Television
Eric Freeman
We’ve talked a lot over the last few weeks about Mad Men being about the Rise of the Boomers and how it pushed out a lost generation too young to fight in World War II and too old to drop acid with gurus and dropouts. The series depicts the end of a way of life, and if Conrad Hilton represents the embodiment of it, then Paris is the figurehead of what it has become. The Hilton name signifies something very different in 2009 than it did in 1963, and that dissonance says a lot about the culture shift that informs much of the series.
Television
Eric Freeman
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.
Television
Darren Franich
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.
Television
Darren Franich
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!
Television
Eric Freeman
Sunday’s Mad Men was about the way that people’s best laid plans don’t always work out the way they want. As usual, we saw all sides of the situation: plans in their inception, as seen in Peggy’s belief that Don’s life is exactly what she wants; plans on the brink of being realized and all the terror that comes with standing on that precipice, as seen in the case of prison guard Dennis Hobart; and plans that have already been realized but haven’t worked, and yet they still get trotted out again in the hopes that this time will be different, as seen in Don and Betty’s hope that little Eugene Scott Draper will make everything better.
