.
    reply
  • Tom Watson

    1 year ago

    Yeah he looks familiar - and ain't that the truth about clients.
    reply
  • Claire Helene

    1 year ago

    I'm glad Peggy's freezing him out.
    reply
  • steverino

    1 year ago

    Precious cargo...pouch...busy beaver...what's wrong with you...
    reply
  • M.A. Peel

    1 year ago

    There is something exhausting about watching MM. It requires so much participation to fill in all the strange holes in the storytelling fabric--
    reply
  • cgeye

    1 year ago

    I didn't call it just that way, but... whoa.
    reply
  • cgeye

    1 year ago

    But can I get credit on the lesbo thing? Partial credit?
    reply
  • steverino

    1 year ago

    Holy crap, this show has gotten wacky.
    reply
  • Tom Watson

    1 year ago

    Mr. Sterling reminds me of Malcom McDowell in Caligula.
    reply
  • Claire Helene

    1 year ago

    Ew, so the red brings home two gross guys to ignore her roommie?
    reply
  • steverino

    1 year ago

    "I do carpentry...I am building a dry sink."

    Best line of throwaway dialog ever.
    reply
  • M.A. Peel

    1 year ago

    Oh please, Red and Blonde could do some much better than these guys. This is another male fantasy--
    reply
  • Claire Helene

    1 year ago

    I agree MA.
    reply
  • cgeye

    1 year ago

    Well, Don's gonna run things, for a while. They didn't have the anti-clotting drugs nor angio procedures, so Sterling's gonna operate under par for quite some time...
    reply
  • Claire Helene

    1 year ago

    Steverino, you're right, too. That was hilarious.
    reply
  • steverino

    1 year ago

    Don's hair mussed - this cannot be good.
    reply
  • M.A. Peel

    1 year ago

    Does the world end during a solar eclipse?
    reply
  • Tom Watson

    1 year ago

    I'll say it if no one else will - they've managed to make the survival of the firm episode (tinged with Doublemint Gum sex and a lesbian sub-plot) as dull as Richard Nixon's ads.
    reply
  • Claire Helene

    1 year ago

    "Don't waste your youth on age." Good line.
    reply
  • M.A. Peel

    1 year ago

    Tom, you've got it. What I can't understand is that we are in the minority in this. Many people LOVE this show.
    reply
  • steverino

    1 year ago

    Don's chest nearly as big as Holloway's...and hers nearly got caught in that elevator door
    reply
  • M.A. Peel

    1 year ago

    Well that's complex: he was raised by his stepmother and her new husband, after his father died.
    reply
  • Claire Helene

    1 year ago

    Oh god! Peggy's got a prosthetic fat suit next ep.
    reply
  • Tom Watson

    1 year ago

    The whore-child is an empty vessel of only passing interest - he leaves a vast chasm at the show's center.
    reply
  • Dan Leo

    1 year ago

    I got stoned and completely forgot the show was on. But I did see the hourlong premiere episode of "The Office", so I got that going for me.
    reply
  • karina

    1 year ago

    "I am genuinely baffled as to how so many people, many of whom’s opinion I respect, can find this series compelling."

    Why are you blogging it every week, then? Is someone holding a gun to your head--or even paying you? Every week you write about how bored you are. Why don't you just stop?
    reply
  • M.A. Peel

    1 year ago

    Karina, this show is a pop cultural phenomenon of sorts, with a distinct place in the television landscape. We are participating in the phenomenon, in the "intrigued but a little critical" part of the spectrum. As I hope you see in the care and thought I put into the opening essays, I have a lot of respect for the show, but it's like a piece of music that I don't hear the way some others do. That doesn't mean I'm not interested in listening further.
    reply
  • Tom Watson

    1 year ago

    Karina is a fan!
    reply
  • blue girl

    1 year ago

    I can't stand Mad Men. But, there are a few people I really respect that have said they *love* the show. I think Dan Leo has said in the past that he's into it.

    I'd love to hear why. And I'm not being a wiseguy, I'm being serious. I'd love to hear a different perspective that might shift my thinking.

    Dan? Dan? Stop eating those brownies! And give us some reasons for why this show is worth watching.

    Pretty please?
    reply
  • Dan Leo

    1 year ago

    Huh? Wha?

    Y'know, I guess I'm not all that into the show, since I forgot it was on, but I was digging the live-blogging; it was a fun way to relax after my Thursday-night gym session. I think there's some perverse combination of genes active in the average American that makes us interested in nearly any TV show after we've watched an episode or two, no matter how bad it is. Which is why I try not to watch much TV in the first place. I definitely didn't go into withdrawal after missing last night's show (and I was home, getting over a cold)and probably for the same reasons that you, Blue Girl, can't stand the show: the characters aren't all that fascinating, and the story-telling is very slow. But I still might watch it next week!
    reply
  • karina

    1 year ago

    I am a fan of Mad Men. I enjoy it on several levels: it works for me as a pure soap, and as period lifestyle porn, and as a comedy of manners, and as a melodrama, and in various ways other ways that I would need more space than this to describe. But, I'm also an unabashed fan of the kinds of films that are often dismissed as "like watching paint dry," so go figure. It's just how I roll.

    My earlier comment had nothing to do with me being a fan of the show. I'm just surprised and a little confused, because there's a sizable community on this site of people who are watching a show that they don't like on a weekly basis. I've never seen anything like that before, even when I was writing for TV Squad--in my experience with online conversations about television shows, the haters and the "intrigued but critical" are usually balanced out by the devoted fans. It doesn't seem like that's happening here, although I could be wrong.
    reply
  • blue girl

    1 year ago

    I think this nutty group likes to hang out together and zip off one liners just for the simple fun of doing that. Pity the show's not very good.

    I'd still like to know why some people I know like the show. I don't trust that comment thread over at AMC. Those people seem like "plants" to me.

    Besides not having cable tv where my Internet connection is -- which makes it really hard to participate in the live blogging -- I've also stopped commenting because I dislike the show so much that all my comments would be so negative and mean -- who wants to read...My God! I hate this show! over and over? That's about all I can muster.

    I don't think the commenters do that here. To heck with the show, I get a kick reading all the comments every Fri morning.
    reply
  • Kristin

    1 year ago

    Did anyone else wonder how hammered Roger had to be to pick those two horsefaced twins over all of the others who actually were attractive? And when Dan recovers from the munchies, we'll have to discuss The Office. An hour is just too damn long. We've jumped the shark now that Jim and Pam are together. But, on the upside, we had Stanley in a straw hat.

    But back to Mad Men. And me. Here's my recap. Really, I didn't see the lesbian thing coming. Am I losing my mojo?
    http://www.unboundedition.com/content/view/2646...
    reply
  • Karen

    1 year ago

    My DVR cramped up and didn't record the Thursday show, so I had to wait to watch it until last night. I have to say I agree with everyone on this page, with the exception of Karina (sorry! Nothing personal!)

    But I'm surprised no one picked up on Cooper turning Red into the white, girl elevator operator near the end there. Now sure what the point was, but they went to the trouble of setting it up, so I thought I'd remark on it. According to the NYTimes, Weiner had the cast watch "The Apartment" as homework, so I have to say I found it kind of ham-handed that they worked it into the script.

    This WAS a boring episode. Everyone picked the least attractive options, with the exception of Don. I guess that's why he's our hero.

    Red is COLD, man.
    reply
  • Dan Leo

    1 year ago

    I just read Kristin's usual hilarious re-cap, so now it's OK that I missed this episode.

    I admit I was stoned, and had a head cold, but I dug that premiere hour of The Office! I've only seen the first four or so episodes of the previous season, so I admit I wasn't quite au courant, but Kristin's got a point, the writers have their job cut out for them now that they don't have the "Will Pam and Jim Just Shut up and Do It" thing going for them.
    reply
  • channel sunglasses

    1 month ago

    i think they were very good artist and they can handle those, some scenes takes only one scene and its amazing, the reason of the sunglasses that has been mysterious was cool.
    reply
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