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 10, 2009 0
In retrospect, there was no way Matthew Weiner was going to spend an entire season having Don battle wits with Gene in some dramatic version of Everybody Loves Raymond. Gene never really acted like anything other than an old man losing his mind more and more everyday. I mean, is Gene not supposed to show Bobby his old war helmets and let Sally drive cars? That’s the whole point of grandparents! When parents neglect, they go way too far in the other direction.
Sep 9, 2009 1
I know logically that kids shouldn’t wear the helmets of dead Prussians on their head, much less helmets with bullet holes in them. I also know that adults shouldn’t let pre-teens drive their car. But the problematic thing about Gene Hofstadt is that, despite all the times we thought he was going to turn out to be a racist, an abuser of children, an incestuous pedophile, or a dementia-ridden wreck, the more the episode went along the more I found myself … I don’t know if “admiring” is the right word, but the man deserved respect.
