Television
Darren Franich
If there’s one running motif that seems guaranteed to tie every character together in one David Milchian bow, it’s shape-changing. Paul Kinsey, we learn, didn’t always speak like a mid-century Roosevelt patrician. Pete Campbell has to go by Dyckman in good company or else he’s just another skinny nobody with bad hair. So far, fully half of the female cast on the show has gotten pregnant, and the other half (Joan and Trudy) keeps trying. For all the leisurely (not to say glacial) pacing of the show’s narrative, Mad Men is fascinated by change on the molecular level.
Television
Eric Freeman
Last week, I complained that Mad Men was entering into third-season doldrums where the show’s typically strong thematic connections fell by the wayside in favor of goofy plot developments. I wrote some standard prescriptions and proclaimed that Matthew Weiner had to regain some focus, even if that focus changed from episode to episode. Then they went and proved me terribly wrong this week with “My Old Kentucky Home,” one of the best episodes in the history of the series.
Television
Eric Freeman
I’m not sure I want Mad Men to do more episodes like “Love Among the Ruins,” but I think it’s almost necessary for a show to become a little less focused in its third season. The third season is an odd period between initial success and the homestretch, a time when writers realize they don’t have to use all their best ideas in order to get renewed. I don’t mean to suggest that people only write well to ensure their show keeps getting picked up, but there’s a natural tendency to start stretching plots out a bit more once everyone realizes the show isn’t at risk of dying any minute.
Television
Darren Franich
Is it just me, or did this whole episode feel a bit digressive? About the only critique you can have about Matthew Weiner is that sometimes his writing is a bit too cleanly metaphorical (in particular, that the advertising plotlines are merely highbrow versions of the patient-of-the-week structure favored by Grey’s Anatomy and its ilk). I’m not so sure how far this argument gets you — it’s a bit like complaining that Charlie Kaufman’s movies are always surreal, or that Miyazaki’s movies have way too much beautiful imagery — but this episode didn’t feel clean at all.
Television
Darren Franich
It’s a central part of Mad Men’s appeal that our protagonists — who make jokes about how their tomboy daughters are “little lesbians” and can’t stand to ride in the same elevator as a black janitor — have an eerily admirable amount of respect for things we didn’t know we were missing. Like the scene in the Season 2 premiere where Don is in an elevator with a lady and two crude young men, and Don tells one man to take his hat off before just going ahead and doing it for him. Of course, this scene is morally ridiculous if you consider that Don is a regular adulterer – if you consider that the crimes perpetrated against his wife far outweigh any amount of mental damage a woman could suffer from overhearing a few dirty jokes. But the morality of Mad Men is more complex than our own morality.
