Television
Eric Freeman
So SCDP acts like they’re making a TV commercial to bankrupt the rival company, except they’re not, and Don brings a motorcycle into the office to show the commercial director, and the commercial director reports back to the rival company, and they make an ad, and the Japanese apparently don’t like it, but they do like Don because he’s handsome and honorable and doesn’t want to be part of their bake-off. Everything turns out great for SCDP in the end! Someone call up Ari Gold so they can hug it out!
Television
Eric Freeman
Pete Campbell has always been Mad Men’s most enigmatic character. That may seem like an odd statement given that Don Draper’s whole character is structured as an enigma, but there are key differences between Don and Pete that make the latter much more difficult to pin down. Don, for all his mystery and deadpan stares into the distance, remains a relatively easy character to place into the larger Mad Men world. Pete is complicated in a way that suggests Matthew Weiner and Co. don’t really know what to do with him.
Television
Eric Freeman
There’s a risk of expecting too much from the fourth season — there are so many possibilities that whatever path Weiner ends up taking will be disappointing. I’ll leave the specific possibilities for later in the discussion. Right now, I just want to commend Matthew Weiner for taking the leap and recognizing that this show was in danger of becoming too static for its own good.
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.
