Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

By

Mad Men Sunday: Today’s the season finale

Tonight’s the season finale for Mad Men, but fans will have their DVDs to reminisce by.

There’s no video preview for tonight’s episode, but here’s the “inside” last week’s episode,

The Wall Street Journal bloggers are wondering if Conrad Hilton’s making a comeback in tonight’s episode.

The Journa’s conversation poses the question that (maybe) tonight’s episode will answer:

Creative work doesn’t always pay off. To be an artist, which is exactly what Don in his way is, is to live with the risk of failure. Where is Don headed? For Midge’s garret or the serious glamor of anti-tobacco campaigns?

There may be other surprises next season: Christina Hendricks Wants To Ditch Her Womanly Curves & Drop 35 Pounds!

She must be nuts.

UPDATE
What did I think of the finale?
(spoiler below the fold)
(more…)

23584
Share

By

Mad Men Sunday: The Joan look

Mad Men costume designer reveals secret to Joan Holloway look
Janie Bryant, costume designer of hit show Mad Men, has disclosed how the show’s unique style was created.

She has told The Sunday Telegraph how:

* The actresses are banned from working out so that their bodies do not appear too muscular.

* The female characters wear “shapewear” including girdles and longline bras — a cross between a bra and a corset — to push their bodies into hourglass shapes.

* When the antique and reproduction bras and garters start causing the actresses too much pain, assistants provide them with pads of moleskin to cushion their skin

Sounds simple enough, but the details are what make them appealing, including Joan’s pen necklace.

Politicians are getting publicity on their Mad Men Style, too.

Here’s the preview of tonight’s show,

And don’t forget to check out the Wall Street Journal’s commentary and recap of last week’s episode 11.

23490
Share

By

Mad Men Sunday: The thickening plot

Three episodes left in the season and last Sunday there were panic attacks in every form. Don had a panic attack, Lane gets kicked in the face by his own father, and Lucky Strike left Roger after Roger found out Joan is pregnant (is she still pregnant by episode’s end?). All the panics involved secrets in one form or another, and how secrets take a toll. Soap, 99.44% pure.

Last week’s episode had confrontation after confrontation,

The Wall Street Journal has embraced the Mad Men and not only has ‘Mad Men,’ Season 4, Episode 10, ‘Hands and Knees’: TV Recap, they also interviewed Lynn Shelton, who directed last week’s episode, and continue the weekly conversations, which are always enlightening: Walter Dellinger explains,

But my absolute favorite fact about the show is that the abusive Robert Pryce informs his son Lane that he will be staying at the Warwick Hotel until Friday. Warwick Hotel? That rang a bell. As readers are no doubt weary of hearing, I was a clerk in New York City in the summer of 1965. Although I couldn’t score a ticket to the legendary Beatles concert in Shea Stadium on Sunday night, August 15th of that year, I followed the daily saga of that week’s British Invasion of NYC. Especially memorable was the riot that occurred as a mob of (mostly) young girls surrounded the Warwick Hotel where the Beatles – and Robert Pryce! – were staying.

The mob scene at the Warwick occurred on the morning of Friday the thirteenth. It would have been well nigh impossible to exit the hotel that morning. Did the Pryces miss their flight to London? Or did Robert Pryce use his horrible skill with his walking-stick-as-weapon to beat their way through the chorus of teenyboppers-in-heat. (Their whole father/son thing seems to confirm the worst stereotypes of what British boarding school abuse leads to).

The preview for tonight’s episode doesn’t seem all that exciting, with Peggy being stuck in a car with the Communist guy, a most uninteresting character,

However, with the season finale getting close, Countdown to ‘Mad Men’: Are Don Draper and company on the ‘Eve of Destruction’?

Of course they’re not. If they did, we would stop watching.

In the meantime, here’s a shot of Christina Hendricks that ought to get me a spot on Smitty’s Rule 5 Sunday sometime,

23336
Share

By

Mad Men Sunday: Jon Hamm talks politics

Actor Jon Hamm: The Tea Party Is “Racist” (VIDEO)

Actor Jon Hamm said that the “Luo tribesman” statement was racist. “That’s what it’s all sort of couched in … that’s the secret agenda.” He then added this: “When they say [Obama] is a ‘Luo tribesman,’ it’s all sort of code.”

Fellow guest Martha Raddatz agreed with Hamm. “That’s the message there … that Obama’s ‘exotic,’” she said. “[That] there’s something ‘different’ about him than the rest of us.”

Hamm finished up the “racism” discussion with a jab at conservatives. He said that the Tea Party keeps taking about “taking back” America. “Well,” he said, “who are ‘we’ taking it back from?” Hamm then concluded with this remark: “I’m pretty sure … ‘we’ as Americans still have America. I don’t know who ‘we’ need to take it back from.” The crowd applauded when he was done.

The sole purpose of Bill Maher’s HBO program Real Time is, it seems, to disappoint viewers by proving that the actors, musicians, and comedians they respect hold exceptionally dumb political views.

Meanwhile, a fan tries to get Far From the Madding ‘Mad Men’ Crowd. As usual, the Wall Street Journal has the best recap of last week’s episode, The Beautiful Girls; the conversation compares the episode to The Women.

Was it The Women?

23096
Share

By

Mad Men Sunday: The swimmer

Last Sunday’s episode, The Summer Man, featured an introspective Don controlling his alcohol intake while pondering his problems. The episode starts with Don swimming at the NYAC, doing one lap & bursting into a cough. Later in the episode he was fit enough to race another guy in he adjacent lane, and win. It was fascinating at the same time of being reminiscent of the Burt Lancaster classic film The Swimmer (1968), which in turn was based on a John Cheever story first published in 1965, the year in which this episode takes place.

Unlike Cheever’s Swimmer, Don’s life has not careened out of control. Even when he admits that his mind is a jumble, Don realizes that he can attain a modicum of peace, introspection is not a bad thing after all, and sleeping alone is actually pleasant. As the WSJ’s recap put it,

Mick Jagger can’t get no satisfaction—but last night’s installment of “Mad Men” made it seem like Don Draper might be able to.

Let’s hope he does.

Another very interesting plot twist involved sexual harassment by Joey-the-freelance-illustrator who ends up being fired by Peggy; however, Joan clarified to Peggy how Joan would have handled it – and kept power on Joan’s hand, instead of Peggy’s – illustrating the changing strategies women faced as the working world evolved.

During her dates with Don, Fay brings up the fable of the wind and the sun, which neatly tied all the story lines together at the end of the episode. Or does it?

The episode started with Mick Jagger singing Satisfaction, and ended with the credits silently rolling by. Toril Moi asks,

Who can’t get no satisfaction in this episode? At first, it may look as if it is Don, since the song plays when he stands outside the gym watching the women go by. (The Rolling Stones’ song was released in the U.S. in June 1965.) But this episode is more about Don’s redemption than about his frustration: he is the summer man who will flourish after his winter of hibernation.

Of course Don’s not going to remain the controlled, introspective swimmer in each and every episode, since this is a soap opera after all, but the series’s writers have managed to merge well-realized fictional characters, history, advertising products, and the changing sex roles in the workplace, simultaneously maintaining and renewing our interest.

And now for the superficial stuff:
Other highlights were the brilliant Miss Blankenship recovering from eye surgery, and the women’s fashions. You can’t help but notice the impeccable fit on Peggy’s blue dress with red gores, and how every female character is wearing exactly her personality. Of course Jon Hamm fans will love the swimming scenes, and Christopher Stanley (Henry) looks very fine while shirtless.

Tonight’s episode, The Beautiful Girls, airs at 10PM Eastern; here’s the preview:

In Jon Hamm news, The Town is now playing at a theater near you, so Hamm’s out promoting it. If you click on the link, the article says that Hamm’s being considered to play Superman.

I certainly hope he doesn’t.

23063
Share

By

Mad Men Sunday: The Don and Peggy show

After last week’s episode, the baggage-loaded The Suitcase, one may just wonder when will they end up in bed?

If the writers have any sense, the answer will be: on the series’s final episode. Those two end up in the sack and the show will either jump the sack or be a televised version of Adam’s Rib. Or worse, a continuous festivus where the two air their grievances, as they did last week, timed to the Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston fight:

The Wall Street Journal’s recap speculates,

Peggy’s hesitant about the ad, but she tells Don she likes it. Finally, she turns to go home and take a much-needed shower. As Peggy leaves, she asks Don whether he wants the entrance to his office to be open or closed. “Open,” he says. We’re pretty sure he’s not just talking about the door.

Alcoholism is now a central theme in the plot:

Don may be self-destructive, but no amount of anachronistic moralizing about health and drinking is going to get him to stop. He can’t stop until he finds his own reasons for doing so. Will he need to experience genuine tragedy (killing a man in a boat) before he can turn things around?

The thing that grabs you about Mad Men is not just the actors, the retro sets and clothes, and the soap opera plot; it’s also, as Walter Dellinger points out,

One of the many aspects of “Mad Men” that separates it from soap operas and other dramas is the extraordinary way in which it is so deeply situated in a real time and place. The almost perfectly realized world of early summer 1965 is not simply the period “setting” for this production: it is the prima materia of the drama itself.

Tonight’s episode is titled The Summer Man, and the preview features Miss Blankenship, whom I have learned to love,

“I’m telling you, I was blind, and now I see.”

Can’t wait for Miss Blankenship to dye her hair blue and stand next to Joan for contrast.

If you miss Mad Men on AMC, you can catch the episodes on iTunes.

Over in Argentina, Yanqui Mike has the Mad Men Mania, too.

22980
Share

By

Mad Men Sunday: The Rolling Stone photos UPDATED

At Rolling Stone:
Inside ‘Mad Men’: On Set and Behind the Scenes of the Emmy- Winning Show

The caption for the above photo?

Flying Low
“I fly very low on the radar,” says Hamm. “Mark Twain said it: ‘I’d rather say nothing and be thought an idiot than open my mouth and remove all doubt.’ Another Missouri boy, Mark Twain. The petulant, shitty movie-star mentality – that burns out pretty quick.”

Amen!

I was at the supermarket the other day and Vanity Fair has Hamm on the cover surrounded by the gorgeous ladies of Mad Men, but so far the Vanity Fair website is not showing it.

I’m liking how the ads are tying-in with the show; here’s a Behind the Scenes of Unilever’s Retro ‘Mad Men’ Ads

Here’s one of their ads (which was preceded by a Purdue Chicken ad. Young Mr. Purdue’s looking more like Old Mr. Purdue every day.),

Recap of last week’s episode at the Wall Street Journal,
‘Mad Men,’ Season 4, Episode 6, ‘Waldorf Stories’: TV Recap

Preview of tonight’s episode,

This season’s question:

The more concrete Draper becomes—and the more he asserts himself as a character, the more problematic he becomes for the audience. Can we continue to be enthralled if Draper is no longer our hero/anti-hero?

Staying tuned…

UPDATE, Monday September 6,
After watching last night’s episode, and pondering the above question, I have yet one more question,
Should we also be thankful that the writers didn’t show us Don actually throwing up at the toilet, but only did sound effects and his legs sticking out of the stall?

22826
Share

By

Mad Men Sunday: The mug, the drinks, plus VIDEO

Last week Don took his date to Benihana, a restaurant chain that managed to sustain business for decades. Even I was taken to Benihana on a date (but not in 1964!), and I wonder if there’s still a Benihana somewhere slicing, chopping, and dicing to entertain the diners.

Cripes Suzette has the Laughing Bhudda mug. Suzette collects enough vintage tableware the Mad Men props people would love her.

What to drink off the mug? Drink To The Emmys In ‘Mad Men’ Style

VIDEO
Behind the scenes: last week’s episode:

At the Wall Street Journal,

‘Mad Men,’ Season 4, Episode 5, ‘The Chrysanthemum and the Sword’: TV Recap

Tonight’s Emmys have a lot of Mad Men nominees:
Men of drama drive Emmys
Lead actor class offers bounty of deserving performances

Jon Hamm was intoxicating during the third season of AMC’s advertising-driven period piece “Mad Men,” as his suave Don Draper lied, cheated, smoked and drank his way from coast to coast and lost just about everything he created along the way. Hamm’s cerebral character, anchoring the Emmy-winning best drama the past two years, was mesmerizing as he continued to crack apart but never fully fell to pieces.

22558
Share