Sep 23, 2009 0
I’m not saying people shouldn’t be analyzing themes, but at some point you have to cut it out and talk about visceral effects. Mad Men is usually so restrained and subtle that a moment like this one grabs you by the throat to a degree it never would on a show like Nip/Tuck. Occasionally, you just have to go with it and praise the sheer audacity.
Sep 21, 2009 0
British jokes, this episode had plenty! Just as Season 2 of The Wire taught us that that there’s a whole world of Polack humor lurking in the urban enclaves of the eastern seaboard, and Season 3 of Deadwood taught us about lost race of Cornish people, so Season 3 of Mad Men has reminded us that, forty years ago, before the era of postracial humor and white-person self-deprecation, the most fertile ground for SFW naughty ethnic humor were our transatlantic neighbors. I’ve lost track of the number of references to the Revolutionary War, but Roger made a joke about the Union Jack. He also had the line of the night: somebody mentioned Guy might lose his foot, and Roger shook his head, “And right after he got it in the door.” Everybody had a good blood-drenched laugh about that.
Sep 16, 2009 0
Jesus, Pregnancy! I watched last night’s episode with my girlfriend, so I can vouch for at least one female that last night’s presentation of the miracle of childbirth was easily the most disturbing in TV history. Or, perhaps more accurately, it’s the most disturbing portrayal of childbirth that didn’t involve any apparent medical difficulty whatsoever; you realized that the whole hellish routine (signing papers during contractions, last-minute substitute doctors, liberally administered drug cocktails) was all normal. Business as usual here on pregnancy row! The baby is breach! More demerol!
Aug 25, 2009 1
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.
Aug 19, 2009 0
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.
