Mad Men on AMC (7 Viewers)

[wikkidpissah]

Like with most of the actors on that show, she's not going to get a better role, nor turn in a better performance. Kind of like Larry Linville playing Frank Burns on M*A*S*H*.

FWIW, I paused my watching last night when I went to bed, and it was paused on the shot of Betty in the yellow bikini she bought at the country club auction. Her legs definitely go all the way up.   

she's immaculate. and available. and the 2nd is more important on TV (movies are magic, shows are relationships) the two stars i found most beautiful growing up were Grace Kelly and Inger Stevens. my eyes & heart reacted to Grace but my eyes, heart, arms and pants reacted to Inger. it's one of the ways i learned i was not here to worship, but to thrill and be thrilled. i feel the Inger way about January and it's because she wants to be Inger (to have the depth beauty usually doesnt permit) and is stuck being Grace, which is almost the best of both.

 

[Charlie Steiner]

she's immaculate. and available. and the 2nd is more important on TV (movies are magic, shows are friendships) the two stars i found most beautiful growing up were Grace Kelly and Inger Stevens. my eyes & heart reacted to Grace but my eyes, heart, arms and pants reacted to Inger. it's one of the ways i learned i was not here to worship, but to thrill and be thrilled. i feel the Inger way about January and it's because she wants to be Inger (to have the depth beauty usually doesnt permit) and is stuck being Grace, which is almost the best of both.

I wonder if she got any pointers from Christina Hendricks re: facial expressions. Part of me wants to think that she did and we just weren't allowed to see it much because Betty is supposed to be so vapid, but I don't think that's the case because of her lack of notable roles since. Too bad she couldn't go the Gloria Grahame route as a femme fatale, but noir isn't done much any more.  Maybe if someone revives Streetcar Named Desire, she could try her hand as Blanche.

 

[wikkidpissah]

I wonder if she got any pointers from Christina Hendricks re: facial expressions. Part of me wants to think that she did and we just weren't allowed to see it much because Betty is supposed to be so vapid, but I don't think that's the case because of her lack of notable roles since. Too bad she couldn't go the Gloria Grahame route as a femme fatale, but noir isn't done much any more.  Maybe if someone revives Streetcar Named Desire, she could try her hand as Blanche.

they'd both be great in noir. Hendricks (much better trained than Jones, btw) would be a FABULOUS Gal Friday to a private **** because she gets men to spill and knows what to do with it. Jones is too pristine for Grahame roles (nobody play the heart of a vicitm like GG) but, if someone cooked up some Veronica Lakes for her... her limited chops could handle a "not what she seems" thing cuz she wouldnt have to play it.

the biz today is perfect for noir but young writers dont grok the purgatorial aspect well enough. fate is obvious, heaven or hell, anymore, not wrestled with in the waiting room

shame - my old files are filled with noirs i dont even remember. my late agent knew a LOT of "operators" who lived for the pitch and i used to write outlines for them to buy options on so they'd have sumn to sell. i think he sold 12 options on one (an Indian tribe hostages the opening of a ski resort built on their sacred land - a western w choppers & ATVs) but i know that, in 1975, anything noir that replaced the fedora with a leisure suit or whatever was worth 5K for a day's work.

i've never rescued those files from his widow. i should take a look one day...

 

[wikkidpissah]

they'd both be great in noir. Hendricks (much better trained than Jones, btw) would be a FABULOUS Gal Friday to a private **** because she gets men to spill and knows what to do with it. Jones is too pristine for Grahame roles (nobody play the heart of a vicitm like GG) but, if someone cooked up some Veronica Lakes for her... her limited chops could handle a "not what she seems" thing cuz she wouldnt have to play it.

the biz today is perfect for noir but young writers dont grok the purgatorial aspect well enough. fate is obvious, heaven or hell, anymore, not wrestled with in the waiting room

shame - my old files are filled with noirs i dont even remember. my late agent knew a LOT of "operators" who lived for the pitch and i used to write outlines for them to buy options on so they'd have sumn to sell. i think he sold 12 options on one (an Indian tribe hostages the opening of a ski resort built on their sacred land - a western w choppers & ATVs) but i know that, in 1975, anything noir that replaced the fedora with a leisure suit or whatever was worth 5K for a day's work.

i've never rescued those files from his widow. i should take a look one day...

Matt Weiner could do a noir reunion of his old ensemble - Hamm as Nick Danger, Peggy as good girl in distress, JJ as femme fatale, Hendricks as the wise operative,  Sterling as mysterious billionaire, Pete the greasy pimp, Megan as the woman from Danger's past etc etc. Hella Netflix event

 

[Charlie Steiner]

they'd both be great in noir. Hendricks (much better trained than Jones, btw) would be a FABULOUS Gal Friday to a private **** because she gets men to spill and knows what to do with it. Jones is too pristine for Grahame roles (nobody play the heart of a vicitm like GG) but, if someone cooked up some Veronica Lakes for her... her limited chops could handle a "not what she seems" thing cuz she wouldnt have to play it.

the biz today is perfect for noir but young writers dont grok the purgatorial aspect well enough. fate is obvious, heaven or hell, anymore, not wrestled with in the waiting room

shame - my old files are filled with noirs i dont even remember. my late agent knew a LOT of "operators" who lived for the pitch and i used to write outlines for them to buy options on so they'd have sumn to sell. i think he sold 12 options on one (an Indian tribe hostages the opening of a ski resort built on their sacred land - a western w choppers & ATVs) but i know that, in 1975, anything noir that replaced the fedora with a leisure suit or whatever was worth 5K for a day's work.

i've never rescued those files from his widow. i should take a look one day...

I see Hendricks more as the jilted wife or soon-to-be widow of the rich industrialist that's up to no good and cozies up to Nick Danger to either throw him off the scent or frame him. JJ could be the bookish secretary who's pined away for him in silence for years and her high competence at her job keeps the subtle sexual tension between them from boiling over.

Speaking of noir, I thought the writers on the recent Gotham show on Fox did a competent job.  Maybe there's a sliver of hope.

 

[wikkidpissah]

I see Hendricks more as the jilted wife or soon-to-be widow of the rich industrialist that's up to no good and cozies up to Nick Danger to either throw him off the scent or frame him. JJ could be the bookish secretary who's pined away for him in silence for years and her high competence at her job keeps the subtle sexual tension between them from boiling over.

Speaking of noir, I thought the writers on the recent Gotham show on Fox did a competent job.  Maybe there's a sliver of hope.

ya, i could see that.

Gotham coulda been good left to its own devices. But Fox was too wrapped up in the game of topping itself for "coming attractions" purposes to let the narrative flow organically (which is the only hope for but the only thing they dont do in the DC/Marvelverse). i lasted almost two seasons with it.

 

[Charlie Steiner]

Matt Weiner could do a noir reunion of his old ensemble - Hamm as Nick Danger, Peggy as good girl in distress, JJ as femme fatale, Hendricks as the wise operative,  Sterling as mysterious billionaire, Pete the greasy pimp, Megan as the woman from Danger's past etc etc. Hella Netflix event

You're probably not into video games, but this happened to a small extent in the form of the game L.A. Noire.  They used stop-motion technology to get the characters to look like the real actors. Cosgrove was the lead character, and the background was full of actors from Mad Men: Campbell, Kinsey, Betty's shrink, Don's Dad, Betty's dad, Peggy, Peggy's mom, sister and one of her roommates; Campbell's long-time secretary Hildy, Don's one-time secretary Allison, Campbell's brother, Jimmy Barrett, and others, supposedly 75 total actors from Mad Men made appearances in that game. Actually it was cool seeing those guys do other roles.  Betty's shrink was the coroner, so he showed up a lot and had a lot of lines. Campbell was a mechanic, which I couldn't buy since I identified the actor too much with soft rich boys, Kinsey was a bartender, which totally worked as his snark transferred well to the character.  I've had to give up that game because I can't shoot to save my life, but it was fun looking for the former SCDPCGC gang to appear.

 

[Charlie Steiner]

ya, i could see that.

Gotham coulda been good left to its own devices. But Fox was too wrapped up in the game of topping itself for "coming attractions" purposes to let the narrative flow organically (which is the only hope for but the only thing they dont do in the DC/Marvelverse). i lasted almost two seasons with it.

I stuck with Gotham through the whole thing and I actually like that they didn't try to do too much.  For most people that watched it, it was probably their first exposure to some form of noir and I think they did a good job of whetting the appetite but not trying to push the envelope; it wasn't the right show to do that even though it was about Batman. 

 

[Charlie Steiner]

Didn't want to pollute the death thread with excessive Mad Men talk, so I'll mention here that in honor of Robert Morse's passing that I went to the next episode of my binge watching and it's the one in which Miss Blankenship dies at her desk. Irony aside, it reminds me of one of the reasons I go back to this show so often. Right next to the shock and sadness of death, they inserted some humor when we see the staff dealing with it in the background while Don, Ken and Dr. Miller are meeting with the Fillmore Auto Parts guys. Loved how Ken went from just glancing up to seeing what was going on and trying to process it without being noticed, to Harry Crane entering the frame after Ida's been wheeled off and yells "My MOM made that!" it makes you laugh and almost feel guilty about laughing about someone dying.

I mentioned in the death thread about this year marking the 15th anniversary of the show's first run. I don't know if anyone is interesting in rehashing it, but I keep picking up on new things almost every time I watch it and it has only grown in my estimation as possibly my favorite TV show of all time. 

When I started watching the show during quarantine just 2 years ago, I went through this thread and on one hand was impressed with the conversations about it during its run, but I also noticed that upon re-watching (and re-watching and re-watching), I think there is still a lot of meat on the bone that is revealed when taking a deeper look.  I don't want to set myself up as an expert on the show (in fact, it wasn't until I started watching it that I've started to grasp the concept of subtext), but there are times when I feel I'm bursting to talk about some of the details of the show--the characters, the attention to details of the time and the significance of many of the choices they made in telling the story., and would love to hear from others that like this show and can point out things I've overlooked. I guess it would sort of be like the book or movie discussion threads if anyone were interested in participating.  Otherwise, just look for the occasional update to the thread when I've had too much to drink and am uninhibited enough to post something. 

 

[Barry]

Didn't want to pollute the death thread with excessive Mad Men talk, so I'll mention here that in honor of Robert Morse's passing that I went to the next episode of my binge watching and it's the one in which Miss Blankenship dies at her desk. Irony aside, it reminds me of one of the reasons I go back to this show so often. Right next to the shock and sadness of death, they inserted some humor when we see the staff dealing with it in the background while Don, Ken and Dr. Miller are meeting with the Fillmore Auto Parts guys. Loved how Ken went from just glancing up to seeing what was going on and trying to process it without being noticed, to Harry Crane entering the frame after Ida's been wheeled off and yells "My MOM made that!" it makes you laugh and almost feel guilty about laughing about someone dying.

I mentioned in the death thread about this year marking the 15th anniversary of the show's first run. I don't know if anyone is interesting in rehashing it, but I keep picking up on new things almost every time I watch it and it has only grown in my estimation as possibly my favorite TV show of all time. 

When I started watching the show during quarantine just 2 years ago, I went through this thread and on one hand was impressed with the conversations about it during its run, but I also noticed that upon re-watching (and re-watching and re-watching), I think there is still a lot of meat on the bone that is revealed when taking a deeper look.  I don't want to set myself up as an expert on the show (in fact, it wasn't until I started watching it that I've started to grasp the concept of subtext), but there are times when I feel I'm bursting to talk about some of the details of the show--the characters, the attention to details of the time and the significance of many of the choices they made in telling the story., and would love to hear from others that like this show and can point out things I've overlooked. I guess it would sort of be like the book or movie discussion threads if anyone were interested in participating.  Otherwise, just look for the occasional update to the thread when I've had too much to drink and am uninhibited enough to post something. 

mad men reddit is still going strong. 

 

[wikkidpissah]

Didn't want to pollute the death thread with excessive Mad Men talk, so I'll mention here that in honor of Robert Morse's passing that I went to the next episode of my binge watching and it's the one in which Miss Blankenship dies at her desk. Irony aside, it reminds me of one of the reasons I go back to this show so often. Right next to the shock and sadness of death, they inserted some humor when we see the staff dealing with it in the background while Don, Ken and Dr. Miller are meeting with the Fillmore Auto Parts guys. Loved how Ken went from just glancing up to seeing what was going on and trying to process it without being noticed, to Harry Crane entering the frame after Ida's been wheeled off and yells "My MOM made that!" it makes you laugh and almost feel guilty about laughing about someone dying.

I mentioned in the death thread about this year marking the 15th anniversary of the show's first run. I don't know if anyone is interesting in rehashing it, but I keep picking up on new things almost every time I watch it and it has only grown in my estimation as possibly my favorite TV show of all time. 

When I started watching the show during quarantine just 2 years ago, I went through this thread and on one hand was impressed with the conversations about it during its run, but I also noticed that upon re-watching (and re-watching and re-watching), I think there is still a lot of meat on the bone that is revealed when taking a deeper look.  I don't want to set myself up as an expert on the show (in fact, it wasn't until I started watching it that I've started to grasp the concept of subtext), but there are times when I feel I'm bursting to talk about some of the details of the show--the characters, the attention to details of the time and the significance of many of the choices they made in telling the story., and would love to hear from others that like this show and can point out things I've overlooked. I guess it would sort of be like the book or movie discussion threads if anyone were interested in participating.  Otherwise, just look for the occasional update to the thread when I've had too much to drink and am uninhibited enough to post something. 

i can contribute thematically but, unless AMC starts showing it again i got no way to watch eps anymore. i aint giving Penisheadspaceman a dime i dont have to and want to make my grave without paying a "+" service. seriously, best existential fiction of my lifetime

 

[Barry]

i can contribute thematically but, unless AMC starts showing it again i got no way to watch eps anymore. i aint giving Penisheadspaceman a dime i dont have to and want to make my grave without paying a "+" service. for my money, best existential fiction of my lifetime

i found the dvds dirt cheap on kijiji. 

 

[Charlie Steiner]

i can contribute thematically but, unless AMC starts showing it again i got no way to watch eps anymore. i aint giving Penisheadspaceman a dime i dont have to and want to make my grave without paying a "+" service. seriously, best existential fiction of my lifetime

You don't need to watch it again because you lived it.

 

[wikkidpissah]

You don't need to watch it again because you lived it.

only sorta - i'm roughly the same age as Sally and my ol' man did his corporate work (R&D man, inventor of the grow light for Sylvania) in a New England mill town.

but more&more i get the feeling that what future generations are going to be paying attention to from my time on earth is the guys who came home from the War and said, "why not, what about me?". they built the most successful world that's ever been built by the seat of their pants, starting industry after industry with neither guidebook nor revolutionary fervor, just guys (mostly) making the most of the chance they never dreamed to have. and their taste in reward - chrome, lawns, martinis, secretaries, appliances, little league - are as uncanny as their innovations. and Mad Men captures many facets of those identities as they surf their dreams. ultimate stuff -

 

[Charlie Steiner]

only sorta - i'm roughly the same age as Sally and my ol' man did his corporate work (R&D man, inventor of the grow light for Sylvania) in a New England mill town.

but more&more i get the feeling that what future generations are going to be paying attention to from my time on earth is the guys who came home from the War and said, "why not, what about me?". they built the most successful world that's ever been built by the seat of their pants, starting industry after industry with neither guidebook nor revolutionary fervor, just guys (mostly) making the most of the chance they never dreamed to have. and their taste in reward - chrome, lawns, martinis, secretaries, appliances, little league - are as uncanny as their innovations. and Mad Men captures many facets of those identities as they surf their dreams. ultimate stuff -

So you're old enough to have witnessed and experienced a lot of the events and moods of the era, and lived long enough to process it and translate it to us younger old guys. Again, you know this show more from having lived it more that watched it. You're our native guide through the show, as it were.

One of the other underlying themes I've noticed the more I watch is the generation between The Greatest and the Baby Boomers, i.e. Don, Joan, Peggy, Pete, basically all the characters in their 20's during the show's early years (actually, I'd say Roger's daughter is just at the cusp between the two but definitely is in the vanguard of Boomers) are the ones who informed the Mad Men era most, and that generation doesn't really get talked about yet maybe deserve a little more scorn than Boomers do for setting the stage for what transpired in the late 60's and early 70's; by then, they were moving toward middle age and their 'rebellious' years were mostly behind them, leaving you and your Boomer brethren nowhere else to go but into the chaos they ushered in. Rebels without a clue, to be sure.  And it pains me to say it because my parents are part of that generation.

@Barry, I will check out the reddit thread but my familiarity with guys here like wikkid has me hoping that there will be enough interest to have some sort of conversation about the show here in the FFA.

 

[NewlyRetired]

i found the dvds dirt cheap on kijiji. 

One can also get them from probably any local library if they really want to go the $0 route.  There is also torrenting if someone does not have morals like myself.

 

[wikkidpissah]

So you're old enough to have witnessed and experienced a lot of the events and moods of the era, and lived long enough to process it and translate it to us younger old guys. Again, you know this show more from having lived it more that watched it. You're our native guide through the show, as it were.

One of the other underlying themes I've noticed the more I watch is the generation between The Greatest and the Baby Boomers, i.e. Don, Joan, Peggy, Pete, basically all the characters in their 20's during the show's early years (actually, I'd say Roger's daughter is just at the cusp between the two but definitely is in the vanguard of Boomers) are the ones who informed the Mad Men era most, and that generation doesn't really get talked about yet maybe deserve a little more scorn than Boomers do for setting the stage for what transpired in the late 60's and early 70's; by then, they were moving toward middle age and their 'rebellious' years were mostly behind them, leaving you and your Boomer brethren nowhere else to go but into the chaos they ushered in. Rebels without a clue, to be sure.  And it pains me to say it because my parents are part of that generation.

@Barry, I will check out the reddit thread but my familiarity with guys here like wikkid has me hoping that there will be enough interest to have some sort of conversation about the show here in the FFA.

dont know the cutoff years (people werent self-conscious enough to name things yet), but i believe the "too young for WW2, too old for beatnik" folks are known as the Silent Generation, which i believe came retroactively from Nixon's "silent majority".

my ol' man is case-in-point. 5th of a dirtfarmer's 10 kids, son of a guy who invested his entire character in using WW1 enlistment as a way to get out of northern VT but got knocked back w a viral heart condition from Spanish flu and resented every subsequent day of his life, me Da ran the fam's 140 acres as a teenager while older brothers were at war and didnt graduate high school til he was 21 as a result. made his own try at getting off the farm, got knocked back, was about to give in when Harry Truman - who he hates more than everyone else combined - drafted him for Korea. realized that, being bright enough for Officer's Candidate School that, if he kept changing his specialty, he could stay in OCS indefinitely and rode out the war keeping Massachusetts & New Jersey safe from the Asian Commie hordes and taking leave at the NYC YMCA to watch Broadway shows.

married me Ma cuz she had a good job so he wouldnt have to bust hump to take advantage of GI Bill for some education. i was a honeymoon baby, tho, making my mother fat & unemployable so he did full-time in the freezers of Sealtest Ice Cream thru Bachelors & Masters programs @ UVM, got an R&D job @ Sylvania but had to pay off a deal with me Ma that she'd get to live with fam after college so commuted from innercity Boston OUT to the burbs for years til swarthy people encroached on our neighborhood and we moved to Salem.

Sylvania Lighting's R&D dept was so prolific that the company branched into TV/Stereo and thanked the dept that got em there by closing it. finally suffering unto a mortgage, my father did department tango for a coupla yrs til he realized they had no product-safety dept. designed one for them (claims to have created the product recall code) and was put in charge of it til the BA types conspired in unison against an engineer running a dept. the plant mgr liked me Da, so reached an agreement w the BAs that he could keep the title as long as he didnt do anything. for the next five years, he spent mornings writing trade papers and afternoons in a local strip club (reportedly engaging in a long affair w a 6ft black dancer called Silky Doll) til one of those papers garnered him a fancy job with a boutique lightining company in NYC. Spent his declining years fat & happy in the Jersey burbs til he got arbitraged out of job & pension by Matsu####a Electronics 5 yrs before he wanted to retire. He's 96, God bless him, and yells about gays causing hurricanes while i dress the phlebitic necroses on his feet.

Ladies & gentlemen, the Silent Generation.

 

[Charlie Steiner]

dont know the cutoff years (people werent self-conscious enough to name things yet), but i believe the "too young for WW2, too old for beatnik" folks are known as the Silent Generation, which i believe came retroactively from Nixon's "silent majority".

my ol' man is case-in-point. 5th of a dirtfarmer's 10 kids, son of a guy who invested his entire character in using WW1 enlistment as a way to get out of northern VT but got knocked back w a viral heart condition from Spanish flu and resented every subsequent day of his life, me Da ran the fam's 140 acres as a teenager while older brothers were at war and didnt graduate high school til he was 21 as a result. made his own try at getting off the farm, got knocked back, was about to give in when Harry Truman - who he hates more than everyone else combined - drafted him for Korea. realized that, being bright enough for Officer's Candidate School that, if he kept changing his specialty, he could stay in OCS indefinitely and rode out the war keeping Massachusetts & New Jersey safe from the Asian Commie hordes and taking leave at the NYC YMCA to watch Broadway shows.

married me Ma cuz she had a good job so he wouldnt have to bust hump to take advantage of GI Bill for some education. i was a honeymoon baby, tho, making my mother fat & unemployable so he did full-time in the freezers of Sealtest Ice Cream thru Bachelors & Masters programs @ UVM, got an R&D job @ Sylvania but had to pay off a deal with me Ma that she'd get to live with fam after college so commuted from innercity Boston OUT to the burbs for years til swarthy people encroached on our neighborhood and we moved to Salem.

Sylvania Lighting's R&D dept was so prolific that the company branched into TV/Stereo and thanked the dept that got em there by closing it. finally suffering unto a mortgage, my father did department tango for a coupla yrs til he realized they had no product-safety dept. designed one for them (claims to have created the product recall code) and was put in charge of it til the BA types conspired in unison against an engineer running a dept. the plant mgr liked me Da, so reached an agreement w the BAs that he could keep the title as long as he didnt do anything. for the next five years, he spent mornings writing trade papers and afternoons in a local strip club (reportedly engaging in a long affair w a 6ft black dancer called Silky Doll) til one of those papers garnered him a fancy job with a boutique lightining company in NYC. Spent his declining years fat & happy in the Jersey burbs til he got arbitraged out of job & pension by Matsu####a Electronics 5 yrs before he wanted to retire. He's 96, God bless him, and yells about gays causing hurricanes while i dress the phlebitic necroses on his feet.

Ladies & gentlemen, the Silent Generation.

Closest person I know to your father was one of my uncles, and while my memories of him growing up were nothing special, I learned in the years near the end of his life and after his death that he was actually an #####. Maybe that's why they were 'silent'.

I think the Silent Generation shouldn't include folks born in the late 20's-1940-ish, though they overlap with the Silents. I think they are a special thing in and of themselves, and maybe the timing being alive yet not traumatized by The Depression was a defining factor. In the show,  Don and Joan were both born during The Depression and are just old enough to have gone to Korea (a war that didn't have the cultural impact that WWII had) and enjoy the first fruits of the booming post-war economy as young adults without having had to go through the growing pains of building it. Plus there's the quartet of Campbell, Cosgrove, Crane and Kinsey, who started to make their way under more cushy circumstances and see prosperity as a birthright. My parents (born in '36 and '40, respectively) both were affected by the culture The Depression and WWII created yet don't have depressing stories to tell about it; to them, it was something they went through because they didn't know things could be any other way, and I think instilled in them the value of hard work and being wise with their money. They were by no means living anything resembling what any of the characters in the show were living, but nonetheless, they were contemporaries, and that's part of my interest in the show. Being the youngest in my family, I was an only child from age 11 on and therefore developed a bond with my parents that neither of my siblings had. This show gives me a glimpse of some of the things they may have experienced socially and culturally from the time before I can remember.

 

[Encyclopedia Brown]

The Conrad Hilton storyline hits hard, an emotional gut punch.

Hilton is everything Don aspires to be: fame/wealth/status, yet is miserable and empty.

Fantastic writing, and off the charts acting by Hamm and Chelcie Ross.

 

[Charlie Steiner]

The Conrad Hilton storyline hits hard, an emotional gut punch.

Hilton is everything Don aspires to be: fame/wealth/status, yet is miserable and empty.

Fantastic writing, and off the charts acting by Hamm and Chelcie Ross.

I've always wondered what 'gift' he had for Don toward the end of the series when he was at McCann.

Maybe a Bible with Don's name engraved on it?