Mad Men

44 more reviews

1. ›Television Review: The Good News (Mad Men, S4x03, 2010)@drax3d1 view

   

   The Good News (S4x03)

   Airdate: 8 August 2010

   Written by: Matthew Weiner & Jonathan Abrahams Directed by: Jennifer Getzinger

   Running Time: 48 minutes

   For its first three seasons, Mad Men basked in the near-unanimous adoration of critics, who hailed Matthew Weiner’s period drama as a masterpiece of television. Yet, as the fourth season began, a subtle but perceptible shift occurred in the critical consensus. The bloom was, if not entirely off the rose, certainly beginning to wilt. The third episode of the season, The Good News, became the first instance where the chorus of enthusiasm was notably muted, and a nagging question began to surface in reviews and recaps: had Matthew Weiner, like his protagonist Don Draper, lost his creative “mojo”? The episode was not bad, but it felt like a stumble, a moment of uncertainty from a show that had previously seemed so sure-footed.

   The episode is set around the New Year of 1965, and its central storyline finds Don Draper, alone and depressed in his bachelor pad, telling anyone who will listen that he plans to spend the remaining days of 1964 vacationing in Acapulco. This is, of course, a lie. Instead, he takes a detour to California, to visit his quasi-wife and old friend, Anna Draper, the only person who knows the truth of his stolen identity and who has always understood him without judgement. For Don, California has always been a precious getaway, a liberating escape from the tiresome entanglements of his corporate life and the wreckage of his family life. It is the place where he can shed the skin of Don Draper and be Dick Whitman, if only for a while. Yet, in a significant departure from the show’s established pattern, this visit marks the first time he leaves the West Coast in worse shape than when he arrived.

   His stay at Anna’s home begins pleasantly enough. He is greeted by Anna’s sister, Patty (Susan Leslie), and her college-attending daughter, Stephanie (Cathy Lotz). Stephanie is young, spirited, and attractive, wearing skimpy clothes and enthusiastically embracing the burgeoning counterculture of the 1960s, whether it be political protests or marijuana. Don, feeling rejuvenated by the liberated atmosphere of the West Coast, cannot resist the opportunity to flirt with her. But Stephanie is not impressed, and she delivers a devastating blow: Anna has terminal cancer. The family has deliberately chosen not to tell her, hoping to allow her to die in peace. Don is sworn to secrecy. He initially resolves to spend extra time with Anna, to savour what little time remains. But in the end, he simply cannot cope with the emotional weight. He flees back to New York, leaving Anna blissfully unaware that they have just seen each other for the last time.

   The other storyline of the episode concerns Joan Holloway and her increasingly fraught marital situation. A scene in a doctor’s office reveals that Joan wants to get pregnant, but is deeply concerned about the potential complications from her two previous abortions, as well as the very real prospect of her husband, Greg, being sent to Vietnam. She attempts to secure some extra vacation time from the overworked Lane Pryce, but he refuses. Later, she receives a bouquet of flowers and an apology note from Lane, which prompts her to storm into his office, only to discover it was a mix-up. The package was intended for Lane’s wife, and his incompetent secretary, Sandy (Bayne Gibney), sent it to Joan by mistake. Joan’s reaction is swift and brutal: she fires Sandy on the spot. The emotional climax of her storyline comes when she accidentally cuts herself while making breakfast for Greg. He immediately takes charge, expertly “fixing her up” with a bandage, demonstrating a skill and tenderness that is entirely absent from their emotional life. The sight of this small, competent kindness is so jarring and so painful that it makes Joan cry.

   Don, at a loss for what to do with himself, ends up in the otherwise empty SCDP offices, where Lane is still working. It does not take much time or alcohol for Don to realise that Lane is in a similarly dire situation: his wife has left him and will not be returning from England. The two men decide to comfort each other with a classic night out on the town, involving heavy drinking, an expensive restaurant, a trip to the cinema, and a visit to a comedy club. There, an unknown comedian (Will Janowitz) mistakes them for a homosexual couple, a moment of awkward humour that is quickly defused when they are joined by a call-girl, Candace, and her colleague, Janine (Elaine Carroll). The night ends at Don’s apartment, where Lane has sex with Janine and later pays her extra for her service. The episode closes the next morning, with the SCDP leadership assembled in the conference room, and Joan asking them, “Gentlemen, shall we begin 1965?”

   +The Good News+ is a solid episode, but it feels like a misstep. Matthew Weiner, who co-wrote the script with Jonathan Abrahams, gives the impression of trying too hard to engineer a tonal shift following the dark overtones of the previous episode, but he apparently lacks the conviction to see it through. Don’s vacation, which was supposed to rejuvenate him, ends with another devastating revelation, but the way it is handled feels soapish and brings too much bathos to the proceedings. The emotional weight of Anna’s impending death is undercut by the melodramatic reveal and Don’s subsequent flight, which feels less like a profound character moment and more like a plot device to get him back to New York.

   Weiner does provide a light at the end of the tunnel, ironically, when Don returns to New York and has his “Boys’ Own Adventure” with Lane, which is presented in a largely humorous fashion. This segment, however, is spoiled by a glaring anachronism. The film the two men watch is Gamera, the 1965 Japanese monster classic, which was actually released later in the year than the episode’s setting. This is a major faux pas for a series that has prided itself on its meticulous attention to period detail, and it is the kind of error that breaks the immersion for attentive viewers.

   Ultimately, the episode is saved by Christina Hendricks, whose storyline finally gives her character something substantial to do after being tragically underused in the previous season. Joan’s arc is the emotional core of the episode, and Hendricks delivers a performance of quiet desperation and simmering rage that is far more compelling than Don’s maudlin journey. Her storyline provides the genuine emotional weight that the rest of the episode strives for but fails to achieve. The Good News is a reminder that even the best shows can stumble, and that sometimes, the supporting cast is the only thing holding the whole thing together.

   RATING: 6/10 (++)

   ==

   Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo Substack https://draxster.substack.com/

   LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

   BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

   ▲Upvote

   ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

   💬 Show comments
2. ›Television Review: Christmas Comes But Once a Year (Mad Men, S4x02, 2010)@drax4d

   

   Christmas Comes But Once a Year (S4x02)

   Airdate: 1 August 2010

   Written by: Matthew Weiner & Tracy McMillan Directed by: Michael Uppendahl

   Running Time: 48 minutes

   Of all the ways in which the modern conception of Christmas has been hollowed out, few are as thoroughly documented as its utter commercialisation. A holiday that once served as a moment of religious reflection and familial gathering has, in the popular imagination, become little more than an engine of consumption, driven in no small part by the very industry that Mad Men spent seven seasons dramatising. It is therefore almost inevitable that the series would eventually turn its attention to the season of goodwill, and the fourth season’s second episode, Christmas Comes But Once a Year, represents the first serious attempt to do so. The previous three seasons had concluded in late autumn, but the fourth begins in November 1964, allowing the show’s creators to place their characters in the thick of the holiday season for the first time. What emerges is an episode that is less a critique of Christmas as a commercial construct and more a character study of a man whose personal and professional life has unravelled to the point where the season’s enforced jollity becomes a source of genuine pain.

   The episode opens with Don Draper in a state of profound dislocation. For the first time after long time, he is spending Christmas without his family, and the loneliness that this engenders is something he is manifestly ill-equipped to handle. His attempts to deny the reality of his situation—that he is a man in his late thirties, newly divorced, living in a sparsely furnished Manhattan apartment, and dependent on the charity of his secretary to remember where he left his keys—are increasingly pathetic. The bottle becomes his refuge, and the consequences are predictable. His professional judgement suffers, and the awe that once surrounded him among the junior staff of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce gives way to something far more corrosive: mockery. It is a striking reversal for a character who has, for three seasons, been presented as the unassailable genius of the advertising world, and Jon Hamm’s performance captures every nuance of this decline with remarkable precision.

   The central plot of the episode revolves around the SCDP Christmas party, and it is here that the show’s writers, Matthew Weiner and Tracy McMillan, deploy their sharpest observations about the intersection of commerce and celebration. Roger Sterling and Lane Pryce, acutely aware of the firm’s precarious financial position, have planned a modest, low-budget affair. But when Lee Garner Jr. of Lucky Strike calls Roger to announce his attendance, the calculus changes instantly. The party must be expanded, the budget increased, and the tone shifted from collegial to sycophantic. It masterfully shows dynamics of power within the advertising industry: the client is king, and the king’s whims must be indulged, no matter how degrading they may be to those who serve him.

   The return of Freddy Rumsen (Joel Murray), provides a counterpoint to the excesses of the party. Freddy, who was fired from Sterling Cooper for his alcoholism, has spent the intervening eighteen months rebuilding his life. He is sober, he has secured a two-million-dollar account through his AA network, and he has bought his way back into the firm. Yet his reunion with Peggy Olson is not entirely comfortable. She finds him “old fashioned,” and their relationship, once that of mentor and protégé, has become strained. Freddy’s refusal to attend the office party, for fear of temptation, is a poignant reminder of the fragility of recovery, and his subsequent advice to Peggy—that she should not sleep with her new boyfriend Mark (Blake Blashoff) if she wants to marry him—is both wise and anachronistic. Peggy, for her part, ignores the advice, unwilling to face New Year’s Eve alone.

   Don’s encounters with two women during the episode serve to underscore his diminished state. Phoebe (Norah Zehetner), the nurse who lives in his building, helps him to bed when he is too drunk to manage on his own, but there is no hint of the predatory charm that characterised his earlier seductions. Dr. Faye Miller (Cara Buono), a consultant who administers a psychological test to the SCDP staff, is similarly immune to his advances, and his refusal to complete the test—because it asks questions about his father—reveals a vulnerability that he is unable to articulate. These are not women to be conquered; they are witnesses to his decline.

   The subplot involving Sally Draper and Glen Bishop is, perhaps, the weakest element of the episode. Glen’s obsession with Sally, mirroring his earlier obsession with her mother, feels less like psychological depth and more like a narrative convenience. His decision to break into the Francis home and trash it, leaving only Sally’s bed untouched, is genuinely disturbing, but it is also somewhat gratuitous. The episode does not have the time to explore the implications of this act, and it remains an unresolved thread.

   The party itself descends into the expected chaos. Lee Garner Jr. bullies Roger into playing Santa Claus and delivering a series of humiliating remarks, and the evening becomes a study in the degradation of the powerful by the even more powerful. Don, who has drunk too much, leaves early but forgets his keys. In desperation, he calls the office, and his secretary Allison retrieves the keys and accompanies him home. What follows is one of the most uncomfortable scenes in the episode: Don kisses her, they have sex, and the next morning he pretends that nothing happened. Allison’s transition from romantic elation to heartbreak is handled with devastating economy by Alexa Alemani, who delivers a performance that is all the more powerful for its restraint.

   Christmas Comes But Once a Year is a solid episode, but it is not a great one. Weiner seems more comfortable depicting the old, static world of the Eisenhower era than the rapidly changing landscape of the mid-1960s. The focus on Don’s personal issues, while effective in isolation, threatens to turn Mad Men into a soap opera rather than a period piece. The Christmas theme is addressed through predictable musical choices—the 1950s standard “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” makes an appearance—and Phoebe’s observation that people get depressed at Christmas, which brings her extra work as a nurse, is a rare moment of genuine insight.

   What saves the episode is the quality of the performances. Jon Hamm continues to demonstrate his remarkable range, finding new depths in a character who has been defined by his surface-level competence. Joel Murray’s Freddy Rumsen is a welcome return, and he manages to retain the sympathy he earned in the first two seasons. Marten Holden Weiner, the showrunner’s son, is considerably more unsettling as Glen Bishop than he was in previous appearances, and his actions carry a weight that the episode does not fully earns. But it is Alexa Alemani who delivers the episode’s most memorable performance, capturing the precise moment when a woman realises that the man she has just slept with is not going to remember her name in the morning. It is a small, cruel moment, and it is the one that lingers longest after the credits roll.

   RATING: 6/10 (++)

   ==

   Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo Substack https://draxster.substack.com/

   LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

   BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

   ▲Upvote

   ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

   💬 Show comments
3. ›Television Review: Public Relations (Mad Men, S4x01, 2010)@drax6d

   

   Public Relations (S4x01)

   Airdate: 25 November 2010

   Written by: Matthew Weiner Directed by: Phil Abraham

   Running Time: 48 minutes

   Mad Men entered its fourth season from a position of considerable strength. The series had not only survived the departure of key creative figures but had emerged with its critical cachet intact, a status symbolically cemented when President Barack Obama—then at the zenith of his popularity—publicly declared himself a fan. The viewing ratings had begun to improve, and the season premiere arrived with the promise of shedding the static, traditional world of the first three seasons to ride the wave of social and cultural change that defined the 1960s. Yet, as the episode’s title “Public Relations” suggests, the gap between perception and reality is vast, and the season opener, while competent, ultimately feels like a holding pattern rather than a bold leap forward.

   If the series was in a good place, its protagonist was decidedly not. Don Draper (Jon Hamm) now lives alone in a cold New York City apartment, his cleaning lady a poor substitute for the family he has lost. The episode’s B-plot with Betty (January Jones) and Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley) at Thanksgiving underscores the domestic dislocation, but Don’s own situation is more poignant. Goaded by his accountant, he is forced to confront the financial reality of maintaining the Ossining house, telling Betty and the children to leave so he can sell it. It is a moment that crystallises his rootlessness: the man who once defined himself by his suburban home and family is now a visitor in his own life.

   Things are scarcely better at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce (SCDP). Bert Cooper (Robert Morse) wryly notes that the price of corporate freedom was steep, and the firm cannot even afford a proper conference table. The charade of claiming a second floor to impress clients is a necessary fiction, but it underscores the agency’s precarious position. Matters worsen when Don is interviewed for Advertising Age. His understandable reluctance to discuss his past leads to an article describing him as a “cypher,” making clients uneasy and costing the firm the lucrative jai alai contract with Horace Cook Jr. Bert publicly blames Don for the fiasco, and the only comfort comes from Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks), who offers the weary reassurance: “It’ll pass.”

   Don receives another professional setback when dealing with Jantzen Swimwear. The executives make an impossible demand: a campaign that gives them an edge over competitors while abstaining from sex, as they wish to be “wholesome” and “family oriented.” Don tries his best with an innovative, only slightly suggestive image, but when the Jantzen men refuse, he loses his temper and chases them from the office. The scene is effective in illustrating Don’s fraying patience, but it also represents a historical distortion. Real-life Jantzen was known for its playful, often racy 1950s ad campaigns, and depicting their executives as prudes feels like a simplification of the struggle between the Old and New in the 1960s business world.

   Meanwhile, Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) brings Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) another account: Sugarberry Ham, a company producing canned ham. Peggy and her young subordinate Joey Baird (Matt Long) stage a publicity stunt by paying two actresses to fight over a ham, later creating the slogan “Our hams are worth fighting for.” The stunt nearly ends in disaster when the women are arrested, and Peggy must embarrassingly beg Don for bail money. Yet it ultimately succeeds, with Sugarberry Ham sales soaring. The subplot is interesting but not particularly original, and it feels like a retread of earlier, more inventive schemes.

   Don’s private life grows increasingly messy. Instead of picking up women in the usual way, he fulfils his sexual needs with a call-girl who slaps him during sex, a subplot that dabbles in BDSM territory but feels like padding. Roger (John Slattery), apparently concerned for his friend’s wellbeing, arranges a blind date with Bethany Van Nuys (Anna Camp), an aspiring stage actress and college friend of his young wife Jane. When Don meets her, he sees a striking resemblance to Betty, but Bethany is reluctant to yield to his initial advances. The episode ends with Don realising his mistake and agreeing to a second interview with a Wall Street Journal reporter, previously arranged by Bert, to repair the damage from his first disastrous interview.

   While Public Relations maintains the high quality of the previous three seasons, it represents a slight disappointment. With the plot advancing roughly a year since the last season finale, most of the dramatic changes have already occurred, and the episode largely deals with their long-term consequences. There is too much focus on Don and his private issues, with corporate and broader cultural struggles being overshadowed. The only saving grace is Jon Hamm, who shows a little more acting range by playing a protagonist suddenly realising he has lost some of his “mojo.”

   The episode also appears stuck in the past it tries to escape. Peggy and Joey playfully recreate “Johnny and Marsha,” a 1951 novelty song by Stan Freberg, a reference few in the mid-1960s would remember and hardly anyone in the contemporary audience would recognise. It is a moment that feels like a relic, undermining the show’s claim to be riding the wave of change. Ultimately, Public Relations is a solid but unspectacular season opener, one that sets the pieces on the board but lacks the dramatic momentum of the series’ best episodes.

   RATING: 6/10 (++)

   ==

   Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo Substack https://draxster.substack.com/

   LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

   BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

   ▲Upvote

   ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

   💬 Show comments
4. ›Television Review: Shut the Door. Have a Seat (Mad Men, S3x13, 2009)@drax24d

   

   Shut the Door. Have a Seat (S3x13)

   Airdate: 8 November 2009

   Written by: Erin Levy & Matthew Weiner Directed by: Matthew Weiner

   Running Time: 48 minutes

   The penultimate episode of Mad Men’s third season, The Grown-Ups, delivered the most seismic “wham” development of the year by brutally juxtaposing the national tragedy of President Kennedy’s assassination with the personal catastrophe of Don Draper’s crumbling marriage. Yet to view the actual finale, Shut the Door. Have a Seat, as mere narrative mop-up would be a profound misreading. Instead, the Season 3 finale executes a deliberate and monumental tonal shift, marking not an end but a beginning. It decisively closes the door on the stifling, decorous world of early-1960s Sterling Cooper and ushers in a new era defined by optimism, chaotic possibility, and the tantalising promise of second chances for its deeply flawed protagonists.

   By the finale’s opening, Don Draper’s marriage to Betty is a clinical corpse; both spouses are merely going through the motions. Betty, having coldly consulted with Henry Francis and her lawyer, informs Don she wants a divorce. Don, in a final spasm of denial, initially vows to fight her in court. The revelation from Roger Sterling that Betty intends to marry Henry extinguishes that last flicker of resistance. In a moment of devastating clarity, he recognises the futility of a battle that would only further scar their children. He capitulates to all her terms. The episode’s most heartbreaking sequence is a domestic apocalypse: Don telling Sally and Bobby he is leaving. Jon Hamm’s performance here is a masterclass in suppressed agony, the alpha male reduced to a ghost in his own home. His subsequent exit from the Ossington house, suitcase in hand, is the final, quiet death of Dick Whitman’s most elaborate fantasy—the perfect suburban family.

   This profound personal defeat is immediately overshadowed by a professional cataclysm. Summoned to Conrad Hilton’s office, Don learns that Putnam, Powell & Lowe is selling Sterling Cooper to the behemoth McCann Erickson. For Don, the corporate cog, this is a death sentence. His genius has always been predicated on autonomy; absorption into McCann would render him a branded commodity. In a flash of desperate inspiration, he proposes to Bert Cooper that they simply steal their company back. Cooper, the ageing libertarian contemplating retirement, is stirred by the audacity. Roger Sterling, whose friendship with Don has frayed to bitterness, is reluctantly seduced by the chance to reclaim relevance and, crucially, to bring the American Tobacco account—the lifeblood of any new venture—with him. The stage is set not for a dignified departure, but for a heist.

   The conspiracy’s most crucial and poetic recruit is Lane Pryce. The Englishman, who confirmed the sale, realises his fate at McCann would be that of a superfluous bureaucrat. In a delicious irony, he uses his remaining authority as acting president to “fire” Bert, Roger, and Don via a telegram to London on Friday, 13 December 1963. This bureaucratic sleight of hand, engineered to exploit the weekend and transatlantic delay, is the episode’s pivotal stroke. It transforms the characters from employees to outlaws, severing their contractual obligations before London can react. What follows is a thrilling, almost farcical sequence of corporate larceny. Over one frantic weekend, the conspirators ransack the Sterling Cooper offices, hauling away files, artwork, and client records in a symbolic and literal seizure of their own legacy.

   The recruitment drive that fills out the new firm is a narrative of redemption and validation. Pete Campbell, perpetually undervalued and contemplating flight, commits, bringing his own portfolio of accounts and, more importantly, a forward-thinking sensibility. Harry Crane is tapped to build a media department, his previously marginal role suddenly central. Joan Holloway (now Harris), having quit Sterling Cooper for a failed marriage, is brought back by Roger to provide the organisational genius they desperately lack. Most significantly, Don must personally and humbly woo Peggy Olson. Their late-night meeting in her apartment is the culmination of three seasons of tension. Don’s admission—“I don’t know if I can do this alone”—is not just a professional plea but a profound personal acknowledgement. Peggy’s acceptance is her hard-won coronation. When an apoplectic St. John Powell fires Lane, it is too late; the phoenix has already fled the ashes. The newly minted Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce convenes in a suite at the Pierre Hotel, a temporary headquarters buzzing with chaotic energy. The season concludes on a note of quiet, determined hope: Don Draper, alone, approaches the door of his new Manhattan apartment.

   The episode represented the writing debut of Erin Levy (daughter of television writer Lawrence H. Levy), who co-wrote the script with series creator Matthew Weiner. Their achievement is in masterfully managing the season’s drastic emotional pivot. After the unrelenting darkness of The Grown-Ups, *Shut the Door. Have a Sea adopts a notably lighter, quicker, and more optimistic tone. This is not to say it lacks pathos—Don’s farewell to his children is arguably the series’ most devastating moment to date. However, the narrative emphasis shifts from death to rebirth. The demise of Sterling Cooper, which in earlier seasons would have been framed as a tragedy, is here reframed as a liberating opportunity. The old, stifling hierarchy is dead; long live the scrappy, entrepreneurial start-up.

   This new entity, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, promises to be better precisely because almost everyone involved has been recently humbled. Don Draper, the archetypal self-made man, is forced to confront his limitations. His genius for pitching is useless without Roger’s client relationships, Lane’s bureaucratic cunning, and Peggy’s creative execution. He must swallow his pride, rely on others, and recognise talent in those he has previously dismissed. He finally sees that Pete Campbell, for all his unctuous ambition, is often right and represents the future. The “conspiracy,” rightly described by many critics as playing out like a heist film, is a triumph of collective action over the rugged individualism that has defined Don’s life and nearly destroyed it. In the end, the collective succeeds.

   The episode’s generally positive denouement allows for moments of grace amidst the chaos: Don and Roger renew their fractured friendship over Scotch and scheming; Pete returns to a Trudy who enthusiastically fuels the conspirators with cookies, suggesting a marriage finally on solid ground; Peggy is validated; Joan reclaims her professional prowess. Christmas is near, but the mood is less about nostalgic tradition than about new beginnings. The world of Mad Men is finally, decisively, stepping out of the lingering shadow of the 1950s and into the 1960s as it exists in the Boomer cultural memory—a time of upheaval, yes, but also of possibility.

   This optimistic tone can, intriguingly, be interpreted as a reflection of the contemporary moment of the episode’s creation. It aired in 2009, a year after the election of Barack Obama—an event that seemed to symbolise a clean break from America’s problematic past and the realisation of 1960s progressive dreams. The era was suffused with a grand optimism that America, by bridging deep divisions, was entering a new, brighter chapter. The finale’s narrative of disparate, often antagonistic individuals bridging generational, gender, and personality gaps to build something new together resonates powerfully with that 2009 spirit of “Yes We Can.” The season became a reflection of the present, where “the great change and hope of 2009 found its version in surprisingly optimistic finale of Season 3.

   The episode is not without minor flaws. A flashback to the death of Don’s father, Archie Whitman, feels somewhat redundant, reiterating themes of abandonment and fresh starts already powerfully articulated in the main narrative. Nevertheless, Shut the Door. Have a Seat is a triumph of television writing and pacing. Its quality was formally recognised with a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series for Levy and Weiner. It serves as the perfect series finale for the show’s first act, providing catharsis, closure, and a thrilling launchpad into the unknown. It proves that in the universe of Mad Men, the end of 1963—a year that culturally signalled the end of innocence—could also be, for these characters, a very good beginning indeed.

   RATING: 8/10 (+++)

   ==

   Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo Substack https://draxster.substack.com/

   LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

   BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

   ▲Upvote

   ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

   💬 Show comments
5. ›Television Review: The Grown-Ups (Mad Men, S3x12, 2009)@drax25d

   

   The Grown-Ups (S3x12)

   Airdate: 1 November 2009

   Written by: Brett Johnson & Matthew Weiner Directed by: Barbet Schroeder

   Running Time: 48 minutes

   No event depicted or referenced in Mad Men was less anticipated by its audience than the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. For many Americans of that era, and particularly for the Baby Boomers who would come to dominate the cultural narrative, 22 November 1963 stands as the grand, irrevocable dividing line between ‘What Used To Be’ and ‘What Is Now’. By the end of its third season, set in that otherwise relatively uneventful year of 1963, it was a foregone conclusion that the series would eventually confront how its protagonists—people whose profession is the shaping of images and perceptions—would react to the momentous events in Dallas. The only remaining question was one of narrative placement: would this national catastrophe be reserved for the season finale, or, in keeping with the emerging practice of high-quality serialised television, would it occur in the penultimate episode, allowing the aftermath to resonate into the season’s close? The Grown-Ups, the twelfth episode of the third season, decisively answered that question, and in doing so delivered one of the series’ most masterful and devastating instalments.

   Co-written by Brett Johnson and Matthew Weiner and directed with remarkable restraint by the Swiss-French filmmaker Barbet Schroeder, the episode begins in deceptively banal fashion on Thursday, 21 November. The genius of this opening lies in its focus on the petty, everyday grievances that consume the Sterling Cooper office. Pete Campbell complains bitterly about a heating failure that has left him freezing; his physical discomfort is neatly paralleled by the professional chill of learning that Ken Cosgrove has been promoted over him, despite both men bringing in comparable accounts. Across the office, other trivial dramas unfold: Roger Sterling’s daughter, Margaret, frets about her Saturday wedding and the inevitable presence of Jane, Roger’s young wife, whom she cannot abide. Meanwhile, Peggy Olson discusses her ongoing liaison with the louche Duck Phillips with her roommate Karen Ericson, treating it as a mundane secret rather than a life-altering affair. This meticulous establishment of routine is crucial, for it constructs the placid surface that is about to be shattered.

   Friday, 22 November dawns like any other day. The heating has been repaired, but now the office is oppressively hot—a minor irony that underscores the characters’ inability to achieve equilibrium. Peggy accepts a call from Duck, arranging a midday tryst. Don Draper argues with Lane Pryce over replacing the art director after the unjust firing of Sal Romano. Pete, seeking solace, discusses his stagnant future with Harry Crane in his office. As head of the television department, Harry has a set tuned to CBS to monitor advertisements; the soap opera As The World Turns plays in the background, ignored. This detail is a stroke of brilliant dramatic irony. The characters are so engrossed in their myopic personal and professional concerns that they literally ignore the world turning on its axis, as a special news bulletin interrupts the broadcast with the first fragments of news from Dallas.

   The episode then meticulously dissects the varied, often self-absorbed, reactions of its ensemble. Duck Phillips, waiting for Peggy in his hotel suite, sees the bulletin but chooses to switch off the television, prioritising a sexual escapade over a national tragedy—a chillingly apt character note for a man defined by opportunism and escape. Back at Sterling Cooper, Don Draper’s world is invaded by the news more subtly; he notices the phones falling silent and the staff gathering anxiously around radios and television sets. It is only when colleagues burst into Harry Crane’s office that both Harry and Pete are ripped from their insular conversation and forced to comprehend the reality of the situation.

   The collective shock and grief that permeate the office are portrayed with a realism that avoids melodrama. However, the episode’s sharpest critique is levelled at the characters’ capacity to refract even this seismic event through the prism of their own immediate desires. None is more blatantly affected in this regard than Margaret Sterling, who upon hearing the news declares her wedding to be “ruined.” Her petulance is not presented as mere villainy but as a tragic failure of perspective, emblematic of a privileged generation suddenly confronted with a history that refuses to accommodate their personal timelines. The following day, the invited executives grapple with the etiquette of the situation. Pete and Trudy Campbell, representing a newer, perhaps more morally cautious sensibility, decide not to attend. Don and Betty Draper, ever performing the role of the perfect couple, go. The wedding itself is a profoundly unhappy affair, a forced and brittle pantomime of celebration. Some guests, including Jane, retreat to the kitchen to watch the relentless television coverage, unable to maintain the façade. Don and Betty take to the dance floor in a grim imitation of marital bliss, but Betty’s attention is fractured by the arrival of Henry Francis, who, under the thin pretext of accompanying his daughter and Margaret’s friend Eleanor (Veronica Taylor), has come solely to see her. Here, the episode brilliantly juxtaposes the collapse of a national myth with the unravelling of a domestic one.

   The aftermath of the wedding offers further poignant vignettes. Roger, tending to his drunken wife Jane, uses the opportunity to call Joan Holloway (now Harris). Their conversation is one of the episode’s quieter, more profound moments. Joan speaks of her husband, a doctor working in the Emergency Room, trying to process the day’s events, thereby grounding the national tragedy in tangible, human-scale suffering. It is a rare instance of a character attempting to contextualise the horror, rather than being overwhelmed by it.

   The episode’s final act moves the focus decisively to the disintegration of the Draper marriage. On Sunday, 24 November, Betty leaves her home for a drive “to clear her head”—a transparent euphemism for a rendezvous with Henry Francis. Their meeting in a parked car is charged with a desperate intimacy. Henry declares his intention to marry her, and they share a kiss that seals the fate of Betty’s current life. Upon returning home, Betty initiates the conversation she has avoided for years, telling Don with devastating simplicity, “I don’t love you anymore.” Parallel to this, in the Campbell household, Trudy attempts to galvanise a despondent Pete, urging him to gather his clients and strike out to form his own agency—a suggestion that plants the seed for the season’s finale. These parallel scenes underscore the episode’s central thesis: just as the nation is forced to confront a terrifying new future, so too are these individuals.

   Monday morning presents a haunting tableau of aftermath. Betty and Don share a silent, icy breakfast before Don leaves, ostensibly for work but in reality to confront the desolate truth that his marriage is over. The world outside is in official mourning; bars are closed. The Sterling Cooper office, that temple of capitalist distraction, is one of the few places open. There, Don finds Peggy already at work, diligently altering a television advertisement because its visual composition now bears an unwelcome and traumatic resemblance to the Zapruder film’s imagery. This moment is a perfect, succinct metaphor for the show’s entire project: the advertising industry, tasked with crafting palatable fictions, must now hastily edit reality itself.

   The Grown-Ups is arguably one of Mad Men’s finest achievements. Its genius lies in the deft juxtaposition of a national catastrophe with the personal cataclysms of its protagonists. Just as America—and the world—would never be the same after Dallas, neither would Don Draper, who is finally forced to contend with an unimaginable loss that no amount of professional ingenuity or personal reinvention can mitigate. The episode operates on multiple levels, weaving threads of dark humour and profound irony into its fabric. The irony of Margaret’s “ruined” wedding and the bleak comedy of Duck turning off the news for a tryst—all serve to highlight the fragile vanity of the characters’ pre-assassination concerns.

   Schroeder’s direction is notably economical and realistic, refusing to sensationalise events that were already seared into the cultural memory of much of the audience. The episode trusts viewers to connect the dots, relying on the power of implication and reaction rather than graphic recreation. This restraint makes the emotional impact all the more potent. Furthermore, the cultural resonance is cemented by the impeccable choice of Skeeter Davis’s ‘The End of the World’ over the closing credits. The song’s plaintive, heartbroken refrain (“Why does the sun go on shining?”) perfectly captures the episode’s essence: the bewildering persistence of daily life in the face of world-shattering events, and the private apocalypses that unfold in quiet living rooms and empty marriages.

   The Grown-Ups transcends being merely an ‘assassination episode’. It is a masterful study in contrast, a meticulous deconstruction of American self-absorption on the brink of historical upheaval, and the point at which Mad Men fully matured into the tragic, clear-eyed masterpiece of television history it is recognised as today. It demonstrates that sometimes, growing up is forced upon you by a single, terrible Friday in November.

   RATING: 9/10 (++++)

   ==

   Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo Substack https://draxster.substack.com/

   LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

   BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

   ▲Upvote

   ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

   💬 Show comments
6. ›Television Review: The Gypsy and the Hobo (Mad Men, S3x11, 2009)@drax25d

   

   The Gypsy and the Hobo (S3x11)

   Airdate: 25 October 2009

   Written by: Marti Noxon, Cathy Humphrys & Matthew Weiner Directed by: Jennifer Getzinger

   Running Time: 48 minutes

   Mad Men, throughout its run, maintained a meticulous framing of its episodes around specific, identifiable points in time, using the backdrop of history to underscore the personal revolutions of its characters. The show’s third season, however, ran into a distinct structural problem with the year 1963. The year was, until its cataclysmic end in Dallas, a relatively uneventful—the writers were deprived of the grand historical touchstones that peppered earlier seasons. The solution, as in many dramatic series, was to pivot towards the communal calendar of public holidays. In the case of the eleventh episode, The Gypsy and the Hobo, the chosen holiday is Halloween, a day traditionally dedicated to the wearing of masks. The episode’s central, devastating irony is that it is on this day of sanctioned disguise that the most consequential mask worn by the protagonist, Don Draper, is finally and irrevocably torn off.

   The plot is set in motion several days before Halloween. Betty Draper, ostensibly taking the children to Philadelphia to visit her brother’s family, provides Don with the perfect opportunity to pursue his affair with their children’s teacher, Suzanne Farrell. He employs his well-worn excuse of pressing work commitments. The reality, however, is that Betty’s trip is a business necessity: she is attempting to settle her father’s contentious estate. In the office, she dismisses her brother William to confer privately with her attorney, Milton Lowell (Dan Desmond). Here, the expected discussion of probate is swiftly abandoned. Instead, Betty reveals her discovery of Don’s true identity as Dick Whitman, the ultimate foundation of his years of deception. She seeks legal advice, explicitly floating divorce as the most sensible reaction. Lowell, embodying the pragmatic, patriarchal legal establishment of the era, counsels caution. He posits that she has a good life with three children and that divorce is a difficult, messy procedure—unless she can secure proof of infidelity. This moment is crucial; it establishes Betty not as a hysterical wife but as a calculating strategist, already mapping the battlefield of her marriage’s dissolution.

   The irony of Lowell’s advice is immediately and brutally underscored. Don, emboldened by his assumed freedom, drives Suzanne to his own home to retrieve an item, only to find Betty and the children have returned early. Suzanne remains unseen, but a far greater reckoning awaits. Confronted by Betty with the damning contents of his locked desk—the physical evidence of his stolen identity—Don’s facade crumbles. After initial, futile denials, he launches into a quiet, tearful confession. Jon Hamm’s performance here is exemplary in its raw vulnerability, a man finally speaking his foundational truth. Yet, the episode’s critical power derives from Betty’s reception of it. January Jones portrays Betty with an icy, unmoved stillness. She absorbs his biography—a narrative already fully known to the audience—without a flicker of surprise or sympathy. The dramatic “wham” moment of revelation is thus deliberately neutered; its impact is not on Betty, but on the dynamic between them. As this domestic drama unfolds, Suzanne waits in the car, a forgotten spectre of the affair, until she finally departs, her patience exhausted. The following day, a terse phone conversation from Don’s Sterling Cooper office makes the inevitable clear: their relationship is terminally punctured by the reality of his exposed life.

   Parallel to this central unraveling, Roger Sterling is confronted by a ghost from his own past. Annabelle Mathis (Mary Page Keller), recently widowed owner of the dog food company Candlecott Farms, arrives as a client with a PR crisis (the 1961 film The Misfits has revealed her product contains horse meat). For Annabelle, however, the meeting is profoundly personal. She and Roger were once romantically involved before the war, and she arrives carrying a torch, seeing her widowhood as a chance to correct history. In a moment that subverts Roger’s established character as a self-deluding man in a midlife crisis, he firmly and realistically rejects her advances. His refusal is not born of newfound virtue but of a clear-eyed understanding of his recent marriage to the much younger Jane. The episode cleverly contrasts Annabelle’s romantic fantasy, which she gauchely compares to Casablanca, with Roger’s weary pragmatism. Her subsequent decision to withdraw her company’s business from Sterling Cooper is a petty, personal retaliation that highlights the messy intersection of professional and private lives—a theme central to the entire series.

   Spurred perhaps by this encounter with regretted paths, Roger seeks out Joan Holloway (now Harris). Learning of her husband Greg’s professional failures and their resulting financial strain, Roger offers to help her find work. Meanwhile, Joan is desperately trying to orchestrate Greg’s career, here attempting to coach him for psychiatric residency interview. Greg’s abject failure in the interview and his subsequent wallowing in self-pity trigger a shocking, and arguably flawed, moment of violence: Joan loses her composure and strikes him on the head with a vase. The aftermath of this assault is handled with puzzling brevity. Greg suffers no serious physical consequences, and the psychological fallout is glossed over almost immediately as he announces his decision to join the U.S. Army. He frames this as a pragmatic solution: the military’s need for surgeons will guarantee him a residency and secure their finances. Joan, visibly horrified at the prospect of a peripatetic life as an officer’s wife, nonetheless performs acceptance, plastering on a smile and pretending to be happy. This subplot feels the most contrived. The act of violence seems disproportionate and psychologically unmotivated within the episode’s otherwise nuanced framework, and its rapid resolution undermines any serious exploration of the couple’s toxic dynamic. Furthermore, Greg’s enlistment is laden with a heavy-handed, anachronistic irony regarding the Vietnam War—a conflict whose shadow feels somewhat artificially imposed on this 1963 narrative.

   The episode’s denouement returns to the Halloween motif. Don and Betty, performing a semblance of normalcy, accompany their children Sally and Bobby trick-or-treating. They stop at the home of their neighbour, Carlton Hanson. Looking at the costumed children, Hanson identifies Sally as a “gypsy” and Bobby as a “hobo.” He then turns his gaze to the parents and asks, rhetorically, “And what are you supposed to be?” The question hangs in the air, a perfectly crafted piece of dramatic irony. It inadvertently alludes to Don’s true, humble “hobo” origins and to Betty’s current performance as the dutiful wife. In this moment, they are both wearing the ultimate masks, pretending for the outside world—and for themselves—that the foundational crack in their marriage has not appeared.

   Co-written by Marti Noxon, Cathryn Humphris, and Matthew Weiner, The Gypsy and the Hobo is, for all its momentous revelation, a surprisingly cold and clinical hour of television. This is its greatest strength and, for some viewers, a potential weakness. The writing and acting are impeccable, but the emotional temperature is deliberately low, mirroring Betty’s business-like demeanour as she seeks to put her things in order. Don’s confession, while powerfully acted, reveals nothing new to the audience. Consequently, the scene lacks the shocking “wham” impact it might have possessed had the viewer been discovering the truth alongside Betty. Instead, the power is displaced onto the chilling normalcy that follows. The apparent return to the status quo—the couple continuing to cohabit, to parent, to perform their social roles—is far more unsettling than any explosive argument. The audience, armed with foreknowledge, understands this calm is the eye of the storm. We know nothing will be the same, and the episode’s coldness makes the inevitable collapse feel both more certain and more terrifying.

   The episode’s exploration of the chasm between image and reality is deftly mirrored in Roger’s subplot. His rejection of Annabelle Mathis presents a rare moment of clarity and self-possession for a character often depicted as pathetic and self-deceiving. By refusing to indulge a nostalgic fantasy, Roger emerges as more grounded and realistic than the romanticising Annabelle. This subplot serves as a thematic counterpoint: where Don’s entire life is a fabricated image now crumbling, Roger actively chooses reality over a comforting illusion, even at a professional cost.

   The Gypsy and the Hobo is a pivotal episode that executes a narrative milestone with remarkable restraint. It forgoes emotional pyrotechnics in favour of a slow, chilling realism. The use of Halloween as a backdrop is brilliantly ironic, highlighting the perpetual masquerade of its characters. While the subplot involving Joan and Greg succumbs to melodramatic violence and somewhat anachronistic historical signalling, the core narrative of the Drapers is handled with devastating precision. The episode leaves us not with a climax, but with a pregnant, dreadful quiet. The mask is off, but the performance, for the sake of the children and the neighbourhood, must go on—and that, the episode suggests, is the greatest horror of all.

   RATING: 8/10 (+++)

   ==

   Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo Substack https://draxster.substack.com/

   LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

   BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

   ▲Upvote

   ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

   💬 Show comments
7. ›Television Review: The Color Blue (Mad Men, S3x10, 2009)@drax27d

   

   The Color Blue (S3x10)

   Airdate: 18 October 2009

   Written by: Kate Gordon & Matthew Weiner Directed by: Michael Uppendahl

   Running Time: 48 minutes

   Within the expansive, seven-season tapestry of Mad Men, it was all but inevitable that certain episodes would come to resemble each other in terms of theme, character dynamics, and plot mechanics. Given the series’ intense focus on the cyclical nature of personal history and the inescapability of one’s past, such repetitions can feel deliberate, yet they also risk appearing as creative retreads. A prime example of this phenomenon is found in Season 3’s The Color Blue, which functions, in many respects, as a deliberate and nuanced variation on themes first explored in the seminal Season 1 episode 5G. While the later episode attempts to deepen the psychological portrait of its protagonist, Don Draper, it simultaneously exposes some of the strain on the series’ narrative engine, revealing a writer’s room perhaps struggling to consistently mine new material from its richly constructed but firmly established world.

   The most recognisable structural similarity between the two episodes is their pivotal narrative device: a gala public gathering at which Don Draper is to be honoured. In 5G, it is a minor advertising award; here, it is the fortieth anniversary celebration of Sterling Cooper’s founding. Don, as the agency’s creative talisman, is the natural choice for keynote speaker. The ceremony forces together the professional and personal in a manner typical of the series, but the corporate backdrop here is particularly fraught. The British overlords from PPL are pressuring Roger Sterling and Bert Cooper to attend, a directive delivered by the increasingly beleaguered Lane Pryce. Lane’s storyline provides the episode’s most potent subtext of imperial decline and personal futility. Having worked diligently to improve Sterling Cooper’s financial health, he learns that PPL intends simply to sell the agency, rendering his efforts meaningless. This professional despair is compounded by a domestic loneliness, as his wife Rebecca (Embeth Davidtz), homesick for London, remains oblivious that Lane’s original posting was meant to be Bombay. His is a life of quiet dislocation, a subtle counterpoint to Don’s more explosive secrets.

   Those secrets are, as ever, driving the plot. Don is deep into his affair with his children’s teacher, Suzanne Farrell, and uses the alleged demands of his work for Conrad Hilton to spend nights away from home. This prolonged absence grants Betty the opportunity to discover the key to his locked desk drawer, wherein she finds the damning evidence of his stolen identity: money, photographs, and the divorce decree from Anna Draper. The revelation, which occurs in near-silent, devastating scenes, is brilliantly timed to coincide with Don’s public accolade, mirroring the ironic structure of 5G, where Don’s award ceremony leads to the arrival of his brother Adam. This repetition is not a flaw in itself; rather, it underscores the show’s central thesis that success and exposure are two sides of the same coin for Don Draper.

   However, The Color Blue seeks to add a layer of moral complexity missing from the earlier, more brutal confrontation. Here, Don’s moment of crisis is intercut with his encounter with Suzanne’s brother, Danny Farrell (Marshall Allman). Danny, a young man plagued by epileptic seizures and an inability to hold a job, is a pathetic figure. Don, tasked with driving him to a janitorial position in Bedford, Massachusetts, sees in Danny a ghost of his own brother, Adam Whitman—the man he paid to disappear. Haunted by that past cruelty, Don chooses a different path. He gives Danny money and his business card, insisting he will “do it right” this time. It’s a moment that suggests a sliver of conscience, an attempt to break a vicious cycle, even as he actively perpetuates another through his adultery.

   The episode’s B-plot, focusing on the creative process at Sterling Cooper, provides both comic relief and a potential meta-commentary on the series itself. Peggy Olson conceives a strong idea for a television commercial, but it is assigned to the struggling Paul Kinsey, who is flailing with the Western Union account. The sequence of Paul working late, fuelled by alcohol and desperation, culminates in a moment of inspiration sparked by a brief chat with the janitor, Achilles (Hal Landon Jr.). In a fit of drunken forgetfulness, he fails to jot it down, leading to his frustrated morning lament: “the faintest ink is better than the best memory.” This Chinese proverb, ironically, becomes the kernel for Peggy’s successful campaign pitch, framing telegrams as permanent records versus ephemeral phone calls. This subplot is charming but can be interpreted as a self-reflexive nod to the writers’ own challenges. By Season 3, the show had to go through a relatively uneventful historical year (1963) before the seismic shift of the Kennedy assassination. Paul’s struggle for a fresh, original idea mirrors the difficulty Matthew Weiner and his team may have faced in maintaining the show’s acclaimed quality and novelty without relying on grand historical events or repetitive character beats.

   Where the episode falters, and where the strain perhaps becomes most visible, is in its attempts to inject original flavour through scenes of questionable tonal control. An effort at dark humour involving Roger Sterling’s senile mother, who mistakes his young wife Jane for his daughter Margaret, feels like a crude and overly broad jab at Roger’s May-December marriage. It lacks the subtle, character-driven irony that is the series’ hallmark.

   More divisive is a scene depicting Paul Kinsey, in his late-night, booze-soaked search for inspiration, glancing at an old mock-up for a Marilyn Monroe/Jacqueline Kennedy ad. The scene implies he is inspired not for a creative breakthrough, but to engage in solitary sexual activity. This moment is likely to split audiences: some may view it as a raw, humanising detail of a flawed man’s loneliness and frustration; others may find it exploitative, gratuitous, or a cheap attempt to underscore his pathetic state. It highlights a recurring issue in later Mad Men: a tendency to occasionally trade nuanced observation for jarring, sensational character beats.

   The Color Blue is a competently executed episode that suffers slightly from its overt resemblance to a superior predecessor. Its power derives from the enduring strength of its core mystery—Betty’s discovery—and from Jon Hamm’s masterful portrayal of a man trying, and largely failing, to outrun his ghosts. The episode’s willingness to show Don exercising a shred of decency towards Danny Farrell adds a welcome shade of grey. However, the more forced comedic elements and the palpable sense of narrative recycling suggest a series consciously stretching its material. This was a period of consolidation and quiet before the storm of November 1963. The Color Blue functions effectively as a chapter in that build-up, but it ultimately feels more like a skilful reprise of familiar notes than a wholly original composition. It proves that even the most meticulously crafted dramas can occasionally reveal the faintest ink of creative fatigue.

   RATING: 7/10 (+++)

   ==

   Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

   LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

   BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

   ▲Upvote

   ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

   💬 Show comments
8. ›Television Review: Wee Small Hours (Mad Men, S3x09, 2009)@drax27d

   

   Wee Small Hours (S3x09)

   Airdate: 11 October 2009

   Written by: Dahwi Waller & Matthew Weiner Directed by: Scott Hornbacher

   Running Time: 48 minutes

   As the third season of Mad Men approaches its conclusion, the episodes begin to exhibit a marked variance in tone and mood, at least where the series’ protagonist, Don Draper, is concerned. The illusion of the all-powerful, invulnerable Don—already fractured by the forceful signing of his contract in Seven Twenty-Three—had been temporarily supplanted by the fantasy of a blissful, romanticised life during the Roman holiday of Souvenir. That fantasy, notably facilitated by the benevolent patronage of Conrad Hilton, presented Hilton as a saviour, mentor, and the long-sought paternal role model Don craved. Wee Small Hours, the ninth episode, exists to shatter that particular illusion with a quiet, cumulative force, initiating a phase of profound professional and personal erosion that would define the remainder of the season. Directed by Scott Hornbacher, a producer making his directorial debut after working with Matthew Weiner on The Sopranos, the episode adopts a languid, nocturnal pace that perfectly mirrors its protagonist’s insomnia and restless moral drift.

   One of the episode’s most structurally ambitious features is its framing within an unusually expansive historical period. It bookends its narrative with two pivotal events from the American civil rights movement: Martin Luther King’s March on Washington on 28 August 1963, and the funeral for the victims of the Birmingham church bombings on 18 September 1963. This three-week span provides a subtle, persistent hum of societal tension against which the characters’ personal crises play out, often in stark, unflattering contrast. Hornbacher’s direction handles this context with admirable restraint, allowing history to permeate the edges of the frame rather than dominate it, an approach that would be less successfully applied to the series’ more heavy-handed, slightly anachronistic references to the burgeoning Vietnam conflict.

   The central professional relationship of the season, that between Don and Conrad Hilton, here reveals its corrosive underbelly. After bestowing perks and a veneer of heightened importance upon Don, Hilton emerges as the archetypal demanding, capricious client. He sees nothing untoward in pestering Don with phone calls every four hours, day and night, operating on a global tycoon’s schedule that acknowledges no human need for rest. The result is a Don Draper pushed to exhaustion, plagued by insomnia, and reverting to a familiar coping mechanism: aimless nocturnal driving. It is during one such insomniac pilgrimage that he encounters Suzanne Farrell, his children’s teacher, running along the roadside. The ensuing conversation in his car, charged with his obvious attraction, brilliantly displays subdued erotic tension and emotional vacancy. Don is not seeking connection but distraction, a pattern the episode meticulously dissects.

   In a stroke of bitter irony, while Don contemplates this new adulterous avenue, his wife Betty is engaged in a parallel, if more cautiously orchestrated, betrayal. She initiates a correspondence with the politically ambitious Henry Francis, who responds by impulsively arriving at the Draper home—only to be seen by the family’s housekeeper, Carla. His hastily concocted cover story, involving a potential Republican fundraiser at the house, is seized upon by Betty with a mixture of relief and thrilling complicity. She successfully manipulates Don into agreeing to host the event. However, the fundraiser itself delivers a crushing humiliation: instead of Henry, his middle-aged female aide, Elsa Kitteridge (Ann Ryerson), appears. Feeling cheated and infantilised, Betty confronts Henry at his office. Their charged encounter, where they finally vocalise their mutual attraction, ends not in consummation but in abrupt, almost prudish, retreat. Betty, suddenly seeing offices and motel rooms as “tawdry”, pulls back, leaving the relationship in a state of frustrated limbo.

   A far more severe and consequential rejection forms the episode’s devastating core, unfolding within the offices of Sterling Cooper. The production of a television commercial for the vital Lucky Strikes account is supervised by Lee Garner Jr. (Darren Pettie), the boorish, arrogant son of the client’s owner. Salvatore Romano, the agency’s talented art director, is directing the spot. Garner Jr., having correctly intuited Sal’s hidden homosexuality, attempts to exploit it when they are alone in an editing room. Sal’s horrified, principled rejection of these advances is a moment of quiet dignity. The retaliation is swift and brutal: a drunken Lee Garner Jr. calls Harry Crane, demanding Sal’s firing and warning him not to tell Pete Campbell. Harry, in a catastrophic failure of moral courage, does nothing, hoping the matter will “blow over”. When Garner Jr. later storms out of a meeting upon seeing Sal still employed, the crisis can no longer be ignored. Don, informed of the situation by a devastated Sal, is faced with an ugly business reality. The Lucky Strikes account is simply too important; the client’s whims, however petty and cruel, must be obeyed. In a chillingly pragmatic decision, Don tells Sal he must go. The final image of Sal is heartbreaking: deceiving his wife Kitty about still having a job while speaking from a pay phone in a section of Central Park known for gay cruising. His professional annihilation coincides with his forced return to the shadows of a clandestine life.

   This professional and personal erosion culminates in Don’s final humiliation via the very relationship that once elevated him. While discussing an advertising campaign, Conrad Hilton expounds on his mission to bring American democracy and the Hilton experience to every corner of the globe, “including the moon”. Don, sleep-deprived and increasingly disconnected, makes a fatal interpretive error. He delivers a beautiful, ambitious pitch about bringing Hilton to the world, but fails to literally include the moon as a proposed hotel site. Hilton, seeing his explicit wish ignored, storms out in disgust. Roger Sterling, ever the cynical pragmatist, later visits Don to deliver a stark warning: with two major clients now furious, his position is precarious. The father figure has become the wrathful judge, and Don’s creative genius is dismissed as insubordination.

   The episode’s denouement finds Don attempting to reclaim some agency through familiar, toxic means. Using the pretext of another late-night call from Hilton, he instead calls Suzanne Farrell. Their ensuing late-night tryst is underscored by her sharp observation that targeting his children’s teacher represents a risky departure from his usual modus operandi—it is “too close to home”. She sleeps with him regardless, but the act feels less like a conquest than a symptom of his spiralling desperation. It is a hollow victory in a night of profound losses.

   Where the series sometimes stumbles with clunky historical references, *Wee Small Hour handles the civil rights movement with far greater nuance. The events are not merely backdrop but serve as pointed characterisation tools, particularly in delineating the women in Don’s orbit. Suzanne speaks of teaching her pupils Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, a statement that evokes in Don a mixture of tacit approval and fascination with a woman who represents educated, principled independence. She is the antithesis of Betty, who, upon hearing the news of the Birmingham bombings, remarks to Carla with dismissive privilege, “Maybe it isn’t the time for civil rights.” The contrast couldn’t be clearer, framing Suzanne as a beacon of the future and Betty as an avatar of a wilfully ignorant past.

   The firing of Salvatore Romano marked a significant behind-the-scenes milestone, making actor Bryan Batt the first regular cast member to be written out of the show. His contract was not renewed for Season 4. Series creator Matthew Weiner originally defended the shocking, unjust nature of Sal’s dismissal as a necessary illustration of the risks and injustices faced by gay men in the 1960s. While dramatically potent, this decision remains one of the series’ most controversial. Weiner later expressed public regret, calling the abandonment of Sal’s storyline “a missed opportunity,” and despite vague plans for a future cameo, nothing materialised. This meta-narrative of creative regret inevitably colours a modern viewing of the episode.

   Wee Small Hours is a technically solid, often brilliantly acted episode. Hornbacher’s direction is assured, the historical framing is clever, and the parallel narratives of Betrayal are deftly interwoven. However, its overarching critical flaw is one of dramatic balance. The brutal, emotionally resonant termination of Salvatore Romano’s storyline is so powerful, so morally arresting, that it completely overwhelms the other narrative threads. Don’s troubles with Hilton, his pursuit of Suzanne, and Betty’s flirtation with Henry Francis all risk seeming like artificial ‘filler’ in comparison—well-executed subplots that simply cannot compete with the raw impact of a beloved character being sacrificed on the altar of period-accurate bigotry and corporate cowardice.

   RATING: 6/10 (++)

   ==

   Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

   LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

   BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

   ▲Upvote

   ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

   💬 Show comments
9. ›Television Review: Souvenir (Mad Men, S3x08, 2009)@drax28d

   

   Souvenir (S3x08)

   Airdate: 4 October 2009

   Written by: Lisa Albert & Matthew Weiner Directed by: Phil Abraham

   Running Time: 48 minutes

   Following the contractual and psychological “wham” event of the previous episode, Seven Twenty Three, wherein Don Draper is forcibly signed to a three-year contract, the eighth episode of Mad Men’s third season, Souvenir, takes a characteristically deliberate approach to storytelling. True to the series’ foundational ethos, it sacrifices forward plot momentum almost entirely for the sake of slow-burn character development. The episode functions as a narrative holiday, both for the characters desperate to escape their various stifling realities and for an audience granted a respite from high-stakes agency politics. In doing so, it delivers a piece that is arguably slight and occasionally unoriginal, yet one that provides rich psychological texture and, not unimportantly, a measure of deliberate fan service to those invested in the show’s meticulous period aesthetics and the personal tribulations of its cast.

   The script, by Lisa Gilbert and Matthew Weiner, is notably less precise about its temporal framing than is typical for the series. While established as occurring over a few sweltering days in August 1963, the exact chronology feels diffuse, mirroring the languid, aimless mood of a city in seasonal stasis. This vagueness is not necessarily a flaw but a deliberate stylistic choice, reinforcing the episode’s core theme: the summer hiatus as a liminal space where normal rules and routines are suspended, with consequences that are both liberating and perilous.

   The oppressive heat of a New York summer is established as the primary antagonist in the opening scene. As Hildy informs Pete Campbell and his colleagues of her weekend beach plans, the dialogue underscores a mass exodus. Trudy, Pete’s wife, has also departed, leaving him ostensibly to work. His claim that he “loves New York in August, when everyone is out” is a telling piece of self-deception, a fragile boast masking a profound loneliness. The reality of Pete’s solitude is far less glamorous. He indulges in regressive, childlike comforts—eating cereal and watching cartoons—behaviour that reveals the stunted adolescent beneath the accounts executive’s veneer. His encounter with his neighbour’s au pair, Gudrun (Nina Rausch), crying over a ruined borrowed dress, provides a catalyst for a more adult, yet equally immature, fantasy. His chivalrous mission to replace the garment at the upscale Bonwit Teller department store becomes a cringe-inducing exercise in humiliation, first upon discovering Joan Holloway—the embodiment of Sterling Cooper’s former glamour—reduced to working as a shop manager, and second in the awkward transaction itself, highlighting his marital disconnect. The scene brilliantly displays quiet embarrassment, mining discomfort from the gap between intention and perception.

   Pete’s narrative arc descends from awkwardness into outright venality. After resolving the dress crisis, he returns drunk to Gudrun’s apartment, demanding sexual payment for his services—a stark, ugly moment that lays bare the transactional nature he perceives in all relationships. The subsequent confrontation by her employer, Ed Lawrence (Ned Vaughn), who coldly warns Pete to take his adulterous business elsewhere, is a brutal dose of reality. The true emotional climax, however, arrives with Trudy’s return. Pete’s inability to perform sexually culminates in a tearful breakdown that all but confesses his infidelity. Trudy’s silent, devastated comprehension is more powerful than any outburst. In a poignant, if ultimately hollow, coda, Pete promises never to let them be apart during holidays again—a vow that speaks more to his desperate, cloying love for her than to any genuine reform. It is a devastating portrait of a man who wants to be good but lacks the moral fortitude, a theme Vince Kartheiser portrays with pitiable precision.

   Parallel to Pete’s sordid drama, the episode follows Betty Draper’s own summer restlessness. Her involvement with the Junior League of Tarrytown and the controversial reservoir project brings her into further contact with Henry Francis. His intervention at the Board of Trustees, using his political authority to postpone the project, is a clear display of power that both attracts and intimidates her. Their brief, charged kiss in the car park is a silent agreement to continue their clandestine dance, a mutual grasping for an escape route from their respective gilded cages.

   The most visually sumptuous escape is granted to Don and Betty themselves. With Conrad Hilton dispatching Don to inspect his European hotels, Don surprisingly invites Betty to join him in Rome. This interlude is the episode’s centrepiece, a sun-drenched fantasy of marital rekindling. In the Eternal City, they shed their American skins: Don is playful and attentive, Betty is radiant and adventurous, even participating in a mildly risqué charade where she pretends not to be Don’s wife to tease two local men. It is a perfect, self-contained holiday idyll, beautifully shot and performed, offering a tantalising glimpse of what their marriage could be without the weight of secrets, boredom, and suburban conformity. This plot device allowed the audience to experience Betty as an early 1960s fashion icon, a function Souvenir fulfils with aplomb.

   Yet, the title itself—Souvenir—is deeply ironic. A souvenir is a token of a past experience, often kitschy and divorced from the reality of the place it represents. The episode argues that this is all such escapes can ultimately provide. The Draper’s Roman holiday is just that: a fleeting keepsake. Upon returning to Ossining, the illusion shatters instantly. Francine reveals the reservoir project is back on, Carla reports that the children have been fighting, and the crushing monotony of domestic life reasserts itself. Betty’s declaration to Don—“I hate this place”—and her subsequent retreat into frosty detachment is the inevitable crash after the European high. The holiday has changed nothing; it has only made the return more unbearable.

   This structural critique leads to the episode’s most significant weakness: its lack of originality and narrative thrust. The central premise—wives and families fleeing the city heat while husbands remain behind, tempted by the proximity of other women—is borrowed wholesale from Billy Wilder’s 1955 film The Seven Year Itch. In that film Jake Sherman, a middle-aged publishing executive has sent his wife and young son on vacation while he stays in the city because of work, leaving him tempted by a glamorous neighbour. The parallels to Pete’s storyline are unmistakable. While Mad Men often engages in sophisticated cultural reference, here it feels less like homage and more like a straightforward appropriation of a classic premise without substantially subverting or deepening it. Pete is a more pathetic and less likable protagonist than Tom Ewell’s Sherman, but the narrative skeleton is identical, rendering this strand of the episode predictable and slightly derivative.

   Where “Souvenir” seeks to compensate is in its dedicated fan service. This operates on two levels. Firstly, for a certain segment of the audience, there is the sheer visual appeal of January Jones in period underwear and, most memorably, in the Rome sequences adorned with a flawless beehive hairdo and glamorous evening wear. This look, for which the episode won an Emmy, is not merely decorative. It serves as a potent visual symbol, signalling Betty’s—and by extension, America’s—tentative, glamorous step away from the conservative 1950s and into the more adventurous spirit of the nascent 1960s. Secondly, the episode caters to history and retail archaeology buffs with its use of Bonwit Teller. As noted, this was a legendary New York department store, a temple of mid-century consumerism whose controversial demolition in the early 1980s to make way for Trump Tower became a notorious footnote in the city’s development history. Its inclusion is a deeply resonant period detail, a ghost of a vanished New York that underscores the show’s commitment to a specific, fading world.

   Souvenir is an episode that embodies both the strengths and the indulgences of Mad Men’s narrative style. As a piece of character study, it is profoundly effective, offering nuanced, painful insights into Pete Campbell’s fragile masculinity and Betty Draper’s desperate yearning for meaning beyond motherhood. The Roman interlude remains one of the series’ most beautifully realised sequences. However, its reliance on a recycled cinematic premise, its deliberate lack of plot progression, and its occasional descent into aesthetic pandering prevent it from ranking among the season’s finest hours. It is, like the trinket it is named for, an attractive, well-crafted, but ultimately insubstantial piece—enjoyable in the moment, yet revealing its limitations upon closer, more critical inspection. It serves as a perfect holiday postcard from the world of Mad Men, capturing a mood and a moment with picture-postcard beauty, but offering little in the way of forward momentum or groundbreaking narrative insight.

   RATING: 6/10 (++)

   ==

   Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

   LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

   BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

   ▲Upvote

   ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

   💬 Show comments
10. ›Television Review: Seven Twenty Three (Mad Men, S3x07, 2009)@drax28d

    

    Seven Twenty Three (S3x07)

    Airdate: 27 September 2009

    Written by: Andre Jacquemetton, Maria Jaquemetton & Matthew Weiner Directed by: Daisy von Scherler Mayer

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    In the first seasons of Mad Men, Don Draper featured as an iconic, larger-than-life character who functioned as a personification of the American Dream in its purest form—a man who came from nothing and whose talent for selling images, both of himself and his clients, convinced him that everything was possible and that he could do no wrong. By Season 3’s seventh episode, Seven Twenty Three, that carefully constructed persona is brutally dismantled. Draper is finally confronted by his limitations, knocked down to reality both figuratively and literally. This episode, a pivotal turning point in the series, orchestrates his humbling with a precision that is as dramatically satisfying as it is psychologically acute. It marks the moment when the show’s central myth of self-invention collides with the immutable forces of corporate power, personal history, and human vulnerability.

    The episode was written by Andre and Maria Jacquemont together with the show’s creator, Matthew Weiner, and represents the directorial debut of Daisy von Scherler Mayer. Mayer, best known for her 1995 independent film Party Girl and also the wife of the series’ music composer David Carbonara, brings a distinct and personal touch to the material. This is immediately evident in the unusual, almost novelistic opening sequence, which forsakes the show’s typical establishing shots for a triptych of characters waking up. We see Peggy Olson in bed with a lover after having sex; Don in a motel room with blood on his face; and Betty Draper resting on a plush red couch. It is a bold, disorienting choice that functions as a narrative hook, promising to reveal how each character arrived at these disparate moments. The rest of the episode is precisely that explanation, weaving their stories into a tapestry of compromise, desire, and capitulation.

    The narrative begins with something banal: Don and Betty discussing new interior design for their Ossining home. This surface-level domesticity is swiftly undercut. Don later accompanies his children, Sally and Bobby, to a field class held by their teacher, Suzanne Farrell, to observe the partial solar eclipse of 20 July 1963. The celestial event offers an opportunity for Don and Suzanne to talk, a conversation the experienced teacher interprets as flirting—something Don denies with a characteristic, almost reflexive, deflection. This subplot reinforces Don’s perpetual state of being in transit between identities, unable to fully inhabit either the responsible father or the serial adulterer without conflict.

    Simultaneously, Betty embarks on her own journey towards transgression, though her path is paved with the respectable veneer of civic duty. Through her Junior League membership, she learns of a controversial reservoir project and is urged to leverage a personal connection to Henry Francis, an assistant to Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Their arranged meeting in a local bakery shows repressed longing. Both find excuses to come alone. Henry can promise nothing regarding the reservoir but clearly relishes the brief encounter, their mutual attraction barely concealed beneath polite conversation. As they leave, Betty is drawn to an ornate, oversized couch in a shop window. Henry, revealing a past moving furniture, identifies it as a fainting couch—a Victorian relic for ladies overwhelmed by their corsets. The symbolism is unsubtle but potent: Betty, constrained by the corset of her perfect-wife persona, is unconsciously seeking a place to collapse.

    The catalyst for the episode’s central drama is the unexpected arrival of Conrad Hilton at Sterling Cooper. The legendary hotel tycoon, a genuine historical figure whose introduction in Season 3 is noted as a significant narrative device, comes specifically to hire Don Draper. This coup sends a jolt of prestige through the agency, leaving the staff in awed applause. For Don, it should represent the ultimate validation of his genius. Yet, in the world of Mad Men, no triumph comes without a price.

    Parallel to this, Peggy Olson is dealing with unwelcome courtship. Duck Phillips, believing she belongs with him at Grey, woos her with gifts. Uncomfortable, she returns a present to his hotel suite, where Duck, ostensibly sober, makes another pitch—both professional and personal. Peggy’s refusal turns to acquiescence with startling speed, leading to a sexual encounter that has often been critiqued as a rare narrative misstep. The transition from professional tension to sexual liaision feels abrupt, insufficiently motivated by either established attraction or deeper character connection, leaving a moment that feels more plot-driven than character-driven.

    Don’s deal with Hilton, rather than cementing his autonomy, triggers his undoing. The immense account brings unwelcome scrutiny from the other Sterling Cooper partners, who insist he sign a formal contract—anathema to Don, who values the independence that saved him during the PPL takeover. The pressure escalates when Roger Sterling, in a profound betrayal, telephones Betty to enlist her influence. This intrusion of business into his domestic sanctum infuriates Don. In a fit of pique, he simply leaves, driving aimlessly until he picks up two young hitchhikers, Doug (Trevor O’Brien) and Sandy (Erin Sandsers). They are travelling to Niagara Falls to marry, a plan Doug candidly admits is a strategy to avoid the draft. This reference to Vietnam feels a touch anachronistic or heavy-handed for the summer of 1963, a time when the conflict was still a distant, low-intensity concern for most Americans. The couple shares drugs with Don, leading to an impromptu, hazy party in a motel room. Here, Don’s subconscious surfaces in a vision of his abusive father, Archie Whitman, before Doug physically assaults him, knocking him out and robbing him. He awakens abandoned, symbolically stripped of his money, his dignity, and his illusion of invincibility.

    Betty, in the meantime, has acted on her obsession, purchasing the fainting couch and installing it in her living room, to the horror of her interior designer. This act of defiant, self-indulgent decoration reveals that the couch she was resting on in the opening sequence is indeed this very object—a tangible manifestation of her inner lassitude and yearning for an escape she cannot yet name.

    Don returns to the Sterling Cooper offices on 23 July 1963, bearing the humiliating physical evidence of his downfall: a band-aid on his nose, dismissed as a “fender bender”. A greater humiliation awaits in Bertram Cooper’s office. Cooper, who had previously tolerated Don’s fabricated identity with benign indifference, now recalculates. With the lucrative Hilton contract in play, Don’s secret becomes leverage. In a chilling display of corporate realpolitik, Cooper demands the contract, forcing Don’s capitulation. The only concession Don can wrench is the petty victory of no longer having to work with Roger. The man who sold the world is himself sold, his genius now legally owned by the firm. The episode’s title, “Seven Twenty Three”, thus refers not just to the date of his return but to the new, binding numerical identifier of his servitude.

    The episode is superbly crafted. Von Scherler Mayer’s direction is assured, balancing the intimate stillness of Betty’s scenes with the chaotic, drug-fuelled descent of Don’s misadventure. The writing is taut, layering multiple character arcs with thematic coherence. The performances are, as ever, exemplary; Jon Hamm conveys Don’s crumbling defiance with heartbreaking subtlety. However, the episode is not without flaws. Beyond the previously noted abruptness of Peggy’s scene, the Vietnam reference, while intended to foreshadow the coming national trauma, can feel like a box being ticked rather than an organic part of the narrative.

    The episode is also rich in industry meta-commentary. Colleagues refer to Don as “our Ogilvy”, a nod to David Ogilvy, the legendary British advertising executive who served as a partial model for Draper. They quote from his seminal 1963 book, Confessions of an Ad Man, anchoring the fiction in the real history of the industry. This cleverly blurs the line between Don the character and the titans he emulates, even as the episode systematically deconstructs that very emulation.

    Finally, the closing choice of “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford is an impeccable music cue. The classic tune’s lyrics about debt, labour, and being another day older and deeper in debt perfectly underscore the episode’s thesis. For all his individual brilliance, Don Draper is revealed to be just a cog in the corporate machine, a man who must, as the song says, “owe [his] soul to the company store”. His knee is bent, his contract signed. The American Dream, in this devastating hour, is shown to have fine print—and it is binding.

    In the broader context of Season 3, which portrays the last gasps of the pre-assassination era, Seven Twenty Three is a crucial inflection point. It is the moment the show’s protagonist is forcibly integrated into the very system he sought to transcend, a personal November coming months before the national one. The episode stands as a masterful, if occasionally imperfect, piece of television drama, proving that the most compelling collapses are those of the giants we ourselves erected.

    RATING: 7/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
11. ›Television Review: Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency (Mad Men, S3x06, 2009)@drax30d

    

    Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency (S3x06)

    Airdate: 20 September 2009

    Written by: Robin Veith & Matthew Weiner Directed by: Leslie Linka Glater

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    It is a peculiar and celebrated hallmark of Mad Men that whole episodes can drift by in a haze of cigarette smoke and murmured subtext, where the most seismic shifts occur within a character’s glance rather than in the plot. Very little, in the conventional television sense, ‘happens’. And yet, when something does indeed happen—when the meticulously constructed world of early-1960s New York is violently punctured by an event—the result is often one of the series’ most indelible moments. Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency, the sixth episode of the third season, stands as an exquisite case in point. Here, the catalytic event, one with profound and lasting consequences for nearly every principal character, is the product of sheer, absurd accident. This episode, written by Robin Veith and Matthew Weiner, masterfully uses a single, grotesquely comic disaster to explore themes of power, chance, and the fragile veneer of control, all while being precisely anchored to the Fourth of July weekend of 1963.

    As with much of the series’ finest storytelling, the episode is deftly woven into the ongoing serial tapestry. It begins and ends by addressing the fallout from the previous episode—the birth of Eugene ‘Gene’ Draper. The domestic storyline reveals young Sally Draper’s poignant struggle to accept her new baby brother, a difficulty compounded by the fact that his name is a constant, painful reminder of her recently deceased and deeply beloved grandfather. This familial micro-drama, handled with the show’s characteristic subtlety, provides a quiet, human counterpoint to the corporate chaos about to erupt.

    The main plot, however, returns us to the offices of Sterling Cooper, where the staff are once again confronted with their subjugation to their London-based corporate overlords, Puttnam, Powell & Lowe. On 1st July 1963, a staff meeting is called to announce the imminent arrival of a high-level delegation led by the imperious Saint-John Powell. He is to be accompanied by two other executives: Harold Ford (Neil Dickson) and, most significantly, Guy MacKendrick (Jamie Thomas King), a young, charismatic rising star. Their visit, coinciding with major impending personnel and policy changes, sends a ripple of anxiety and speculation through the ranks. The corporate intrusion is so profound it forces the agency to remain open on Wednesday, 3rd July, flouting the standard practice of closing before a national holiday. When queried on their poor timing, the PPL representatives offer a wonderfully condescending explanation: being British, they simply didn’t know.

    This atmosphere of imposed change dovetails tragically with Joan Holloway’s personal narrative. In a devastating sequence, Joan, who has already perceived the possessive and potentially violent streak in her handsome, young husband Greg, makes the decision to quit her job to dedicate herself to domestic life. Her vision of a perfect future is shattered when Greg returns home drunk, confessing he has failed to secure a crucial surgeon’s residency—a career-ruining setback. In a cruel twist, he informs her that they must now re-evaluate their finances and that she will have to find a job, mere moments after she has voluntarily relinquished hers. The humiliation is compounded when she must still attend her own farewell party at the office, a celebration now rendered hollow and ironic. The PPL arrival only deepens the sense of instability. Lane Pryce, the British financial officer who has become somewhat sympathetic, is informed he is to be shipped off to Bombay, his office promised to the incoming wunderkind, Guy MacKendrick.

    The subsequent party, like so many at Sterling Cooper, is fuelled by copious alcohol and quickly descends into raucous disarray. The episode’s central, shocking set-piece is triggered by a John Deere lawnmower, a gauche celebratory gift brought in by Ken Cosgrove after landing the account. In a moment of drunken hijinks, Smitty Smith gives secretary Lois a ride on the machine, loses control, and sends it careening across the office floor. The result is one of the most visceral and darkly hilarious scenes in television history: the lawnmower blade gruesomely severs Guy MacKendrick’s foot, spraying the stunned partygoers with blood. The scene is a masterclass in controlled chaos, and it is only through Joan’s swift, level-headed application of a tourniquet that MacKendrick’s life is saved. In an instant, the corporate destiny of the agency is rewritten.

    Notably, Don Draper misses the incident entirely. He has been summoned to the Presidential Suite of the Waldorf Astoria to meet with “Connie”, the mysterious man he encountered weeks earlier. This meeting confirms the man’s identity as none other than Conrad Hilton (Chelcie Ross), the hotel magnate. Their discussion, in which Hilton probes Don about his advertising services, is a significant moment for the series, establishing a precedent for introducing real-life historical figures into its fictional fabric. The scene cleverly juxtaposes Ross with the image of the real Hilton from a 1963 Time magazine cover, blurring the lines between history and drama. Their meeting is abruptly cut short by the news of the office catastrophe.

    Upon his return, Don learns the consequences: MacKendrick will likely lose his foot and thus his capacity to work, meaning Lane Pryce’s transfer to Bombay is cancelled. He will stay in his role, and the corporate reshuffle is nullified by a freak accident. The episode excels in its subtle depiction of these layered dynamics: the strained family relationships, the brutal calculus of professional choices, and the trans-Atlantic tension where a New York agency, operating in America at the zenith of its global power, must still kneel to representatives of a faded British empire.

    The most memorable and analysed aspect of the episode remains the lawnmower scene. It functions on multiple levels. Primarily, it is a brutally effective piece of black comedy that suddenly reshuffles the corporate deck, undoing weeks of corporate machinations in a spray of blood and shock. More profoundly, the incident serves as a comical foreboding of a far more tragic national event. Director Lesli Linka Glatter employs specific visual cues—the sudden violence, the stunned reaction shots, the chaos erupting in a moment of celebration—to create an unmistakable associative link with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which would occur just months later in November 1963. The parallels are stark: a young, energetic, and charismatic leader (MacKendrick is explicitly framed as the future of the company) is cut down just as he is poised to enact great change. The episode thus becomes a brilliant piece of historical foreshadowing, using a grotesque office accident to prefigure the traumatic national accident that would truly end the ‘Camelot’ era.

    The episode’s finale returns to a quieter, more reflective key. In a strong and resonant scene, Don and Sally discuss the new baby. Don tells his daughter that a baby, unlike adults, has many possibilities ahead of him. This sentiment perfectly underscores one of the series’ central motifs: the necessity of moving forward, of embracing the future’s potential rather than being paralysed by the past. It’s a poignant note that bookends the episode’s exploration of thwarted futures and sudden, accidental redirections.

    If the episode possesses a flaw, it is perhaps a rare moment of overly explicit historical signposting. A scene featuring a heavy-handed reference to Vietnam and the possibility of a military draft feels somewhat anachronistic in its urgency for the summer of 1963. While the conflict was certainly a growing concern, the level of everyday anxiety depicted would become more characteristic of the later 1960s. This minor misstep, however, does little to detract from the episode’s overall power.

    In the end, “Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency” is not merely a very good episode of Mad Men; it is arguably the most memorable of Season 3. It rewards the audience’s patience with the series’ slow-burn storytelling by delivering a shocking, game-changing event that is both horrifically funny and deeply meaningful. It masterfully intertwines personal dramas with corporate politics and bold historical metaphor, all while showcasing the series’ unparalleled skill in character nuance and period detail. By confirming Conrad Hilton’s presence and orchestrating its infamous accident, the episode proves that when Mad Men decides to have something ‘happen’, it does so with unparalleled precision and lasting impact.

    RATING: 8/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
12. ›Television Review: The Fog (Mad Men, S3x05, 2009)@drax30d

    

    The Fog (S3x05)

    Airdate: 13 September 2009

    Written by: Kater Gordon Directed by: Phil Abrahan

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    The defining strength of series like Mad Men lies in their architectural precision. In a narrative landscape often dominated by the shock of grand historical events, Matthew Weiner’s drama excels in its ability to move plots and characters from point A to point B with a clockmaker’s consistency, using established historical markers as its fixed bearings. This is true even within the relatively uneventful calendar of 1963—a year whose cataclysmic conclusion in Dallas looms over the season but whose preceding months offer fewer obvious dramatic hooks. Here, the series’ mechanics become most visible: the precision applied to historical backdrop is mirrored in the meticulous, often predictable, development of its regular plotlines and character arcs. The Fog, the fifth episode of Season 3, is a telling example of this method. It executes its moves with flawless technical competence, yet in doing so, it reveals both the assured craft and the occasional dramatic safeness that can emerge when a series follows its own blueprint too faithfully.

    This precision is immediately evident in the script by Kater Gordon, which is meticulously set between the 20th and 22nd of June 1963. The days are framed by two deaths: the recent passing of Betty Draper’s father, Gene Hofstadt, and the real-world assassination of Black civil rights activist Medgar Evers in Mississippi on June 12th. These events are the psychological poles between which the episode’s drama oscillates. The episode opens with Don and Betty being summoned to Sally’s school following an altercation. Here, the teacher’s name is revealed as Suzanne Farrell, a young woman whose intense, almost intrusive dedication to Sally immediately signals a narrative vector distinct from Betty’s weary, pregnant desire to simply move on. Suzanne’s later, thinly-veiled late-night call to Don under the pretext of further discussion confirms her romantic interest, planting a seed for future subplots. Yet, this is part of the season’s pattern of Don risking his adultery too close to home, a precision in repeating his cycles of infidelity that borders on the schematic.

    Don’s attention, however, is forcibly redirected when Betty goes into labour. The ensuing hospital sequence forms the episode’s core. In the waiting room, Don shares a bottle of whiskey with Dennis Hobart, a Sing Sing prison guard. Their conversation—a blend of masculine anxiety and naive hope about fatherhood—is a perfectly crafted vignette of period-specific male bonding, yet it feels like a deliberate, almost clinical exercise in thematic contrast: Don, the affluent adman, and Hobart, the working-class guard, both momentarily united by biological inevitability. Meanwhile, Betty is subjected to the period’s popular medical practice of “twilight sleep”, a cocktail of drugs designed to ease birth. This becomes the conduit for the episode’s titular fog, a stream of hallucinatory visions. She encounters her deceased father Gene, her mother Ruth (Lou Mamboni), and, most strikingly, Medgar Evers. This vision is the episode’s most audacious attempt to tether personal trauma to the national political landscape. The birth of a son, whom Betty names Eugene after her father, provides a neat, emotional closure, but the progression feels inevitable. The audience could well have guessed Betty would give birth around this time, and so she does; the mechanics are impeccable, but the surprise is negligible.

    Concurrently, the professional world of Sterling Cooper is gripped by a different kind of unease. The new PPL regime, embodied by the austerely pragmatic Lane Pryce, has imposed cost-cutting measures, casting a pall over the office. This financial tension catalyses two key developments. First, a call from Herman “Duck” Phillips, who has resurrected his career at rival firm Grey. He attempts to poach both Pete Campbell and Peggy Olson. Their reactions are precisely delineated: Pete, burdened by pride and his complex rivalry with Peggy, rejects it outright; Peggy flirts with the idea but ultimately demurs, choosing instead to ask Don for a raise—a request he coldly refuses, citing the firm’s finances. This interaction reinforces the show’s enduring hierarchy and Peggy’s frustrated ascent.

    The second, more thematically rich, development involves Pete Campbell. Frustrated with being assigned “dog” accounts like Admiral television, Pete demonstrates his occasional prescience. Noting that Admiral sales are dipping everywhere except in Black communities, he devises a pitch focused on that very market, even suggesting the use of Black media and hinting at “integrating” their marketing approach. In his research, he awkwardly questions Hollis, the firm’s Black elevator operator, about why Black people might prefer Admiral. This moment is a direct, deliberate callback to the series’ opening scene in the pilot, where Don Draper questioned a Black waiter about his cigarette preferences. That scene established the pervasive, casual racism of the era, and Draper’s unique, almost anthropological detachment. Pete’s version is clumsier, more transactional, but it underscores the same dynamic: the white corporate world’s myopic, instrumental view of Black consumers. His progressive idea is, unsurprisingly, rejected by the Admiral executives, a historical verisimilitude that shows Pete, as point seven notes, a little bit ahead of his time. It’s a nuanced tragedy of foresight wasted on a world not ready to listen.

    The episode’s craft extends to its aesthetic choices, which are a mix of the effective and the curiously anachronistic. The music accompanying Betty’s visions—Me voy a morir de tanto amor by Alberto Iglesias, from the 2001 film Lucía y el sexo—is, as noted, a clear anachronism for a 1963-set piece. Yet, its haunting quality undeniably fits the ethereal, disorienting mood of the sequence, a case where emotional resonance trumps historical purity. More subtly telling is Duck Phillips’ sartorial choice during his lunch with Pete and Peggy: a turtleneck sweater, worn without a tie. In the uniform world of Madison Avenue suits, this is a visual declaration of rebellion, a symbol of the emerging, more casual 1960s sensibility that would eventually dismantle the very establishment Duck once represented. It’s a small, precise detail that speaks volumes.

    The Fog is an episode that embodies the virtues and limitations of Mad Men’s mid-season craftsmanship. It is superbly constructed, each narrative thread dovetailing with historical touchstones and character consistency. The script is tight, the performances nuanced, and the thematic ambition—connecting domestic birth pangs with national racial violence—is commendable. However, this very precision can feel like a well-rehearsed performance. The beats of Betty’s labour, Pete’s frustrated ingenuity, and Don’s passive navigation of crises unfold with a predictability that lacks the disruptive spark of the series’ best episodes. It functions as part of the season’s broader project of showing the last gasps of an era, moving its pieces deliberately towards the November cataclysm. As a piece of television, it is impeccably made; as a dramatic experience, it sometimes feels like watching a masterful machine operate, hearing every gear click perfectly into place, and occasionally longing for a moment of unexpected, unscripted friction.

    RATING: 6/10 (++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
13. ›Television Review: The Arrangements (Mad Men, S3x04, 2009)@drax32d

    

    The Arrangements (S3x04)

    Airdate: 6 September 2009

    Written by: Andrew Colvile & Matthew Weiner Directed by: Michael Uppendahl

    Running Time: 50 minutes

    Mad Men is often celebrated as a meticulously crafted window into 1960s America, a series obsessed with a nation nervously facing its future. Yet, some of its most penetrating episodes are those that grapple with the past, illuminating historical periods that were as alien to its protagonists as the 1960s have since become to a contemporary audience. The Arrangements, the fourth episode of the third season, is a prime example. It deftly exposes the deep generational fissures that existed even within that seemingly cohesive post-war society, rifts reflected most painfully in the starkly different styles of parenting and the fraught transfer of responsibility from one generation to the next. Directed by Michael Uppendahl from a script by Andrew Colville and Matthew Weiner, the episode has great tonal balance, weaving together tragic family drama, sharp business satire, and poignant personal awakenings into a cohesive whole that captures the peculiar anxiety of mid-1963.

    The episode advances the season’s timeline significantly, picking up more than a month after the events of My Old Kentucky Home. It is clearly set around 11 June 1963, a detail that becomes quietly crucial. 1963 was a relatively uneventful year until its cataclysmic end in Dallas, forcing the narrative to build tension through character development and mundane crises. This temporal setting—early summer, before the heat of impending history—allows the episode to explore its themes of arrangement and inheritance without the overshadowing spectre of national trauma, making the personal tragedies all the more resonant.

    The episode’s various storylines all orbit this central theme of negotiating new terms between generations. For Peggy Olson, the generational conflict is one of ambition versus tradition. Concluding that her lengthy commute from Brooklyn is a professional hindrance, she decides to move to Manhattan. This practical decision is met with visceral outrage from her mother, who views it as a moral betrayal, condemning Peggy as becoming “one of those girls.” Peggy’s attempt to mitigate the cost by finding a roommate leads to a humiliating prank call after her ad is posted on the Sterling Cooper bulletin board. The scene is a small, brutal lesson in the office’s latent misogyny. Following Joan’s characteristically pragmatic advice, she eventually finds a roommate in Karen Ericson (a pre-Bones Carla Gallo), securing her foothold in a new, independent life her mother’s generation could scarcely comprehend.

    In the professional sphere, the generational clash is framed in terms of wealth and wisdom. Pete Campbell introduces Don Draper to Horace Cook Jr. (Aaron Stanford), a feckless, spoiled heir who wishes to spend a million dollars promoting the obscure sport of jai alai. Don is immediately wary, recognising the folly of the venture and the delicate politics involved, as Cook’s father is an associate of Bert Cooper. In a partners’ meeting, Horace Cook Sr. (David Selby) reveals his own cynical parental strategy: he will allow Sterling Cooper to take his son’s money, believing a spectacular commercial failure is the only way to teach the arrogant young man humility. Don, in a rare moment of ethical clarity, attempts to warn Horace Jr. directly, but his counsel is dismissed as a mere negotiating tactic.

    A parallel business, with worse financial outcome for Sterling Cooper, provides the episode’s more comical thread. The agency’s attempt to create a Patio Cola advertisement as a carbon-copy remake of the opening number from Bye Bye Birdie hits a snag. The film functioned as a glittering time capsule of pre-assassination America, its hyper-energetic performance by Ann-Margret symbolising a new, commercially sanitised femininity. When the hired director becomes unavailable, Salvatore Romano seizes the opportunity, throwing himself into the work with fastidious passion. This professional obsession bleeds into his barren domestic life, further disappointing his wife, Kitty. In a moment of devastating dramatic irony, Sal jumps from his marital bed to enthusiastically reconstruct the ad for her, playing the role of the seductive young woman with an authenticity that finally grants Kitty her first, chilling glimpse of his true sexuality. The professional conclusion is bitterly ironic: the Patio executives reject the ad not on its technical merits, but because, as Roger Sterling bluntly puts it, the girl simply “isn’t Ann-Margret.” Don’s consolation—that Sal can now add “commercial director” to his resume—is a hollow prize for a man whose authentic self must remain forever uncredited.

    The episode’s unsung hero, and its emotional core, is Gene, Betty Draper’s father. Portrayed with magnificent depth by Ryan Cutrona, Gene is a man going through the fog of dementia. His behaviour is erratic—teaching his young granddaughter Sally to drive his car is a terrifyingly poor decision—yet he proves to be lucid, witty, and profoundly loving company for her. He represents the “Lost Generation,” a repository of lived history, shown when he unsettles Don by showing his grandson Bobby a German helmet from the First World War, complete with a bullet hole. In his most clear-sighted act, Gene, sensing his mortality, presents Betty with meticulously detailed plans for his funeral, arguing that the funeral industry preys on grief-stricken families. Betty dismisses this as morbid, but Gene’s pragmatism is proven tragically correct when he collapses and dies while shopping, leaving Sally devastated. His death is not just a family loss; it is the passing of a worldview—practical, seasoned, and intimately acquainted with hardship.

    Uppendahl’s direction handles these disparate storylines with remarkable skill, ensuring the episode feels cohesive rather than fragmented. The acting is uniformly superb, with Cutrona’s performance standing out for its ability to blend pathos, humour, and dignity, making Gene’s departure deeply moving. The episode’s conclusion showcases Uppendahl’s flair for potent symbolism. In the final moments, Don sits on Gene’s now-empty bed, next to the crib awaiting his and Betty’s unborn child. The composition is a perfect visual metaphor: Don is literally positioned between the disappearing world of the past and the utterly uncertain world of the future. This theme is underscored by the use of the famous First World War song “Over There” over the end credits—a symbolic farewell to the Lost Generation, whose experiences were as alien to the Baby Boomers as the Boomers’ own coming tumult would be to Generation Z.

    The episode’s most chilling nod to the future, however, is reserved for Sally. Sent to watch television to distract her from her grief, she is confronted with the now-iconic news footage of Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức self-immolating in Saigon in protest against the South Vietnamese government’s religious policies. This image, one of the first truly global television atrocities of the 1960s, is a brutal intrusion of coming history into the Draper living room. It is a precursor to the flood of violent imagery that would define the Vietnam War era, a frightening glimpse of the new world Sally and her generation will have to live in. In this moment, The Arrangements transcends its specific domestic and professional concerns to connect the personal passing of one man with the violent birth pangs of a new historical epoch.

    The Arrangements is a standout episode that fully earns its critical acclaim. It succeeds not through grand plot twists but through nuanced character study and a profound understanding of its historical moment. It captures the quiet, often painful negotiations required when one generation makes way for the next, whether in a family home, a corporate boardroom, or the broader sweep of culture. By juxtaposing the death of a World War I veteran with the first televised flames of Vietnam, it masterfully illustrates how the personal and the historical are inextricably linked, all while maintaining the series’ signature blend of sharp wit and deep humanity. It is a testament to the show’s creative team operating at the peak of their powers.

    RATING: 8/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
14. ›Television Review: My Old Kentucky Home (Mad Men, S3x03, 2009)@drax32d

    

    My Old Kentucky Home (S3x03)

    Airdate: 30 August 2009

    Written by: Dahvi Waller & Matthew Weiner Directed by: Jennifer Getzinger

    Running Time: 50 minutes

    Mad Men is a series dedicated to charting the profound social and cultural shifts of 1960s America, a transformation that, while appearing rapid in historical retrospect, unfolded with agonising slowness from the perspective of those living through it. To portray this glacial pace of change authentically, the show frequently relied on subtlety and slow-burn character exposition, often resulting in episodes where, on the surface, very little of dramatic consequence actually occurs. My Old Kentucky Home, the third episode of the show’s third season, stands as a prime example of this narrative approach. It is an piece of television whose plot is gossamer-thin, its drama largely internal, and its interest sustained almost exclusively through moments of brilliant acting and the surprising, jarring inclusion of musical performances. It is an episode that frustrates traditional expectations of narrative propulsion, yet, in its meticulous layering of social detail and character nuance, it becomes a fascinating, if deliberately uneventful, portrait of a world on the cusp.

    The title itself is a loaded signifier, pointing directly to the 1852 ballad by Stephen Foster. This piece, one of the most popular works of 19th-century American music and adopted as the state song of Kentucky in 1928, carries a legacy of racial insensitivity within its original lyrics, a fact that would later force amendments. By invoking this anthem, the episode immediately plants itself in the contested soil of American tradition, heritage, and the uncomfortable truths that fester beneath polished surfaces.

    Set on a single day—Saturday, 4 May 1963—the episode follows three distinct party threads and one thread of reluctant work. The most overtly comedic strand involves Peggy Olson, Paul Kinsey, and the freelancer Smitty, who are condemned to the office to brainstorm a campaign for Bacardi rum. Frustrated and uninspired, Paul calls upon an old college acquaintance, Jeffrey Graves (Miles Fisher), who provides marijuana. The ensuing sequence is a masterclass in subtle class humiliation. As they smoke, Jeffrey punctures Paul’s carefully cultivated image of the refined, intellectual aesthete by revealing his working-class New Jersey roots and his once-heavy “Joisy” accent. Paul’s defence is performative: a surprisingly adept and spirited rendition of “Hello My Baby.” Peggy, intrigued and asserting her independence from her fussy secretary Olive (Judy Kain), joins them, declaring she wants “to get high.” Her subsequent experience is telling; she feels “in a good place” and, with a clear head, finds the inspiration to work, subtly underscoring her innate, pragmatic work ethic—a trait that consistently sets her apart from her more pretentious male colleagues.

    Meanwhile, in the rarefied air of a country club, Don and Betty Draper attend a Kentucky Derby party hosted by Roger Sterling and his new, young wife, Jane. This sequence is a symphony of quiet discomfort and telling vignettes. At home, before the party, a minor crisis unfolds as Sally steals a five-dollar bill from her grandfather, Gene. The resolution—Sally pretending to find the money after seeing his distress—and their subsequent bonding over Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a beautifully understated moment that speaks to the complex, often unspoken affections within families.

    At the party, the social fissures are palpable. Don, ever the outsider despite his success, slips away to the bar where he meets an elderly gentleman named Connie (played with wonderful gruffness by Chelcie Ross, who, in a neat piece of casting, would later return as the historical figure Conrad Hilton). Over the mixing of Old Fashioneds, Connie confesses that decades of wealth have never erased the feeling of his humble origins, a sentiment that resonates deeply with Don’s own fabricated identity. Back in the party room, the episode delivers its most infamous and controversial moment: Roger, in grotesque blackface, entertains the guests with a rendition of “My Old Kentucky Home.” The reaction shots of Don and Pete Campbell, who exchange a look of profound discomfort, are crucial. They signal a dawning, albeit silent, recognition of the practice’s offensiveness, a tiny crack in the monolith of accepted WASP culture.

    The party conversation also touches on the contemporary scandal of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller leaving his wife for a younger woman, a move the partygoers lament for potentially handing the 1964 Republican nomination to the hard-right Barry Goldwater. This political aside is not incidental; it frames the entire gathering as a last hurrah for a certain breed of moderate, country-club Republicanism. Betty, glowing in pregnancy, attracts the slightly drunken attention of a guest, Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley), who asks to touch her belly—a moment charged with a mutual, unacted-upon attraction. The party culminates with Pete and Trudy Campbell’s impeccably choreographed Charleston, a performance of youthful energy and synchrony that contrasts sharply with Roger and Jane’s slow, strained final dance, and with Don’s intervention to prevent a drunk Jane from causing a scene.

    The third party is the most tense and domestically claustrophobic. Joan Holloway (now Harris) and her husband, Greg, host a gathering for his hospital colleagues. Joan is in full crisis-management mode, using all her formidable social ingenuity to steer Greg away from potential arguments that could turn violent. The party reveals the devastating truth that Greg, the supposed brilliant surgeon, accidentally killed a patient. This revelation lands like a physical blow on Joan’s face, sowing the seeds of doubt about his career—and, by extension, the stability of their marriage. Forced by Greg to play the accordion, Joan surprises everyone with a soulful, knowing performance of Cole Porter’s “C’est magnifique.” It is a moment of defiant grace, a reclaiming of agency through performance, and one made more memorable by the behind-the-scenes fact that actress Christina Hendricks herself suggested the switch from piano to accordion, drawing on her own modest skills with the instrument.

    What, then, does this episodic diptych of parties and work actually accomplish? Precisely what Mad Men does at its best: it illustrates deep social and cultural divisions through behaviour, not exposition. The sharpest contrast is between the old-world WASP aristocracy, embodied by Roger and Betty, comfortably inhabiting their country-club milieu, and the strivers of Sterling Cooper. Yet, the divisions are more nuanced. Even within the office, a generational shift is evident. Paul Kinsey, for merely being a few years older, seems less “hip” than Smitty. And Paul’s visible discomfort at the blackface performance, despite his own privileged background, positions him as more aligned with the changing times than Roger, who remains blissfully, offensively entrenched in the past. The episode is a study in belonging and alienation, in the performances required to fit in, and the private costs of those performances.

    The blackface scene became one of the most controversial in the series’ history. While it is historically accurate for such a gathering in early 1960s America, and while Matthew Weiner’s direction clearly frames it as grotesque and jarring (through the reactions of Don, Pete, and the audience’s own modern perspective), many viewers and critics found its depiction unacceptable and racially insulting. The controversy was potent enough that some streaming services in various countries opted to simply not air the episode, a modern act of censorship that ironically highlights the very uncomfortable history the episode seeks to expose.

    My Old Kentucky Home is an episode that demands patience. It is a slow, deliberate, and at times frustrating instalment that deliberately avoids major plot advancements. Its power lies not in what happens, but in how it feels. It captures the stifling atmosphere of a social order beginning to rot from within, where laughter is strained, marriages are fragile, and professional futures are built on sand. The brilliant acting—from Jon Hamm’s silent discomfort to January Jones’s glacial poise, and particularly from Christina Hendricks, who conveys a world of disillusionment with a single glance—elevates the material. The musical interruptions, from Paul’s vaudeville turn to Joan’s accordion lament, are not mere quirks but vital expressions of character and release. The episode, like the Foster song it references, is a relic that contains both beauty and ugliness, a slow, mournful ballad for a way of life in its twilight. It may be an episode where “nothing happens,” but in the world of Mad Men, that nothing speaks volumes about the end of an era, one awkward party and one uncomfortable performance at a time.

    RATING: 7/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
15. ›Television Review: Love Among the Ruins (Mad Men, S3x02, 2009)@drax33d

    

    Love Among the Ruins (S3x02)

    Airdate: 23 August 2009

    Written by: Cathryn Humphries & Matthew Weiner Directed by: Leslie Linka Glaser

    Running Time: 50 minutes

    The title of the third season’s second episode, “Love Among the Ruins”, is something of a deliberate deception. Borrowed from a Robert Browning poem that dwells on decay amidst ancient rubble, it suggests a narrative of decline, doom, or romantic attachment persisting in a fallen world. Yet, as this intricately plotted hour demonstrates, the general theme steering Matthew Weiner’s series in its pivotal 1963 setting is not one of endings but of renewal and new beginnings—however fraught, ambiguous, or commercially motivated they may be. This tension between a nostalgic, crumbling past and an insistent, often unsettling future forms the episode’s core, making it a quintessential, if not always spectacular, piece of the Mad Men mosaic.

    The episode’s most memorable sequence is its opening, which it pointedly shares with the 1963 cinematic musical Bye Bye Birdie. That film stands as a glittering, frenetic monument to a moment on the very precipice of change, a last, blissfully ignorant dance before the fall of the Kennedy assassination. The episode weaponises this cultural artefact. We see the Sterling Cooper office transfixed by the film’s hyper-energetic opening number, performed by a radiant Ann-Margret. The context is professional: client Patio Cola demands an advertisement exactly like this scene. The task is ultimately handed to Peggy Olson, who watches with a mixture of admiration and professional scepticism. She is visibly impressed by Ann-Margret’s galvanic performance—a symbol of a new, unabashed femininity—but voices doubts about whether “sex would sell” in this particular case. This moment is a fascinating character beat; Peggy, herself a product of the era’s shifting sexual mores, is analysing the mechanics of the very forces that are reshaping her own life. Her subsequent action—picking up a young engineering student in a bar for a night of casual sex—acts as a personal, unspoken answer to her professional question. It is a new beginning of her own, a claim on sexual agency that runs parallel to, yet distinctly apart from, the commodified version on screen.

    This theme of personal renewal causing familial rupture is mirrored in the subplot involving Roger Sterling. His decision to leave his wife Mona for the younger Jane Siegel has estranged him from his family, a cost he perhaps underestimated. The episode makes this painfully clear through his daughter, Margaret, who coldly informs him that while he might be allowed at her upcoming wedding, Jane certainly will not. Roger’s attempt at a new life has rendered him a ghost in his old one, a man caught between two worlds without full citizenship in either.

    Professionally, the episode centres on a grand, literal proposed renewal: Sterling Cooper’s attempt to win New York City’s public opinion for the demolition of the old Penn Station and the construction of a new Madison Square Garden. The assignment is daunting, a battle for the city’s soul. In a sharp irony, it is Paul Kinsey—the office beatnik, later called a “communist” by a Garden executive—who proves to be the arch-conservative in the room. While discussing the project with the developers, he passionately parrots the preservationist arguments of the project’s opponents, seeing Penn Station as an architectural marvel worth saving. He is, in effect, arguing for the ruins. Don Draper, ever the pragmatic visionary, suggests the alternative framing: the project should be sold not as a destruction, but as a “new beginning.” This encapsulates the advertiser’s alchemy—recasting loss as opportunity. The plot takes a bitter turn when Lane Pryce informs Don that the London office has inexplicably dropped the project. Don’s shock is palpable; he saw this as their ticket to the lucrative 1964 World’s Fair and decades of work. Lane’s impotent “I don’t know” in response to Don’s “Why?” underscores the existential precariousness of the American office under its distant British owners. A promised new beginning is abruptly revoked by unseen forces.

    Draper’s domestic life offers a parallel, smaller-scale crisis of renewal. His dementia-suffering father-in-law, Gene, arrives with Don’s brother-in-law, William, and his wife, Judy. Their solution is to put Gene in a nursing home, financed by selling his house. Betty, clinging to a sense of familial duty, is vehemently opposed. Don, the masterful negotiator, imposes a Solomonic compromise: Gene will live with them, nursed by Betty, while William covers the expenses. William, intimidated by Don’s imposing authority, agrees. This arrangement creates a new, stressful beginning for the Draper household—a promise of duty that quickly sours. The episode’s poignant, darkly comic climax to this thread sees Gene, lost in the past, destroying their liquor supply in a Prohibition-era panic, causing Don and Betty to share a silent, weary look of second thoughts. Their new beginning has instantly decayed into a burdensome present.

    The episode concludes with a scene of overt symbolism. Sally and Bobby participate in a Maypole celebration, a ritual of spring and natural renewal organised by their youthful, enthusiastic teacher (Abigail Spencer). Don, watching from the sidelines, is unmistakably drawn to this vision of vibrant, almost pagan freshness. The teacher, dancing barefoot with flowers in her hair, is framed as a proto-hippie—a harbinger of the countercultural forces that will define the decade’s end. It is a new beginning literally dancing on his lawn, and his attraction to it is both personal and emblematic of the era’s coming seismic shift.

    Love Among the Ruins marked the television writing debut of Cathryn Humphris (co-writing with Matthew Weiner), and it bears the hallmarks of a solid, workmanlike entry rather than a groundbreaking one. It is well-directed and well-acted across the board, yet it must be said that the episode is not particularly memorable within the pantheon of the series. The various dramas in Don’s professional and family life, while expertly observed, feel somewhat petty and inconsequential—especially when juxtaposed against the explosive, anachronistic energy of the Bye Bye Birdie clip that opens it. That borrowed fragment from a decades-old film possesses a cultural charge that the original 21st century drama struggles to match.

    Where the episode proves exceptionally clever is in its subtle but firm establishment of the season’s timeline—a crucial matter as the series marches toward the November cataclysm. We learn that Margaret Sterling’s wedding is set for 23 November 1963. The final Maypole scene is explicitly dated 1 May 1963. This simple dating creates a powerful dramatic irony for the viewer, who knows the historical doom awaiting these characters, and structures the season’s arc across the intervening months.

    Thematically, the episode is a clear and effective study of the struggle between the old and the new. The irony is richly layered: the supposed radical, Paul Kinsey, is the one fighting a rearguard action to preserve a crumbling edifice, while the archetypal capitalist, Don Draper, is the voice of creative destruction and new beginnings. The forces of the new are not just corporate; they are cultural (the sexual energy of Ann-Margret), social (the teacher’s proto-hippie innocence), and personal (Peggy’s sexual liberation). The “ruins” are both physical (Penn Station) and metaphorical (Gene’s mind, Roger’s family life, perhaps even the old moral order). The “love” is more ambiguous—often appearing as longing, attraction, or duty strained to its limit.

    Love Among the Ruins serves as a vital, if not flashy, component of Season 3’s architecture. 1963 was a relatively uneventful year until its shattering end, and episodes like this one excel at building character and thematic resonance within that quiet tension. It captures a society, and the individuals within it, nervously travelling from one era to the next, trying to envision new beginnings while still living among the ruins of the old.

    RATING: 6/10 (++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
16. ›Television Review: Out of Town (Mad Men, S3x01, 2009)@drax35d

    

    Out of Town (S3x01)

    Airdate: 16 August 2009

    Written by: Matthew Weiner Directed by: Phil Abraham

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    The second season of Mad Men concluded with a narrative gambit that frustrated a not-insignificant portion of its audience: it left its characters, and the viewers, suspended in the palpable dread of the unresolved Cuban Missile Crisis. This choice created a disappointing cliffhanger where the manufactured suspense was undercut by historical inevitability. When the series returned for its third season with Out of Town, the world hadn’t ended, but the episode immediately situates its characters in a more intimate, though no less consequential, state of emergency. Written by Matthew Weiner and directed by Phil Abraham, the premiere is a workmanlike exercise in re-establishing the show’s themes and dynamics. It is competently crafted and offers key character developments, yet it ultimately feels like a table-setting episode—solid in its execution but lacking the profound spark that distinguishes the series’ finest hours.

    The episode’s most striking formal choice is its unconventional delve into Don Draper’s origin story. Abandoning the straightforward flashbacks of previous seasons, Weiner opts for a series of dreamlike, almost feverish visions that assail Don as he mechanically prepares breakfast. We see his stepmother, Abigail, enduring another stillbirth; his father, Archie, with the prostitute Evangeline (Kelly Huddleston), who delivers the grimly pragmatic warning that she’ll “cut his penis off” if he gets her pregnant; and finally, Evangeline’s death in childbirth, with the midwife handing the newborn boy—named “Dick”—to Abigail to raise as her own. This vignette is brutal and economically poetic, efficiently cementing the foundational trauma of Don’s identity: birth intertwined with death, and motherhood as a transaction. The device is later revealed to be triggered by Betty’s advanced pregnancy, a neat psychological explanation that also firmly anchors the narrative in March of 1963. This temporal setting is crucial, as the season at large is preoccupied with the last gasp of the pre-assassination ‘Camelot’ era, in 1963. the year American baby boomers retroactively identify as the beginning of the end.

    If Don’s domestic life is defined by cyclical trauma, his professional world is in the throes of a corporate shake-up. The new British owners, PPL, have installed the impeccably mannered yet steely Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) as financial director, heralding a regime of austerity. A third of the staff have been made redundant, and the episode introduces the head of accounts, Burt Peterson (Michael Galston), seemingly for the sole purpose of having him fired in a spectacularly bitter scene. As a narrative device, it’s a blunt instrument. The audience has no prior investment in Peterson, so his meltdown registers as workplace spectacle rather than emotional tragedy, a flaw the episode doesn’t attempt to mitigate. His function is purely catalytic: to vacate a position that is then offered to Pete Campbell. Pete’s fleeting triumph, however, is immediately diluted when he learns he must share the title and workload—though not the salary—with his rival Ken Cosgrove. It’s a suitably cynical corporate manoeuvre, but as a plot twist, it feels somewhat predictable, reinforcing the episode’s tendency to favour schematic plot mechanics over genuine surprise.

    The episode’s core, and its most significant narrative development, occurs when Lane sends Don and art director Salvatore Romano to Baltimore to court the raincoat manufacturer London Fog. Liberated from the constraints of their New York lives, both men indulge in extramarital affairs. Don’s dalliance with a stewardess named Shelly (Sunny Mabry) is standard Draper fare, but Sal’s encounter with a male bellhop (Orestes Arcuni) is transformative. For the first time in the series, Sal acts on his homosexual desires. The execution, however, is remarkably prudish by modern—or even 2009—standards. The encounter is discreetly framed, and the revelation to Don occurs farcically during a hotel fire evacuation, with Sal caught in a dressing gown beside the bellhop. Don’s subsequent, quietly delivered advice to “limit your exposure” is a masterclass in subtext. Is it homophobia? A pragmatic warning from one secret-keeper to another? Or a ruthless calculation to protect a valuable asset? The scene works precisely because it refuses to clarify, resting on Jon Hamm’s inscrutable delivery and the show’s understanding that Don’s own precarious identity is the ultimate guarantor of Sal’s secret.

    This theme of secrets and manufactured identities culminates in the episode’s closing moments. Returning home, Don tells his daughter Sally the story of her birth, specifically how he drove her mother to the hospital through a storm. It’s a tender, paternal moment, yet it’s undercut by the viewer’s knowledge of the sordid affairs and traumatic birth narratives that haunt the episode. Don is crafting a palatable family myth, a sanitised origin story starkly opposed to the brutal truth of his own. The episode thus comes full circle, contrasting the stories we tell with the realities we endure.

    Out of Town is peppered with the series’ trademark subtle details, but one stands out for its audacious subtext. In Bert Cooper’s office, Lane Pryce admires a framed print: Hokusai’s The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife, a famous example of Japanese shunga and, more specifically, tentacle erotica. For a series that largely eschewed the explicit sexuality of its cable contemporaries, this is a wonderfully eccentric and risqué visual gag. It perfectly encapsulates Bert’s esoteric interests and the show’s willingness to flirt with taboo in the most refined manner possible. It’s a detail that rewards the attentive viewer, suggesting a world of deviance lurking beneath the polished surface of Madison Avenue.

    Out of Town is a proficient but unspectacular season premiere. Its primary function is transitional: to navigate the audience from the unresolved tension of Season 2 into the new corporate and personal landscapes of 1963. While Salvatore Romano’s storyline provides the instalment with its most meaningful character progression, other elements—the disposable conflict with Burt Peterson, the predictable manoeuvring between Pete and Ken—feel like routine pieces being moved on the board. The episode lacks the conceptual boldness of the season two finale, even as it avoids that finale’s structural pitfalls. It is, in essence, a well-made piece of television machinery, reliable and insightful in moments, yet never quite reaching for the profound melancholy or savage irony that defines Mad Men at its best. It assures the audience that the world of Sterling Cooper persists, but one is left hoping the ensuing season will provide more compelling calamities than those offered here.

    RATING: 6/10 (++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
17. ›Television Review: Meditations in an Emergency (Mad Men, S2x13, 2008)@drax49d

    

    Meditations in an Emergency (S2x13)

    Airdate: 26 October 2008

    Written by: Matthew Weiner & Kater Gordon Directed by: Matthew Weiner

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    The second season of Mad Men is, by a discernible margin, inferior to its groundbreaking first. This decline is not one of technical execution—the production values remain impeccable, the acting superb—but of conceptual ambition and narrative cohesion. The diminution is perhaps most starkly observed in a direct comparison of their respective final episodes, both helmed by series creator Matthew Weiner. Where Season One’s [The Wheel](https://peakd.com/hive-166847/@drax/television-review-the-wheel-mad-men-s1x13-2007) offered a masterfully subdued, character-driven coda steeped in melancholy irony, Season Two’s Meditations in an Emergency opts for a grandiose, history-laden climax that feels simultaneously over-determined and curiously hollow. This finale encapsulates the season’s core weakness: an over-reliance on iconic historical touchstones at the expense of the subtle, psychological portraiture that defined the show’s initial brilliance.

    Weiner’s decision to set the season in the eventful year of 1962 was a double-edged sword. It allowed the series to chart the subtle societal shifts—in attitudes towards race, gender, and sexuality—that would erupt later in the decade. However, this choice also shackled the narrative to a parade of iconic moments. Amongst these, the Cuban Missile Crisis looms largest, and it is this world-historical event that Weiner controversially elects as the backdrop for his season finale. The decision is a fateful one, transforming the episode from a character study into a fraught, and ultimately problematic, exercise in historical juxtaposition.

    The plot mechanics hinge on a contrived simultaneity. Don Draper returns from his prolonged, mysterious Californian sabbatical on 22 October 1962—the very day President Kennedy announces the naval blockade of Cuba. As the crisis escalates towards potential nuclear annihilation, a palpable panic grips the populace. Yet Don, the archetypal self-made man, appears either oblivious or wilfully philosophical. His focus remains stubbornly parochial: the crises of his crumbling marriage and his precarious professional standing. However, it risks rendering Don not as a complex tragic figure, but as a solipsistic bore. His personal turmoil, while significant, feels trivial when framed against the backdrop of global thermonuclear war. The episode never quite resolves this tension, leaving the audience to question whether we are meant to critique Don’s myopia or share in it.

    Betty Draper’s parallel storyline is arguably more compelling, precisely because it operates on a human scale. Pregnant, betrayed, and advised by her doctor to keep a child she does not initially want, Betty’s arc captures the terrifying constraints of her era. Her subsequent, uncharacteristic act of picking up a stranger (Ryan McPartlin) in a bar for a brief sexual encounter is a raw, desperate lash for agency. It is a powerful moment, brilliantly underplayed by January Jones, that speaks volumes more about her internal crisis than any of Don’s brooding. The eventual reconciliation scene, culminating in her revelation of the pregnancy, is charged with a profound ambiguity. It feels less like a new beginning and more like a mutual surrender to biological and social fate, a ceasefire in their marital cold war brokered by an unborn child.

    The professional sphere mirrors this upheaval. Don’s return to Sterling Cooper coincides with the finalisation of its merger with Putnam, Powell & Lowe. The corporate machinations are handled with the show’s customary sharpness. Duck Phillips’s rise and spectacular fall is a miniature tragedy of hubris and addiction. His belief that he has outmanoeuvred Don by leveraging a non-existent contract is a superb piece of dramatic irony. Saint John Powell’s cynical manipulation—first plying the recovering alcoholic with liquor to secure his loyalty, then using his subsequent drunken rage to discard him—is a chilling display of corporate realpolitik. Don’s victory here is passive and procedural; he wins simply by having never signed a piece of paper, a testament to his inherent, anarchic distrust of institutions.

    Meanwhile, the spectre of annihilation prompts two very different men to make final appeals to Peggy Olson. Father Gill’s attempt to use the threat of hellfire to reclaim her soul is grotesquely exploitative. In contrast, Pete Campbell’s vulnerable admission of love, and his offer to spend their last moments together, carries a pathetic sincerity. Peggy’s devastating revelation—that she bore his child and gave it away—lands with the force of a moral grenade. It is the episode’s most emotionally raw exchange, brilliantly exposing the chasm between Pete’s romantic self-pity and Peggy’s lived, brutal reality. This subplot succeeds where others falter because it uses the crisis not as mere backdrop, but as a catalyst for irreversible, personal truth-telling.

    This brings us to the episode’s fundamental structural flaw. Using the Cuban Missile Crisis as a setting is one thing; choosing to end the season before the crisis is resolved is a strange and ultimately frustrating narrative gambit. It creates a rather disappointing cliffhanger. The audience, armed with historical hindsight, knows the world did not end. Consequently, the pervasive dread Weiner works so hard to cultivate is undercut by a foregone conclusion. The tension becomes artificial, a manufactured suspense that the show cannot pay off. Unlike The Wheel, which ended on a note of profound, personal loneliness that resonated deeply, Meditations ends on a note of historical suspense that feels cheap and unearned.

    The episode’s legacy is further complicated by off-screen controversy. While Weiner and his co-writer Kater Gordon won an Emmy for their script, Gordon was fired from the production staff immediately afterwards. Her 2017 allegation that this stemmed from her discomfort with Weiner’s sexually inappropriate remarks casts a long, unsettling shadow over the episode’s creation.

    Meditations in an Emergency is a beautifully crafted but deeply flawed piece of television. It showcases Mad Men’s signature strengths—meticulous period detail, superb performances, and literate dialogue—but binds them to a narrative concept that ultimately overwhelms the characters it seeks to illuminate. By placing the intimate crises of the Draper universe inside the pressure cooker of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Weiner aims for a profound statement on the personal amidst the political. Instead, he achieves a dissonance that diminishes both.

    RATING: 6/10 (++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
18. ›Television Review: The Mountain King (Mad Men, S2x12, 2008)@drax50d

    

    The Mountain King (S2x12)

    Airdate: 19 October 2008

    Written by: Matthew Weiner & Robin Veith Directed by: Alan Taylor

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    In so-called Golden Age of Television, the penultimate episode of a season had begun to assume a particular narrative weight. It was the moment for the ‘wham’—the shocking twist, the devastating confrontation, the point of no return that would propel the story into its finale. Matthew Weiner, schooled in this very tradition on The Sopranos, appears to deliberately stray from this principle in The Mountain King, the twelfth episode of Mad Men’s second season. While the episode features an event that, in any other series or season, would be deemed profoundly consequential—the secret sale of Sterling Cooper—it is presented with a curious, almost languid anti-climax. The seismic business shift is relegated to a muted decision by partners who dismiss the absent Don Draper as ‘insignificant’. This structural choice, to downplay the central plot engine, forces the episode to compensate with a sprawl of side narratives, resulting in a frustratingly diffuse instalment that lacks the focused, consequential punch its position in the season demands.

    The title itself, ‘The Mountain King’, is a direct reference to Edvard Grieg’s 1875 orchestral piece ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’, composed for Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. It is one of the most famous pieces of classical music, ubiquitously deployed in film and television to soundtrack creeping horror and impending doom. The genius of the allusion is not in its application to the episode’s atmosphere—there is no literal sense of horror—but in its ironic placement within the domestic, sun-drenched space of Anna Draper’s California home. Here, the piece is heard by Don as one of Anna’s young piano pupils practices it, describing it simply as ‘scary’. The music, associated with monstrous fantasy and pursuit, becomes a benign, slightly discordant backdrop to the episode’s true emotional core: the revelation of Don’s past and his unique, forgiving bond with Anna. Through flashbacks, we learn the full story: Anna, the real Don Draper’s wife, confronted the impostor Dick Whitman, who confessed his ignorance of the marriage and his role in her husband’s death. In a moment of extraordinary grace, the lame Anna—a woman who felt herself a substitute for her prettier sister—not only forgave him but forged a deep, platonic friendship. She later agreed to divorce him so he could marry Betty. In the present, their arrangement provides Don with his only true confidante, a sanctuary where his fabricated identity is not a burden. The California interlude, with its custom cars and ocean swims, offers Don a tantalising, if fleeting, glimpse of an authentic life, far from the stifling performances of New York.

    While Don enjoys this sabbatical, his prolonged absence is met with a collective, telling indifference back in New York. His family, bosses, and subordinates largely choose to ignore it, a testament to his emotional isolation. Only Pete Campbell pays it any mind, and his attention is purely self-serving; he secretly hopes Draper will simply vanish and assume a new identity, thereby clearing Pete’s path to advancement. This venal hope is undercut by a crisis in his personal life, where his anger over Trudy’s secret contact with an adoption agency leads to a row so intense that his father-in-law Tom Vogel intervenes, threatening the review of Pete’s Clearasil account. The message is brutally clear: Pete’s career prospects are inextricably tied to his wife’s happiness, a chilling equation of domestic and professional capital.

    Other subplots unfold with varying degrees of relevance. Peggy, frustrated by sharing an office with a Xerox machine, successfully petitions Roger Sterling for her and much larger office, a small victory that sows resentment among the male staff. Joan’s relationship with the surgeon Greg Harris is revealed as deeply troubled; his insecurities manifest in a jarringly unsubtle scene where, after refusing Joan’s sexual advance at home, he later forces himself upon her in Don’s office. This moment, intended to illustrate the oppressive patriarchy of the early 1960s, suffers from a lack of narrative subtlety, reducing Joan’s complex agency to a blunt metaphor about female subjugation.

    Betty Draper, meanwhile, grapples with Don’s absence in halting, confused ways. After catching her daughter Sally smoking, she attempts discipline but later confesses to a friend that her husband’s disappearance might be permanent. Her other storyline, in which she chastises her friend Sarah Beth for the extramarital affair she herself previously encouraged, feels particularly aimless. It seems designed less to develop Betty’s character than to artificially stall her potential ascent as a counterpoint to Don, reinforcing a destructive irrationality that goes unexplored.

    The critical event, however, occurs in a conference room without its protagonist. The Sterling Cooper partners—including Bertram’s sister, Alice (Mary Ann McGary)—meet and, with dismissive ease, agree to sell the agency. Don, with his mere 12% share, is deemed inconsequential to the decision. This is the episode’s purported ‘wham’, yet it is delivered not as a dramatic climax but as a dry, administrative footnote.

    This is where The Mountain King fundamentally falters. The year 1962 allowed the show to explore subtle shifts in American life, but this episode feels like a collection of those shifts without a unifying centre. Matthew Weiner and writer Robin Veith appear to have deliberately downplayed the sale’s drama, compensating with a series of side storylines that go all over the place, and sometimes go nowhere. The Joan-Greg subplot lacks nuance, the Betty-Sarah Beth thread is abortive, and even Pete’s crisis is resolved through external financial threat rather than internal growth. The episode is, like all Mad Men instalments, impeccably acted and directed, but it suffers from a lack of narrative focus.

    This lack of cohesion culminates in the final image: Don, alone, swimming in the vast Pacific Ocean. The shot is visually striking but tonally dissonant. It feels like a piece of ‘acid’ art cinema artificially infused into the narrative, an idealised vision of the West as a place of spiritual cleansing. This aesthetic choice finds a direct parallel in the criticised desert sequence from The Sopranos episode Kennedy and Heidi. This episode portrayed Tony Soprano’s peyote-induced vision as visually striking but leaning into pretension, evoking the excesses of 1970s counterculture rather than deepening Tony’s character. A similar charge can be levelled at Don’s oceanic baptism. It aspires to a profound, wordless catharsis but, in the context of the episode’s scattered priorities, registers more as a stylistic affectation—a postcard from a thematic holiday the script hasn’t fully earned.

    In conclusion, The Mountain King looks like a curious misfire in Mad Men’s otherwise impeccable second season. By rejecting the conventional ‘penultimate episode’ playbook, it seeks a more nuanced, ambient tension but ultimately substitutes fragmentation for depth. The sale of Sterling Cooper should reverberate; here, it is muffled. The character moments should illuminate; instead, many feel undercooked or obvious. The episode grasps for thematic resonance through its musical allusion and final, beautiful image, but without a sturdy narrative framework, that resonance rings hollow.

    RATING: 6/10 (++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
19. ›Television Review: The Jet Set (Mad Men, S2x11, 2008)@drax50d

    

    The Jet Set (S2x11)

    Airdate: 12 October 2008

    Written by: Matthew Weiner Directed by: Phil Abraham

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    As Mad Men approached the conclusion of its second season, the series began to strain against the confines of its established narrative format. The eleventh episode, The Jet Set, is a pointed example of this tension, directly leaning on the events of its immediate predecessor, The Inheritance. Unlike the more self-contained, vignette-like episodes that characterised much of the early season, Jet Set commences precisely where the previous instalment concluded, forging a stronger serialised link that signals the show’s gradual shift towards more protracted story arcs. This structural pivot, whilst effective in deepening character exploration, also renders the episode one of the more conventional in the season’s run—a conventionality that is both its strength and its subtle weakness.

    The episode opens in the tangled sheets of Roger Sterling’s midlife crisis. The image of Jane Siegel, nude on a bed with only a strategically positioned blanket preserving modesty for the cameras, is one of the series’ most potent and attractive. For the male audience, the scene is instantly telling: here is the visceral, physical answer to the question of why a man would jettison three decades of marriage and stability. Roger is not merely captivated by Jane’s body but by her performance of bohemian artistry. Deeply impressed as she scribbles poems about him, he is seduced by the fantasy of being someone’s muse, leading to his impulsive, almost absurd proposal to marry her. This moment perfectly encapsulates Roger’s tragicomic trajectory—a pursuit of rejuvenation through cliché, mistaking a young woman’s affectations for profound connection.

    Meanwhile, the episode’s central narrative thrust follows Don Draper, who has arrived in California with the endlessly eager Pete Campbell. The contrast is immediate. Pete is a child in a candy shop, enthusing about the warm climate and the beautiful women by the pool, while Don must sternly remind him to prioritise business. This dynamic establishes the episode’s core theme: the confrontation between escapist fantasy and inescapable reality. Don’s professional purpose leads him to an aerospace convention in Pasadena, a temple to the era’s technological optimism. Yet, this dream of a Space Age future curdles into a specific, visceral nightmare. A presentation by an international ballistic missile manufacturer features a chillingly enthusiastic simulation of an American nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, boasting of near-total annihilation and a drastically reduced retaliatory capability. For Don, a man who has seen the intimate, chaotic horror of war first-hand, this sanitised, corporate vision of apocalypse is profoundly unsettling. He abandons the convention, delegating the work to Pete, in a flight not from responsibility, but from a future that feels more grotesque than the past he fled.

    His retreat leads him directly into another, more seductive fantasy. Previously spotted at his hotel by a cosmopolitan group including the enigmatic Joy (Laura Ramsey) and the European aristocrat Willy (Philippe Brenninkmeyer), Don is now invited to join them in Palm Springs. After initial hesitation, he accepts, arriving at a stunning Mid-Century Modern house with a vast pool. Joy, effortlessly played by Laura Ramsey, explains they are house-sitting for friends in Sardinia. In a scene dripping with erotic possibility, she slips into a bikini and suggests Don join her in the pool, either by borrowing trunks or going “au naturelle.” Overwhelmed—perhaps by the heat, the offer, or the cumulative weight of his disillusionment—Don collapses.

    Upon waking, diagnosed with heat stroke, he is surrounded by this strange new coterie. Refusing an injection but acquiescing to convalescence, he remains, ultimately having sex with Joy. Their post-coital conversation reveals the group’s nomadic, hedonistic ethos. Willy discovers them in bed, but his reaction is one of paternal appraisal: “he makes beautiful babies,” he remarks, all but admitting his familial relationship to Joy. She later offers Don a permanent place in their rootless set, citing Willy’s admiration for his “beautiful” silence. It is the ultimate temptation for a man who once reinvented himself: to shed Don Draper completely and become a perpetual tourist in his own life. Yet, the fantasy is punctured by the arrival of a man named Christian with two small children, a reminder of the familial obligations that even this liberated circle cannot fully escape. Instead of embracing the nomadic future, Don makes a pivotal phone call, addressing himself as “Dick Whitman” to someone presumably privy to his original, discarded identity. It is a moment of profound regression, choosing to face the ghosts of his past rather than leap into an uncertain future.

    Back in New York, Roger’s impulsive decision begins to unleash unforeseen corporate consequences. Consulting divorce attorney George Rothman (Alan Blumenfeld), Roger is warned that Mona will take half of everything. This vulnerability is spotted by the opportunistic Duck Phillips, who sees Rothman leaving and deduces the impending divorce. In a desperate power play, Duck confronts Roger, demanding a partnership, only to be bluntly refused due to his lacklustre results. Fearing for his job, Duck meets with his former colleagues from the London firm Putnam, Powell & Lowe. Failing to win back his old position, he makes an audacious counter-gamble: he suggests PPL simply buy Sterling Cooper. With Roger needing liquidity for his divorce, the timing is perfect. Duck’s condition is that he be installed as president post-merger. This corporate intrigue unfolds with quiet menace, threatening to dismantle Don’s professional world at the very moment he contemplates abandoning it.

    The episode’s subplot involving the junior staff at Sterling Cooper provides a pointed, if somewhat clumsy, commentary on the changing social mores of 1962. As they discuss the growing civil rights disturbances in Mississippi, the German art director Kurt Smith asks Peggy to attend a Bob Dylan concert at Carnegie Hall. The open invitation sparks office gossip about a date, which Kurt deflates by calmly stating, “I am a homosexual.” The revelation lands like a grenade in the sterile office. Salvatore Romano, himself a deeply closeted gay man, reacts with panicked awkwardness. Ken Cosgrove declares he would never “work with a homo,” while Kurt’s partner Smitty lamely explains it away as a “European thing.” Peggy, however, agrees to go. In a subsequent scene, Kurt visits her apartment, cuts her hair into a more modern style, and acts as a confidant. Herein lies the episode’s most glaring conventionality. The depiction of Kurt and Peggy’s friendship leans heavily on a tired Hollywood cliché: the gay man as the single woman’s stylish, non-threatening mentor and best friend. While the episode deserves credit for directly naming homosexuality in a 1962 setting—a taboo breaking that shows that times have indeed changed when someone clearly identifies with being gay—its execution feels sanitised and familiar, a safe narrative compromise.

    This conventionality is a defining feature of The Jet Set. It is, paradoxically, a very good episode—arguably one of Season 2’s best—despite being one of its more conventional. Its conventionality manifests in its multiple story structure and in its treatment of social issues like homosexuality through recognisable, almost formulaic, tropes. It even concludes with a cliffhanger-like revelation—Don’s “Dick Whitman” call—that feels designed to propel the serialised narrative forward in a manner more typical of television dramaturgy.

    Yet, to dismiss it as merely conventional would be a grave error. The Jet Set’ is a richly multi-layered hour of television. Series creator Matthew Weiner employs multiple levels of irony with a master’s touch, most effectively in the brutal confrontation of Don’s dreams with reality. Don’s dream trip to the promised land of California immediately devolves into a minor nightmare of lost luggage and professional disgust. His dream of a gleaming, technological future is perverted into a simulation of nuclear genocide, triggering his suppressed wartime trauma. The season uses California to give hints of both protagonist’s future and present, and here that future is rendered as a seductive illusion. Don, the master of self-reinvention, is wooed to perform the act again by the rich, idle nomads—a group whose lifestyle of endless travel, sun, sea, and sex represents the very antithesis of his stifling suburban existence with Betty. Joy is the embodiment of a freedom Betty could never offer. Yet, for Don, this step proves a step too far. Whether due to age, ingrained fear, or a latent sense of responsibility, he cannot make the leap. In a supreme irony, he turns to face his past at the precise moment Duck Phillips’ machinations threaten to annihilate his present. The escape hatches both forward and backward are simultaneously closing.

    Directed with exceptional flair by Phil Abraham, Rge Jet Set is one of the series’ most visually appealing instalments to date. The cinematography luxuriates in the Californian light and the sleek lines of modernist architecture. It is also arguably the most erotic episode by this point in the series, though, as noted, AMC’s broadcast standards ensured it never reached the explicit heights of contemporary HBO or Starz productions. The allure is in suggestion and composition rather than graphic display.

    The episode has also accrued a curious cultural afterlife, sparking persistent fan theories that Joy, Willy, and their set are not merely rich socialites but vampires. This reading, whilst fanciful, speaks to the group’s uncanny, ageless, and predatory aura—they feed on the vitality and beauty of those they attract, offering an eternal, parasitic existence that mirrors Don’s own vampiric relationship with the identity of the real Don Draper.

    Jet Set operates on two levels. On the surface, it is a superbly crafted but structurally conventional episode that advances key plotlines and explores social change through occasionally clichéd lenses. Beneath that surface, it is a profound and ironic meditation on identity, escape, and the inescapable. It presents Don Draper with a mirror reflecting two possible selves: the rootless hedonist and the haunted fugitive. His choice to call out to “Dick Whitman” is not a choice for freedom, but a recoil into a different kind of prison. The nomadic group’s seductive utopia might be an illusion just like those Don sells his clients. In Jet Set, Don Draper, the master illusionist, briefly becomes the mark, before recognising the con and retreating to the devil he knows. The episode’s greatness lies in making that retreat feel not like a failure, but like the tragic, inevitable conclusion of a man forever trapped between the selves he has been and the selves he might have been.

    RATING: 8/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
20. ›Television Review: The Inheritance (Mad Men, S2x10, 2008)@drax51d

    

    The Inheritance (S2x10)

    Airdate: 5 October 2008

    Written by: Lisa Albert, Marti Noxon and Matthew Weiner Directed by: Andrew Bernstein

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    Following the momentous, office-upending events of ?Six Month Leave*, the subsequent instalment, The Inheritance, feels deliberately subdued. In typical Mad Men fashion, the episode favours slow, methodical character exposition over grand plot developments, allowing the lingering aftershocks of the previous week to settle into the background. Yet, to dismiss it as mere narrative marking time would be to misunderstand its purpose. “The Inheritance” is an episode profoundly concerned with change, but of a peculiarly intimate and inexorable kind. The changes it charts are the grand, historical processes of ageing, decay, familial obligation, and societal shift that occur just beyond the immediate sightlines of its characters. It is a piece of television that holds a mirror to the slow erosion of certainties, both personal and national, and while it is often beautifully observed, it ultimately suffers from a frustrating lack of thematic focus, burying its most potent insights under a meandering pace and a scattering of undercooked subplots.

    The most dramatic event within the episode’s confines is a family crisis that temporarily reunites Don and Betty Draper. When Betty receives word that her father, Gene, has suffered a stroke, Don volunteers to accompany her to her childhood home, the two agreeing to maintain the facade of a functioning marriage for the sake of appearances. This sets the stage for the episode’s most powerful and uncomfortable sequences. Upon arrival, Betty learns that Gene has been suffering minor strokes for some time, resulting in a creeping dementia. His condition is rendered with painful clarity when he mistakes Betty for his late wife, Ruth, and in a moment of profound awkwardness, attempts to grope her. This violation, born of confusion rather than malice, forces Betty into a wrenching confrontation with her father’s deterioration and her own role within the family history. Her conversation with the longtime family maid, Viola (a wonderfully grounded Aloma Wright), who advises her to focus on her husband and children, underscores the traditional scripts that Betty feels both compelled by and trapped within. The enforced proximity with Don—sharing a bedroom, with Don sleeping on the floor—leads to a moment of strained, desperate intimacy. Betty initiates sex, a complex act that seems equal parts comfort, habit, and a fleeting attempt to grasp the ghost of their former union. Yet, upon their return home, she firmly re-establishes the boundary, insisting they remain separate.

    While her children are away, Betty’s quiet despair finds a strange echo in the form of Glen Bishop, the unsettling neighbourhood boy who harbours a crush on her. Discovering him hiding in the family’s playhouse after he has run away from home, Betty is presented with a figure of adolescent misery, unhappy with his father, his new stepmother, and feeling ignored by his own mother, Helen. The scene walks a fine line. Betty, in her own emotionally vulnerable state, might be momentarily impressed by this boy’s dramatic, self-deluded gesture. However, the episode wisely has her do the unequivocally correct thing: she calls Helen Bishop to collect him. This leads to a subtle moment of reconciliation between the two women, a small grace note of adult responsibility amidst the surrounding dysfunction. Yet, this subplot, while thematically linked to ideas of neglected children and failed paternal figures, feels somewhat contrived and tonally adrift, an example of the episode’s occasional lack of discipline.

    Parallel familial strife afflicts Pete Campbell, whose narrative provides a counterpoint to the Drapers’. Trudy’s inability to conceive and her desire to adopt meets with Pete’s reluctance and his mother’s outright hostility. The formidable Mrs. Campbell threatens disinheritance should they pursue adoption, a bluff Pete and his brother, Bud (Ritch Hutchman), are forced to call when they confront her with the dire financial mess left by their late father. This storyline efficiently explores the Campbells’ toxic dynastic politics, where children are viewed as heirs to a legacy (or debt) rather than individuals. Pete’s attendance at Harry Crane’s baby shower—a scene the episode oddly underutilises—serves as a piece of symbolic irony, highlighting the familial fulfilment that eludes him due to pride and patriarchal pressure.

    The professional sphere at Sterling Cooper offers little respite. Don, learning of a major aerospace convention in Pasadena, seizes on it as an opportunity to forge connections with industry figures and, more importantly, the congressmen who could direct lucrative government contracts. He dispatches Pete and Paul Kinsey on this mission. For Paul, the assignment represents a thrilling, all-expenses-paid jet trip to the futuristic promised land of California, and a perfect excuse to avoid accompanying his Black girlfriend, Sheila, on a voting registration drive in Mississippi. This dichotomy is where the episode finds its most coherent thematic thread. Paul embodies the dual, often hypocritical, faces of Kennedy’s “New Frontier”: the glamorous, technologically optimistic space-age future, and the gritty, dangerous struggle for civil rights unfolding in the present. In a last-minute decision, drained by the familial drama and craving escape, Don decides to go to California himself, displacing a bitterly disappointed Paul. This pivot forces Paul off the sidelines and onto the bus to Mississippi, a neat, if slightly schematic, narrative irony that ties his personal cowardice to a larger historical reckoning.

    The episode, a writing debut for Marti Noxon (previously famed for her work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer), who co-wrote with Lisa and Matthew Gilbert, is undeniably well-crafted and superbly acted. January Jones and Jon Hamm go through the Draper sequences with a heartbreaking, repressed precision. However, it suffers from a lack of clear, driving focus. Its various elements—Betty’s paternal crisis, Pete’s inheritance drama, Paul’s moral quandary—feel like distinct short stories bundled together, connected more by the vague theme of “legacy” than by any compelling narrative interplay. The attempts at symbolic irony, such as Gene’s dementia-addled distrust of Don (“You don’t have people”), which inadvertently hits upon the truth of Don’s rootless, fraudulent identity, are potent but feel isolated, buried by the slow pace.

    The episode is saved from being merely a collection of vignettes by its magnificent final beat. As Don flies to California, leaving his fractured life behind for the sun-drenched promise of the West, the soundtrack swells with The Tornados’ 1962 instrumental “Telstar.” The choice is inspired. With its futuristic, otherworldly electronic melody, the song perfectly captures the optimistic, forward-thrusting spirit of the age—a spirit Don is desperately trying to latch onto. It symbolises the brave new world of satellites and jets, a clean technological future that seems to offer an escape from the messy, decaying inheritances of the past. In this moment, The Inheritance crystallises its central tension: the relentless pull of the future against the dead weight of the past. It’s a brilliant, evocative conclusion that almost, but not quite, compensates for the meandering journey that precedes it.

    Ultimately, The Inheritance is a respectable, often thoughtful entry in the Mad Men canon, but it stands as an example of the show’s occasional tendency to prioritise mood and character nuance over narrative momentum and tight thematic cohesion. It deals with profound material—ageing, dementia, infertility, financial ruin, racial awakening—but spreads its attention so thinly that none of these threads achieves the devastating impact of the series’ very best episodes.

    RATING: 6/10 (++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
21. ›Television Review: Six Month Leave (Mad Men, S2x09, 2008)@drax51d

    

    Six Month Leave (S2x09)

    Airdate: 28 September 2008

    Written by: Matthew Weiner, Andre Jacquemott and Maria Jacquemott Directed by: Michael Uppendahl

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    The world of Mad Men differs from our own in many details, but one of the most conspicuous is in the different standards and social mores towards drinking, especially drinking on the job. To say that people in the early 1960s were more tolerant towards mixing work and booze would be an understatement; in practice, many offices were manned by what would, in the best-case scenario, be termed functioning alcoholics. What happens when one such alcoholic stops being functional serves as the major storyline in Season 2’s ninth episode, Six Month Leave. It is another “wham” episode in the series, although not in the way the audience might have expected, delivering its blows not through external catastrophe but through the quiet, humiliating unravelling of a man and the seismic ripples it sends through the fragile ecosystem of Sterling Cooper.

    The episode begins in the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, where Don Draper has been residing since being chased from his home by Betty. There, he picks up a newspaper and reads the headline about Marilyn Monroe’s suicide, anchoring the plot firmly in 7 August 1962 and the few days that follow. The news proves devastating for the female staff of Sterling Cooper, many of whom are visibly emotional. Even the usually unflappable Joan Holloway shows a rare vulnerability during a chance encounter with Roger Sterling. This historical anchor does more than just provide a date; it casts a pall of melancholy and lost innocence over the entire episode, framing the personal crises to come within a broader cultural moment of disillusionment.

    The central crisis, however, is decidedly less glamorous. In his office, Freddy Rumsen has gathered Pete Campbell, Salvatore Romano, and Peggy Olson to discuss a presentation for their Samsonite clients. In that moment, years of excessive drinking take their final, humiliating toll: Freddy loses control of his bladder and, unaware he has wet his trousers, simply passes out. The reactions are telling: Salvatore is amused, Pete seems aghast, but Peggy is temporarily tasked with the presentation whilst Freddy’s condition is hidden. Peggy handles the pitch with her now-characteristic competence, but the news spreads, partly due to Pete, who sees a chance to advance at Freddy’s expense. In a meeting called by Roger, and despite Don’s initial opposition, it is decided that Freddy in such a condition is too great a liability. The episode’s title is thus revealed as a corporate euphemism: a “six months’ leave of absence” with full pay, which everyone present understands is merely a sweetened firing.

    The subsequent evening out, where Freddy is told his fate by Don and Roger, is a brilliant example of period detail and masculine stoicism. Freddy accepts his superiors’ decision with a weary dignity, knowing he cannot argue. The trio then proceeds to an underground gambling club, where Freddy’s luck turns and he keeps winning at the table. It is here that Don, spotting the comedian Jimmy Barrett, punches him in the face, blaming him for the collapse of his marriage. The scene is a burst of raw violence in an otherwise tightly controlled episode, a reminder of Don’s simmering rage. Afterwards, Roger and Don discuss their lives, with Roger realising Don’s marriage is on the rocks—a situation he admits to having experienced himself. Don’s advice to “move forward” becomes the episode’s most consequential, and most carelessly delivered, piece of philosophy.

    The next day, Don promotes Peggy, giving her all of Freddy’s accounts. In a fine moment of moral clarity, Peggy chastises Pete for engineering Freddy’s downfall, noting she liked the affable alcoholic and owed him her copywriting career. This subplot works well, showcasing Peggy’s ascent and her retention of a moral compass in an amoral environment.

    However, the episode’s greatest shock arrives from the reception desk. Mona Sterling storms into the office and confronts Don over his “move forward” advice, which has apparently led Roger to end their twenty-five-year marriage for Don’s young secretary, Jane Siegel. Don, disgusted by the consequence of his own glib counsel, demands Roger move Jane out of her position. This revelation is the episode’s second “wham” moment, and it is here that the script, co-written by Matthew Weiner and André and Maria Jacquemetton, begins to show signs of strain.

    Whilst the main storyline involving Freddy’s departure is handled with a superb mix of horror and black humour—his “mishap” is both cringe-inducing and darkly funny—the subplot dealing with Betty Draper feels like an uninspired filler. Depressed and adrift in her empty house, she is observed by her concerned housekeeper, Carla, but even in this state, she manipulatively orchestrates a lunch date between her friend Sarah Beth Carson and the man Sarah Beth secretly desires. It adds little to the episode’s thematic weight and seems a perfunctory check-in on a character whose own narrative is treading water.

    The use of Marilyn Monroe as a narrative frame is, however, deftly handled. Her rendition of “Down with Love” over the closing credits provides a poignant, ironic commentary on the episode’s events. Furthermore, the continuity detail—where Peggy notes that Sterling Cooper must scrap their “Jackie vs. Marilyn” conceptual art for Playtex bras in light of Monroe’s death—is a clever, meta-textual nod to the series’ own earlier episode, Maidenform, and the fragile nature of the icons it sells.

    The episode’s most significant problem lies in its final twist. The revelation that Roger has begun a full-blown affair with Jane and is willing to blow up his marriage for it comes almost completely out of left field. Whilst something was hinted at in the previous episode (The Gold Violin), the development feels dramatically unjustified. It lacks the meticulous build-up that Mad Men usually affords such seismic shifts in relationships. Instead, it plays as a “shock for the shock’s sake”, a contrivance designed to inject melodrama into an episode otherwise concerned with slow, pathetic decline. It undermines the more nuanced tragedy of Freddy’s exit by pairing it with a sudsy, impulsive betrayal that the series hasn’t earned at this juncture.

    This episode represented the directorial debut of Michael Uppendahl, who would go on to direct seven more episodes of the series. His work here is assured, balancing the claustrophobic office scenes with the more expansive, shadowy atmosphere of the gambling club. He handles the delicate tone of Freddy’s storyline with particular skill, ensuring it never tips into outright farce or maudlin sentiment.

    Six Month Leave is a powerfully acted and often brilliantly observed episode that stumbles in its final act. It excels in its unflinching portrayal of professional oblivion and the cruel euphemisms of corporate culture, using Freddy Rumsen’s downfall to expose the rot beneath the polished surface of Sterling Cooper. The anchoring of Monroe’s death provides a resonant backdrop. Yet, by grafting on a hastily conceived marital implosion for Roger Sterling, it seeks to deliver a second shock that feels unearned and disruptive to the episode’s otherwise finely calibrated study of failure. It remains a strong, memorable instalment, but one that ultimately lacks the narrative discipline of the series’ very best, falling prey to the very kind of impulsive, messy decision-making its characters would condemn.

    RATING: 7/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
22. ›Television Review: A Night to Remember (Mad Men, S2x08, 2008)@drax52d

    

    A Night to Remember (S2x08)

    Airdate: 14 September 2008

    Written by: Robin Veith & Matthew Weiner Directed by: Leslie Glinka Glatter

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    One of the perennial challenges for a television series of Mad Men’s calibre is the inevitable narrative ebb and flow; a towering, brilliant episode often casts a long shadow over its immediate successor, making a merely competent instalment appear wan and uninspired by comparison. This dynamic is starkly evident in the second season’s sequencing. The narrative and thematic brilliance of The Gold Violin (S2E07), an episode that masterfully deconstructed the American Dream through the purchase of a Cadillac and the devastating Stork Club confrontation, is followed by the decidedly pedestrian affair of A Night to Remember (S2E08). Despite the show’s unwavering technical polish—the impeccable period design, the subtle cinematography, the restrained acting—this episode cannot shake the aura of uninspired filler, a necessary but clumsily executed piece of plot machinery designed to formalise a marital rupture that the previous episode had already devastatingly implied.

    The episode’s title, ‘A Night to Remember’, deliberately evokes Walter Lord’s seminal 1955 book on the sinking of the RMS Titanic, for decades the definitive account of that disaster. Here, the disaster is domestic. The metaphorical iceberg was struck in ‘The Gold Violin’, when Jimmy Barrett’s vicious revelation at the Stork Club left Betty Draper humiliated and physically sickened. In this episode, what begins to sink is the Draper’s previously picture-perfect marriage.

    The psychological toll of that night is the episode’s central, albeit unevenly handled, concern. Betty, portrayed with brittle precision by January Jones, initially attempts to maintain the facade of the impeccable suburban housewife. She goes through the motions, even seeking release through horse riding—a classic symbol of repressed passion and frustration. Yet, the facade cannot hold. The cracks appear in a series of telling, unconscious lapses: she accidentally destroys a side table, and later, in a moment of distracted carelessness, injures her foot. These are subtle, effective touches that show a mind and spirit coming undone under the strain of knowledge she cannot yet openly acknowledge. She is a vase developing hairline fractures before the final shatter.

    The shattering force is the ill-fated dinner party. In a bid to impress Roger Sterling, Duck Phillips, and the acquintance Crab Colson and his wife Petra (Amy Landecker), Betty plans an elaborate ‘around the world’ menu. The centrepiece, Heineken beer, becomes the instrument of her humiliation. She learns, to her horror, that Heineken is the subject of Sterling Cooper’s new campaign and that Don had manipulated her into featuring it. This public revelation—that her domestic sphere has been co-opted by her husband’s professional deceit—is the final insult. The evening is a great example of a quiet agony, with Betty’s smile growing ever more strained. Afterwards, she confronts Don about his affair with Bobbie Barrett. Jon Hamm plays Don’s denial with practised, weary defiance, but Betty is now adamant. Her frantic, almost pathetic search for evidence—rummaging through his desk and clothes—yields nothing tangible, yet her conviction is absolute. The next day, she delivers the coup de grâce in a chillingly calm phone call to his office: “Don’t come home.” The image of Don, the master of appearances, reduced to spending the night in his office with a bottle of Heineken as his sole comfort, is a potent irony. The product he sold has become the symbol of his exile.

    Unfortunately, the compelling gravity of the Draper’s collapse is diluted by two undercooked and largely inconsequential subplots. At Sterling Cooper, Harry Crane, the perpetually overwhelmed head of television, is chastised by Duck Phillips for a disastrous ad placement for Maytag, washing machine manufacturer. The ad aired during a drama about Communist agitators, risking the association of Maytag with May Day. Harry’s plea of being overworked leads to Joan Holloway being temporarily assigned to assist him. Christina Hendricks brings her usual commanding presence to scenes where Joan efficiently manages the crisis, highlighting the show’s recurring theme of capable women propping up incompetent men. Yet, this promising thread is abruptly severed when Roger hires a man, Daniel Lindstrom (Jonathan Runyon), for the role. Joan’s disappointment is palpable but unexplored. This storyline is told from Harry’s perspective, but its true protagonist is Joan, who once again performs essential labour only to be sidelined when a man is available. The opportunity to deepen this through the context of her engagement to Greg Harris (Sam Wise) is missed, rendering it a frustrating narrative cul-de-sac.

    Similarly, the continuation of Peggy Olson’s interactions with Father Gill feels like wheel-spinning. The young priest again seeks her professional help, this time for posters promoting a church dance. Peggy delivers copy with the slogan “A Night to Remember,” which Father Gill approves, only for old parish committee women to reject it, forcing a revision. The scenes are well-acted by Elisabeth Moss and Colin Hanks, but they reveal nothing new about Peggy’s complex relationship with faith, career, and her secret pregnancy. They function as filler, a lightweight counterpoint to the Draper heaviness that fails to resonate. The subplot’s sole interesting beat is its coda: after a montage of characters retiring for the night, we see Father Gill, stripped of his clerical collar and in casual clothes, strumming a folk song on a guitar. It’s a brief, evocative glimpse of the burgeoning folk music trend and a reminder of the personal identities hidden beneath societal roles—a theme the episode elsewhere handles with less finesse.

    Written by Matthew Weiner and Robin Veith, A Night to Remember is, in essence, a solid episode of television that fails spectacularly to live up to its potential. Its core function is to deliver the ‘wham’ event of Betty finally voicing her knowledge and ejecting Don—a necessary narrative pivot. However, it executes this pivot in an unremarkable, almost anticlimactic manner. The dinner party, while tense, lacks the raw, visceral power of the Stork Club confrontation; the final phone call feels like a foregone conclusion rather than a dramatic peak. The episode’s crucial flaw is its lack of focus. The Draper disaster, a seismic event for the series, shares space with two minor subplots that are neither properly integrated nor meaningfully explored.

    This lack of focus extends to a missed meta-textual layer. The episode was reportedly the source of off-camera controversy due to the inclusion of Heineken. It was not a creative decision but the result of a sponsorship deal between Heineken and AMC, a cost-cutting measure insisted upon against Matthew Weiner’s wishes. This behind-the-scenes reality adds a layer of unintended irony to the narrative: the very product that betrays Betty in her home is itself an intrusion of corporate compromise into the artistic fabric of the show. The advert has literally invaded the drama.

    In the end, A Night to Remember is the narrative equivalent of tidying up after a brilliant party. The real event—the catastrophic humiliation, the shattered illusions—happened the night before. This episode is necessary housekeeping, executed with professional skill, but it lacks the inspiration, thematic depth, and dramatic force that define Mad Men at its best.

    RATING: 6/10 (++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
23. ›Television Review: The Gold Violin (Mad Men, S2x07, 2008)@drax52d

    

    The Gold Violin (S2x07)

    Airdate: 7 September 2008

    Written by: Jane Anderson, Andre Jacquemott, Maria Jacquemott and Matthew Weiner Directed by: Andrew Bernstein

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    The second season of Mad Men consciously depicts America in 1962 perched at the zenith of its post-war power. It is a moment of unparalleled prosperity and confidence, where President Kennedy’s New Frontier promises a future of limitless potential, still untainted by the assassinations, Vietnam, and civil unrest that would soon define the decade. It is unsurprising, then, that the season’s very midpoint—the seventh episode, pointedly titled The Golden Violin—opens with an image that symbolically presents its protagonist, Don Draper, at the very apex of this world.

    The episode’s opening tableau is a brilliant example of the visual storytelling. Draper is seen in an immaculately austere car salon, sitting behind the wheel of a gleaming 1962 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. The vehicle is a totem of success, accessible only to the upper class. His ability to purchase it is the ultimate signifier that Dick Whitman has fully ‘made it’ as Don Draper. This ascension is verbally confirmed in a subsequent, quietly significant scene with the agency’s patriarch, Bertram Cooper. Informing Draper that he will now need to wear tuxedos more frequently and attend the social functions of decision-makers, Cooper effectively anoints him as a member of the ruling caste. Draper basks in this validation, proudly showing the car to his wife Betty and later using it to transport his picture-perfect family on an idyllic picnic. The Cadillac is the physical manifestation of his conquest—a mobile throne from which he surveys his kingdom.

    Yet, this triumph is immediately and irrevocably shadowed by the ghosts of Draper’s past. The very act of entering the car dealership triggers a brief but potent flashback to roughly a decade earlier, where a younger, desperate Draper ekes out a living as a used car salesman. The shabbiness of that existence is starkly contrasted with the opulence before him. More chillingly, his office is visited by a mysterious woman (a haunting Melinda Page Hamilton) who delivers the devastating line: “I know you’re not Don Draper.” This intrusion shatters the pristine present, reminding both Draper and the audience that his entire edifice is built upon a stolen identity, a foundational lie that can never be fully buried.

    The purchase of the Cadillac itself is born not from unadulterated triumph but from grim necessity; his previous car was totalled in a traffic accident that nearly killed him. The accident’s significance is compounded by the presence of Bobbie Barrett, with whom he was conducting an adulterous and increasingly toxic affair. Though Don has ended the relationship, its fallout pursues him relentlessly.

    This pursuit crystallises in the episode’s central, agonising set piece at the Stork Club. Bobbie’s husband, the crude comedian Jimmy Barrett, uses a lucrative television deal brokered by Don as a pretext to insinuate himself into the Drapers’ lives. He invites Betty to a celebration, which she reluctantly attends with Don. In a scene dripping with malicious intent, Jimmy, while Don is distracted with Bobbie, deliberately plies Betty with alcohol and obliquely accuses Don of having an affair with his wife. Betty’s expression shifts from polite discomfort to dawning horror and finally to visceral disgust. The confrontation culminates with Jimmy directly spitting the accusation to Don about sleeping with his wife. The car journey home, meant to be a silent ride in Don’s new symbol of success, becomes a hearse for their marriage’s dignity, interrupted only by Betty vomiting onto the pristine upholstery. It is a moment of spectacular, symbolic wreckage; the American Dream, quite literally, cannot be stomached.

    While Don’s personal life unravels, Sterling Cooper continues its awkward, corporate attempt to harness the coming cultural wave. The hiring of the younger creative team, Smithy Smith (Patrick Kavanaugh) and Kurt Smith (Edin Geli), represents this push. They belong to the Beat-influenced, rebellious generation and propose a revolutionary concept for Martinson’s Coffee: instead of dictating to youth, use a likeable jingle to make suggestions. Their success with previously sceptical clients highlights a seismic shift in advertising—and by extension, in society’s authority structures—that the old guard, for all their tuxedos, can scarcely comprehend.

    A parallel shift in the office’s micro-politics unfolds around Don’s secretary, Jane Siegel. Defying Joan Holloway’s warnings about her wardrobe, she wears a sweater so provocative it prompts Roger Sterling to remark he would forbid his own daughter from wearing it. Later, overhearing junior executives anxiety over Bert Cooper’s habit of quizzing them about the painting in his office, Jane orchestrates a daring, clandestine raid to view it. The discovery that it is a Mark Rothko abstract expressionist work is a delicious irony, undercut moments later when Harry Crane, trying to appear cultured, mentions it to Cooper only to be told it means nothing to him—he bought it purely as an investment. This vignette perfectly captures the show’s critique: art, culture, and even rebellion are being commodified by the very establishment they ostensibly challenge. Jane’s initiative nearly costs her job, as Joan, who sees her as a threat, seizes the chance to fire her. In a twist of fate (or calculated desperation), Jane appeals to Roger, who, clearly attracted to her, overrules Joan and secures her return. The power dynamic subtly shifts; traditional, matriarchal authority (Joan) is circumvented by male caprice and sexual interest.

    The episode’s title finds its origin in a subplot involving Ken Cosgrove, who has written a story inspired by an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. Art director Salvatore Romano, deeply moved by the story, invites Ken to dinner at his home. The scene is a masterpiece of tragicomic unease. Ken is impressed by the sophisticated décor and lavish spread, but Salvatore’s hospitality is entirely directed at his handsome colleague, leaving his wife Kitty utterly neglected and bewildered. The ‘gold violin’ of the title—a beautiful object perhaps more valuable than functional—becomes a metaphor for Salvatore’s own life: a meticulously constructed façade of heterosexual domesticity that hides his true, unplayable nature. The script for this storyline was co-written by Jane Anderson, a lesbian writer known for exploring homosexual themes, and her contribution lends the scene a palpable authenticity, rendering Salvatore’s closeted agony with both tragedy and dark humour.

    The episode’s overarching strength is its systematic deconstruction of the American Dream. Don Draper appears to have it all: professional acclaim, a beautiful wife, flawless children, and now the ultimate luxury car. Yet every element is compromised. His success is built on fraud, his marriage is a hollow performance, his family is a prop, and the car is both a replacement for a wreck caused by his infidelity and the vessel for his wife’s physical revulsion. The idyllic picnic scene concludes with a telling period detail often cited by critics: as the family departs, they simply leave their litter—beer cans, rubbish—strewn on the grass. This complete disregard for the environment is not just a historical footnote; it is a metaphor for the moral and emotional detritus Don leaves in his wake. The dream is not merely fragile; it is inherently polluting.

    The Gold Violin also seeds the coming social cataclysm with remarkable prescience. The two Smiths reference the Port Huron Statement, the founding manifesto of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), as a guide to what American youth wants. At the time, the SDS was an obscure, radical group. By the decade’s end, it would become a cornerstone of the New Left, fundamentally challenging the very institutions Sterling Cooper represents. The episode hints that the confident world of 1962 is already incubating the forces that will dismantle it.

    Another nuanced period detail lies in Betty’s reaction to Jimmy Barrett. After his vicious stunt, she recoils with the pronouncement, “You people are ugly and crude.” When Jimmy retorts, “Comedians?”, the question hangs in the air. The remark could easily be read as a product of the residual, genteel anti-Semitism still lingering in the WASP circles from which Betty hails, a subtle bigotry as much a part of the ‘good old days’ as the Cadillacs and cocktails.

    In the end, The Gold Violin stands out as one of Mad Men’s most perfectly realised episodes. It functions as a poignant, critical elegy for an America at its peak, cleverly using the purchase of a luxury car as the narrative engine to explore the corrosion beneath the chrome. It masterfully interweaves personal betrayal, professional anxiety, and social foreshadowing, all while maintaining the series’ signature aesthetic precision and narrative restraint.

    RATING: 8/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
24. ›Television Review: Maidenform (Mad Men, S2x06, 2008)@drax53d

    

    Maidenform (S2x06)

    Airdate: 31 August 2008

    Written by: Matthew Weiner Directed by: Phil Abraham

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    When a television series establishes itself as a paragon of consistent quality, each instalment is held to an almost impossibly high standard. A singular episode that fails to reach this elevated bar stands out as a conspicuous blemish. This is the peculiar curse of Maidenform, the sixth episode of Mad Men’s second season. Taken in isolation, it is a competently acted, handsomely produced piece of drama. Yet, measured against the series’ own sterling pedigree it emerges as a frustratingly diffuse and occasionally clumsy endeavour. It is the season’s first significant stumble, a piece that prioritises aesthetic provocation and crammed narrative over the disciplined focus that made the show great.

    Written by series creator Matthew Weiner, the episode takes its title from the real-life American lingerie manufacturer, the chief competitor to Playtex. The latter is, within the fiction, a client of Sterling Cooper, thus setting the stage for a narrative ostensibly about the brassiere wars of 1962. The plot is situated in the late May heat around Memorial Day, a contrivance that functions primarily as a flimsy excuse to parade the female cast in various states of undress. This agenda is announced with unsubtle clarity in the opening sequence, which cross-cuts between Betty Draper, Joan Holloway, and Peggy Olson dressing in their underwear. While visually striking, the scene feels less like organic character revelation and more like a deliberate, somewhat cynical calculation to engage the viewer’s gaze—a theme the episode will awkwardly attempt to critique within its own diegesis.

    The professional catalyst arrives when Duck Phillips informs Don Draper that Playtex, threatened by Maidenform’s advertising, demands a campaign of equal potency. The creative process that follows yields the episode’s central, and most problematic, conceit. Paul Kinsey, ever the pretentious intellectual, posits that all American women desire to be either the refined, patrician Jackie Kennedy or the voluptuous, sensual Marilyn Monroe. The proposed campaign promises that with the right Playtex bra, a woman can embody both archetypes. This is, of course, a blatant dramatisation of the Madonna-Whore complex, presented with a startling lack of the series’ usual subtlety. The concept reduces the nuanced exploration of female identity that the show often championed into a crude, binary marketing pitch. The subsequent casting call leads to one of the episode’s more gratuitous subplots: Pete Campbell engaging in a joyless tryst with a model (Susie Wright) in a room she shares with her mother. The scene’s conclusion, where their coupling is intercut with a televised documentary of US fighter jets accompanied by solemn religious narration, aims for a resonant irony but lands with a thud of pretentious ‘artiness’, feeling like an unnecessary filler that contributes little to Pete’s arc or the episode’s core themes.

    Parallel to this, Peggy’s ongoing struggle for recognition within the masculine fortress of Sterling Cooper reaches a new peak of frustration. Cut out of the Playtex campaign by the ‘boys’, she is advised by Joan to shed her girlish attire and adopt the armour of a woman—to infiltrate their circle through socialisation. The episode’s most effective commentary on gender performance arrives when the Playtex executives, though impressed by the dual-identity ad, decide to pass on the campaign. In a desperate move to salvage the account, the Sterling Cooper men take them to an upscale strip club. In a moment of shocking, calculated audacity, Peggy arrives, transformed in a sultry gown, and boldly plants herself in the lap of a Playtex executive. It’s a powerful, desperate act of assimilation, highlighting the extreme lengths to which a woman must go to be considered ‘one of the guys’ in this world. This storyline succeeds precisely because it engages with the series’ strengths: the quiet agony of professional ambition constrained by gender, and the brutal cost of swapping expected roles.

    Elsewhere, the narrative sprawls uncontrollably. Roger Sterling) forces a perfunctory lunch between Don and Duck to mend fences after the American Airlines debacle—a subplot that resolves with predictable, hollow cordiality. More weight is given to Duck’s personal unraveling. A visit from his ex-wife and children leaves him custodial of his son’s dog, Chauncey. The beagle’s sad, loyal eyes become a temporary bulwark against Duck’s overwhelming thirst for alcohol. In a moment of quiet tragedy, he leads the dog out of the office and abandons it on the street, presumably returning to succumb to his addiction. It’s a well-acted vignette, but it feels emotionally and narratively disconnected from the episode’s other threads, a symptom of the instalment’s lack of focus.

    This lack of discipline is most glaring in Don Draper’s storyline. Attending a Memorial Day party at the country club with Betty, he departs early to continue his affair with the brash, older Bobbie Barrett. The power dynamics here are intriguing: Don learns Bobbie has adult children, shattering his perception of her, and later, during a sexual encounter, she casually mentions that his prowess is legendary in her social circles. In an instant, Don is revolted. He sees himself reduced to a sexual object, a mirror image of his own predatory behaviour. His response—tying her to the bed under the pretence of kink before coldly departing—is a brutal act of reasserting control by weaponising her expectation of his desire. It’s a compelling idea, but it feels rushed, sandwiched between the party scenes and Betty’s own chaste rejection of an advance from Arthur Case. The episode concludes with Don shaving, staring into the mirror with self-loathing—a potent image, but one that resonates less because the emotional journey to that point has been fragmented.

    Matthew Weiner has cited Maidenform as a personal favourite, which may explain certain indulgent details. The name ‘Franklin Reeve’, the man Duck’s ex-wife plans to marry, is a direct homage to Weiner’s college mentor. While a charming insider nod, it underscores an episode that occasionally feels like a creator’s playground rather than a cohesive chapter. Furthermore, the episode’s much-criticised anachronism—the use of The Decemberists’ 2005 song ‘The Infanta’ over the opening montage—is a rare but significant misstep for a series famed for its fastidious period authenticity. It momentarily shatters the carefully constructed illusion of 1962, a year being viewed through rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia and a pivotal moment before the coming storm of social change.

    The year was more eventful than 1960, leading to a Season 2 inferior to Season 1 partly because it must engage with iconic images, words and events that define that era. ‘Maidenform’ suffers from this burden, feeling obligated to insert references to Marilyn Monroe’s infamous JFK birthday performance and the Bay of Pigs invasion, the latter via a conversation with the CIA-connected Crab Colson (Matt McKenzie). These feel less like organic historical texture and more like obligatory checkboxes, further contributing to the narrative clutter.

    Where the episode truly succeeds is in its visual boldness and its moments of meta-commentary. The Memorial Day party features a fashion show of swimwear; when Betty buys a suit and wishes to swim in it, Don is visibly aghast at the thought of other men seeing his wife. This hypocrisy—the adman who sells desire but cannot stomach his wife being its object—is sharp. It can also be read as the episode’s defensive retort to accusations of its own exploitative content: Look, it seems to say, we are aware of the predatory male gaze, and here is a character who is hypocritically consumed by it. It’s a clever, if somewhat transparent, manoeuvre.

    In the end of the day, Maidenform is not a failure. The performances remain superb, and individual scenes crackle with the series’ trademark intelligence. However, it is an episode at war with itself. It tries to be a critique of sexual objectification while luxuriating in imagery that facilitates it; it wants to explore the Jackie/Marilyn dichotomy but does so with uncharacteristic heavy-handedness; it introduces compelling personal crises for Don and Duck but fails to give them the narrative room to breathe. The result is a scattered, often unsatisfying instalment that stands as a testament to what happens when a great show’ ambition outpaces its focus. In a season already grappling with the challenge of following a near-perfect first year, Maidenform is the point where the seams of Mad Men’s impeccable suit become visibly, and disappointingly, frayed.

    RATING: 6/10 (++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
25. ›Television Review: The New Girl (Mad Men, S2x05, 2008)@drax54d

    

    The New Girl (S2x05)

    Airdate: 24 August 2008

    Written by: Robin Veith Directed by: Jennifer Getzinger

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    The so-called Golden Age of Television established a peculiar and remarkable artistic principle: the most prestigious dramas excelled at making the mundane utterly compelling. They demonstrated that a show need not rely on car chases, gunfights, or high-stakes melodrama to captivate; instead, the quiet dissection of character in everyday scenarios could yield profound dramatic power. Matthew Weiner’s Mad Men stands as a quintessential exemplar of this school, and its second season episode, The New Girl (Season 2, Episode 5), is a great example pof the form. On its surface, the episode is a slow-burning account of office politics and a mid-summer personal misadventure. Yet, through its meticulously observed details and understated performances, it delivers brilliant character exposition, excavates traumatic pasts, and whispers of the profound social tremors just beginning to ripple through the ostensibly stable world of 1962.

    The episode’s title operates on a double entendre. It directly refers to Jane Sigel (Peyton List), the young, college-educated woman recently installed as Don Draper’s secretary. It is high summer in New York, and Jane uses the heat as a pretext for a more casual, revealing wardrobe. The male staff’s attention becomes palpably predatory, a silent, leering audience to her daily performance. This provokes one of the episode’s most fascinating power struggles. Joan Holloway, temporarily covering the role and freshly adorned with an engagement ring, swiftly reasserts her matriarchal authority over the office’s feminine ecosystem. Her chastisement of Jane is not merely about professionalism or decorum; it is a brutal lesson in survival. Joan understands the economy of female sexuality in this world—it is a currency to be strategically deployed, not frivolously spent. By demanding “wholesome” costume choices, she is teaching Jane the first rule: to be taken seriously, a woman must first learn to armour herself against the male gaze she is simultaneously expected to attract.

    While Jane goes through this initiation, the episode’s central narrative thrust follows Don Draper into a spiral of recklessness that exposes his profound disquiet. He is being aggressively pursued by Bobbie Barrett, the brash wife of comedian Jimmy Barrett, who is intent on continuing their affair. Under the guise of celebrating her husband’s television deal, she lures Don to the upscale Sardi’s restaurant in the middle of a working day. There, in her most glamorous and seductive attire, she embodies a very different model of female agency from Joan’s—one of overt, transactional sexual power. The encounter turns acutely awkward with the arrival of Rachel Menken and her new husband. This chance meeting is a superb piece of writing, forcing Don and Rachel to confront the ghost of their past, deeply felt affair amidst the banal politeness of a restaurant greeting. The shared, unspoken discomfort highlights the lingering emotional truth beneath Don’s carefully constructed façade.

    The plot accelerates from discomfort into outright chaos. Fuelled by alcohol and Bobbie’s proposition of a sexual tryst in the sand at Long Beach, Don agrees to drive them out of the city. Their mutual intoxication leads to a loss of control, a car veering off the road, and minor injuries for both. For Don, the physical bruises are inconsequential compared to the social peril: being charged with drunk driving by local police and lacking the $150 cash for the fine. In a moment of sheer desperation, he makes a phone call that defines one of the series’ most crucial relationships: he calls Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss). Peggy’s response is a quiet triumph. She arrives with her own money, orchestrates a rental car for Don, and takes the battered Bobbie back to her apartment to hide until facial wounds can be concealed. The subsequent scene between the two women is electric. Bobbie, a veteran of managing men in the entertainment business, offers Peggy unsentimental career advice. She should treat men as equals, but use her femininity as a tool. It’s a cynical, pragmatic credo that stands in stark contrast to both Joan’s strategic armour and Jane’s naïve display, presenting a third path of calculated performance.

    The aftermath of this night reverberates through Don’s life. He concocts a lie for Betty about side effects from blood pressure medication, a flimsy cover that underscores the growing chasm in their marriage. Back at the office, his arm in a sling, he is subjected to the grotesque spectacle of Jimmy Barrett arriving with Bobbie to personally thank him for the TV show deal. Don’s palpable anxiety—wondering if the comedian knows the truth—is a masterpiece of silent acting from Jon Hamm. The episode’s most significant character beat, however, comes when Don, with immense embarrassment, reimburses Peggy. Her simple, deliberate use of “Don” instead of “Mr. Draper” as she accepts the money is a seismic shift. It is an unspoken acknowledgement of the debt incurred, a move from hierarchical formality to a fraught, intimate parity forged in crisis.

    This bond is further rooted in the episode’s harrowing flashbacks, set in 1960. We see Peggy in the aftermath of giving birth, heavily sedated in St. Mary’s hospital, implying a severe post-partum psychotic episode. The portrayal is unflinching and bleak. When Don visits, making awkward inquiries before realising the truth, he is visibly shaken. In a moment of rare, unguarded connection, he unconsciously sees his own traumatic past—the forged identity, the buried pain—mirrored in her experience. His advice, “You must put this behind you,” is less a corporate mantra and more a survival tactic he himself employs daily. This shared secret becomes the bedrock of their unique, enduring alliance, elevating their professional relationship to a level of unspoken understanding no other character shares.

    For all its strengths, The New Girl, written by Robin Veith, is not a flawless piece of television. The episode suffers from a slight lack of narrative focus, primarily due to a subplot involving Pete and Trudy Campbell’s attempts to conceive. The storyline, in which Pete must prove his fertility by providing a sperm sample in the office while perusing erotic magazines, feels tonally adrift. Whether period-accurate or not, it plays like a piece of early-21st-century low-brow comedy awkwardly grafted onto the series’ refined aesthetic. Similarly, the bizarre interlude where Freddy Rumsen interrupts Jane and Ken Cosgrove to perform Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik with his trousers zipper is pure, absurdist farce. While it might aim to illustrate the juvenile office culture, it risks undermining the episode’s otherwise nuanced atmosphere with a jarring, cartoonish gag.

    In the broader context of Mad Men’s second season, as noted in contemporaneous reviews, 1962 is presented as a year on the cusp. The world is still strong, confident and optimistic, yet the show subtly seeds the coming revolutions in gender, race, and social more. The New Girl encapsulates this perfectly. It is an episode about women navigating a man’s world using vastly different strategies—Jane’s naivety, Joan’s governance, Bobbie’s manipulation, Peggy’s quiet competence. It is about Don Draper, the archetypal self-made man, finding himself literally and metaphorically crashed by the forces of desire and indiscretion he believes he controls. By weaving together the mundane—a secretary’s dress, a traffic fine, an office prank—with moments of deep psychological revelation, the episode affirms Mad Men’s central genius: the greatest dramas often unfold not in war rooms or courtrooms, but in the quiet, charged spaces between people, where the future is being nervously, awkwardly, and irrevocably born.

    RATING: 7/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
26. ›Television Review: Three Sundays (Mad Men, S3x04, 2008)@drax55d

    

    Three Sundays (S2x04)

    Airdate: 17 August 2008

    Written by: Andre Jacquemott & Maria Jacquemott Directed by: Tim Hunter

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    The structural rhythm of Mad Men has often been described as episodic vignette, a series of finely observed “day in the life” slices that advance the overarching plot with deliberate, often glacial, slowness. Each episode typically confines itself to a narrow temporal window, deepening character through mundane ritual and subtle interaction rather than through sweeping narrative leaps. Three Sundays, the fourth episode of the second season, represents a slight but significant deviation from this established pattern. As the title overtly signals, the episode’s plot is spread across three consecutive Sundays—Passion Sunday, Palm Sunday, and Easter Sunday—encompassing the period between 8 April and 22 April 1962. This tripartite structure allows the writers, Andre and Maria Jacquemetton, to trace the gradual accumulation of pressure and revelation in their characters’ lives with a novel sense of weekly ritual, using the Christian liturgical calendar as both a narrative scaffold and a potent source of thematic resonance.

    The choice of Eastertide is far from incidental; it ensures that questions of faith, guilt, redemption, and resurrection permeate the storylines. The episode is bookended by the high holy days of Christianity, and the script deftly explores how these abstract concepts collide with the messy, secular realities of early 1960s America. The most explicit engagement with faith is found in the storyline centred on Peggy Olson. Visiting her devoutly Catholic family for Sunday dinner, Peggy is pressured into attending Mass, an experience that visibly discomforts her. Her flight from the service—feigning illness—leads her to a chance encounter outside the church with Father Gill (Colin Hanks), a young, tall, and disarmingly handsome priest. In a beautifully ironic twist, his earnest, unintentionally charismatic presence inadvertently draws her back into the fold, setting in motion a complex dynamic that blends spiritual guidance with unspoken attraction and professional exchange.

    Father Gill’s subsequent visit to the Olson home, where he learns of Peggy’s career as a copywriter on Madison Avenue, allows the episode to forge a fascinating connection between the pulpit and the pitch meeting. He recruits her to help craft his Palm Sunday sermon, a request that Peggy, ever eager to prove her utility and perhaps intrigued by the priest, accepts. This collaboration culminates in one of the episode’s most quietly devastating moments: during confession, Peggy’s sister Anita confesses to Father Gill that she “hates” Peggy. Anita, who has followed the traditional path of marriage and motherhood, seethes with resentment that Peggy, who bore a child out of wedlock, has simply abandoned that life for a career and acts like nothing happened. The Church, traditionally a bastion of the very morality Anita embodies, is here represented by a priest who is not a figure of judgement but of confused, slightly hip compassion. His final gesture—giving Peggy a painted Easter egg “for the little one” on Easter Sunday—is a masterpiece of ambiguous kindness. It is both a recognition of her secret and a gentle, painful reminder of the life she has chosen to suppress, highlighting the impossible gap between her modern aspirations and her family’s (and faith’s) traditional expectations.

    Whilst Peggy grapples with the personal implications of faith and family, Don Draper is embroiled in a professional crisis that mirrors the episode’s themes of disaster and forced resurrection. Sterling Cooper is tasked with salvaging the American Airlines account after a recent, devastating air crash. The assignment is a public relations nightmare, and the pressure is ratcheted up when Duck Phillips informs Don that the airline wants concepts before Easter. This forces Don to summon his creative team for an emergency meeting on Palm Sunday—a violation of the Sabbath that underscores the agency’s secular devotion to commerce. The scenes of the team working in a near-deserted office are among the episode’s most striking visual departures; the men, usually icons of tailored perfection, are dressed in casual sweaters, slacks, and even shorts, creating a comical yet revealing contrast. Their dishabille mirrors their mental state—stripped of their professional armour, they are forced to think rawly. Don’s solution, when it comes, is pure Draper alchemy: to ignore the disaster entirely and pitch a future-oriented campaign asking “what 1963 will look like.” It is an act of audacious denial, a secular form of resurrection. Yet, in a cruel twist of corporate fate, Don’s perfect pitch is rendered useless when Duck reveals that Shel Keneally, their key contact at American Airlines, has been fired. The executives will attend the meeting merely out of courtesy. Don’s creative resurrection is stillborn, and his bitter reaction contrasts sharply with Roger Sterling’s world-weary consolation that “these things happen.”

    Don’s professional frustration is expertly paralleled with his domestic turmoil. Most of this stems from his five-year-old son, Bobby (now played by Aaron Hart), whose childish irresponsibility causes minor but resonant chaos. Betty, overwhelmed and increasingly detached, demands that Don discipline his son. Don’s refusal, and his subsequent, raw admission to Betty, provides one of the season’s most poignant character insights: he confesses that he was savagely beaten by his own father and cannot bring himself to replicate that violence. This moment fractures the façade of Don as the omnipotent patriarch, revealing the traumatised child within who is desperately trying to forge a different, better fatherhood—even if he has no model for how to do so.

    The episode’s focus on these two major arcs is disciplined, but it allows minor storylines to weave through the narrative with natural ease. Bobbie Barrett appears at Don’s office, using a flimsy business pretext to reignite their affair, highlighting Don’s continued moral drift. More notably, Roger Sterling, preoccupied with his daughter’s upcoming wedding, encounters a call girl named Vicky (Marguerite Moreau) in a hotel bar. Impressed by her brazen resourcefulness (she poses as a client’s wife to dine in a restaurant), he hires her services. In a telling moment of self-rationalisation, Roger tells Vicky he hasn’t been with a prostitute since his Navy days, framing this transaction as a tidier, less emotionally fraught alternative to an affair. It’s a sad, funny commentary on the compartmentalisation of his life, and the actor John Slattery delivers the line with perfectly dry irony, especially when Vicky dismisses his health concerns by stating “nobody ever died doing this,” prompting Roger’s wry smile at the memory of his own near-fatal heart attack.

    The episode’s strength lies in this nuanced, structurally sound scripting and its acute sensitivity to the cultural shifts of its time. 1962 represents a pivotal moment where the old, established world begins to subtly erode. Peggy Olson is the embodiment of this change—a woman prioritising career over family in an era where such a choice was socially anathema. The episode cleverly contrasts her with the older, plainer, more “square” women in her family, framing the conflict not as a simple battle between progressive and conservative, but as a more tragic clash of mutually incomprehensible life paths. The casting of the youthful, attractive Colin Hanks as Father Gill adds a fascinating twist: the Church, the institution most associated with tradition, is here represented by a face that looks almost cool, blurring the lines and suggesting that even organised religion is not immune to the changing tides.

    The use of humour is equally deft. Kiernan Shipka, as Sally Draper, steals her scenes with a child’s unfiltered curiosity, asking awkward questions and even sipping a cocktail in Sterling Cooper’s offices—a moment that is both charming and faintly unsettling. The visual joke of the creative team in casual weekend wear punctures the series’ usual aesthetic of rigid formality, reminding us that beneath the suits and slicked hair are fallible, tired men.

    Three Sundays is a particularly finely crafted episode. It uses its expanded timeframe to explore themes of sacrifice, failure, and the hope for renewal—both personal and professional—against the backdrop of a fading, yet still potent, American Protestant ethic. It doesn’t advance the season’s plot in giant leaps, but in doing so it offers something richer: a profound, moving, and critically astute examination of its characters straining against the confines of their era, their faith, and their own deeply flawed natures.

    RATING: 7/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
27. ›Television Review: The Benefactor (Mad Men, S2x03, 2008)@drax55d

    

    The Benefactor (S2x03)

    Airdate: 10 August 2008

    Written by: Matthew Weiner & Rick Cleveland Directed by: Leslie Glinka Glatter

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    Matthew Weiner’s choice to depict the tumultuous decade of the 1960s from the perspective of advertising industry executives and employees proved to be an exceptionally astute creative decision. These individuals were not merely passive observers of momentous cultural shifts; they were, by virtue of their profession, on the forefront of shaping consumer desire and, via the creative class, firmly connected with the entertainment industry. This vantage point allows Mad Men to serve a dual purpose: as a penetrating insight into a transformative past and as a veritable treasure trove of pop culture references, where the mechanics of selling products intertwine with the era’s defining media. One such exemplary fusion is found in The Benefactor, the third episode of the show’s second season. This instalment masterfully leverages a real television controversy to hold a mirror to the personal and professional machinations of its characters, revealing the brittle facades of control they maintain in a world on the cusp of radical change.

    The episode’s engine of conflict is ignited in a utilitarian studio, where the crudely popular comedian Jimmy Barrett (Patrick Fischler) is filming a commercial for Utz Potato Chips. The arrival of the company’s owner, Hunt Schilling (Steve Stapenhorst), and his wife Edith (Jan Hoag)—an ardent fan—sets the stage for disaster. Barrett, unable to resist the lowest-hanging fruit, unleashes a series of brutally insensitive jokes about Edith’s obesity. This represents a catastrophic failure for Sterling Cooper, which had the Utz account. The cardinal sin, as Roger Sterling later elucidates, was allowing the clients near the combustible Barrett, a man whose reputation for offence preceded him. The ensuing scramble for accountability finds Don Draper peculiarly absent, having chosen to spend the afternoon in a cinema watching a pretentious French art film—a futile attempt to connect with a “cool” new world that remains elusive to him. Don’s solution to the crisis is both swift and cowardly: he deflects blame onto his secretary, Lois, demoting her back to the pool of switchboard operators, thus providing a sacrificial lamb to appease the gods of corporate hierarchy.

    This professional fiasco, however, also presents an opportunity for Don to reassert his value as a fixer. His plan is to compel a humiliating apology from Barrett to the Schillings. The path to this goal leads him to Bobbie Barrett (Melinda McGraw), Jimmy’s wife and manager, a character of formidable and unapologetic sexual agency. Their initial meeting is a tense negotiation; Bobbie is dismissive of the need for an apology, viewing the incident as trivial client hypersensitivity. The dynamic shifts, however, when they have sex—a transaction of power as much as desire. Don’s strategy culminates in a staged reconciliation at Lutèce, New York’s most elite restaurant, where the Barretts and Schillings are to dine with Don and his wife, Betty. Betty’s participation is secured through immense reluctance, yet once at the table, she performs her wifely duty with devastating efficiency, charming everyone present. Jimmy, emboldened by alcohol and his own nature, shamelessly flirts with her. When he still refuses to apologise, Don follows Bobbie to the restroom. In a chilling display of coercive power, he grabs her and threatens to destroy her husband’s career. The apology is swiftly delivered. Don’s mission is accomplished, but the cost is laid bare in the final scene:As he returns home, he finds Betty weeping, her composure shattered by the evening’s degrading spectacle.

    Running parallel to this central drama is the episode’s second major storyline, which serves as a superb study of corporate envy and opportunistic ambition. Harry Crane, feeling undervalued and financially stagnant, accidentally opens a piece of mail intended for Ken Cosgrove and discovers the vast disparity in their salaries. This moment of private humiliation fuels a crisis of confidence. He explores a move to CBS, but a fruitless phone call yields an unexpected prize: intelligence about an upcoming episode of the prestigious legal drama The Defenders. Titled “The Benefactors,” the episode deals with the taboo subject of abortion, rendering it so controversial that the show’s regular sponsors have withdrawn. Harry, seeing a chance to prove his worth, attempts to secure a new sponsor through Sterling Cooper. His pitch to Belle Jolie fails, but in the process, he earns the public admiration of the company’s executive, Paul Keeley, for his resourcefulness and bravery. This display of initiative does not go unnoticed. Roger Sterling, impressed, rewards Harry by promoting him to head of a newly created Television Department, complete with a modest raise. This subplot is a perfectly calibrated piece of storytelling, illustrating how personal grievance can be channelled into professional advancement within the mercurial logic of the corporate world.

    The Benefactor is firmly anchored in television history. The Defenders, created by Reginald Rose of 12 Angry Men fame, was a critically acclaimed series, and the episode “The Benefactors” was indeed pulled from its initial broadcast schedule in May 1962 due to sponsor revolt over its abortion storyline, only airing later after a replacement sponsor was found. The episode’s use of actual footage from the 1962 broadcast is not mere period dressing; it provides a potent meta-commentary. Just as the fictional Sterling Cooper navigates the fallout from Barrett’s offensive humour, the real-life television industry was grappling with the limits of acceptable discourse. The episode smartly parallels these two realms, suggesting that the anxieties about content and sponsorship in entertainment are inextricably linked to the broader cultural anxieties the ad men both exploit and embody.

    Co-written by Matthew Weiner and Rick Cleveland and directed with assured clarity by Leslie Linka Glatter, the episode is a model of narrative focus, weaving together only three primary storylines with precision. The Harry Crane plot is a quintessential Mad Men exploration of office politics and the slow, often accidental, shifting of cultural attitudes. The minor thread concerning Betty’s struggle with adulterous temptation—she is simultaneously repulsed by Don’s world and drawn to the crude validation offered by Jimmy Barrett’s flirtation—serves to deepen the main narrative, highlighting the emotional collateral damage of Don’s transactional existence.

    The episode’s success is significantly bolstered by its casting. Patrick Fischler embodies Jimmy Barrett with a pathetic, wounding energy, channelling the aggressive, insecure humour of era comedians like Jerry Lewis. Even more compelling is Melinda McGraw’s Bobbie Barrett, a revelation as a sexual manipulator who, despite being arguably older than Don, exerts a formidable and unsettling power over the men around her. Their dynamic serves as a fascinating study in layered frustration: Jimmy, presumably henpecked and emasculated by Bobbie’s management, lashes out through alcohol and cruelty; Don, feeling inferior to Roger Sterling’s effortless authority, reasserts control by bullying an innocent subordinate and manipulating his own wife into a degrading performance.

    The Benefactor also occupies a curious place in Mad Men lore due to an unresolved mystery. Matthew Weiner has deliberately never identified the pretentious French art film Don watches in the cinema, leading to years of fervent fan speculation. The prevailing theory suggests the footage was either from an extremely obscure picture or created specifically for the series, a deliberate void that amplifies the episode’s themes of elusive authenticity and Don’s futile pursuit of a sophistication that remains just out of reach.

    The Benefactor is particularly rich and cohesive entry in the series’ canon. It functions brilliantly as a case study in crisis management and personal compromise, utilising a real-world television controversy to illuminate the fragile ecosystems of advertising, marriage, and corporate ambition. The episode demonstrates how Mad Men consistently finds the profound within the professional, revealing the quiet desperation and opportunistic grit that fuelled the American machine on the eve of its most dramatic upheaval.

    RATING: 8/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
28. ›Television Review: Flight 1 (Mad Men, S2x02, 2008)@drax55d

    

    Flight 1 (S2x02)

    Airdate: 3 August 2008

    Written by: Lisa Albert & Matthew Weiner Directed by: Andrew Bernstein

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    The narrative pace of Mad Men was famously, often agonisingly, glacial. Matthew Weiner’s meticulous period drama preferred the slow burn of character revelation and ambient social tension to conventional plot propulsion. This deliberate tempo was, however, periodically shattered by unexpected “wham” developments, many of which were intrusions from the eventful real history of the 1960s. Flight 1, the second episode of the second season, stands as a prime and ironically meta-textual example. Its plot hinges on a sudden, mass-casualty air disaster—a classic force majeure event. The irony lies in the fact that the episode’s very existence was itself precipitated by a tragic force majeure in the show’s own production.

    The real-world event that catalysed the episode occurred on 25 January 2008, when a sudden avalanche at California’s Mountain High ski resort killed three people. Among the deceased was Christopher Allport, the actor cast as Andrew Campbell, Pete’s patrician and dismissive father, who had appeared in Season 1. The character was originally intended to recur, but showrunner Matthew Weiner made a decisive creative choice: rather than recast, he would kill Andrew Campbell off, weaving an unexpected death into the show’s fabric. The episode is dedicated to Allport’s memory, a sombre footnote that lends the on-screen proceedings a palpable, unscripted gravity. This decision transforms a production setback into a narrative strength, using mortality as an unannounced guest that disrupts the Sterling Cooper ecosystem as abruptly as it did the writers’ room.

    The episode’s plot begins on the evening of 28 February 1962, with a jarring cultural collision. Junior executives attend a party thrown by the pretentious Paul Kinsey at his New Jersey apartment. The scene brilliantly shows subdued alienation. The Sterling Cooper men, in their uniform grey suits, are visibly uncomfortable amidst beatniks, interracial couples, marijuana smoke, and the sounds of Black music. Kinsey’s motivation is transparently pathetic: he brandishes his new Black girlfriend, Sheila White (Donielle Artese), primarily as a performative act of “cool” aimed at wounding Joan Holloway, with whom he shares a romantic history. It’s a petty, personal drama set against a backdrop of simmering social change, effectively establishing the era’s pervasive anxiety about shifting norms.

    The following day, 1 March, the personal is violently eclipsed by the national. Roger Sterling, complaining with characteristic cynicism about traffic snarls caused by ticker-tape parades for astronaut John Glenn, finds his staff gathered silently around a radio. American Airlines Flight 1, a Boeing 707, has crashed into Jamaica Bay shortly after take-off from New York, killing all 95 on board. The initial office reactions are a cocktail of morbid curiosity and gallows humour. For Don Draper, the tragedy is immediately professionalised: he must retool an entire advertising campaign for Mohawk Airlines, whose competitors are now tainted by association. For Pete Campbell, the news soon becomes catastrophically personal. Learning his father was aboard, Pete is rendered catatonic, a boy in a man’s suit, desperately seeking guidance from Don, who offers none. The subsequent revelation that his father was insolvent, leaving a mountain of debts, completes the brutal lesson: death brings not closure, but a cascade of vulgar practical problems.

    This is where the episode’s core thematic engine roars to life. Duck Phillips, coming out as the opportunistic weasel, learns through old contacts that American Airlines is in a panic and will require a massive public relations salvage operation. He lobbies Bert Cooper and Roger Sterling to ruthlessly jettison the small-potatoes Mohawk account and pitch their services to the far more lucrative, wounded giant. His logic is coldly pragmatic: even a rejected offer would burnish the agency’s prestige. Don Draper, who worked tirelessly to secure Mohawk, argues passionately for loyalty and stability. In a defining moment for the series, he is overruled. The honour of the individual—Don’s word to his client, Pete’s grief—plays little to no effect against cold corporate calculus. Season 2 excels in showing history reflect[ing] on some private and seemingly ordinary lives, and here that reflection is merciless: capitalism’s brutal essence is its capacity to metabolise tragedy into opportunity.

    The episode then brilliantly bifurcates to contrast two forms of professional humiliation. Don is given the unenviable task of informing Mohawk’s Henry Wofford (Matt Reidy) that they are being dropped. Wofford’s chastisement—accusing Don of having fooled him during the original pitch—stings precisely because it contains truth. Don’s creative prowess is exposed as a commodifiable service, devoid of genuine loyalty. He ends in Japanese restaurant, sitting in silent defeat. Conversely, Duck’s pitch to American Airlines’ Shel Kenealy (Vaughn Armstrong) is a grotesque performance of corporate dedication. In a stunningly cynical manoeuvre, Duck brings the shell-shocked Pete to the meeting, using his fresh bereavement as a prop to demonstrate that personal matters wouldn’t matter. It is a chilling illustration of how human feeling is instrumentalised for gain.

    Lisa Albert and Matthew Weiner’s script is at its most incisive in this main storyline, but it also constructs a potent symbolic contrast. The technological triumph of the Space Age, embodied by John Glenn (whom Roger cynically compares to a man driving around the block), is immediately undercut by the limits of that same technology in the crashing jet. Yet, for all this brilliance, Flight 1 suffers from its weaker, filler subplots. The domestic scene at the Drapers’, where neighbour Carlton Hanson complains about a teenage babysitter allegedly hired by his wife to tempt him, feels like a trite, underwritten parody of suburban sexual anxiety. Similarly, the introduction of Peggy’s devoutly Catholic sister Anita (Audrey Wasilewski) and mother Katherine (Myra Turley), who are caring for her illegitimate son and pressuring her to attend Mass, is thematically relevant but clumsily expository, lacking the nuanced integration of the show’s best B-stories.

    An intriguing, if slightly opaque, grace note concludes the episode. In the Japanese restaurant, Don is approached by an attractive Asian waitress (Elizabeth Tsing) as “Sukiyaki” by Kyu Sakamoto—a genuine 1963 hit—plays. This serves a dual purpose. Primarily, it is a period-accurate detail, a piece of fan service for 1960s aficionados. More interestingly, it visualises Don’s escapist fantasy, a fleeting, exoticised alternative to his present humiliation. It is a silent offer of anonymous solace, a theme that would define his character, though its presentation here is perhaps too subtle to land with full force.

    In the end of the day, Flight 1 is a bifurcated episode. Its central narrative, forged in real-life tragedy, is a masterful dissection of American capitalism’s cold heart, showcasing how adroitly the machinery of commerce co-opts personal catastrophe. The performances, particularly from Vincent Kartheiser as a shattered Pete and Jon Hamm as a professionally neutered Don, are superb. However, the episode is dragged down by subplots that feel like obligatory, underwritten padding, preventing it from achieving the flawless status of the season’s later entries like The Jet Set. It remains, however, essential viewing for understanding Mad Men’s overarching thesis: that the great, unsettling forces of history and the market ultimately leave individuals scrambling in their wake, whether they are grieving sons or betrayed ad men.

    RATING: 7/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
29. ›Television Review: For Those Who Think Young (Mad Men, S2x01, 2008)@drax56d

    

    For Those Who Think Young (S2x01)

    Airdate: 27 July 2008

    Written by: Matthew Weiner Directed by: Tim Hunter

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    As Mad Men embarks upon its second season, it remains steadfast in a narrative pace that many contemporary viewers—accustomed to the relentless momentum of modern television—would describe as glacial. Yet this deliberate tempo is not a flaw but a deliberate aesthetic, one that the series compensates for with a bold structural gambit: leaping forward fifteen months. Where Season 1 meticulously dissected the world of 1960, Season 2 opens in February 1962, a decision that immediately heightens the sense of a society on the cusp. This temporal jump is not merely a convenient reset; it is the episode’s first and most profound statement about change, a theme that permeates every scene of For Those Who Think Young.

    Matthew Weiner’s script precisely anchors the episode in history by establishing the date as 14 February 1962. The Valentine’s Day setting is more than a backdrop for failed romantic gestures; it is woven into the fabric of the episode through the ubiquitous cultural event of Jacqueline Kennedy’s televised tour of the White House. As the characters gather to watch, the First Lady’s curated vision of youthful, modern elegance becomes a national mirror, reflecting the very aspirations and anxieties the episode explores. The tour serves as a shared experience, a real-time historical anchor that contrasts sharply with the private disillusionments unfolding in the characters’ lives. This juxtaposition is classic Mad Men: public optimism versus private despair, with the medium of television itself acting as a reluctant herald of a new era.

    The central motif, as the title declares, is youth—or more accurately, its perceived loss and the desperate desire to reclaim it. For Don Draper, this is triggered not by a spiritual epiphany but by a brutally mundane insurance-mandated physical. The doctor’s verdict that he must start taking care of himself because, at 36, “this is it” lands with the force of a death sentence. Don’s subsequent attempt at a grand Valentine’s getaway with Betty at the Hotel Savoy ends not in rekindled passion but in impotence and retreat, the couple silently watching Jackie Kennedy’s tour instead of making their own history. This sequence masterfully ties the personal to the cultural: Don’s confrontation with his own mortality and fading virility is set against a national celebration of renewal and style. His youth is something he suddenly realises he no longer possesses, and the episode posits that this realisation is the true beginning of his mid-life crisis.

    This preoccupation with youth is not confined to the personal sphere; it is the paramount business challenge at Sterling Cooper. The firm’s struggle to connect with a younger market is articulated with palpable frustration by Duck Phillips, who sees the agency’s inability to sell coffee—a client’s product—as symptomatic of a generational disconnect. His solution is to hire younger creative talent, a move that leads to the brilliantly awkward interview scene where two confident, casually dressed young men unsettle the established order. Simultaneously, Peggy and Salvatore’s campaign for Mohawk Airlines, initially conceived around a titillating, sex-based idea, is shot down by Don in favour of something more family-friendly. This conflict encapsulates the agency’s dilemma: how to harness the energy and sexuality of the emerging youth culture without alienating the traditional, conservative consumer base. The episode suggests there is no easy answer, only the uneasy tension of a world in transition.

    The physical manifestation of this brave new world arrives not in the form of hulking Xerox machine. Its placement becomes a minor crisis for Joan, who must find a permanent home for this disruptive marvel. The scene is a superb piece of visual metaphor: the machine represents efficiency, replication, and the future, yet it is an unwieldy, space-invading problem in the meticulously ordered old world of the office. It is change itself, literally dropped onto the floor and demanding accommodation.

    Economically, the episode sketches the alterations in the characters’ lives over the missing fifteen months. Peggy has lost weight and carries herself with new authority, though the office rumour mill cruelly speculates that her “three-month sabbatical” was for bearing Don’s child—a vicious lie that highlights the persistent sexism she must navigate. Harry Crane is reconciled with his wife and is having children, embracing a conventional domesticity that others find elusive. Pete and Trudy’s anguish over their childlessness contrasts sharply with this, their frustration bubbling into marital tension. Salvatore Romano, in perhaps the most poignant update, has entered a marriage of convenience with Kitty, actively constructing a heterosexual façade to survive. Joan, meanwhile, has moved on from Roger, announcing she is dating a doctor—a declaration of independence that masks a continued search for security. These updates are delivered not through exposition but through behaviour and allusion, a testament to the show’s nuanced storytelling.

    Betty Draper’s arc in this episode is a quiet study in awakening agency and sexuality. Her riding lessons introduce her to Arthur Case (Gabriel Mann), whose younger, admiring gaze offers a thrilling alternative to Don’s neglect. The chance encounter with her old roommate Juanita (Jennifer Siebel), whom she deduces is a call girl, exposes her to a world of transactional female power. Later, when her car breaks down, she instinctively deploys a flirtatious performance for the mechanic to lower the repair bill. Betty is learning, however tentatively, to use her beauty as a currency and to see beyond the gilded cage of suburban motherhood. Her story runs parallel to Don’s, both exploring avenues of escape from the roles they are trapped in.

    Artistically, the episode is notable for its evocative use of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Song of the Indian Guest.” Its exotic, melancholic strains accompany Don’s scenes of alienation, particularly the failed hotel tryst, lending a sense of doomed romanticism and distant yearning that dialogue alone could not convey. More significantly, the episode introduces Frank O’Hara’s 1957 poetry collection Meditations in an Emergency. Don discovers it in the hands of a beatnik in a diner—a figure representing the very anti-establishment youth culture that baffles Sterling Cooper. Told he “wouldn’t like it,” Don’s instinct is to acquire and read it. This moment is critical: it shows Don, however awkwardly, reaching outside his own world to understand the new cultural currents. The book is not just a prop; it becomes a recurring symbol of existential angst and the search for meaning that will haunt Don throughout the season.

    For Those Who Think Young is a masterful season premiere that uses its deliberate pace to layer theme upon theme. By jumping to 1962, it instantly immerses us in a period where the future is visibly pressing against the present. The episode functions as a series of case studies in adaptation—and maladaptation—to a world that increasingly worships youth. Don Draper’s personal crisis of ageing mirrors his agency’s professional crisis of relevance, while the supporting characters each grapple with their own forms of societal change. It is a piece of television less concerned with plot propulsion than with psychological and social portraiture, establishing the season’s central concern: what happens when the world starts moving faster than the people in it? The answer, as this episode suggests, is a profound and deeply unsettling dissonance.

    RATING: 6/10 (++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
30. ›Television Review: The Wheel (Mad Men, S1x13, 2007)@drax69d

    

    The Wheel (S1x13)

    Airdate: 18 October 2007

    Written by: Matthew Weiner & Robin Veith Directed by: Matthew Weiner

    Running Time: 52 minutes

    In the contemporary landscape of prestigious television drama, a now‑common structural gambit sees the season’s most defining, explosive moments reserved for the penultimate episode. This practice, whilst often delivering a powerful immediate punch, carries a significant risk: the actual season finale can appear weak, underwhelming and inconsequential by comparison. This is precisely the trap into which Mad Men’s first season falls. The brilliance of Nixon vs. Kennedy – an episode of profound political and personal upheaval – is replaced by the more pedestrian, conventional The Wheel. The contrast renders the final chapter of an otherwise superb season a curiously flat and anti‑climactic affair, a competent piece of television that nevertheless fails to match the heights of what came immediately before it.

    The plot of The Wheel unfolds several weeks after the momentous events of the previous episode: the 1960 presidential election and Don Draper’s securing of his partnership at Sterling Cooper by fending off Pete Campbell’s blackmail attempt. The episode is largely concerned with the aftermath, showing characters grappling with the new status quo.

    The Draper family is supposed to reunite with Betty’s family for Thanksgiving, but Don is adamant in his refusal to attend, citing work pressures. At the office, he receives the shattering news that his brother, Adam, has committed suicide. Simultaneously, he learns that Rachel Menken, with whom he shared a genuine connection, is embarking on a three‑month world trip; a call from her father to Bert Cooper is interpreted as a not‑so‑subtle hint that their affair is conclusively over. Plunged into acute loneliness, Don channels this desolation into professional inspiration, crafting the legendary pitch for Kodak’s new Carousel slide projector. Using slides of his own family, he sells a nostalgic, aching vision of ‘the wheel’ of time and memory, securing Kodak as a client in a moment of triumphant artifice.

    Whilst Don triumphs professionally, the episode pointedly contrasts his success with the personal suffering of others. Harry Crane, having attempted honesty by confessing his one‑night stand with Hildy to his wife, is banished to the office. Watching the happy images of the Drapers during Don’s presentation, he breaks down in tears – a stark reminder that the perfect family tableau is a marketable fiction. Pete Campbell, meanwhile, operates under intense pressure to save his job. His humiliation is complete when he must accept help from his father‑in‑law, who uses old connections to secure the Clearasil account. Don assigns the newly promoted junior copywriter, Peggy Olson, to handle it, compounding Pete’s emasculation. His frustration finds solace only in drink, much to his wife Trudy’s displeasure.

    The domestic sphere offers no sanctuary either. Betty Draper’s storyline takes a decisive turn when her friend Francine arrives to complain about her husband Carlton’s affair, discovered via Manhattan numbers on a phone bill. Betty, harbouring her own suspicions, tests a Manhattan number from her own bill only to discover it belongs to her psychiatrist, Dr. Wayne, who has been colluding with Don. This betrayal – deeper than mere infidelity – prompts her to begin deliberately feeding suspicions to the psychiatrist, knowing they will be passed to her husband, a quiet act of marital warfare.

    Peggy’s arc culminates in the episode’s most conventionally dramatic ‘wham’ moment. Having finally been promoted and given an office, albeit shared with the grumpy Victor Manny (Jonathan Spencer), her triumph is undercut by severe stomach pains. Rushed to hospital, she and the attending doctors are stunned to discover she is not only pregnant but entering labour. In a chilling, ambiguous moment after the birth, she turns away when offered the chance to hold her baby. This plot twist, whilst undeniably powerful, feels like a more traditional season‑ender, a cliffhanger setting up the career‑versus‑family dilemma that will define her character in subsequent seasons.

    The episode concludes on a masterfully melancholy note of self‑deception. Don returns home and agrees to join Betty and the children for Thanksgiving, appearing to choose family. The final shot reveals this to be a fantasy; the season ends with Don utterly alone in his dark, empty house. This conclusion underscores the episode’s central theme: the gap between the lives we curate, both for clients and for ourselves, and the desolate reality we inhabit.

    The Wheel, co‑written by Matthew Weiner and Robin Veith and marking Weiner’s directorial debut for the series (it would later earn both an Emmy nomination), is a finale of intriguing contradictions. It is both conventional and unconventional. Its unconventionality lies in its refusal to deliver major, plot‑driven resolutions for its protagonist. Don experiences a kind of epiphany – shaken by his brother’s death and Rachel’s departure, he seems to realise that his constructed life with Betty might be preferable to yet another reinvention. Yet, in a cruel irony, Betty is simultaneously learning the extent of his deceptions and beginning her emotional withdrawal, sowing the seeds of the marital collapse that will unfold in later seasons. The finale thus trades explosive action for poignant, character‑based irony.

    However, some of its choices feel less assured. The scene between Betty and the young boy, Glenn Bishop, in which she discusses his private troubles, remains awkward and has long been criticised as an indulgence for Weiner’s son, who played the role. It adds little to the episode’s thematic weight. Furthermore, whilst Peggy’s secret pregnancy is handled with the show’s typical subtlety – the self‑delusion of a woman focused on career over family is psychologically plausible – its revelation as a last‑act shock inevitably feels like a concession to more conventional serialised storytelling. It is the kind of dramatic punctuation mark the show was often wise to avoid.

    First season of Mad Men is a superb and fascinating recreation of the past’ with fascinating characters’ while noting a lack of traditional plot. The Wheel encapsulates these strengths and weaknesses. It is a character study steeped in period detail and psychological nuance, yet its plot mechanics, especially when compared to the seismic shifts of Nixon vs. Kennedy, can feel slight. The season’s overall excellence is isn’t drastically diminished with The Wheel, but the episode functions as the season’s least essential chapter.

    RATING: 7/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
31. ›Television Review: Nixon vs. Kennedy (Mad Men, S1x12, 2007)@drax70d

    

    Nixon vs. Kennedy (S1x12)

    Airdate: 11 October 2007

    Written by: Lisa Albert, Albert Jaquemetton & Maria Jacquemetton Directed by: Alan Taylor

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    When Matthew Weiner, having cut his teeth on the late, groundbreaking seasons of The Sopranos, unveiled Mad Men in 2007, critics were quick to recognise the profound influence of HBO’s pioneering drama on his own creation. This extended beyond mere aesthetic or thematic borrowings to a fundamental narrative architecture: the habit of reserving the most consequential plot developments and character revelations for the penultimate episode of a season, rather than the finale. In its very first season, Mad Men adhered to this sophisticated structural principle with remarkable confidence. The twelfth episode, Nixon vs. Kennedy, is the season’s true dramatic pivot, a masterfully constructed hour that defines its protagonist more sharply than any before it and irrevocably sets the series on its course. It is an episode where history happens in the background, personal betrayals unfold in the foreground, and a man’s entire fabricated existence is laid bare, only to be validated by the most cynical of philosophies.

    The “wham” event that gives the episode its title and temporal setting is one that the protagonists observe with a mixture of professional interest and personal bias, but over which they exert no control: the 1960 United States Presidential election. In the nostalgic memories of the Baby Boomer generation and subsequent Hollywood myth-making, this election defined the dawn of a new, optimistic decade and altered the course of world history. Yet in the world of Sterling Cooper, it is merely the backdrop to an office party, a topic for boozy speculation, and a symbol of the entrenched establishment being nervously challenged. The staff, largely staunchly pro-Nixon, gather around the television on the night of 8 November 1960, convinced of the Vice-President’s imminent victory despite the polls’ closeness. The election night coverage becomes an excuse for yet another bacchanal, fuelled by copious alcohol. In this loosened atmosphere, subplots simmer: Ken Cosgrove discovers Paul Kinsey’s pretentious play manuscript, leading to an impromptu, drunken performance with Joan Holloway drafted into a role—a moment that underscores the performative nature of identity that permeates the series. Meanwhile, the alcohol also facilitates a reckless coupling between Harry Crane and Pete’s secretary, Hildy (Julie McNiven). Their fumbled, regret-filled encounter the next morning—Harry wracked with guilt over infidelity, Hildy ashamed of her unprofessionalism—serves as a microcosm of the era’s shifting sexual mores, where liberation is often followed by immediate remorse.

    The professional stakes are raised earlier that day with the arrival of Herman “Duck” Phillips (Mark Moses), a former Y&R executive with London experience and British contacts. Don Draper, ever the instinctual talent-spotter, is keen to install him as the new Head of Account Services. This position is the very one Pete Campbell, despite his youth and grating entitlement, desperately covets. Feeling thwarted, Pete unleashes his secret weapon: the parcel from Don’s half-brother, Adam Whitman, which contains artefacts that could unravel Don’s meticulously constructed identity as “Don Draper”. In a tense confrontation, Pete attempts blackmail, demanding the job in exchange for his silence about Don’s true past as Dick Whitman and the mysterious circumstances of the real Don Draper’s death in Korea. Don’s response is a masterpiece of controlled panic. Outwardly, he dismisses Pete with icy disdain; inwardly, his entire world teeters on the brink. This insecurity manifests in a desperate, romantic flight of fancy—he visits his lover, Rachel Menken, and proposes they abandon everything and reinvent themselves in California. Rachel’s refusal, grounded in her responsibilities to her department store and family, is a sobering reminder that not everyone is willing or able to shed their skin so completely. It leaves Don isolated, forced to face his past.

    That past is revealed in a series of stark, economical flashbacks to Korea in 1950. The sequence is a testament to the show’s ability to achieve profound narrative impact without a lavish budget. The chaos of war is conveyed through bureaucratic farce: Lieutenant Don Draper, expecting twenty men to build a field hospital, is sent only one—the hapless Private Dick Whitman. The ensuing shelling and catastrophic gasoline explosion are depicted with brutal efficiency. The charred, mangled corpse of the officer is the most graphic violence the series has shown to this point, a shocking visual counterpoint to the episode’s other adult content. In this moment of chaos, the wounded Whitman seizes his opportunity, swapping dog tags with the dead officer. He awakes in a hospital, awarded a Purple Heart under a false name, and is tasked with delivering the coffin containing “Dick Whitman’s” remains to the fallen man’s family. His refusal to disembark the train, and the fleeting, haunting glimpse of him caught by his young brother Adam, is a chilling moment of self-annihilation. The subsequent scene on the train, where a sympathetic, attractive woman mistakes his trauma for noble guilt and offers sexual comfort, is pivotal. It teaches the nascent Don Draper a fundamental lesson: the image he now projects—the dashing, wounded officer—is a powerful currency that can elicit desire and compassion, cementing his skills in deception and manipulation.

    The following day, a humiliated and furious Pete decides to execute his threat. He marches into Bertram Cooper’s office, with Don in reluctant tow, and unveils the secret. The resulting scene is one of the series’ most brilliantly ironic twists. Pete, expecting shock, outrage, and Don’s immediate ruin, is met instead with Cooper’s bland, dismissive “Who cares?” Bert, an ardent devotee of Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy, is not appalled but delighted. He admires the sheer, audacious self-invention Don has accomplished. In Cooper’s worldview, Don is the ultimate Randian hero, a man who created himself ex nihilo through will and opportunity. Pete, the scion of old money who plays by the perceived rules of lineage and tradition, is suddenly revealed as the anachronism. Cooper, the elderly patrician, is philosophically more attuned to the emerging, meritocratic (and morally ambiguous) 1960s than the ambitious young climber. He coolly suggests Don could fire Pete, but also notes that such ruthlessness might be an asset to the firm. The crisis is over; Don’s façade is not just intact but validated by the highest authority in his professional life.

    This resolution is underscored by the episode’s final irony. Don returns home, his career and identity secure, only to watch Richard Nixon concede defeat to John F. Kennedy on television. The world he and his colleagues assumed would continue—a Nixonian world of quiet, conservative certainty—has been upended. Yet, as Bert Cooper muses earlier, if Kennedy bought the election through fraud (a popular conservative grievance at the time), he will need the services of pragmatic, amoral men like them. The 1960s, with all their upheaval, have truly begun, and Sterling Cooper is ready to profit from them.

    Nixon vs. Kennedy is a superlative piece of television writing and a defining episode for Mad Men. It employs an intensely economical approach to complete the foundational arc of Don Draper’s background, answering the “how” and “why” with devastating clarity. The episode is also notably graphic for the series to that point, juxtaposing the horror of a burnt corpse with the discreetly shot but evident nudity of Hildy—pushing boundaries, albeit less aggressively than its HBO forebears. Its masterstroke is the deployment of dramatic irony on multiple levels: the audience’s historical knowledge of Kennedy’s victory plays against the characters’ Nixonian certainty, and Bert Cooper’s reaction subverts every expectation of how such a secret should be received. The season overall doesn’t have much of a plot, serving instead to introduce setting and character. Nixon vs. Kennedy is the glorious exception, the plot-heavy, character-defining crescendo that justifies the slow burn of the preceding eleven episodes. It proves Matthew Weiner learned the most important lesson from The Sopranos: that the deepest truths about people are often revealed not when they are making history, but when history, indifferent to them, is happening just outside the window.

    RATING: 9/10 (++++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
32. ›Television Review: Indian Summer (Mad Men, S1x11, 2007)@drax71d

    

    Indian Summer (S1x11)

    Airdate: 27 September 2007

    Written by: Tom Palmer & Matthew Weiner Directed by: Tim Hunter

    Running Time: 46 minutes

    The first season of Mad Men is rightly celebrated as one of the finest pieces of television drama ever produced, a masterclass in character study and period atmosphere. Almost every episode is very good, yet some inevitably rank higher than others in the collective critical memory. Those that occupy the lower tiers often do so on account of their conventional narrative choices. Indian Summer, the eleventh episode of the inaugural season, is a prime example. While it delivers several seismic plot developments and pivotal character moments, it does so with a sometimes clumsy hand, marring the subtlety that is the show’s usual hallmark.

    The episode opens with an uncharacteristically brutal and direct scene. Adam Whitman, the brother Don Draper paid $5,000 to disappear from his life, is seen in a cheap hotel room. He returns the money in a parcel addressed to Don, then proceeds to hang himself. This stark depiction of suicide immediately sets a darker, more visceral tone than the series’ typical restrained melancholy. It is a raw reminder of the human cost of Don’s fabricated identity and his ruthless severing of past ties. Yet, in a narrative irony that defines much of the episode, Don remains completely oblivious to this tragedy. He is consumed by a corporate crisis at Sterling Cooper.

    A month after Roger Sterling’s heart attack, the firm’s patriarch, Bert Cooper, is in a panic. Fearing that lucrative clients—particularly the tobacco giant Lucky Strike—might abandon the agency due to the partner’s absence, Bert coerces the barely convalescent Roger to leave his sickbed and make an appearance at the office. Roger’s arrival, supported by his wife Mona and met with staged applause from the staff, is a hollow spectacle. Bert, acutely aware that Roger’s pallor betrays his frailty, devises a characteristically cynical solution. He enlists Joan Holloway, the office manager and Roger’s discreet mistress, for a special task: to apply her expertise with cosmetics to make Roger look healthy. The scene where Joan performs this intimate act is charged with unspoken history; as she applies rouge to his cheeks, they quietly admit they have missed each other, a moment of genuine tenderness amidst the deception. This plot strand showcases the show’s strength in depicting the personal within the professional, yet the premise itself—using a mistress as a makeup artist to deceive a client—borders on the contrived.

    The charade, unsurprisingly, fails. During the meeting with Lee Garner Sr. of Lucky Strike, Roger suffers a second, very public heart attack and is stretchered away to an ambulance, his wife Mona cursing Bert for endangering her husband’s life. The business outcome, however, is perversely positive. Garner is impressed by Don Draper’s cool-headed pitches amidst the chaos, and with Roger definitively out of the picture, Bert is forced to promote Don to senior partner. This promotion sets in motion significant changes. Don retains his creative director role but gains a new, larger office. This, in turn, disrupts the expected career path of Peggy Olsen, who will not become his new secretary. Instead, this proves a fortuitous turn for her. Impressed by her work on the Belle Jolie campaign, Don and his team assign her to develop a campaign for the “Relax-a-cisor,” a contraption marketed to help women lose weight. The assignment is tinged with unspoken commentary on Peggy’s own recent weight gain. In testing the device, Peggy makes an accidental discovery: its vibrations, when applied to her genitals, produce pleasure. With dutiful, almost clinical detachment, she reports this finding to the male executives, suggesting how the sensation could be marketed to women. Don, recognising a sharp advertising mind at work, is impressed and promotes her to junior copywriter with a raise. This subplot is the episode’s most clever exploration of its central theme: the awakening and commercial exploitation of female sexuality.

    That theme is further explored through Betty Draper’s storyline. With Don spending increasing nights away—often in the bed of department store heiress Rachel Menken—Betty is left in the echoing emptiness of her suburban home. An unseasonably hot autumn day, the ‘Indian summer’ of the title, brings Bob Shaw (Adam Kaufman), an air conditioning salesman, to her door. Despite Don’s prior warnings about strangers, Betty lets him in. Their conversation is a masterpiece of repressed tension and unspoken longing, though it culminates in nothing more than a sales pitch. Later, Don’s anger upon hearing of the visit underscores his controlling nature. More revealing is the scene where Betty catches herself in a vivid sexual fantasy about the young salesman. The episode frames female desire through both Peggy’s pragmatic discovery and Betty’s internal fantasy, linking them via the literal and metaphorical ‘heat’ of the season. This symbolism, however, is where the episode stumbles. The connection between the weather and female frustration is presented with a lack of subtlety that feels heavy-handed compared to the series’ normally nuanced storytelling.

    Further evidence of this uneven execution is found in a subplot that feels like unnecessary filler. Peggy’s date with Carl Winter (Aaropn Hill), a young, independent truck driver, is a clunky attempt at social commentary. Their evening ends badly due to differences in class and ambition, highlighting the cultural gulf between Peggy’s burgeoning white-collar aspirations and Carl’s blue-collar worldview. While intended to flesh out Peggy’s character and the era’s social tensions, the scene adds little to the episode’s core narratives and disrupts its pacing.

    The episode concludes with a potent cliffhanger that expertly ties its threads together. Don’s old office stands empty. Pete Campbell, who perpetually yearns for Don’s status, wanders in, symbolically occupying the space. A messenger boy, mistaking Pete for Don, delivers the parcel containing Adam Whitman’s returned $5,000 and suicide note. Pete’s possession of this damning evidence about Don’s past sets up immense future conflict, providing a masterful hook for the season’s final episodes.

    While the season as a whole excels inn atmospheric recreation of the 1960s while lacking traditional plot—Indian Summer stands out precisely because it does have plot. Writers Tom Palmer and Matthew Weiner pack in dramatic firsts: the series’ first on-screen death and a second, public medical crisis for Roger. More importantly, it engineers momentous changes for two major characters: Don’s ascension to partner and Peggy’s breakthrough into copywriting. These are tectonic shifts in the series’ power dynamics.

    Ultimately, Indian Summer is an episode of profound importance to Mad Men’s first season, forcing character evolution and advancing the narrative at a sudden pace. Its exploration of female sexuality, through the dual lenses of commercial exploitation and personal repression, is ambitious and largely successful. However, its achievements are compromised by moments of overly literal symbolism and a tendency towards melodrama that contrasts with the show’s typically refined restraint. It is, therefore, a fascinating but flawed installment: a necessary storm that changes the landscape, even if the thunderclaps are occasionally too loud.

    RATING: 7/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
33. ›Television Review: Long Weekend (Mad Men, S1x10, 2007)@drax71d

    

    Long Weekend (S1x10)

    Airdate: 20 September 2007

    Written by: Bridget Bedard, Andre Jacquemetton, Maria Jacquemetton & Matthew Weiner Directed by: Tim Hunter

    Running Time: 47 minutes

    In the often cynical world of television production, a persistent adage suggests that a large number of scriptwriters is a harbinger of creative compromise and diluted quality, a symptom of committee-driven storytelling that inevitably saps a narrative of its distinctive voice. Mad Men, however, from its very inception, ran gloriously contrary to this rule. Its first season demonstrated that a unified vision could harness multiple talents without sacrificing coherence or depth. The tenth episode, Long Weekend, is a potent example of this. Authored by four individuals – Bridget Bedard, series creator Matthew Weiner, and the writing partnership of Andre and Maria Jacquemetton – the episode not only maintains the season's exceptionally high standard but also delivers one of its most pivotal and thematically rich instalments. It is a sophisticated piece of television that deftly balances intimate character exposition with significant plot propulsion, all while weaving in a sharp commentary on the era it so meticulously recreates.

    Superficially, Long Weekend adopts the series' favoured "day in the life" narrative structure, opening on Friday, 5 September 1960, on the cusp of the US Labor Day holiday. It initially appears to be another slice of the Sterling Cooper milieu, leaning heavily on character exposition to portray its protagonists grappling with intimations of mortality. Yet, this deceptive calm is the set-up for a dramatic rupture. The episode’s true engine is not the leisurely exploration of weekend plans, but a seismic event that irrevocably alters the corporate and personal dynamics of the show’s world.

    The Drapers’ planned trip is soured by Betty’s resentment at having to host her widowed father, Gene Hofstadt (Ryan Cutrona), and his new wife, Gloria Massey (Darcy Shean), whom Betty venomously dismisses as a "vulture" who stalked her father at her mother’s funeral. This familial tension, a petty but potent misery, contrasts with the professional unease settling over Don. At the office, still tidying up before joining his family, he must pitch a department store renovation to Rachel Menken and her father Abraham (Allan Miller), a meeting tinged with his own professional humiliation. He has just learned that the important shoe manufacturer Mr. Schol has withdrawn Sterling Cooper’s account, a spectacular and personal defeat for a man unaccustomed to such setbacks. This professional vulnerability primes him for the emotional collapse that follows.

    The episode’s central crisis unfolds through Roger Sterling’s disastrous attempt to turn a mundane casting session into a hedonistic interlude. With his own family away, Roger plans a tryst with Joan Holloway, but is rebuffed as Joan opts for a night out with her roommate, Carol McCardy. Undeterred, Roger, accompanied by a reluctant Don, uses the search for twins for a Cartwright aluminium campaign to proposition 20-year-old models Mirabelle (Alexis Stier) and Eleanor Ames (Megan Stier). The ensuing impromptu party in the empty offices is a cringe-inducing spectacle of Roger’s entitled decadence. His attempt to bed both sisters culminates in catastrophe: naked on the floor, clutching his chest in the throes of a heart attack. This moment is a masterstroke of narrative economy. Roger’s physical collapse symbolises the fragility of the entire world Mad Men has built—a world of carefully constructed masculinity, corporate power, and invincible charm, all suddenly rendered pathetic and mortal. Don’s reaction—his panic, his efficient handling of the crisis, and his subsequent view of Roger, pale, weeping, and vulnerable before his wife and daughter—is transformative. The sight of his mentor laid low forces Don to confront the mortality he has spent a lifetime fleeing.

    The repercussions are immediate and far-reaching. In a brilliantly revealing scene, the avuncular but omniscient Bert Cooper summons Joan in the middle of the night to dictate telegrams to clients, calmly revealing his knowledge of her affair with Roger and advising her not to "waste her youth" on a man of his age. This moment underscores the show’s understanding of power: Bert’s paternalistic concern masks a ruthless pragmatism, and Joan’s value is acknowledged even as her personal life is coolly assessed.

    For Don, shaken to his core, the response is a desperate, impulsive reach for connection. He turns to Rachel Menken, and in a moment of profound vulnerability, she allows him into her apartment. They engage in sex and that leads to Don’s stunning confession: the revelation of his true origins as the son of a prostitute who died in childbirth, raised by his bitter biological father and a stepmother he describes as "sad." This raw unveiling is the logical culmination of the episode’s meditation on death and reinvention. Don’s entire fabricated identity is revealed as an escape—not just from poverty, but from the death that marked his entry into the world and the emotional death of his childhood.

    Long Weekend is a brilliant episode precisely because it uses a dramatic event to deepen character exposition exponentially. Don’s fear, previously abstract, becomes visceral. In Roger’s foolish, alcohol-fuelled indulgence, he sees a memento mori, a preview of a future where charm and cunning are useless against the body’s betrayal. The power dynamics of Sterling Cooper are subtly but permanently shifted with Roger, at least temporarily, removed from the board.

    The episode also showcases Mad Men’s sophisticated intertextuality through an explicit homage to Billy Wilder’s 1960 classic, The Apartment. Joan and Roger’s discussion of the film, which satirises corporate adultery and loneliness, provides the series with its first instance of meta-commentary. They compare their situation to the film, acknowledging the tawdry archetypes they inhabit, yet the episode cleverly subverts the comparison—Roger’s fate is far grimmer than any cinematic satire.

    Furthermore, the episode deftly uses the backdrop of the real-life 1960 US Presidential election as a tool for character definition and cultural analysis. The Sterling Cooper office is largely pro-Nixon, with Don offering a telling endorsement: Nixon, he says, "came from nothing," implicitly aligning the self-made politician with his own background. The staff’s discussion of the surprisingly close polls serves as a refreshing corrective to later Boomers’ historical revisionism, reminding viewers that the election was fiercely contested. More presciently, the ad men analyse Kennedy’s pioneering use of television advertising, correctly predicting that the medium would become the decisive tool of political image-making, where persona would trump policy. This subplot reinforces the series’ core theme: the ascendancy of image over reality, a game in which all its characters are complicit.

    If the episode possesses a flaw, it lies in the somewhat contrived scene where Carol, Joan’s roommate, declares her lesbian love for her. Coming after the earlier confirmation of Salvatore Romano’s suppressed homosexuality, Carol’s confession feels less like organic character development and more like a narrative checkbox being ticked, an attempt to inject "edgy" content that the episode’s otherwise nuanced handling of sexuality doesn’t quite necessitate. Joan’s choice to simply ignore the declaration feels true to her character, but the setup leans toward the schematic.

    Long Weekend is a triumph of collaborative writing. It seamlessly integrates plot advancement, profound character revelation, and acute historical commentary. It takes the series’ established strengths—the meticulous period detail, the complex character studies noted in general season reviews—and pushes them into new, dramatically fertile territory. The episode proves that, in the right hands, multiple writers can forge not a compromise, but a consensus of excellence, resulting in a chapter that is essential to understanding the fragile, glittering world of Mad Men.

    RATING: 8/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
34. ›Television Review: Shoot (Mad Men, S1x09, 2007)@drax72d

    

    Shoot (S1x09)

    Airdate: 13 September 2007

    Written by: Chris Provenzano & Matthew Weiner Directed by: Paul Feig

    Running Time: 47 minutes

    Mad Men has long been celebrated for its meticulous and authentic portrayal of a period that lies well beyond the living memory of not only its target audience but also most of its creators. This striving for historical realism manifested itself not merely in the careful curation of period-accurate costumes, props, and pop culture references, but in the bold decision to weave real-life entities directly into its narrative fabric. Shoot, the ninth episode of the inaugural season, stands as a prime example of this technique, using the very real advertising behemoth as the catalyst for a nuanced exploration of its characters’ ambitions, frustrations, and the fragile illusions of their lives.

    The entity in question is McCann Erickson, known today simply as McCann, a global giant of the advertising industry. Even in the early 1960s setting of Mad Men, it was a colossus, and the episode’s plot is set in motion by its fictional director, Jim Hobart (H. Richard Greene). The encounter occurs in the lobby of a theatre during an intermission for the Broadway musical Fiorello!, where Hobart and his wife Adele engage the Drapers in small-talk. Hobart is quick to extol the strength and scale of his company, deliberately dwarfing the comparatively modest Sterling Cooper, and suggests that a talent like Don Draper could flourish with the greater resources and prestige McCann offers. The conversation turns to Betty, who reveals her past as a model and how she met Don on a shoot. Seizing the opportunity, Hobart compliments her beauty and proffers a business card, offering her a minor role in a photo shoot for McCann’s Coca-Cola campaign—a seemingly innocuous gesture laden with calculated intent.

    The Drapers later discuss the offer. Don appears superficially supportive, recognising it as a harmless diversion. For Betty, however, this “few days” gig represents far more than pocket money; it is a tantalising glimpse at re-launching a career she abandoned and, more pressingly, an escape from the crushing monotony of her existence as a suburban housewife and mother. As Betty travels to the shoot, Don is summoned to the office by Roger Sterling. Roger, acutely aware of McCann’s predatory interest, moves to secure his star creative by offering a substantial raise. In the end, Don chooses to remain at Sterling Cooper, a decision rooted in his instinctual understanding of the corporate landscape. Betty, meanwhile, is informed that her services are no longer required, the campaign requiring a model with a more “European” look. The rejection is delivered with a bland corporate politeness that makes the dismissal all the more galling.

    Betty’s reaction is manifestation of suppressed fury. She masks her profound disappointment in front of Don, but the slight demands an outlet. This she finds in her neighbour, Ross Beresford (Rick Scarry). Earlier, Beresford had threatened to kill the Draper family dog, Polly, after it injured one of his pigeons—a threat that deeply traumatised young Sally. In the episode’s climactic scene, Betty, clad in a nightgown and with a cigarette dangling from her lips, steps into her garden and defiantly shoots at Beresford’s pigeons with a BB gun. It is a potent, almost mythic image of suburban rebellion, where the only available targets for her pent-up rage are captive birds.

    Simultaneously, the Sterling Cooper offices provide a parallel narrative of ambition and humiliation. Peggy Olson, about to be promoted to copywriter and hopeful for her future, suffers a very different kind of setback when her dress rips at the seams. Forced to seek help from Joan Holloway, she endures a quietly humiliating ordeal as Joan marvels at her predicament with a mixture of pity and superiority. The incident draws attention to Peggy’s changing body, a fact not lost on the office wolves. Ken Cosgrove makes a remark so crude regarding her weight gain that Pete Campbell—who, despite his many flaws, still harbours secret feelings for her—impulsively punches him in the face. The ensuing scuffle is a brief, brutal interruption to the office’s usual decorum, ended almost as quickly as it began with a tense handshake.

    Earlier, a subplot involving Pete and Harry Crane offers a darker shade of period-specific cynicism. Reminiscing about college pranks, they hatch a plan to flood the electorally crucial state of New Jersey with television advertisements for a laxative client. The goal is to force the Kennedy presidential campaign to abandon the airwaves and switch to radio, a tactic that delights Bert Cooper as a clever, if underhanded, way to curry favour with the Nixon campaign. It is a reminder that the “creative” in advertising often borders on the amoral.

    The script, by Chris Provenzano and Matthew Weiner, excels in character exposition, particularly regarding Betty Draper. Through her interactions and memories, we gain deeper insight into her past, her complex relationship with her late mother, and the profound loneliness that underpins her perfect façade. Where the episode is less successful, however, is in traditional plot progression. In the first season the narrative engine is deliberately subdued. The major potential developments—Don moving to McCann, Betty restarting her modelling career—are resolved in a manner that will seem obvious to even the least perceptive viewer. Yet, this is not necessarily a weakness. So early in the series, it would be unrealistic to expect seismic shifts for the central characters. The script handles this with psychological realism: Don intuitively recognises that McCann Erickson is too vast, too impersonal, and too corporate for a self-invented man who prizes his autonomy. He also perceives the offer to Betty as a transparent manipulative ploy and refuses to become a pawn in such games.

    The direction by Paul Feig, who would later find great success in comedy, is assured and effective. Two scenes stand out: first, the casual stroll of Don and Roger through the office, their conversation continuing uninterrupted as a fistfight erupts and is subdued in the background—a brilliant visual metaphor for the show’s focus on the personal amidst the professional chaos. Second, the final tableau of Betty, a spectral figure in the moonlight, taking aim with her BB gun. It is one of the most memorable and iconic images of the series’ early run, perfectly encapsulating the quiet desperation simmering beneath the polished surface of American life in 1960.

    Shoot may not advance the overarching plot in significant ways, but it serves a vital purpose in deepening our understanding of its characters, particularly Betty Draper. By leveraging the real-world weight of McCann Erickson, it creates a credible pressure point that exposes the ambitions and vulnerabilities of the Draper marriage. It is a finely observed, beautifully acted, and deftly directed piece of television that reaffirms Mad Men’s commitment to character over contrivance, and to the potent truths hidden within historical detail.

    RATING: 8/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
35. ›Television Review: The Hobo Code (Mad Men, S1x08, 2007)@drax72d

    

    The Hobo Code (S1x08)

    Airdate: 6 September 2007

    Written by: Chris Provenzano Directed by: Phil Abraham

    Running Time: 47 minutes

    Mad Men established its multi-layered narrative genius by repeatedly using the past to elucidate the present, a technique nowhere more deftly employed than in the first season’s eighth episode, The Hobo Code. This instalment, one of the more memorably nuanced of the nascent series, proves that the show’s true subject is not the glossy advertising world of 1960 but the earlier, formative periods that forged both that world and its enigmatic protagonist, Don Draper. Written by Chris Provenzano in his debut for the series, the episode adheres rigorously to the show’s founding principle: eschewing conventional plot propulsion in favour of deep, often painful, character exposition. The nominal plot—the successful pitch for the Belle Jolie lipstick account at Sterling Cooper—is merely a skeletal framework upon which the flesh of backstory, desire, and disillusionment is hung.

    Provenzano’s script is a masterclass in narrative economy and thematic resonance. The day begins with Peggy Olson and Pete Campbell arriving at the office independently and unusually early. In the empty, pre-dawn silence, they rekindle their clandestine relationship. Their motivations, however, are rooted in distinct anxieties: Pete is preoccupied with moving into his new apartment, while Peggy nervously awaits the executives’ verdict on her copy for Belle Jolie. For Peggy, acceptance promises a tentative escape from her “lowly secretarial place,” a glimmer of professional validation. Pete, characteristically self-absorbed, seems indifferent to her career aspirations, seeking instead to mute his own disquiet through a furtive sexual encounter in Don’s office. This scene establishes the episode’s central tension between aspiration and entrapment, a theme that reverberates through every subplot.

    The episode also introduces the recurring character of Lois Sadler (Crista Flanagan), the switchboard operator. Her hopeless, instant crush on art director Salvatore Romano (Bryan Batt) begins when she overhears him speaking Italian to his mother. Their flirtation is a charming, bittersweet diversion, highlighting the office’s social ecosystem. Yet, it is Salvatore’s other invitation that carries profound weight. Declining Lois’s offer, he instead accepts a drink from the urbane Elliot Lawrence (Paul Keeley) at the renovated Roosevelt Hotel. Their conversation is a delicate dance of coded recognition, with Elliot all but explicitly identifying Salvatore as a fellow homosexual. The invitation to “enjoy the view” from his hotel room is a clear proposition, one that Salvatore, paralysed by fear and the era’s oppressive norms, cannot accept. This subplot is handled with remarkable sensitivity, balancing the tragic drama of a man imprisoned by his own secret with the acute humour of Lois’s unrequited romantic fantasy. This storyline exemplifies Mad Men’s ability to weave personal tragedy into its social tapestry.

    The professional climax of the episode sees Don successfully pitching Peggy’s “Mark Your Man” copy to Belle Jolie. The victory triggers a cascade of revealing reactions. The male executives offer Peggy patronising congratulations, while Joan Holloway delivers a brutally pragmatic warning: her career belongs “downstairs,” a reminder of the rigid gender hierarchy. The celebratory impromptu party in a local bar sees Peggy, for once, the centre of positive attention, visibly enjoying herself. Pete, simmering with resentment and insecurity, watches this scene and acidly her “I don’t like you that way,” before departing. This moment is a critical flaw in an otherwise tightly constructed episode. The script does not adequately dramatise the source of Pete’s revulsion. Is it jealousy of her success, contempt for her social climbing, or a deeper panic at her emerging independence? Without clearer motivation, his reaction feels merely petulant, a rare instance of character behaviour serving plot contrivance over psychological truth.

    This minor shortfall is, however, overwhelmingly compensated for by the richness of Don Draper’s storyline. The episode gifts him a baffling, symbolic windfall: a $2,500 bonus cheque from the eccentric Bert Cooper, accompanied by a copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and a declaration of their kindred spirits. This moment, as surreal as it is, perfectly captures the show’s understanding of corporate America’s arbitrary rewards and pseudo-philosophical posturing. Don, ever the pragmatist, decides to use the money for adulterous pursuits, visiting his bohemian mistress, Midge. He finds her in the company of her beatnik friends, including the writer Ray Hazellitt. Forced into socialising, Don partakes in marijuana, which acts as a psychological key, unlocking a floodgate of childhood memory.

    It is here that The Hobo Code earns its title and its profound thematic depth. The flashback transports us to the Great Depression-era farm of Archie Whitman (Joseph Culp), a harsh and unloving man. His son, the young Dick Whitman, witnesses the arrival of a drifting hobo, impeccably portrayed by Paul Schulze in a small but indelible role. The hobo, offering work for a meal, becomes a temporary mentor to the lonely boy. He teaches Dick about the “hobo code,” a system of symbols left on fences and homes to communicate kindness, danger, or dishonesty. This code represents a secret language of survival and trust among outsiders. After the hobo departs, Dick discovers the symbol for “dishonest man” carved near his own home—a devastating, silent verdict on his father. This sequence is the episode’s brilliant core. The hobo is Don Draper’s true spiritual father, the original model for the self-invented man. He represents the freedom of the open road, the wisdom of the outsider, and the necessity of constructing one’s own identity—lessons Dick Whitman would later apply to become Don Draper.

    Returning to the present, the episode’s conclusion is steeped in melancholy resolution. Don, high and emotionally raw, offers Midge a romantic escape to Paris with his bonus money. Her refusal, followed by his discovery via Polaroid snapshots that she and Ray are in love, confirms his ultimate isolation. He leaves the money in her bra—a transaction that finalises the end of their affair—and returns to the sterile comfort of his suburban family. This closing movement completes the episode’s exploration of inheritance and identity. Don can buy transient pleasure or fantasy, but he cannot buy genuine connection. He is, as Bert Cooper intuited, a fellow “soul” because he is a self-made creation, yet this creation is rooted in the lessons of a Depression-era drifter and the scars of a dishonest father.

    The Hobo Code stands as one of the first season’s most critically acclaimed episodes for good reason. It masterfully interweaves its threads—Peggy’s tentative ascent, Salvatore’s closeted despair, Pete’s petty cruelties—into a cohesive meditation on the codes we live by, both social and personal. While the Pete and Peggy dynamic falters slightly in motivation, this is a minor blemish on an otherwise superb script. The episode’s greatest triumph is its foundational work on Don Draper, brilliantly illustrating that the flawlessly adaptable, perpetually reinventing ad man is not born but built, his blueprint drawn in the dust of a country road by a passing stranger. The first season of Mad Men often lacks a traditional plot, but in episodes like this, it forgoes event in favour of excavation, revealing the fragile bedrock upon which its characters’ glittering lives are precariously built.

    RATING: 8/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
36. ›Television Review: Red in the Face (Mad Men, S1x07, 2007)@drax73d

    

    Red in the Face (S1x07)

    Airdate: 30 August 2007

    Written by: Bridget Bedard Directed by: Tim Hunter

    Running Time: 47 minutes

    The inaugural season of Mad Men is a piece of television that doesn’t have much of a plot, and serves mostly to introduce the audience to this strange setting and characters. Indeed, across the first six episodes, the audience learns that hardly anything of conventional dramatic consequence occurs; the plot is largely sacrificed for the sake of meticulous character and setting exposition. This deliberate pacing can lull the viewer into a state of observational calm, which makes it all the more jolting when something actually happens. Red in the Face, the seventh episode, is one such memorable exception. It is an episode where the simmering tensions of the Sterling Cooper office and the Draper household boil over into a shocking act of physical violence—a moment that etches itself into the viewer’s memory and underscores the series’ ability to pivot from ambient period study to intense, character-driven drama.

    The episode’s central plot concerns the increasingly troubled friendship between Don Draper and his boss, Roger Sterling. The catalyst is domestic: Roger’s wife, Mona, has taken their daughter Margaret out of the city, leaving Roger at a loose end. He attempts to transform this into an opportunity for some illicit fun with office manager Joan Holloway, only to be rebuffed—she has plans with her roommate, Carol McCardy (Kate Norby). Feeling lonely and somewhat pathetic, Roger calls Don to join him for a drink. In the bar, a telling moment unfolds: Roger gazes longingly at two young women, only to realise their interest is directed squarely at the younger, more handsome Don. This sting of perceived inadequacy prompts Roger to invite himself to dinner at the Drapers’ home. What follows is a display of excruciating social discomfort. Betty Draper, unprepared for a guest of her husband’s boss, must improvise a meal. The evening grows increasingly awkward as Roger, lubricated by alcohol, mistakes Betty’s polite interest in his wartime stories for genuine attraction. In the kitchen, he makes a clumsy, drunken pass at her. Though Betty deftly deflects it and Roger stumbles out, the damage is done. Don’s fury is palpable, yet, in the rigid hierarchy of 1960s corporate America, he cannot strike back at his boss directly. Instead, he channels his rage towards the nearest permissible target: Betty, berating her for the incident as if she were somehow complicit.

    Betty’s subsequent reaction forms the episode’s most visceral beat. Trapped in the same powerless dynamic—unable to strike back at her husband—she too seeks a collateral target for her humiliation and anger. She finds it in Helen Bishop, the divorced neighbour already viewed with suspicion in their conformist suburban community. At the grocery store, Helen chastises Betty for giving a lock of her hair to Helen’s nine-year-old son, Glenn. This minor transgression, magnified by Betty’s pent-up frustration, triggers an explosive response: Betty slaps Helen across the face in full public view. It is a shocking, brutal moment that lays bare the repressed violence simmering beneath the era’s manicured surfaces. The incident becomes the talk of the neighbourhood, but, as Betty’s friend Francine later assures her, the community would take her side over that of the unorthodox, “weird” woman. The scene is a brilliant commentary on the tribal social codes of the time, where conformity trumps morality.

    Back at Sterling Cooper, Roger offers a half-hearted, whisky-soaked apology to Don, who appears to accept it with stoic resignation. This, however, is merely the calm before the storm. Don has been plotting a revenge that is both meticulously calculated and brutally petty. It hinges on an upcoming meeting with a Republican Party delegation, there to discuss Sterling Cooper’s services for Richard Nixon’s 1960 presidential campaign. Prior to the meeting, Don plies Roger with vast quantities of oysters and alcohol under the guise of a friendly lunch. Upon their return, Hollis (La Monde Byrd), the African-American elevator operator (whom Don has quietly bribed), informs them the elevator is out of order, forcing a climb to the twenty-third floor. Don, younger and fitter, manages the ascent with relative ease. Roger, however, is utterly wrecked. He arrives at the meeting sweating, gasping, and—in a moment of perfect, grotesque comedy—vomits spectacularly in front of the horrified clients. The final shot of the two men locking eyes is exquisite: Roger, in his miserable realisation that he has been played, and Don, his vengeance exacted with cold, elegant precision. It is a masterful sequence that blends office politics, psychological warfare, and physical comedy.

    The episode’s B‑storyline, dealing with Pete Campbell, is less successful. It revolves around a surplus “Chip ’n’ Dip” received as a wedding gift, which Pete attempts to return to the department store. Foiled by a store-credit-only policy, he uses the credit to purchase a hunting rifle, which he then brandishes childishly around the office. His wife, Trudy, is furious and demands he get rid of the “toy.” The storyline, reportedly inspired by showrunner Matthew Weiner’s own parents receiving the same gift, feels somewhat tangential and sitcom-ish amidst the nuanced tension of the main plot. It serves primarily to reinforce Pete’s characterisation as a vain, immature, and incompetent man punching above his weight—a figure who is utterly unlikable and tries to be Don.

    Yet, even within this weaker subplot, there are glimmers of Pete’s potential complexity. He is clearly under the thumb of his more assertive wife, and his despondent discussion of hunting fantasies with Peggy Olson hints at a deeper insecurity. More significantly, in the Sterling Cooper conference where the old guard (Bert Cooper and Roger) confidently predicts Nixon will easily defeat the “young and inexperienced” John F. Kennedy, Pete is the sole dissenting voice. He argues that Kennedy’s youth and his appeal to “Elvis fans” could be a decisive advantage—a notion that, with historical hindsight, proves prophetic. This moment suggests that Pete, for all his many flaws, might possess an intuitive understanding of the cultural shifts that will define the coming decade, setting up his future trajectory.

    Written by Bridget Beddard and directed with characteristic subtlety by Tim Hunter, Red in the Face is one of Season 1’s stronger instalments. Its main plot is a masterclass in economical storytelling, weaving together themes of office politics, bruised masculinity, lust, revenge, and mild violence with a darkly humorous thread. Hunter’s direction adheres to the series’ “show, don’t tell” ethos—the tension at the Draper dinner table is conveyed through glances and pregnant pauses—yet it also delivers two of the season’s most memorably visceral images: Betty’s public slap and Roger’s catastrophic vomiting. These moments land with such force precisely because the series has spent so much time building its quiet, observational foundation.

    Red in the Face exemplifies how Mad Men can transcend its own deliberate pacing. It takes the simmering resentments and social anxieties meticulously established in earlier episodes and allows them to erupt in ways that are both shocking and deeply revealing of character. While Pete’s subplot feels undercooked, the episode’s core narrative of Don’s calculated revenge against Roger remains a high watermark for the season, demonstrating that when something finally does happen in this world, it resonates with unforgettable power.

    RATING: 7/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
37. ›Television Review: Babylon (Mad Men, S1x06, 2007)@drax73d

    

    Babylon (S1x06)

    Airdate: 23 August 2007

    Written by: Matthew Weiner
    Directed by: Leslie Linka Glatter

    Running Time: 47 minutes

    Mad Men is a series that richly rewards its viewers, but it does so selectively. Its appeal is often reserved for those with a predilection for period drama and the patience to be ultimately rewarded by its slow-burn character studies. Babylon, the sixth episode of the first season, stands as a prime example of this dynamic. It lacks anything resembling a clear, driving plot, yet compensates amply with meticulous character exposition and a painstaking, almost anthropological depiction of early 1960s America. For the casual viewer, it might feel like an hour of narrative drift; for the attentive, it is a good display of atmospheric storytelling and thematic seeding.

    The episode, set around Mother’s Day 1960, opens with a moment that establishes a subtle continuity with the preceding instalment. Don Draper, the enigmatic creative director, slips on the stairs of his suburban home and, in a brief, disorienting fall, experiences the series’ very first flashback. We see him as a boy, being introduced to his newborn stepbrother, Adam Whitman. This fleeting vision is more than a mere narrative device; it is a declaration of intent. It signals that Mad Men, a show already deeply invested in the recent past of 1960, is willing to dive much further into history to excavate the roots of its protagonist’s fractured identity. Don’s present-day stumbles are literally and figuratively connected to the ghosts of his upbringing, a theme the series will explore with increasing complexity.

    The bulk of the episode’s nominal plot remains firmly in the present, orbiting a new client for Sterling Cooper: an ocean passenger line attempting to pitch Israel as a luxury destination. The creative challenge—to sell Haifa and Jerusalem as the new Paris or Rome—immediately exposes the cultural fissures of the era. Don and his team must deal wth the landscape where anti-Communist bias colours perceptions; kibbutzes and women carrying guns are viewed not as symbols of pioneering spirit but as suspiciously Soviet. Conversely, the monumental success of Leon Uris’s novel Exodus and the impending film adaptation starring Paul Newman have made Israel seem exotic and compelling, with “America falling in love with Israel,” as one character notes. Don, characteristically adrift on matters of personal identity, seeks clarity by turning to Rachel Menken. In a business lunch that doubles as another fumbled romantic overture, he probes her for a perspective on Jewish identity and Israel. Her description of Israel as a “utopia”—simultaneously a “good place” and a “place that cannot be”—is poetically resonant but ultimately provides no easy advertising copy. Her subsequent rejection of Don leaves him once again seeking solace elsewhere, this time with his bohemian mistress, Midge. She drags him to a beatnik club, where he sits amidst the anti-establishment posturing with palpable, sarcastic disdain. The sequence culminates in a rendition of “By the Waters of Babylon,” performed with David Carbonara, the series composer, among the musicians. The song’s themes of exile and longing for a lost homeland echo not only the Israeli narrative but Don’s own perpetual state of dislocation.

    A parallel storyline offers a cynical glimpse into the agency’s workplace dynamics. Freddy Rumsen (Joel Murray), a senior copywriter, is tasked with devising a campaign for Belle Jolie lipstick. His “brainstorming” session involves having women from the secretarial pool test various shades while being observed through a one-way mirror by their male superiors. It is a blatant exercise in voyeurism and power, presented with the show’s trademark clinical detachment. Joan Holloway, the office manager fully aware of the setup, turns the tables by deliberately flaunting her body before the glass, asserting a calculated control over the male gaze. The experiment yields an unexpected creative spark when the otherwise mousy Peggy Olson describes the experience as a “basket of kisses.” Rumsen seizes upon the phrase as ingenious copy, providing the first concrete hint that Peggy’s destiny lies in the creative bullpen. This subplot is a sharp critique of the era’s gendered workplace, while also serving as crucial character development for Peggy.

    The episode also quietly unveils a significant personal revelation: Joan Holloway is engaged in a long-standing affair with Roger Sterling, the married partner of the agency. This detail, dropped almost casually, deepens our understanding of Joan’s complex handling of the corporate world, where her sexuality is both a weapon and a liability.

    Babylon is, by design, a slow episode. It would likely try the patience of a casual viewer unfamiliar with the social mores and pop-cultural touchstones of Eisenhower’s America. However, for those armed with some knowledge of the period, it is a richly layered text. In light of subsequent history, its portrayal of Israel is particularly fascinating. Decades before the nation became America’s “greatest ally”, it is presented here as a strange, exotic land with puzzling politics. The episode deftly captures a moment when American philo-Semitism, spurred by Exodus, coexisted with lingering, unexamined anti-Semitic biases—a hangover from pre-WW2 years when Communism was often perceived as a Jewish plot.

    For a series built upon a reputation for meticulous period reconstruction, Babylon commits a rare but notable anachronism. Joan Holloway references Marshall McLuhan’s famous axiom, “the medium is the message,” a full four years before it was published in his 1964 work Understanding Media. This slip is almost unforgivable in a show that otherwise treats historical detail with such reverence, though it does little to diminish the episode’s overall atmospheric authenticity.

    Mad Men’s first year doesn’t have much of a plot, and serves mostly to introduce the audience to this strange setting and characters. Babylon epitomises this approach. It is less about narrative propulsion and more about immersion—into the conflicted psyche of Don Draper, into the gendered hierarchies of Madison Avenue, and into a specific cultural moment where old prejudices collided with new curiosities. It is not the series’ most dramatic instalment, but for those willing to engage with its deliberate pace and subtle nuances, it is a rewarding piece of television craftsmanship.

    RATING: 5/10 (++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
38. ›Television Review: 5G (Mad Men, S1x05, 2007)@drax74d

    

    5G (S1x05)

    Airdate: 16 August 2007

    Written by: Matthew Weiner
    Directed by: Leslie Linka Glatter

    Running Time: 48 minutes

    In the seemingly static, orderly, and conservative world of early 1960s America that Mad Men so meticulously constructs, the line separating triumph from disaster is perilously thin. Lives, no matter how carefully arranged, can be upended by the whims of fate and mere coincidence. This is the central, unsettling thesis of the series’ fifth episode, aptly titled “5G”. Here, Don Draper’s meticulously crafted existence—a monument to post-war success—comes within a whisker of complete annihilation. Ironically, the very event that validates his professional success, a minor advertising award, becomes the catalyst that nearly brings his entire world crashing down. The episode masterfully demonstrates how the foundations of this ostensibly stable society are built on sand, vulnerable to the slightest tremor from the past.

    The episode opens with Don and Betty Draper returning home tipsy and amorous, a portrait of marital bliss. Don has reason to be pleased with himself, having just flaunted his success at a ceremony where he received a somewhat inconsequential advertising award. This moment of unguarded contentment is, however, short-lived. The following morning, a tardy Don arrives at Sterling Cooper to find the office abuzz with news not of his accolade, but of Ken Cosgrove’s literary triumph. Ken, the account executive with artistic aspirations, has had his story “Tapping a Maple on a Cold Vermont Morning” published in the prestigious Atlantic Monthly. The reaction among his colleagues is a masterclass in petty office politics and submerged envy. Pete Campbell, seething with a jealousy rooted in class anxiety, cannot abide the idea of someone from a relatively modest background receiving such honour. Paul Kinsey, who fancies himself a “cool” bohemian artist, dismisses Ken’s work as milquetoast, smugly suggesting that his own unpublished tales of “hanging out with Negroes in New Jersey” are far more worthy. This early scene establishes a theme of validation and its discontents, where professional and artistic recognition becomes a source of bitterness rather than celebration.

    Pete’s jealousy, however, runs deeper than mere professional rivalry. He is an aspiring writer himself, having toiled for a year on a manuscript. In a painfully revealing domestic scene, he shows it to his wife Trudy, whose polite but unenthused reaction signals her true opinion. Nevertheless, she agrees to leverage a past connection: her former fiancé, Charlie Fiddich, now a publishing executive. The meeting between Trudy and Charlie is a superb piece of social awkwardness and unspoken tension. Charlie, still carrying a torch for her, suggests an extramarital affair—a proposition Trudy deftly and politely rejects. The professional favour is granted, but with a cruel twist: Pete’s story is published not in a literary magazine, but in Boy’s Life. Pete’s humiliation is palpable, and this moment marks the first significant dent in his hitherto happy marriage, illustrating how the pursuit of external validation can corrode the very relationships that supposedly ground one’s life.

    While Pete’s world suffers a slow leak, Don’s faces a sudden, catastrophic rupture. His recklessness—a steamy phone call from his mistress Midge, overheard by the impressionable Peggy Olson—initially seems the greatest threat to his domestic peace. Yet, this pales in comparison to the arrival of an unexpected visitor at his office: a young man who introduces himself as Adam Whitman. This is Don’s younger brother, whom he last saw eight years prior when he was still Dick Whitman, the man Don erased to become Don Draper. Jon Hamm’s performance here is a study in controlled panic. Adam, played with heartbreaking naivety by Jay Paulson, is a ghost from a traumatic past, a living testament to the identity Don has murdered. His arrival is a direct result of Don’s professional success; Adam, working as a janitor in the Empire State Building, chanced upon an Ad Age magazine featuring Don’s picture and award announcement. The thin line between triumph and disaster has never been more literally drawn.

    Don’s desperate, rushed meeting with Adam—which coincidentally causes him to miss a planned family photoshoot with Betty and the children, forcing Peggy into a clumsy cover-up—culminates in a diner scene of immense emotional power. Adam explains that their family is gone and he has no one left. Don’s response is brutal in its clarity: “We can’t be together.” He offers not brotherhood, but a financial settlement. Later, Don tracks Adam to his decrepit hotel room—number 5G—and delivers the final blow, handing over $5,000 to disappear. The title “5G” thus operates on two devastating levels: the location of the payoff and its exact amount. This transaction reduces a familial bond to a cold, financial bribe, highlighting the commodification of everything in Don’s world, even human connection.

    Matthew Weiner’s script excels in its subtle social commentary and deployment of ironic, black humour. The juxtaposition of Ken’s authentic, if bland, literary success against Pete’s purchased and humiliating publication critiques the hollow nature of prestige. The entire episode is structured around the anxiety of exposure—Pete’s mediocre writing is exposed to ridicule, while Don’s entire identity is nearly exposed to ruin. The most memorable scene, however, remains the emotionally devastating final encounter between the brothers. Don, desperate to preserve his fabricated life, confronts Adam, for whom “Dick” represents the only link to authenticity and family. Both Hamm and Paulson deliver performances of remarkable depth, conveying a chasm of loss and desperation with minimal dialogue.

    In a delightful meta-commentary on the blurry line between reality and fiction, The Atlantic Monthly in 2017 actually published Ken Cosgrove’s “Tapping a Maple on a Cold Vermont Morning”, a story peppered with references to the series’ characters and events. This playful gesture underscores the episode’s enduring themes: the construction of narratives, the longing for validation, and the fragile façades we build to survive.

    RATING: 7/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
39. ›Television Review: New Amsterdam (Mad Men, S1x04, 2007)@drax75d

    

    New Amsterdam (S1x04)

    Airdate: 9 August 2007

    Written by: Lisa Albert
    Directed by: Tim Hunter

    Running Time: 46 minutes

    The American Dream, that enduring national mythos which promises that anyone, through sheer grit and determination, can ascend the social ladder, has always been more fiction than fact. America, despite its foundational rhetoric, was constructed upon a bedrock of entrenched divisions—not merely those of sex, race, religion, or ethnicity, but perhaps most persistently, class. As the contemporary phenomenon of Hollywood “nepo babies” starkly reminds us, it has always been profoundly more advantageous to possess talent, determination, and the right set of parents than merely the former two. This uncomfortable truth was not some hidden scandal in the WASP-dominated world of 1960s America depicted in Mad Men; it was the accepted, often unspoken, machinery of social mobility. The series’ fourth episode, New Amsterdam, written by Lisa Gilbert and directed by Tim Hunter, tackles this very issue head-on, using the pathetic, striving figure of Pete Campbell to dissect the brutal realities of privilege and the hollow nature of self-made manhood.

    Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), by this early stage in the series, has firmly emerged as the narrative’s closest approximation to a villain. His villainy, however, stems from a particularly modern form of toxicity: a ruthless, entitled ambition that wildly outstrips his demonstrable talent. New Amsterdam meticulously unpacks the source of this disconnect. The episode opens with Pete reluctantly escorting his young, beautiful, and visibly adoring wife, Trudy (Alison Brie), around the Sterling Cooper offices. Trudy’s ostensible lunchtime visit quickly reveals its true purpose: she whisks him off to view a luxurious Manhattan apartment she desires as their new home. Pete’s immediate, pragmatic objection—that the deposit alone would consume a year of his salary—is effortlessly batted away by Trudy. She counters that their parents, who don’t have these worries, would happily provide the necessary funds. This simple exchange establishes the central conflict: Pete’s desperate desire to be seen as a self-made success, akin to his idol Don Draper, is perpetually undermined by the very safety net of familial wealth he claims to despise.

    His aversion to the apartment is deeply rooted in this fragile self-image. Relying on what he perceives as charity wounds his pride. This internal struggle is exacerbated by his interactions with his own family. His father, Andrew (Christopher Allport), a successful lawyer, dismisses Pete’s professional concerns with a patronising detachment, reinforcing Pete’s sense of inadequacy within his own lineage. In stark contrast, his in-laws, Tom and Jeanie (John O’Connor and Sheila Shaw), are thrilled at the prospect of bankrolling their daughter’s move to a better postcode, their enthusiasm highlighting a different, more transactional view of family and class advancement. Pete is trapped between a father who withholds respect and in-laws whose financial support comes with implicit strings, eroding his fantasy of autonomous achievement.

    Professionally, Pete’s frustration manifests in a clumsy, ethically barren gambit to elevate his standing. The agency is courting Bethlehem Steel, America’s largest steel producer, a client of immense importance. When the gruff executive Walter Weith (Randy Oglesby) rejects Don Draper’s initial campaign idea, Pete seizes an opportunity. He orchestrates a “night on the town” for Weith, involving copious drink and the company of attractive women he euphemistically refers to as his “cousins.” In this compromised setting, Pete -pitches his own slogan. Weith, initially resistant to mixing business with pleasure, is sufficiently lubricated by alcohol and flattery to adopt the idea, believing it to be Pete’s own. The following day, when Weith praises “Don’s” concept, Don (Jon Hamm) is visibly stunned. Recognising the immediate threat to a lucrative account, Don plays along, but his subsequent fury is volcanic. He demands Pete’s termination for undercutting him and jeopardising client relations through unprofessional conduct.

    Roger Sterling (John Slattery), ever the pragmatic partner, agrees. The episode’s masterstroke, however, arrives when Don and Roger are summoned to the austere, Japanese-art-filled office of senior partner Bertram Cooper (Robert Morse). Bert calmly acknowledges Don’s justifiable anger but delivers a crushing, pragmatic verdict: Pete cannot be fired. The reason is pure, unadulterated nepotism, elevated to a corporate strategy. It is revealed that Pete’s mother is a descendant of the Dyckman family, an old, influential New York lineage. Bad blood with the Dyckmans, Bert explains, could slam shut important political and business doors throughout the city. Talent, professional ethics, and even basic competence are rendered irrelevant in the face of ancestral connections. Don is forced to swallow this bitter pill, a vivid lesson in how the game is truly played. Roger, with characteristic cynicism, then twists the situation to his advantage. He approaches the despondent, freshly humiliated Pete and shamelessly lies, claiming it was Bert who wanted him gone and only Don’s merciful change of heart saved his career. This manipulation further binds Pete to Don in a debt of gratitude, all while obscuring the grim reality that his job security hinges entirely on his mother’s maiden name.

    The personal and professional strands coalesce in the denouement. Professionally neutered and stripped of his illusion of self-determination, Pete capitulates on the domestic front. The episode ends with him granting Trudy her wish, walking into the opulent new apartment. As he stands silently, overwhelmed, Trudy chirpily brags to the real estate agent about Pete’s “famous family,” the very thing he has just learned is the sole foundation of his career. The irony is devastating. His struggle for independence has failed utterly; he remains a “momma’s boy” in the office and a husband beholden to his wife’s (and her parents’) social aspirations at home.

    Running parallel to this central narrative is a subplot involving Betty Draper (January Jones) and her neighbour, Helen (Darby Stanchfield). This storyline, representing the writing debut of Lisa Gilbert, aims to inject a note of nascent feminism. Betty, stifled in her perfect suburban prison, attempts to befriend Helen, who represents a different, more bohemian life. The execution, however, is notably heavy-handed. Helen’s virtue is signposted primarily through her volunteer work for John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign, positioning her on the “right side of history” in a manner that feels didactic. The subplot takes a bizarre turn when Betty babysits Helen’s son, Glenn (Marten Holden Weiner, creator’s son). The child’s behaviour—stalking Betty to the bathroom, making intense, uncomfortable demands—is profoundly strange. While perhaps intended to show the unsettling consequences of a broken home, it plays as shock for shock’s sake, and more cynical viewers might well interpret Glenn as a serial killer in the making. This tonal inconsistency undermines the subplot’s thematic ambitions, making it the episode’s weakest element.

    Thankfully, the episode regains its footing when focused on the corporate machinations of Sterling Cooper. The portrayal of Pete’s insecurity is brilliantly nuanced. Vincent Kartheiser excels at conveying the petulance and deep-seated immaturity of a man who believes the world owes him success but lacks the skill or character to earn it. The revelation that his position is a direct result of his mother’s pedigree is the ultimate humiliation, exposing the fragility of the meritocratic facade.

    Casting is another area of strength. Alison Brie is a revelation as Trudy. She portrays the character with a luminous charm and warmth that makes her ambition seem less calculating and more innocently aspirational. Her performance creates a fascinating dissonance: she is clearly more vibrant, effective, and popular than the slowly awakening Betty, the strategically manipulative Joan (Christina Hendricks), or the struggling Peggy (Elisabeth Moss). This casting choice deepens Pete’s later infidelities, making them seem not just morally repugnant but astoundingly stupid and callous, further cementing his status as a man who fails to appreciate the assets he actually possesses.

    Historically, the episode is anchored by its use of Bethlehem Steel. The choice is poignant and prescient. In 1960, the company represented the mighty engine of American industrial might. By the time Mad Men premiered in 2007, Bethlehem Steel had long since ceased operations, a symbol of the deindustrialisation that reshaped the American economy and contributed to the political and social upheavals to come. This layer of historical irony adds depth, connecting the personal failures of Pete Campbell to larger, national narratives of decline and shifted foundations.

    Mad Men excels in its superb and fascinating recreation of the past and its fascinating characters. New Amsterdam is a prime example of this strength. While it may lack the propulsive plot of later episodes, it serves as a crucial thematic cornerstone. It dismantles, with cold precision, the myth of the self-made man in a society where bloodlines and bank balances have always been the ultimate currency. In doing so, it proves itself not merely a period drama, but a timeless examination of the illusions we sustain to navigate the brutal hierarchies of class.

    RATING: 6/10 (++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
40. ›Television Review: Marriage of Figaro (Mad Men, S1x03, 2007)@drax76d

    

    Marriage of Figaro (S1x03)

    Airdate: 2 August 2007

    Written by: Tom Palmer Directed by: Ed Bianchi

    Running Time: 42 minutes

    The world, as we are so often reminded, is in a perpetual state of flux, yet popular memory frequently ossifies the past into a monolith of static conformity. Mad Men’s genius, established from its very first frames, is to depict the ultra-conformist cultural stasis of Eisenhower’s America not as a serene, unchanging tableau but as a pressure cooker of suppressed desires and imminent revolution. This tension is rarely overt; it simmers beneath the impeccably tailored suits and the perfectly coiffed hair. In the series’ third episode, aptly titled Marriage of Figaro, these glimpses of tectonic social shift are rendered with exquisite subtlety, observable not through grand events but through the fissures that appear in the meticulously maintained illusions of its characters. For the knowledgeable and astute viewer, this instalment serves as brilliant example of dramatic foreshadowing, where the personal deceptions of a man like Don Draper become a microcosm for the larger deceptions of an entire society clinging to a doomed ideal.

    The episode’s title is the first and most elegant clue. It refers, of course, to Mozart’s opera buffa, Le Nozze di Figaro, a work whose plot revolves around the themes of marriage, infidelity, and class-based deception. The opera’s aria ‘Voi che sapete’ is heard diegetically, playing on a record during Sally Draper’s birthday party. The choice aligns the episode’s domestic drama with the opera’s exploration of betrayed vows and hidden identities, framing the Draper household’s celebration as a stage where similar comedies and tragedies are performed. The opera’s presence underscores the idea that the rituals of suburban life—the birthday party, the marriage, the professional façade—are themselves performative acts, susceptible to the same cunning and duplicity that drive Figaro’s plot.

    Deception, as the title implies, is the episode’s central motif, and it is embodied most completely in Don Draper. The episode offers its first major clue to the depth of his charade on a commuter train. An old acquaintance from his Army days spots him and, with unsettling familiarity, addresses him as “Dick Whitman”. Don’s reaction—a cocktail of panic, evasion, and barely suppressed rage—is profoundly revealing. It signals to the audience that his infidelities are merely the surface layer of a far more profound deception. His entire identity, the very bedrock of his successful life as a New York adman, is a fabrication. This moment reframes everything that follows; his performance as the loving husband and father is fundamentally an extension of the same identity theft.

    The birthday party for six-year-old Sally Draper is where this well-maintained illusion most visibly crumbles, at least for those willing to see. On the surface, Don is the epitome of post-war paternal virtue, having built an elaborate playhouse in the garden. Yet, the event is steeped in a profound awkwardness that alcohol does little to dissolve. The primary catalyst is the presence of Helen Bishop, a divorcée whom Betty has felt obliged to invite. Helen represents a walking, talking rejection of the conformist lifestyle the other women embody. Her lack of a husband, her practical attire, and her unapologetic demeanour make her a pariah among the wives and a target for the husbands. In a moment of breathtaking hypocrisy, Francine’s husband, Carlton Hanson (Kristoffer Panaha), makes a crude, alcohol-fuelled pass at Helen, disregarding his own wife’s presence. Helen’s swift rejection is a quiet act of defiance. Intriguingly, she is drawn instead to Don, engaging him in conversation—an unconscious recognition, perhaps, of a fellow outsider living within the system but not of it. Betty’s jealous interruption, dispatching Don to fetch the forgotten birthday cake, is a desperate attempt to reassert the normative script of her marriage.

    This professional pretext had, in fact, been Don’s cover for his own pre-party indiscretion. In a scene that mirrors Carlton’s later advance, Don visits Rachel Menken at her department store. Under the guise of business, their tour concludes with Don impulsively kissing her and confessing, “I’m married.” Rachel’s rejection is firm and principled; she insists their professional account continue but be handled by another. Where Carlton’s advance was boorish and entitled, Don’s carries the weight of genuine longing, yet both acts are born of the same marital discontent and sense of entitlement, highlighting the pervasive infidelity that underpins this social world.

    The episode deftly parallels this main narrative with the office dynamics at Sterling Cooper. Pete Campbell returns from his honeymoon and, in a stunning display of cowardice, informs Peggy Olson that their pre-marital tryst must now be forgotten because the circumstances have changed. Peggy’s acquiescence—“We’ll just act like it never happened”—is a devastating moment. It showcases the brutal sexual politics of the era, where women are expected to silently absorb the consequences of male convenience. Peggy’s agreement is both a survival tactic and a bitter acceptance of the same culture of deception that Don masters. Her story is one of a woman trying to rise above her assumed role of secretary and part-time provider of sexual favours, and this scene is a crucial, painful step in that journey.

    The episode’s finale is a masterstroke of quiet desperation. Having observed the party through the lens of his home movie camera—literally framing his life as a performance—Don is overcome. The sight of a genuinely affectionate young couple at the party throws his own hollow marriage into stark relief. He flees to the brink of existential annihilation. The sequence of him driving, contemplating either suicide or simply disappearing to assume another identity, is the logical extreme of his life of deception. It reveals the profound cost of maintaining the illusion. His absence, and the missing cake, creates a crisis at home, one resolved by the outsider, Helen Bishop, who produces a frozen cake. This act of pragmatic salvation subtly champions the non-conformist over the failing traditionalist. Don’s return with a dog for Sally is a transparent attempt to buy back his role as father and husband, leaving Betty in a state of ambivalent confusion—she sees the crack but cannot yet bring herself to acknowledge the crumbling wall.

    It is worth noting that *Marriage of Figaro? is the first episode not written by series creator Matthew Weiner. Writer Tom Palmer, under the steady direction of Ed Bianchi, executes the series’ established tone with remarkable fidelity, proving the strength of the show’s foundational vision.

    Beyond the personal dramas, the script excels in planting seeds of the coming cultural upheaval with remarkable subtlety. The women of Sterling Cooper gossip giddily about Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a novel notorious for its frank depiction of sexuality and critique of marriage that had it censored and banned for decades. This is not idle chatter; it is a sign of repressed desires seeking an outlet.

    Helen Bishop’s very existence is another such signal. Her defiance is made concretely mechanical by her choice of automobile: the Volkswagen Beetle. This brings us to the episode’s most brilliant piece of social commentary, delivered through the ostensibly mundane ‘talking shop’ of the advertising world. Don and his team discuss the revolutionary 1959 Volkswagen campaign by real life advertising legend Bill Bernbach. The ad, with its stark simplicity and self-deprecating headline “Think Small,” bravely broke every convention of American advertising, which championed size and power. The conversation around it is telling: some dismiss the small car as un-American, while another sarcastically notes that Bernbach, a Jew, is helping the German auto industry. Don, however, sees its genius. He praises the campaign’s honesty and disruption. This moment is profoundly meta-textual. Just as Bernbach’s ad signalled a seismic shift in advertising and consumer culture, Helen’s Beetle, parked ostentatiously outside the Draper home, signals the impending shift in social and cultural norms. The car is a symbol of efficiency, modesty, and non-conformity—everything the oversized American dream of the Drapers is not. Don’s appreciation for the ad, coupled with Helen’s ownership of the product, aligns him, however unwillingly, with the forces of change that will dismantle the world he so skillfully inhabits.

    Marriage of Figaro is far more than a domestic drama about a troubled marriage. It is a meticulously constructed diagnosis of a society on the cusp of revolution. Through the lens of deception—personal, marital, and societal—it exposes the fragility of the 1960 American dream. The episode argues that change does not always arrive with a bang; sometimes, it whispers in the form of an opera aria, parks quietly in the driveway in the shape of a foreign car, or arrives at a birthday party in the person of a divorcée with a frozen cake. By tying Don Draper’s personal crisis of identity to these broader cultural tremors, the episode achieves a rare depth, proving that the most powerful television drama often lies not in what is said, but in what is so masterfully and devastatingly implied.

    RATING: 7/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
41. ›Television Review: Ladies Room (Mad Men, S1x02, 2007)@drax76d

    

    Ladies Room (S1x02)

    Airdate: 26 July 2007

    Written by: Matthew Weiner Directed by: Alan Taylor

    Running Time: 47 minutes

    If there remained any doubt among first-time viewers following the series premiere, Mad Men in its second episode, Ladies Room, makes it abundantly clear that the pace of its plot is going to be glacial. In some ways, this is to be expected from Matthew Weiner’s work. Based on his prior contributions to The Sopranos, he has always preferred quiet observation and character exposition to high-stakes drama and shocking displays of violence and sex. His new show would focus less on propulsive narrative and more on meticulously painting a world which is perhaps even more fascinating to today’s viewers. Unlike the realm of Italian-American organised crime, the world of 1960 Madison Avenue advertising is something that ceased to exist even before most of the target audience were born. For a contemporary viewer, it can look like an alien planet, and The Ladies Room serves as a deeply immersive, if deliberately slow, guided tour of its social customs.

    The episode’s title immediately signals one of the fundamental aspects in which the Mad Men era differs from our own: the position of women in society. The ladies’ room, a traditionally female sanctuary, becomes a stage where private anxieties are briefly visible before being repressed again. The episode’s focus rests on two characters in vastly different situations, both nevertheless feeling the tight constraints of societal rules. The first is Betty Draper (January Jones). By the standards of the late 1950s and early 1960s, she should be the picture of contentment. Her husband, Don, is a successful and well-to-do business executive who has gifted her with two children, a picture-perfect house in the suburbs, and a lifestyle that would be the object of envy for most American women of the time. Yet, she is deeply, inexplicably unhappy. Whether this stems from her husband’s prolonged absences or his likely infidelities is less important here than its physical manifestation: a baffling numbness in her hands. This condition first surfaces in the ladies’ room of a fancy restaurant during a dinner with Roger Sterling and his wife Mona (played by Tricia Balsam, John Slattery’s real life wife). It later escalates catastrophically into a loss of control over her car, a moment of sheer terror that, thankfully, ends without serious injury—though the presence of her children in the back seat injects the scene with a chilling undercurrent of neglectful danger.

    One of the triggers for this incident is a visit from Betty’s best friend and neighbour, Francine Hanson (Anne Dudek), who brings gossip about the arrival of Helen Bishop (Darby Stanchfield), a divorcee with a nine-year-old son, to the neighbourhood. For most of the neighbours, a single mother in their midst is a scandal, a living contradiction to their cherished traditional values. For Betty, however, Helen represents a terrifying possible future—a fate she too might experience if Don were ever out of the picture. This fear, internalised and unspoken, feeds directly into her psychosomatic collapse. The medical establishment, as portrayed, is of little help. Physicians dismiss it as non-neurological, leading Don to commit Betty to therapy. Despite the post-war popularity of psychoanalysis in Middle America, Betty views this as a shameful admission of failure. The episode’s most quietly devastating revelation comes at its close: her psychoanalyst, Dr. Arnold Wayne (Andy Umberger), blatantly breaches confidentiality, secretly informing Don about the content of their sessions. This betrayal underscores the complete lack of agency afforded to women, even in a space ostensibly designed for their healing; her mind and its troubles remain the property of her husband.

    Simultaneously, the episode follows Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) through her first weeks at Sterling Cooper. Her challenges are of a different, yet equally oppressive, nature. As a young woman in the office, she is seen less as a professional and more as a target for sexual conquest by her male colleagues. Peggy must deal with not only the constant, lecherous gazing of the executives but also the pointed enmity of office manager Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks), who chastises her for her naivety and works diligently to preserve her own status as queen bee of the secretarial pool. Peggy’s precarious position is highlighted by the absence of Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), away on his Niagara Falls honeymoon but still sending her a provocatively personal postcard. In one of the episode’s key sequences, Peggy glimpses one possible future for herself in the ladies’ room, where she witnesses a woman crying at the mirror, utterly ignored by Joan. Later, Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis), who presents himself as one of the office’s more enlightened and less sexist men, offers Peggy a tour of the various departments—a pretext he uses to make a pass at her. Peggy deftly rejects him by inventing another office lover, whom Paul mistakenly assumes to be Don. The episode concludes with Peggy re-entering the ladies’ room. Standing before the same mirror where she saw the weeping woman, she consciously steels herself, adjusts her expression, and decides to keep her composure. It is a small, powerful moment that signals her nascent resilience and her determination to survive, and perhaps even thrive, within this hostile atmosphere.

    As a counterpoint to these women bound by familial and professional limitations, the episode offers Midge Daniels (Rosemarie DeWitt), Don’s bohemian lover. Revealed to be an artist, her unconventionality is reflected in an openly polyamorous lifestyle. She unashamedly accepts gifts from other lovers, much to Don’s chagrin. His jealousy here is richly ironic, exposing his own hypocrisy and the double standards of the time: he is deeply affected by her infidelity despite being a serial adulterer himself. Midge represents a path not taken, a flicker of alternative female existence that is available only on the fringes of society.

    Beyond its central gender critique, Ladies Room seeds other important narrative elements. The opening restaurant scene is particularly telling for what it reveals about Don—or rather, for what it reveals he refuses to reveal. His abrupt shutdown of any discussion about his early past signals a profound mystery that will, of course, become the central enigma of the series.

    The episode also introduces Bertram Cooper (Robert Morse), the firm’s eccentric founding partner. Cooper appreciates the creative lack of discipline among his male employees, yet he is fiercely conservative in politics, insisting the firm support Richard Nixon in the upcoming presidential election. This juxtaposition highlights a recurring theme: the permissive, ‘mad’ culture of advertising exists comfortably within a framework of traditional, right-wing American values.

    If the episode has a significant flaw, it lies in a rare misstep in the series’ otherwise meticulous recreation of the past: the use of ‘The Great Divide’, a 1996 song by The Cardigans, over the end credits. The choice is jarringly anachronistic. For a show that prides itself on immersive period detail, this needle drop feels unnecessary and disruptive, briefly shattering the carefully maintained illusion of 1960.

    Ladies Room is a nice example of slow-burn character study. The first season of Mad Men doesn’t have much of a plot and instead excels in “superb and fascinating recreation of the past and fascinating characters. This episode epitomises that approach. It forgoes event in favour of depth, using its languid pace to excavate the quiet despair and simmering resilience of its women. It confirms that Mad Men is less interested in what its characters do than in who they are—and, more importantly, who the society of 1960 allows them to be. The glacial pace is not a deficit but the very source of its power, allowing us to feel the weight of the era’s constraints as acutely as Betty feels the numbness in her hands.

    RATING: 6/10 (++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
42. ›Television Review: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (Mad Men, S1x01, 2007)@drax77d

    

    Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (S1x01)

    Airdate: 19 July 2007

    Written by: Matthew Weiner Directed by: Alan Taylor

    Running Time: 49 minutes

    An argument can be made, and indeed has been persuasively advanced by critics and historians of the medium, that what we now reflexively term the ‘Golden Age of Television’ actually began in the summer of 2007 on the relatively unassuming AMC network with the debut of Mad Men. Its first episode, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, served as the clarion call for a new era of serialised storytelling. This was the first prestigious, high-quality television drama to become a major hit, a trend-setter, and a prolific source of cultural references and internet memes on a global scale, despite not bearing the imprimatur of HBO. That it emerged from the creative mind of Matthew Weiner, a writer who had honed his craft on the final, celebrated seasons of The Sopranos, is perhaps unsurprising. Weiner imported HBO’s novelistic depth and moral complexity to basic cable, effectively democratising the ‘prestige drama’ and proving that the appetite for sophisticated, adult-oriented narrative was not confined to subscription television. The pilot episode, produced in March 2006—a full year before the season’s broadcast—stands as a meticulously crafted manifesto for the series and for the transformative decade of television that would follow.

    Mad Men also represented a vanguard for the period drama on mainstream broadcast television, a genre that would flourish in the short term and become a staple of cable and streaming services in the long term. The period chosen was arguably the most fascinating and consequential of the 20th century: the 1960s, a decade marked by tumultuous social, political, and cultural upheaval. The series’ genius lay in its perspective. Rather than focusing on the activists, politicians, or rock stars who typically dominate narratives of the era, it portrayed the change from the original, and often overlooked, vantage point of the American advertising industry. These were the people who, as Weiner suggests, not only reflected the zeitgeist but actively manufactured and commodified it, forging desires and shaping identities in the post-war consumer boom. The phrase ‘Mad Men’ itself, a semi-ironic term coined (as the opening credits wryly note) by the advertising executives of Madison Avenue, encapsulates this world of clever, cynical, and deeply compromised individuals who sell happiness while often being devoid of it.

    Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is set in March 1960, and from its very first frame, it immerses the viewer in a world profoundly alien to contemporary sensibilities. The protagonist, Donald Draper (Jon Hamm), Creative Director of the fictional Sterling Cooper agency, is shown in a haze of cigarette smoke in a dimly lit bar. Everyone is smoking and drinking; it is a world where such habits are not merely acceptable but are the essential lubricants of business and social life. More subtly, it is a world still governed by unspoken but rigid racial boundaries. Draper’s attempt to engage an African American waiter in casual conversation about his smoking preferences is almost immediately curtailed by his companion, who fears the waiter is ‘bothering’ Don. This brief exchange economically establishes two key themes: the pervasive, casual racism of the era, and Draper’s unique, almost anthropological detachment. His interest is not social but professional—he is researching for the agency’s most pressing account, Lucky Strike cigarettes, a task fraught with difficulty given emerging medical evidence linking smoking to cancer and new regulations banning health claims in advertising.

    The remainder of the episode unfolds over a single day at Sterling Cooper, a microcosm of early 1960s America. Don is assigned a new secretary, Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), who immediately becomes the object of lascivious speculation and harassment from the agency’s young executives. Men like the account executive Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton), television department head Harry Crane (Rich Sommer), and copywriter Paul Kinsey (Michael Gladis) view the female staff as a perk of the job, a sentiment openly reinforced by the office’s strict social hierarchy. Peggy is initiated into this world by office manager Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks), whose stunning appearance belies a sharp, pragmatic intelligence. Joan’s guidance is a masterclass in survival, warning Peggy about the dangers of office romances and implicitly teaching her how to navigate a workplace where a woman’s primary currency is her looks and her compliance. This dynamic is the bedrock of the series’ critique: Sterling Cooper relies on a small army of women—secretaries, operators, cleaners—who perform the essential day-to-day labour while occasionally providing sexual favours to the men who monopolise all executive power. Sexism, apart from being prevalent, is the operational system.

    Before this office day begins, however, we see Draper in his other life, leaving the apartment of his part-time girlfriend, Midge Daniels (Rosemarie DeWitt), an aspiring artist. This establishes his pattern of infidelity and his compartmentalised existence. His day at the office is initially fraught with failure. Before the crucial Lucky Strike meeting, the agency must pitch to a potential new client, Rachel Menken (Maggie Siff), the owner of a Jewish department store. The scene is a masterpiece of cringe-inducing awkwardness and institutional anti-Semitism. Senior partner Roger Sterling (John Slattery) is so anxious about their lack of ‘Jewish credentials’ that he parades a token Jewish employee, David Coen, into the meeting. Don, arrogant and unprepared, dismisses Menken’s business acumen and storms out after a humiliating exchange. It is a rare moment where Draper’s famed charisma fails him, revealing the brittle arrogance beneath. He later patches things up with Menken over lunch, displaying a more genuine, persuasive side, but the damage to his aura is noted.

    The Lucky Strike meeting nearly ends in disaster, primarily due to the intervention of the vapid, entitled accounts executive Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser). In a clumsy attempt to assert dominance over Don, Pete resurrects a discarded note of Draper’s and proposes a campaign based on the ‘death wish’, horrifying the clients, Lee Garner Sr. (John Cullum) and his son. On the brink of losing the account, Draper has his ‘eureka’ moment. In a display of the persuasive alchemy that would become the series’ hallmark, he argues that since all cigarettes are essentially the same, advertising must be based on ‘mere differences’ between brands. He seizes on Lucky Strike’s manufacturing process—‘It’s toasted’—and transforms this mundane fact into a resonant slogan of reassurance and distinction. It is a brilliant save, a moment of pure creative genius that simultaneously saves the account, reasserts Draper’s authority, and offers a meta-commentary on the show itself: Mad Men is about finding profound meaning in the seemingly trivial. Don then brutally chastises Pete for stealing his ideas and coldly dismisses a tentative advance from Peggy, reinforcing his emotional inaccessibility.

    The episode’s denouement follows the characters into the night. Pete, drunk and embittered after a bachelor party at a strip club, turns up at Peggy’s apartment, where she reluctantly lets him in—a decision fraught with future consequence. Meanwhile, Don takes the train to Ossining, New York, arriving late at his pristine suburban home. He is greeted by his seemingly perfect wife, Betty (January Jones), a former model, and his two sleeping children. This final shot, of Draper standing in the doorway of a home that represents the ultimate American dream, is haunting. He is an outsider in his own life, a ghost at the feast of his own making. The perfection is mere illusion, foreshadowing the secrets and pathologies that will unravel in the seasons to come.

    Directed with a superb eye for period detail by HBO veteran Alan Taylor, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is an exceptionally effective pilot. Its plot is minimal; there is a lack of traditional narrative. Yet this is its strength. Rather than relying on melodramatic events, it dedicates its runtime to immersive world-building and character introduction. The viewer is not told about the 1960s; they are submerged in them. The authenticity is not merely sartorial (the suits, hats, and dresses are flawless) but behavioural. The attitudes towards drinking (whisky in the office at 11 a.m.), smoking (ubiquitous and unchecked), and sex (as a transactional office commodity) are presented not as quaint historical details but as the very fabric of reality for these characters. The most potent world-building is in the depiction of a strict social hierarchy based on race, class, ethnicity, religion, and, most damningly, sex. The world of Sterling Cooper is one where racism, sexism, and bigotry are not merely institutionalised but are the casually accepted mechanics of daily life.

    The episode also sows the seeds of the central professional conflict: between the flawed but authentically talented Don Draper—a man who has crafted himself from a traumatic past and wartime experience—and the vain, buffoonish Pete Campbell, whose position is entirely a product of privileged birth. Jon Hamm’s performance is a revelation, making Draper compellingly sympathetic despite his myriad moral failings. He conveys a deep, melancholic intelligence and a perceptiveness that sets him apart from his peers. Don’s pitch scenes are the most attractive part of the series. They are riveting theatrical set-pieces where language becomes a tool for manipulation and revelation. His cynical, yet arguably honest, declaration that ‘love was invented by people like me to sell nylons’ is not just a great television quote; it is the series’ thesis statement, laying bare the existential emptiness at the heart of the consumer dream he helps to sell.

    Finally, a seemingly minor scene powerfully encapsulates the era’s restrictive sexual mores. Peggy’s visit to a doctor to obtain a contraceptive device is a quietly devastating moment. The physician, Dr. Walter Emerson (Remys Auberjonois), delivers the diaphragm with snide sarcasm, pointedly noting her unmarried status. It is a stark illustration of how female sexuality was policed by a patronising and judgmental medical establishment, and how the pursuit of sexual agency outside marriage was fraught with shame and difficulty. For Peggy, this device represents not liberation, but a necessary, clandestine tool for navigating the predatory environment she is about to enter.

    Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is a landmark piece of television. It announced Mad Men not as a mere period drama, but as a profound anthropological study of American capitalism, identity, and desire at a pivotal historical moment. It proved that television could be as nuanced, visually arresting, and intellectually demanding as the finest novels or films. By focusing on the advertisers who shaped the dreams of a nation, it provided a uniquely critical lens through which to view the birth of modern America. While it may lack the overt plot mechanics of later prestige dramas, its confidence, atmosphere, and character depth set a new standard.

    RATING: 7/10 (+++)

    ==

    Blog in Croatian https://draxblog.com Blog in English https://draxreview.wordpress.com/ InLeo blog https://inleo.io/@drax.leo

    LeoDex: https://leodex.io/?ref=drax InLeo: https://inleo.io/signup?referral=drax.leo Hiveonboard: https://hiveonboard.com?ref=drax Rising Star game: https://www.risingstargame.com?referrer=drax 1Inch: https://1inch.exchange/#/r/0x83823d8CCB74F828148258BB4457642124b1328e

    BTC donations: 1EWxiMiP6iiG9rger3NuUSd6HByaxQWafG ETH donations: 0xB305F144323b99e6f8b1d66f5D7DE78B498C32A7 BCH donations: qpvxw0jax79lhmvlgcldkzpqanf03r9cjv8y6gtmk9

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
43. ›Mad Men - Season 1 (2007) review: Nostalgia.@richardalexis1434d

    Source

    

    Recently I have been revisiting one of my favorite series: Mad Men, a few days ago I shared with you a short post in which I praised its pilot episode and in general I am amazed at its quality, although I know it will happen and it is difficult to be surprised by its content, the Mathew Weiner's creation is so dense that many elements of it look quite fresh.

    Source

    I knew the series being relatively young, I appreciated its setting and how excellently written its characters were, watching each episode was like traveling in a time machine that took me back to a time that I had not had the opportunity to live in person, it allowed me to understand how society worked at that time, as well as the different problems of their day to day.

    A couple of years of maturity and experience (Of course, the blows that life gives us when we enter adulthood) have given me the ability to enjoy this work from a different perspective, where optimism and cynicism coexist in very different ways. interesting.

    In my mind, I used to look at the first season of Mad Men as a wonderful way to introduce us to this universe, but at the same time I ignored its ability to establish so many plot points that would later be crucial, I let myself go like that and it had been easy for me ignore the substance.

    And it's funny, because the series hasn't changed, it's an artistic product that exists in a static state, but I as a person have done the opposite, I've evolved... I've adapted to love it.

    Mad Men was clearly planned from the start, not because it wasn't susceptible to changing its course as each season premiered and audiences reacted in certain ways, but because its characters are so well done that their internal logic trumps any kind of logic. intention that the writer had... As if they were real beings that we are observing in a voyeuristic plan.

    Don's dark past, Campbell's insecurities, Salvatore's secrets, Peggy's moral instability, each works as a solid piece, rapidly fluctuating between action and reaction, breathing, living, existing.

    Source

    That minimal precision is not for everyone, we must learn to appreciate it... however, even for the less detailed Mad Men has a lot to offer, it has personality, a slow pace that is pleasant, and an elegance in its direction that will hardly be repeated in the course of our own lives.

    

    Source

    

    Recientemente he estado revisitando una de mis series favoritas: Mad Men, hace unos días compartí con ustedes un breve post en dónde alababa su episodio piloto y en general me siento maravillado su calidad, aunque sé que ocurrirá y es difícil sorprenderme con su contenido, la creación de Mathew Weiner es tan densa que muchos elementos de ella se ven bastante frescos.

    Source

    Conocí la serie siendo relativamente joven, apreciaba su ambientación y lo excelentemente escritos que estaban sus personajes, observar cada episodio era como viajar en una máquina del tiempo que me trasladaba a una época que no había tenido la oportunidad de vivir en persona, me permitía entender como funcionaba la sociedad en ese entonces, así como los distintos que eran los problemas de su día a día.

    Un par de años de madurez y experiencia (Por supuesto, los golpes que nos da la vida cuando entramos a la adultez) me han brindado la capacidad de disfrutar esta obra desde una óptica diferente, en dónde el optimismo y el cinismo coexisten de formas muy interesantes.

    En mi mente, solía considerar la primera temporada de Mad Men como una forma maravillosa de introducirnos a este universo, pero al mismo tiempo ignoraba su capacidad para establecer tantos plot points que posteriormente serían cruciales, me dejaba ir por el estilo y se me había fácil ignorar la sustancia.

    Y es gracioso, porque la serie no ha cambiado, es un producto artístico que existe en un estado estático, pero yo como persona he hecho todo lo contrario, he evolucionado... Me he adaptado para adorarla.

    Mad Men claramente estaba planeada desde el principio, no porque no fuese susceptible a modificar su trayecto a medida que cada temporada se estrenaba y el público reaccionaba de ciertas formas, sino porque sus personajes están tan bien hechos, que su lógica interna supera cualquier tipo de intención que tuviese el escritor... Cómo si se tratase de seres reales que estamos observando en un plan vouyerista.

    El pasado oscuro de Don, las inseguridades de Campbell, los secretos de Salvatore, lo moralmente inestable que resulta Peggy, cada uno de ellos funciona como una pieza sólida, que fluctúa rápidamente entre la acción y la reacción, respirando, viviendo, existiendo.

    Source

    Esa precisión milimétrica no es para cualquiera, debemos aprender a apreciarla... no obstante, hasta para el menos detallista Mad Men tiene mucho que ofrecer, tiene personalidad, un ritmo lento para agradable, y una elegancia en su dirección que difícilmente se repetirá en el transcurso de nuestras propias vidas.

    

    Twitter/Instagram/Letterbox: Alxxssss

    

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments
44. ›Mad Men: Joan Holloway, A Subversive Venus@mmaruf3105d

    Mad Men: Joan Holloway, A Subversive Venus

    ▲Upvote

    ReplyPermalink·Open on PeakD ↗·Linked from existing Hive post

    💬 Show comments