newcritics: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant
sluggo
· 2 years ago
The sense I have is that these guys find themselves at 40 and in charge. They survived the war, and now they are successful in spite of themselves, it being difficult to fail over the previous 15 years of postwar economic expansion. They had relatively little competition for their positions until just about the era we see portrayed, and I see Don undergoing the existential crisis of feeling oneself a fraud, about to be revealed as such.
Tom Watson
· 2 years ago
Slug - they seem to be in the "where am I, how did I get here" David Byrne fug, eh? But it's 15 years too early at least....
steverino
· 2 years ago
woo-hoo - excellent bustier, mrs. draper
steverino
· 2 years ago
your nine-year old hair-stealing friend should see you now
Tom Watson
· 2 years ago
Sloooow start...a soapy sex secret.
Jim Tourtelott
· 2 years ago
There is a lot to be said for satin foundation garments.
sluggo
· 2 years ago
More of a fraud than I imagined...
steverino
· 2 years ago
zzzzzzzzzz
M.A. Peel
· 2 years ago
I called "mad brother in the attic" 2 weeks ago--who knew that it was Dick/Don who was the crazy!
Tom Watson
· 2 years ago
Yeah Don/Dick smokes and stares darkly and not much else - he can't sell, can't think up creative, can't run a good meeting.
Jim Tourtelott
· 2 years ago
The portentuous striking of cigarette on cigarette case, complete with metallic clang, is maybe the lamest touch yet.
M.A. Peel
· 2 years ago
Scary sign of the time: putting "famous novelist" infront of F. Scott Fitzgerald
Lance Mannion
· 2 years ago
I'm late. What did I miss, besides Mrs Draper's lingerie?
Tom Watson
· 2 years ago
Just the secret brother....
M.A. Peel
· 2 years ago
"Her." That is one cold son. Huge mother issues--what a cliche.
steverino
· 2 years ago
ladies and gents, I'm givin' it 5 more minutes...i mean, c'mon: this is crappy even for soap opera
Lance Mannion
· 2 years ago
Thinking about Tom's opening with Cary Grant's ad men characters:
The look of the show is right---the clothes, the lighting, the decor, the beer cans, but there's no period background sound. I don't hear the late 50s.
Tom K
· 2 years ago
The wanna-be-author-dweeb's wife has an unusually expressive neck.
Jim Tourtelott
· 2 years ago
"As much as anyone can enjoy that sort of thing." Yes, that about sums up a lot.
Lance Mannion
· 2 years ago
And I don't get the sense that these people are at all plugged in to their times. They reference them, but they don't carry them in their speech or attitudes.
I'm saying I don't think any of these people saw North By Northwest.
Or even heard of Hitchcock.
Tom Watson
· 2 years ago
Yeah, the constant ad pitches, the slogans, the advertising - and how about some street traffic noise? In a coffee shop in midtown, you'd hear horns and brakes squealing...
steverino
· 2 years ago
Other than the bosomy red-haired assistant, can anyone on tonight's show act?
Lance Mannion
· 2 years ago
why are the women in this series so incredibly uncomfortable in their own skins? It’s unsettling - like they literally can’t stand to be who they are, in the clothes they’re in, in the relationships they have.
Isn't that one of Weiner's themes? Life was miserable for women then?
We're never going to bump into Donna Reed along the way, of course. But where's Laura Petrie and Sally Rogers?
Where's my mother?
Tom Watson
· 2 years ago
It's the clothes, the undergarments, the poses the heavy make-up - they're physically uncomfy. And it shows.
Lance Mannion
· 2 years ago
Tom, the traffic noise in North By Northwest is exactly what I was thinking about. When Hitchcock gets the bus door slammed in his face, you can hear the street noise, even though, if I remember correctly, you actually can't because the theme music's playing. Hitchcock and other filmmakers back then could suggest sound.
James Wolcott
· 2 years ago
Kennedy hadn't been elected yet and they were already having Take John-John & Caroline to Work Day.
Tom K
· 2 years ago
Hey, the Yankees have the tying run on deck with 2 outs in the 9th . . .
M.A. Peel
· 2 years ago
There's a blog on the AMCtv site, and there is so much love for this show, it's truly unbelievable. I think people are projecting a lot of themselves into what they are seeing. That may be a huge part of the strange phenomenon surrounding this summer series.
Jack Powers
· 2 years ago
I like the way the AMC teasers foreshadow the next spot. It's like a peek into the very-very-near future.
Tom Watson
· 2 years ago
I love that movie. Sometimes I look from our office windows on Second Avenue and look north, and the reflected glass curtain wals - brand new then - remind me of what was modern about North by Northwest.
Tom K
· 2 years ago
Well, Giambi wiffed.
Tom Watson
· 2 years ago
MA - yeah, dig the "I love when men were men, and women were women" quotes. Kind of validates my male fantasy theory about this series, eh?
Jim Tourtelott
· 2 years ago
There is a style here, but it is completely unexpressive and joyless. That scene in the office with the wife and secretary typified it. It's like something a bright undergraduate might have dreamed up after attending a couple of lectures on Brecht and Kabuki and an Antonioni double feature.
steverino
· 2 years ago
none of this is even vaguely believable...filled with self loathing for sticking with it
Jim Tourtelott
· 2 years ago
Cosgrove's "You lost" was the best line reading of the night.
M.A. Peel
· 2 years ago
Is he going to kill him?
Tom Watson
· 2 years ago
And now we come to....murder?
steverino
· 2 years ago
m.a. you are unbelievably prescient
Jack Powers
· 2 years ago
Gun. He's got a gun.
Tom Watson
· 2 years ago
Damn, money. Mad men money.
M.A. Peel
· 2 years ago
All right. That was one nice fake-out. I hate to see people/characters like Adam being crushed by morally bankrupt, evil people.
What would have been so wrong to have that nice guy in the family? I'll just wait for Matt to explain in the postlude--
Tom Watson
· 2 years ago
There is, of course, more to the story with Draper/Whitman...
James Wolcott
· 2 years ago
Blondie and the kids are going to Cape May. Wonder if I'll see them there next month. Oh wait, this show's set in the past; never mind.
The way the scene w/ Adam was played, it was as if he were the Gay Past returning to haunt Don, not some long-lost brother-man.
Tom Watson
· 2 years ago
A series about monsters, the worst people of 1960.
Tom K
· 2 years ago
*There is, of course, more to the story with Draper/Whitman…*
Maybe. Or, maybe they'll just cue something by Journey and say, "f*ck 'em all."
Tom Watson
· 2 years ago
You see, of course, how Draper used his "Private Executive Account" to pay his long-lost brother to leave him alone - see, very cleverly, the ad pitch came back to him...oh yeah, that's writing.
Wolcott, my same suspicions: The war buddy that could ask anything of Don, except to rip apart his life of lies.
Tom K
· 2 years ago
That Eva Marie-Saint has remarkable upper-body strength.
Lance Mannion
· 2 years ago
Roger Thornhill: I'm an advertising man not a red herring. I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives, and several bartenders dependent on me, and I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed.
cgeye
· 2 years ago
And Don didn't whiff this week's meeting: He truly didn't want to participate in the he-man woman-hatas executive nookie account pitch, tired of the lies, for a change, or at least tired of the others' glee at putting one over on the wives.
As for the head secretary? I hate her, because I know if I were in the typing pool, she'd hiss and spread rumors and hound me until I knocked her on her ass, just so she'd be entertained by the police taking me away in handcuffs.
She is bad juju, a woman unfit to dust Jennifer Marlowe's emery boards, and a woman-hating woman of the first swamp-drained water. Sure, she makes internalized misogyny look like fun, but if we cringe at it when Joan Crawford does it, then we need to stay consistent, and distrust any hottie who does it, Girl Gone Wild or not.
cgeye
· 2 years ago
Ah, not what would William Shawn think -- what would *Wallace* Shawn think? That there's some good depressive playmaking material, I tell you what.
Jennifer
· 2 years ago
Yes, I realize the live-blogging is over, but I just have to add that after watching last night's episode, I feel like I'm watching a high school production... people trying to act mature and of a certain era, but still gnawing the scenery.
And as for women being uncomfortable then- of the women I know who were alive then, most have said there was also comfort in clearly drawn roles and that they had significant support systems. They knew what they were supposed to do and what they were to wear and to them, it may have chafed after awhile, but this was also freedom compared to what their mothers had lived through. They weren't playing that role through the eyes of someone who had lived through the 70's etc. They were forming that role with visions of women who had lived in the 30's and 40's, etc.
MBunge
· 2 years ago
"I think people are projecting a lot of themselves into what they are seeing. That may be a huge part of the strange phenomenon surrounding this summer series."
Honestly, doesn't that apply to an awful lot of supposedly "good" or "hip" shows nowadays. Have we developed some sort of post-modern style of writing where the audience adds in to cover up the weaknesses or enhance the strengths of a creator's work? It seems like if you do something like MAD MEN or even THE SOPRANOS that people get overly exciteda about what it's supposed to be or trying to be, passing over what it actually is.
I'm two days late, but I loved learning that Andrew Sullivan has never heard of prop departments or set designers. "Where they found those old cans"? Good gravy.
David Halsted
· 2 years ago
For the past few days I've been wondering what the 1959 analog to Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" could be. "We'll Meet Again" by Vera Lynn is the best I came up with, though it was already (already?) used at the end of Dr. Strangelove in 1964. Any better ideas?
All Comments
The look of the show is right---the clothes, the lighting, the decor, the beer cans, but there's no period background sound. I don't hear the late 50s.
I'm saying I don't think any of these people saw North By Northwest.
Or even heard of Hitchcock.
Isn't that one of Weiner's themes? Life was miserable for women then?
We're never going to bump into Donna Reed along the way, of course. But where's Laura Petrie and Sally Rogers?
Where's my mother?
What would have been so wrong to have that nice guy in the family? I'll just wait for Matt to explain in the postlude--
The way the scene w/ Adam was played, it was as if he were the Gay Past returning to haunt Don, not some long-lost brother-man.
Maybe. Or, maybe they'll just cue something by Journey and say, "f*ck 'em all."
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As for the head secretary? I hate her, because I know if I were in the typing pool, she'd hiss and spread rumors and hound me until I knocked her on her ass, just so she'd be entertained by the police taking me away in handcuffs.
She is bad juju, a woman unfit to dust Jennifer Marlowe's emery boards, and a woman-hating woman of the first swamp-drained water. Sure, she makes internalized misogyny look like fun, but if we cringe at it when Joan Crawford does it, then we need to stay consistent, and distrust any hottie who does it, Girl Gone Wild or not.
And as for women being uncomfortable then- of the women I know who were alive then, most have said there was also comfort in clearly drawn roles and that they had significant support systems. They knew what they were supposed to do and what they were to wear and to them, it may have chafed after awhile, but this was also freedom compared to what their mothers had lived through. They weren't playing that role through the eyes of someone who had lived through the 70's etc. They were forming that role with visions of women who had lived in the 30's and 40's, etc.
Honestly, doesn't that apply to an awful lot of supposedly "good" or "hip" shows nowadays. Have we developed some sort of post-modern style of writing where the audience adds in to cover up the weaknesses or enhance the strengths of a creator's work? It seems like if you do something like MAD MEN or even THE SOPRANOS that people get overly exciteda about what it's supposed to be or trying to be, passing over what it actually is.
Mike
"We'll Meet Again" by Vera Lynn is the best I came up with, though it was already (already?) used at the end of Dr. Strangelove in 1964.
Any better ideas?