Mad Men on AMC (5 Viewers)

jdoggydogg said:

The Women of Mad Men Answer Fan Questions

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Radical Larry said:

less than 3 weeks. Can't wait.

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Encyclopedia Brown said:

Radical Larry said:

less than 3 weeks. Can't wait.

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I thought Season Four was starting in October.

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Radical Larry said:

jdoggydogg said:

The Women of Mad Men Answer Fan Questions

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less than 3 weeks. Can't wait.

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Radical Larry said:

jdoggydogg said:

The Women of Mad Men Answer Fan Questions

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less than 3 weeks. Can't wait.Nice to see January/Betty's sparkling personality shine through.

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Back to Work for ‘Mad Men’

“WHO is Don Draper?” is the question that opens the premiere of the fourth season of “Mad Men.” And that’s an insider’s joke, a wink at viewers who have spent three years burrowing into the cryptic ad man’s buried secrets and damaged psyche.

AMC’s drama about Manhattan’s advertising world in the early 1960s isn’t just a cult favorite anymore; “Mad Men” has become a cultural phenomenon much in the way “The Sopranos” once was. The two shows are mirror opposites of course.

“The Sopranos” amused viewers with unexpected glimpses of bourgeois ordinariness — lawn mowing, school meetings, psychotherapy — inside the scary, alien world of organized crime. “Mad Men” offers a far more commonplace milieu — the rat race — and finds comedy in the distortions of a rear-view mirror. There lies the spectacle of people just like us doing things that today seem scary and alien, like smoking, drinking old-fashioneds at lunch, letting children play with dry-cleaner bags.

It’s a series set in the days of ice-cold martinis and cold war anxiety that has seduced contemporary fashion, advertising and even the English language. There are “Mad Men” Barbie and Ken dolls, a “Mad Men” clothing line at Banana Republic and pop culture books like “Mad Men and Philosophy: Nothing Is as It Seems.” The term “mad men” has become an adjective, a shorthand way to describe things that are louche, elegant and dissipated in an antediluvian way.

And accordingly there is “Mad Men” overload in the air and, in some corners, even a backlash. Don’s angst at times grew tiresome, as did his marital woes. Viewers yearned to get away from the home front and back to the office skirmishes at his agency, Sterling Cooper. Fortunately the series’s creator, Matthew Weiner, has found a way to finesse “Mad Men” fatigue at the end of the third season by giving his story a mulligan.

Sterling Cooper is starting over, as Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, and so is Don. When the series began in 2007, its main characters were established, slightly jaded players in a field that was on top of its game in a nation still puffed up with postwar confidence and superpower brio. The advertising firm was so successful, despite its disreputable office parties, that it was practically white shoe. And its creative director, Don Draper (Jon Hamm), married to lovely Betty (January Jones) with two lovely children in a lovely suburb, had little to prove, except, perhaps his effortless prowess as an extramarital ladies’ man.

But when Sterling Cooper’s British parent company was sold at the end of last season to an even bigger advertising behemoth, Don and his colleagues broke away and lost their complacency.

Suddenly they became small and scrappy without the huge accounts, vast office space and bottomless expenses of yesteryear. And that final episode, as Don banded his loyalists together to start a new firm, was the most exhilarating moment of the season.

Now, at the beginning of Season 4, which begins next Sunday, it’s a year later, and the executives of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce go on cattle calls to woo clients. Contracts melt away. The business is precarious and copywriters stoop to publicity stunts to gin up business.

His personal life is just as altered. Betty is freshly embarked on a new marriage with Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley), an older man and an aide to Nelson Rockefeller. Henry, who has grown children from a previous marriage, promises Betty a better life — though this one comes with a scornful mother-in-law.

And Don, who had women falling over themselves trying to get him into bed when he was married, finds himself alone in a dark Greenwich Village apartment, shining his own shoes and going out on blind dates. Being a bachelor back in those days before the pill and “The Sensuous Woman” did not automatically include swinging. Don tries to kiss a young woman in the back of a cab but can’t get any further. She won’t let him accompany her to the door to the Barbizon, then a women-only hotel, because, as she puts it coyly, “I know that trick.”

“Mad Men” keeps confounding expectations — the ’60s fashion, mores and cultural landmarks keep getting more familiar, but the characters maintain an elusive weirdness. Betty looks like Grace Kelly, but she seems blandly prosaic — except when she picks up a BB gun and shoots the neighbor’s pigeons, a cigarette dangling from her perfectly curved lips.

Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) would be just another irritating office brown-noser, a prep school Sammy Glick, except that he too has a screw loose and a mystical rapport with firearms. Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) should be an easily identified Rona Jaffe heroine — an unmarried career woman breaking the barriers of sexism — but she too is peculiar and enigmatic. Even Don and Betty’s forlorn daughter, Sally (Kiernan Shipka), is more strange than sad.

“Mad Men” is a period piece that reverses the template. Historical dramas like “The Tudors” or “John Adams” sift through a remote, archaic culture to highlight the most familiar and contemporary concerns of historical characters. “Mad Men” wallows in the comfort of a recent and well-known past by way of characters who are always a little opaque and unknowable.

The narrative snakes through a Life magazine timeline of political turmoil and social change — the John F. Kennedy assassination is a transforming event, and so are the poems of Frank O’Hara and the songs of Bob Dylan. In the season premiere, a character cites the killing of Andrew Goodman, the civil rights volunteer who was murdered with two co-workers in Mississippi. It’s a mention that marks the year as 1964 and the mood of the country as nearing a boiling point. Or as one character puts it, “The world is so dark right now.”

But it isn’t always obvious to those living in it. Copywriters goof around at work. Peggy and a young colleague jokingly coo the names “Marsha” and “John” at each other, an oblique nod to Stan Freberg, an ad writer and comedian who had a huge hit in 1951 with a recorded single, “John & Marsha,” a soap opera parody in which actors intone the words “John” and “Marsha” over and over to organ music.

Don has dinner at Jimmy’s La Grange, a Midtown restaurant favored by advertising executives where chicken à la Kiev is a specialty, and diners are given bibs to protect them from the splatter of butter.

Those kinds of oblique references tether the fictional world of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce to the real advertising world of those times. That’s partly professional pride on the part of the writers, who dread complaints from old ad executives. Emeritus “mad men” can be as finicky and exacting about the historical details of their bygone days as Civil War re-enactors are about the uniforms worn at Bull Run.

But those cues also hold out the promise that the coming season will once again pivot the story on the workplace. It’s where “Mad Men” started and where it was best. A fresh start at the rat race is just what the series needs.

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Barry said:

finished s3 tonight and ready for 4. The ending to the John Deere episode was some real funny ####. lois

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badmojo1006 said:

Barry said:

finished s3 tonight and ready for 4. The ending to the John Deere episode was some real funny ####. lois

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I loved in the last episode when they are going through everything at Sterling Cooper. It is Roger, Joan and Peggy sitting at the table.Roger says, "Peggy go get me some coffee"

Peggy without looking up says "No" The look on Roger's face was priceless

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Premier said:

Can't wait for tonight.

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Celph Titled said:

Great f'ing episode. Love being on the West Coast and getting to watch at 7p, then 9p.

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gump said:

Was Harry's forehead sun-burned?Great ep...Don's life has certainly changed. Not even as easy to get lucky anymore.

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gump said:

Who's the actress Don went out with?

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“Public Relations” picks up about 11 months after the events of “Shut the Door. Have a Seat”(*), with the creation of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and the dissolution of the Draper marriage. It’s Thanksgiving 1964, and Don has seemingly gotten everything he ever wanted professionally, and lost nearly everything he ever thought he wanted personally.

(*) I had briefly forgotten exactly when in ‘63 the finale took place, until I recalled Lane Pryce’s delightful, “Very good. Happy Christmas!” kiss-off to St. John Powell. Good times.

But things on “Mad Men” are never quite that simple. Don is a name partner and the clear power at SCDP, but with great power comes great responsibility, and headaches, and having to give Peggy bail money on Thanksgiving day, and having to make sure every minute of his non-nap time is devoted to making money for the company. And despite the celebrated success of Don’s cinematic Glo-Coat commercial, the firm is barely hanging on financially, working out of a swank but small office in the Time-Life building with no conference table and (despite claims to the contrary by everyone but Bert Cooper) no second floor. They’re still too dependent on Lucky Strike for survival, and the attempt to turn Don into a creative celebrity butts up against Don’s paranoia and disdain for talking about himself.

In part because he’s always afraid someone else will find out about **** Whitman, in part because of how Archie and the others raised him, Don doesn’t want to be the center of attention. But just as the men from Jantzen stubbornly try to hide behind the use of “two-piece” to pretend they aren’t making flesh-baring bikinis(**), Don needs to accept that in this changing world, he has to prepare himself for full exposure. He’s not the delicate genius in the corner office anymore. He’s the public face of SCDP, and if that means sitting down for an interview in which he brags on himself(***), then he will.

(**) I was pleased to see that the official Jantzen website of 2010 does refer to bikinis from time to time. The times, they were eventually a’changing.

(***) We, of course, remember how the actual “Fire us” moment went in “Shut the Door. Have a Seat.” - that it was an idea born of desperation, not confidence - but Don gets the basic details right. He’s embellishing, not dissembling.

That Wall Street Journal interview isn’t going to solve everything. I’m dubious of Harry’s ability to charm Ho-Ho into coming back (really, I’m dubious of Harry’s ability to do anything but get a sunburn), and of course they’re still one Lee Garner Jr. tantrum away from losing American Tobacco and falling apart altogether. But the creation of the new firm hasn’t just been a cosmetic excuse to move most of the actors onto a new set (even if Dan Bishop’s gorgeous, open and glased-in set got a splendid waltz-like introduction accompanied by some more of David Carbonara’s Rat Pack-style score).

Things have changed. There are fewer people, fewer barriers (both physical and political) between the partners and everyone else, more of a sense of common purpose. Pete and Peggy try their ridiculous publicity stunt with the hams because they can’t afford to lose another account, and when Don chews out Peggy when the gag almost blows up in their faces, she’s now strong enough to argue back. (And earlier displays that she has multiple strategies - albeit not always successful ones - for shielding herself from his anger.) Joan has an office now, as all the unwritten parts of her job description at the old firm are official and oft-acknowledged. Roger has come back to life, Bert Cooper is more active, and this feels very much like a place where “Mad Men” isn’t going to be telling variations on the same old stories as the show moves into middle-age.

Away from the office, Don is very much adrift. He has a nice apartment in the Village, but he’s lonely, and he’s hungry in every sense of the word. He doesn’t eat the food his housekeeper makes for him, doesn’t seem interested in dating women like Jane’s friend Bethany - nor can he close the deal with her(****) - and instead has taken to employing prostitutes to work out his self-loathing issues. Back in season one’s “The Wheel,” Betty told her therapist, "The way he makes love -- sometimes it's what I want, sometimes it's obviously what someone else wants.” When Don pays for it, he doesn’t have to factor in anyone’s desires but his own, and those desires aren’t necessarily pleasant to witness.

(****) In our interview, Weiner suggests that Don runs into trouble because he’s single now, and Bethany therefore views him as boyfriend material rather than someone she can sleep with and move on from. But there’s also a sense that as the ‘60s move along, the kinds of women Don used to have an easy time seducing are getting stronger and smarter, and the Don Draper playbook from 1962 won’t work as easily on a 1964 woman.

And the former Mrs. Draper? Who’s refusing to move out of the house on Bullet Park Road, even though she’s already married Henry Francis? Well, she also got everything she thought she wanted - a husband who’s more attentive and respectable than Don - but she’s more miserable - or at least more monstrous - than ever. Betty has never been one of the series’ more likable characters, but at least when she was married to Don, you could feel some sympathy for her because you knew what a lying, manipulative SOB he was. With Don mostly out of the picture, Betty’s least appealing traits - her chilliness, her petulance and her bullying of her kids (here literally shoving a marshmallow into Sally’s mouth, creating a much bigger scene than if Sally had just confessed to not liking Henry’s mother’s cooking) - are all in full bloom. Henry seems to be growing understandably frustrated with her - he has to recreate their early kiss in the car to remind himself of why he chose to marry her - and even he doesn’t understand why she won’t look for another house already. I’m hoping that as Betty gets more distance from her marriage, Weiner finds a way to humanize her. (And if he can’t, then I want to see a lot less of her, even if she and Don are sharing the kids.)

A lot of TV series do status quo-altering season finales, then take a handful of episodes at the start of the next year to reset things to the default(*****), and “Mad Men” could have very easily done that here. Betty has already taken Don back once and could do it again, and while the new firm lacks Kinsey and Sal and some others, enough of the familiar faces have relocated there that it could easily become, as Weiner puts it in our interview, “Sterling Cooper in a new office.”

(*****) Even great ones sometimes prefer to fall back on old rhythms. On “The Sopranos,” Carmela did eventually take Tony back, after all, though at least there it was thematically consistent with the show’s belief that people are usually too selfish to truly change anything about their lives.

But even though Don expertly throws Henry’s words back at him by telling him, “Believe me, Henry, everybody believes this is temporary,” it’s clear that the end of the Draper marriage, and the professional changes going on at the new firm, are permanent. “Public Relations” signals a show that’s looking forward, not back.

I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Some other thoughts on “Public Relations”:

[*]Joan doesn’t get a lot to do in the premiere, but that first glimpse of her office as we enter SCDP for the first time felt triumphant, and she gets one of the funniest lines of the premiere, when she assures Harry the buffoon that she won’t reveal his secret about the jai alai special, insisting, “I won’t even tell people after it’s aired!”

[*]Roger, of course, gets plenty of great lines as well, particularly at the expense of the one-legged reporter from Advertising Age, who came out of Korea far worse than Don did. And maybe the best joke of all is Pete saying, enthusiastically, “I could use my expense account if I say they’re whores!”

[*]Joey, Peggy’s new partner in crime (but not, for now at least, her boyfriend, since she has milquetoast Mark as her “fiance”), is played by Matt Long, probably best known for playing one of the leads on the WB’s short-lived “Jack and Bobby” (and, more recently, the lead on ABC’s even shorter-lived “The Deep End”).

[*]Note, too, that whatever tensions existed between Pete and Peggy last season over him learning about the baby have seemingly vanished. Either he’s accepted that he really is happy without a child in his life, or he’s matured enough to recognize there simply isn’t time (or space) to hold a grudge in the cramped, scrappy world of SCDP. (And the two actresses they hired for the Sugarberry stunt do enough fighting for the four of them.)

[*]Bethany’s played by Anna Camp, who was one of the religious cult leaders last year on “True Blood.” It’s a very “Mad Men” touch that Bethany’s an actress whose job is to be living background scenery - there to make the picture look prettier, but not to be noticed on her own, and to be paid with comp tickets.

[*]Sad to have lost (for now, at least) Paul, Sal and Ken (and Ken’s haircut), but it was nice to see that Don was able to lure Allison over to continue as his secretary. Other than Joan’s brief fill-in during season two, she’s the only strong support he’s had at that desk.

[*]The song over the closing credits was “Tobacco Road,” which was originally recorded in 1960 but became a hit again in 1964 when recorded by the Brit pop band The Nashville Teens.

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Raider Nation said:

gump said:

Who's the actress Don went out with?

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Anna Camp

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Raider Nation said:

Alan Sepinwall:

Henry seems to be growing understandably frustrated with Betty - he has to recreate their early kiss in the car to remind himself of why he chose to marry her - and even he doesn't understand why she won't look for another house already.

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identikit said:

Raider Nation said:

gump said:

Who's the actress Don went out with?

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Anna Camp

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I believe she played the preacher's horny wife in last season's True Blood...

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Raider Nation said:

Alan Sepinwall:

[

(*) I had briefly forgotten exactly when in ‘63 the finale took place, until I recalled Lane Pryce’s delightful, “Very good. Happy Christmas!” kiss-off to St. John Powell. Good times.

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McJose said:

Raider Nation said:

Alan Sepinwall:

(*) I had briefly forgotten exactly when in '63 the finale took place, until I recalled Lane Pryce's delightful, "Very good. Happy Christmas!" kiss-off to St. John Powell. Good times.

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Who is this hack?Roger says the exact date: "Well it's official: Friday, December 13th, 1963. Four guys shot their own legs off."

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Raider Nation said:

McJose said:

Raider Nation said:

Alan Sepinwall:

(*) I had briefly forgotten exactly when in '63 the finale took place, until I recalled Lane Pryce's delightful, "Very good. Happy Christmas!" kiss-off to St. John Powell. Good times.

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Who is this hack?Roger says the exact date: "Well it's official: Friday, December 13th, 1963. Four guys shot their own legs off."

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First, I'm not sure if you're being serious or not about A.S. being a hack. He is perhaps the finest TV scribe on the planet. His reviews of Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Sopranos, NYPD Blue, The Shield etc. are legendary. Scroll down for examples of his work: http://sepinwall.blogspot.com/Secondly, as a critic he gets advanced copies of episodes. It's possible the information you quoted was not included in first draft of the show which he saw.

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McJose said:

Raider Nation said:

McJose said:

Raider Nation said:

Alan Sepinwall:

(*) I had briefly forgotten exactly when in '63 the finale took place, until I recalled Lane Pryce's delightful, "Very good. Happy Christmas!" kiss-off to St. John Powell. Good times.

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Who is this hack?Roger says the exact date: "Well it's official: Friday, December 13th, 1963. Four guys shot their own legs off."

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First, I'm not sure if you're being serious or not about A.S. being a hack. He is perhaps the finest TV scribe on the planet. His reviews of Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Sopranos, NYPD Blue, The Shield etc. are legendary. Scroll down for examples of his work: http://sepinwall.blogspot.com/Secondly, as a critic he gets advanced copies of episodes. It's possible the information you quoted was not included in first draft of the show which he saw.

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That was from episode 13 of season 3. I've never heard of the guy. Sounds like a kick-back job.

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Gadfly said:

McJose said:

Raider Nation said:

McJose said:

Raider Nation said:

Alan Sepinwall:

(*) I had briefly forgotten exactly when in '63 the finale took place, until I recalled Lane Pryce's delightful, "Very good. Happy Christmas!" kiss-off to St. John Powell. Good times.

Click to expand...

Who is this hack?Roger says the exact date: "Well it's official: Friday, December 13th, 1963. Four guys shot their own legs off."

Click to expand...

First, I'm not sure if you're being serious or not about A.S. being a hack. He is perhaps the finest TV scribe on the planet. His reviews of Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Sopranos, NYPD Blue, The Shield etc. are legendary. Scroll down for examples of his work: http://sepinwall.blogspot.com/Secondly, as a critic he gets advanced copies of episodes. It's possible the information you quoted was not included in first draft of the show which he saw.

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That was from episode 13 of season 3. I've never heard of the guy. Sounds like a kick-back job.

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I'm sure it beats digging ditches but he puts in a lot of hours, and he is one of the best TV critics around. Not sure why you think of him as a hack because he didn't remember Roger says the exact date. Sounds like the guy was trying to remember when the finale took place, then thought of Pryce's line. It makes sense that line would stand out in his memory over Roger saying the date, and this was probably a minute or two of him thinking about the timing of the finale he watched a while back. It's not like he watched the finale over again and didn't notice the date being mentioned.

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Raider Nation said:

Alan Sepinwall:

And maybe the best joke of all is Pete saying, enthusiastically, “I could use my expense account if I say they’re whores!”

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Gadfly said:

Not his job at all. His job is to review television shows and generate reader interest. He does a great job at it. For this article, he wanted remember approximately when Season 3 of Mad Men ended. He did so by remembering Layne's Happy Christmas comment. So he had what he needed for the article. He didn't need the exact date, or to remember that Roger said it was December 13th. That had no importance to what he was writing. That you're making a big deal of it says something about you, not him.

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Raider Nation said:

McJose said:

Raider Nation said:

Alan Sepinwall:

(*) I had briefly forgotten exactly when in '63 the finale took place, until I recalled Lane Pryce's delightful, "Very good. Happy Christmas!" kiss-off to St. John Powell. Good times.

Click to expand...

Who is this hack?Roger says the exact date: "Well it's official: Friday, December 13th, 1963. Four guys shot their own legs off."

Click to expand...

First, I'm not sure if you're being serious or not about A.S. being a hack. He is perhaps the finest TV scribe on the planet. His reviews of Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Sopranos, NYPD Blue, The Shield etc. are legendary. Scroll down for examples of his work: http://sepinwall.blogspot.com/Secondly, as a critic he gets advanced copies of episodes. It's possible the information you quoted was not included in first draft of the show which he saw.

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badmojo1006 said:

What was up with Don and the prostitute? Him wanting her to slap him. Weird

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jwb said:

badmojo1006 said:

What was up with Don and the prostitute? Him wanting her to slap him. Weird

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I think it's part of the self-loathing / dark period that he seems to be going through. He lost his family / got divorced, which in 1963 was a big, big deal. People are feeling pity for him, wondering about his social life, etc. It's a bad time for him, and he can't be happy with himself. He's also the "star" of the new agency, and is somewhat reluctant to grab that role.Really, thinking about it more, I kind of take it as a "snap out of it" thing, which, by the end of the show, seems to possibly be the case.

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Celph Titled said:

Someone that we haven't seen yet who looks like they're going to be back:
*** SPOILER ALERT! Click this link to display the potential spoiler text in this box. ***");document.close();

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Sigmund Bloom said:

Raider Nation said:

McJose said:

Raider Nation said:

Alan Sepinwall:

(*) I had briefly forgotten exactly when in '63 the finale took place, until I recalled Lane Pryce's delightful, "Very good. Happy Christmas!" kiss-off to St. John Powell. Good times.

Click to expand...

Who is this hack?Roger says the exact date: "Well it's official: Friday, December 13th, 1963. Four guys shot their own legs off."

Click to expand...

First, I'm not sure if you're being serious or not about A.S. being a hack. He is perhaps the finest TV scribe on the planet. His reviews of Breaking Bad, The Wire, The Sopranos, NYPD Blue, The Shield etc. are legendary. Scroll down for examples of his work: http://sepinwall.blogspot.com/Secondly, as a critic he gets advanced copies of episodes. It's possible the information you quoted was not included in first draft of the show which he saw.

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Sepinwall is gold, and a FBG subscriber to boot! Sometimes he shoots me WDIS questions on Twitter. Absolute essential reading for serious fans of the shows mentioned above.

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