DISQUS

newcritics: Live Blogging Mad Men: Crisis Management 101

  • MaPeel · 1 year ago
    If Don would only do his impersonation of James Mason, everything will be alright.
  • steverino · 1 year ago
    Kay Corleone moment upcoming?
  • clairehelene7 · 1 year ago
    Ironic that Peggy votes to tell the truth.
  • steverino · 1 year ago
    Godfather all over again...
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    You could almost hear the theme
  • MaPeel · 1 year ago
    At least Don went to Betty before the office
  • clairehelene7 · 1 year ago
    I agree.
  • Steve Paradis · 1 year ago
    The guys are all running around like the Brooks Brothers chorus boys in H2S. Maybe they can all be understudies.

    And when did Mark Moses turn into Gig Young?
  • clairehelene7 · 1 year ago
    It's Captain Awesome!
  • steverino · 1 year ago
    You think Betty tried to down the daughter in the bathtub, maybe?
  • James Wolcott · 1 year ago
    I think I saw that bar in a Stanley Kubrick movie once. Director to interior decorator: "I'd like the place done in Dante's Inferno Red..."
  • Steve Paradis · 1 year ago
    I think I saw this script in about 3 Rod Serling scripts.
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    Let's see how they wrap this this thing up - ah, with a pregnancy...will it bring Don back from the coast?
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    As Lance would say, we're very much in Revolutionary Road territory here.
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    I guess the ocean told him to go back...or something. Draper is like a chameleon.
  • James S. · 1 year ago
    Don, there's no there, there...
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    Oh brother, the sooooooo obvious Cuban Missile Crisis episode - who called this weeks ago, somebody here did, can't remember who. Cue the general worrying about survival.
  • steverino · 1 year ago
    Overcoat all wet from the ocean?
  • MaPeel · 1 year ago
    Seeing a clip of a Kennedy as president is chilling. You really only usually see funeral clips
  • clairehelene7 · 1 year ago
    I love that Don is spinning this as a lesson for Pete.
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    Damn that Kennedy, wrecking Roger Sterling's new life!
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    Whoops - churches in 1962 were generally packed, all the more so around the missile crisis - another detail flub by the Mad Men crew.
  • James S. · 1 year ago
    Maybe they were at the 7:00 AM speed Mass...
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    Maybe, but Peggy doesn't seem like a 7 am mass-goer.
  • MaPeel · 1 year ago
    On Betty's best day, it's not a great time for her to be a mother . . .
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    Yeah really - Joan Crawford was better.
  • MaPeel · 1 year ago
    Room service! There's a kid after my own heart.
  • steverino · 1 year ago
    Mannequins more lifelike than ol' Bet...
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    Betty's bucking for a miscarriage - and Don's suddenly Ward Cleaver.
  • clairehelene7 · 1 year ago
    Betty is reduced to bathroom trysts in bars?
  • steverino · 1 year ago
    Watch out for the little baby, for heaven's sakes!
  • steverino · 1 year ago
    Tommy - Ward Cleaver - perfect!
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    I'm thinking like Matt Weiner now.
  • steverino · 1 year ago
    That's you - always thinking like a weiner...
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    Nicely-placed fall-out sign over the good Father's shoulder - subtle.
  • MaPeel · 1 year ago
    The reality of hell--there's a little anti-existentialism for us
  • MaPeel · 1 year ago
    Does Betty want to be able to tell Don that the baby isn't his?
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    Don never had that globe before - hint: world at risk of destruction.
  • James S. · 1 year ago
    Time to work on your Mid-Atlantic accent guys...
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    Creative's fantasies of expression incompatible with TV...yeah, no classic ads in the 70s.
  • clairehelene7 · 1 year ago
    Hahaha, Don always wins. He can't even help it.
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    Yeah, he just lucks into everything - that's Weiner's message in this whole thing.
  • MaPeel · 1 year ago
    He's the Vincent Chase of the 60s.
  • Steve Paradis · 1 year ago
    So it's Duck going out the window . . .
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    Pete too!
  • Steve Paradis · 1 year ago
    "My Dyckman seed? Being raised by some slob in Queens?"
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    It's Armageddon day at Sterling Cooper - clearly, Peggy is the only moral center this show possesses - if/when it it returns, she's gotta be the lead character.
  • clairehelene7 · 1 year ago
    I agree, Tom. I would hope so, but I doubt it.
  • MaPeel · 1 year ago
    Was that a shot of Pete with the rifle?
  • clairehelene7 · 1 year ago
    I think so.
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    Yeah - he's clearly crazy sniper material.
  • Steve Paradis · 1 year ago
    "the destroyer Joseph F. Kennedy?"
    (May be a quoted slip. They were all on edge back then.)
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    Strange point of fact: it's now moored in Fall River, Mass as part of a floating museum.
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    The Heineken cast party better rock, because this season-ender simply didn't.
  • clairehelene7 · 1 year ago
    No it didn't.
  • clairehelene7 · 1 year ago
    It's funny to see the actors with modern haircuts.
  • Steve Paradis · 1 year ago
    "Hi, Christina. Hi, Christina's rack."

    Though it's nice to see that Bryan Batt isn't Poor Sad Sal.
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    Would it be impolitic to note that that they all seem rather simple?
  • clairehelene7 · 1 year ago
    Well, they are actors Tom. ;-)
  • MaPeel · 1 year ago
    Too much again happened off camera. What happened to Dick Whitman in CA with the first Mrs. Draper?? He was saying he was looking for work, then he takes a dip in the Pacific and ends up on a riding farm in Westchester. Not very tight plotting.
  • clairehelene7 · 1 year ago
    I agree. And since they combined the commercials and ended 10 minutes early, I feel a little cheated as a viewer. (And I don't even love the show.)
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    You noticed that, huh? Plus he'd sort of, um, changed? Like he wasn't the same character - again.
  • Steve Paradis · 1 year ago
    When was he looking for work? Hot rods were pretty well known by the 60's--that scene looked like mid 50's.
    I think he went from Hope Lange to Love Reign O'er Me to the stables.
    Goddamit, Weiner--would a transition kill you? This is AMC, remember?
  • Steve Paradis · 1 year ago
    Well, THAT ended.
    So, "The Prisoner" is set in the Area 51 base housing. No American Portmeirion?
  • MaPeel · 1 year ago
    I'm sorry, I'm still in crisis. And has Don really changed, or he just thinks he changed.
  • James Wolcott · 1 year ago
    The creative gap between Matthew Weiner and David Chase widens at every turn.
  • tomwatson · 1 year ago
    I think Matt's got a future in TV advertising - this was one helluva beer commercial.
  • clairehelene7 · 1 year ago
    Weiner definitely thinks he's amazing. Luckily he'll have some time now to soak in all those accolades.
  • James S. · 1 year ago
    Do you remember that conceptual art screening of Hitchcock's Psycho one frame a second at MoMA? This season M-Squared seemed to me like televising a Douglas Sirk movie one frame a second.
  • Steve Paradis · 1 year ago
    If the center is Don, the season was disappointing.
    If the center is Peggy, it wasn't.
    If the center is Pete, I need a highball.
  • tim · 1 year ago
    OK, I'll admit my ignorance and ask: why did Peggy tell Pete about the baby? Just to be cruel? What the hell was the point of that? I often think she's a sociopath.
  • clairehelene7 · 1 year ago
    I agree, it seemed cruel. But I think it was her way of repenting. She doesn't think God is as mean as the young priest does, but know thinks honesty is important.
  • terrsa · 1 year ago
    I thought she was saying that she had the chance once to be with him, decided she wanted something else and he needed to bug off and stop trying to do his lame, married guy come one.
  • SweetSue · 1 year ago
    You have to understand that people really believed that they were about to die.
    And Pete just told her that he loved her and that, in his eyes, she was perfect.
    Jesus, are women ever allowed to be people?
  • MaPeel · 1 year ago
    Very sad news from The House Next Door. Andrew Johnston passed away yesterday, October 26. His recaps of Mad Men were beautiful pieces of writing. Matt Zoller Seitz stepped in for Andrew yesterday with his usual stunning insights.

    http://www.thehousenextdooronline.com/2008/10/m...
  • David Ehrenstein · 1 year ago
  • Affordable SEO Services · 11 months ago
    As for the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis: there’s very little I can say about that. My parents, who both worked for Pfizer, sold a considerable amount of Pfizer stock when the market tanked in the uncertainty, and for one reason or another they didn’t get back in. The way they always spoke of it, I would have been a Pfizer heiress if the missile crisis hadn’t happened.