newcritics - Latest Comments in Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

David Halsted — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 11:32:00 -0000

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?

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

DonBoy — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 00:50:01 -0000

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.

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

Paul Levinson — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 06:08:22 -0000

A rare, amazing gem of a series ... this Thursday's episode was especially powerful ... http://paullevinson.blogspot.com/2007/08/mad-me...

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

MBunge — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:38:08 -0000

"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.

Mike

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

Jennifer — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 07:43:18 -0000

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.

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

cgeye — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:06:19 -0000

Ah, not what would William Shawn think -- what would *Wallace* Shawn think? That there's some good depressive playmaking material, I tell you what.

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

cgeye — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:02:31 -0000

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.

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

Lance Mannion — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:54:38 -0000

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.

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

Tom K — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:22:40 -0000

That Eva Marie-Saint has remarkable upper-body strength.

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

cgeye — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:15:52 -0000

Wolcott, my same suspicions: The war buddy that could ask anything of Don, except to rip apart his life of lies.

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

Lance Mannion — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:09:56 -0000

For Tom:

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Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

Tom Watson — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:07:45 -0000

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.

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

Tom K — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:05:21 -0000

*There is, of course, more to the story with Draper/WhitmanÃ¢â‚¬Â¦*

Maybe. Or, maybe they'll just cue something by Journey and say, "f*ck 'em all."

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

Tom Watson — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:03:36 -0000

A series about monsters, the worst people of 1960.

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

James Wolcott — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:01:41 -0000

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.

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

Tom Watson — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:00:58 -0000

There is, of course, more to the story with Draper/Whitman...

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

M.A. Peel — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 22:59:40 -0000

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--

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

Tom Watson — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 22:55:09 -0000

Damn, money. Mad men money.

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

Jack Powers — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 22:52:54 -0000

Gun. He's got a gun.

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

steverino — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 22:52:28 -0000

m.a. you are unbelievably prescient

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

Tom Watson — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 22:52:12 -0000

And now we come to....murder?

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

M.A. Peel — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 22:51:36 -0000

Is he going to kill him?

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

Jim Tourtelott — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 22:50:18 -0000

Cosgrove's "You lost" was the best line reading of the night.

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

steverino — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 22:49:52 -0000

none of this is even vaguely believable...filled with self loathing for sticking with it

Re: Live-Blogging Mad Men: The Debt to Cary Grant

Jim Tourtelott — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 22:43:08 -0000

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.