Tag Archives: AMC

August 17, 2008 · 11:37 pm

Mad Men – “Three Sundays”

“Three Sundays”

August 17th, 2008

When Father Gil (Guest star Colin Hanks) stops by to the Olsen household for a dinner party, he is asked to say grace. He gives a short little moment of reflection on the meal in front of them, and Peggy’s Mother commends him on the fine words and asks if he’s going to say grace now. He quickly breaks into the traditional verse.

Roger’s daughter, meanwhile, is engaged. Her mother wants a wedding, a big gala where all of their friends can come and enjoy, but she isn’t on the same page: the young Ms. Sterling does want to feel like she needs to prove her love to anyone in some grand ceremony after only two months of engagement. Eventually, it seems settled: like it or not, a big wedding is simply unavoidable.

We shouldn’t be surprised by any of this: as my brother (who just finished the first season) noted, the 60s is a decade of change and Mad Men is a show about people of an older era. While this is not yet the time when there is an active war between these two generations, the battlegrounds are being drawn: as Don himself says, “We have a lot of bricks, but we don’t know what the building looks like.”

But, slowly but surely, the bricks are falling into place; and over these “Three Sundays,” a lot happens to lay a foundation.

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August 11, 2008 · 12:00 am

Mad Men – “The Benefactor”

“The Benefactor”

August 10th, 2008

After a busy day of moving, there’s nothing better than sitting down with one of the most satisfying dramas on television and just letting its quality suck you in. But, to be honest, it wasn’t grasping me at first: maybe it’s being tired, maybe it’s just that the show is finding a slower pace after a couple of really quick episodes, but there was something about “The Benefactor” that wasn’t clicking.

But then all of a sudden everything starts clicking – what seemed like a strangely slow subplot for Harry Crane turns into a sudden revelation of its broader impact on his life (And Peggy’s for that matter). It’s one of those examples where something initially so isolated has this ripple effect, showing in tiny small moments how one thing impacts everyone else.

And even though the episode is slow to start for Don and Betty Draper, they end the episode both with extremely twisted views of their current marital detente of sorts: as they both continue to struggle with embracing their new roles, it is clear that their expectations for happiness are quite different. When Betty cries in the car on their way back from dinner, they’re inexpicable tears of happiness, her bar set so low that being used to flirt with an unruly comedian is her new calling.

But, I guess this is normal: for her, Don is really just a Benefactor, although a slightly more benevolent one these days.

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August 4, 2008 · 1:14 am

Mad Men – “Flight 1”

“Flight 1”

August 3rd, 2008

If last week was about the dueling crises of Betty and Don Draper, the sophomore episode of Mad Men’s second season is all about how the show’s other two primary characters are dealing with crises of their own own. Pete and Peggy’s fates are no doubt intertwined in this series, from the premiere’s tryst to the finale’s birth, and while they share only a brief conversation and one long look during one of Pete’s lower moments, their connection is apparent throughout.

Mad Men is all about reactions: to the times, to the people, to tragedy, to triumph, and everything else in between. We don’t see Flight 1 crash into Jamaica Bay, but we see the reactions of the people at Sterling Cooper and through the impact it has on Pete’s family. Much like the second season from a conceptual level, the show isn’t about showing us every event, but rather slowly pulling back the curtain on the ways that those events change these characters. It’s a show where a plane crash is never just a plane crash not because of some sort of electromagnetic field, but rather due to the show’s ability to emphasize the widespread impact of events both big and small on the characters it knows so well.

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July 28, 2008 · 12:13 am

Season Premiere: Mad Men – “For Those Who Think Young”

“For Those Who Think Young”

July 27th, 2008

The breakout success of Mad Men has been a huge surprise – when I started watching the show last summer, it was a cable show from a network that didn’t do such shows. It had the pedigree of Matthew Weiner, and it had some positive kudos from the critics, but what person would have predicted sixteen Emmy nominations, two Golden Globes, and a cultural firestorm so powerful that it even compelled the Canadian networks with the rights to the series to air the second season premiere before the first season has even completed airing?

But the time for kudos, set visits, really fancy DVD sets and excessive hype is over: while last season’s finale seems like ages ago at this point, it’s time to see whether the emotional resonance of “The Wheel” can be rekindled as the show picks up fifteen months later and in a whole different critical context: once a show without expectation, it has become perhaps the most closely watched sophomore session of the year.

And the series is showing its age, to use the opening episode’s central theme: it is a show that allows its characters to feel all of their insecurities in a way that ages them. If we look back to each character’s trajectory, and the series’ central transportation back to another era, a lot of it is about time and the way it changes people: whether it’s Betty Draper looking back to her modeling days or Roger Sterling having an affair with Joan, the voluptuous secretary, it’s all inevitably about returning to a younger self, a younger identity.

As the show begins its second season, it strongly and intelligently hits on this note, framing a story of a Valentine’s Day where “Young” is in and where those feeling time slipping away from them are hoping to hang onto everything they can. With a large ensemble cast and a number of emotional cliffhangers to deal with, the jump forward in time brings new facial hair, new jobs, and new rumours; in the process, it’s a new season of one of television’s finest dramas.

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July 13, 2008 · 11:34 pm

Mad Men – “Babylon”

“Babylon”

Season One, Episode Six

In the world of Mad Men, normalcy is the goal: for Don Draper, it’s bringing his wife breakfast in bed on Mother’s Day. Of course, as he travels up the stairs, he losing his footing and everything smashes around him. Cue the flashback to his brother’s birth, and another sign that Donald Draper’s life is a giant lie just waiting to be smashed like the falling breakfast tray.

Yes, the opening of “Babylon” is not exactly subtle, but this is an episode that is all about the hidden becoming revealed, the secrets becoming part of common knowledge. The central attempt to commodify Israel into a tourism destination for Americans is about taking a secret and turning it into common knowledge, but there the ad men get to put their spin on it; the facts are one thing, but with the right treatment they can become something far more profound. This episode is about the people who need to spin their own lives, and the one person who’s about to start spinning for others.

And in the meantime, you’re stuck in exile; and as a series about people who find themselves searching to avoid such a position, Mad Men flourishes.

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July 7, 2008 · 3:53 am

Mad Men – “5G”

“5G”

Season One, Episode Five

To say that “5G” is uneventful or unrevelatory isn’t really doing it justice, but the point could probably be made. Of the episode’s major story points, none of them are all that surprising: yes, they fill in some blanks in Don Draper’s past and present, but elsewhere the episode plays much into the same things we already know. Pete is unwilling to share the spitlight, Draper has a lot of secrets, and Peggy is still just a little in the dark when it comes to how to handle her new position.

What “5G” does, though, is make these elements more starkly real: it displays the pettiness of Pete and the desperation of Draper. Pete’s attempt at being famous is a bit of a simple little plot point until you consider the implications on her marital relationship, but Draper’s actions take his character to a new level. The relationship between his old life and his current one is what paralyzes him, and here we see that seeing those two worlds collide creates a volatile situation.

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July 6, 2008 · 7:01 am

Mad Men – “New Amsterdam”

“New Amsterdam”

Season One, Episode Four

[I’m a week late on this one, but forgive me: I’ll have a piece on tonight’s episode done sometime tonight, probably]

By the time Mad Men got to its fourth episode, it had filled in a lot of its gaps: we are thoroughly compelled by Don Draper, interested in seeing more of this world from Betty’s perspective, intrigued at the inner workings of Sterling Cooper, and curious as to how all of these people intersect in the historical mediation the show presents.

All except Pete Campbell, that is. To be honest, Pete Campbell was pretty much a snake before this point: a spineless, ungrateful punk at his worst, and certainly not the kind of character that any of us relate with. His insistence on rising the corporate ladder could be passed off as mere capitalist determinism, a selfish attempt to take for himself and to leave others in his wake.

What “New Amsterdam” provides is a new perspective, a glimpse into the fact that Pete Campbell’s life is just as complicated as everyone else’s in terms of the series’ primary characters. Over time, the show reveals the truth behind other characters as well (Joan and Roger Sterling are next up), but the familial and spousal pressures facing this character are some of the most eye-opening. No, it isn’t exactly surprising that he has some serious family issues, but it does explain at least some of his past behaviour while leaving plenty of qualities on the table that we as viewers will take issue with.

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June 23, 2008 · 12:48 am

Mad Men – “Marriage of Figaro”

“Marriage of Figaro”

Season One, Episode Three

One of the strengths of Mad Men is its ability to capture lightning in a bottle, taking moments or elements of the 1960s and building off of them. In the pilot, this felt clunky and forced, but as time has moved on things have changed: these small elements have become an important but not integral element of the story. The plot doesn’t rely on these little moments, but rather uses them to help explain and expand upon both story and characterization.

“Marriage of Figaro” is not yet in the shape of a normal episode of the series, still needing to clearly point out the show’s central divide: in a way that few episodes mimic, the action is split directly in half as we first follow Don’s life in the city before transitioning into his daughter’s birthday party in the suburbs. The only thing connecting these two parts, on the surface, is Don Draper, but little bits of information and intrigue follow (Whether it’s romantic entanglements or the impact of the Volkswagen ad that has everyone talking).

The result is that the episode is indeed a Don story, never quite fully diving into the series’ other various narratives. There are some pieces laid down here, though, that will become very important for the future; plus, when I say it’s a Don story, that’s not a bad thing in the least.

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June 15, 2008 · 11:01 pm

Mad Men – “Ladies Room”

“Ladies Room”

Season One, Episode Two

One of the complications of using a pilot as a piece of misdirection, in this instance not revealing Don Draper’s wife Betty until the very end of the episode, is that the need for exposition (a necessary evil in a series’ first episode) lingers on.

In that sense, this is Betty’s pilot, a chance to get a view into the life of a housewife in an era of uncertainty and confusion perpetuated by new-age psychiatry and the elusiveness of her own husband. Betty is a woman who just lost her mother and who feels as if she’s missing a side of her husband (or five) that he never shows to her, without knowing that a few of them remain hidden even to his co-workers and his mistress.

With her introduction, the narrative of Mad Men’s female characters comes fully into view, as Peggy’s struggles on the job reflect upon the challenges women faced during the era in a frank and honest perspective. When jumping into this series, you really need to get through the second episode before you can understand where Matthew Weiner is taking us, with a whole new side to the story and continued subtle hints at the stories to come.

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June 9, 2008 · 12:36 am

Mad Men – “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”

“Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”

Season One, Episode One

[As part of getting in the groove for the second season premiere in late July, figured that CTV’s decision to air Mad Men’s first season in Canada this summer is as good an excuse as any to revisit this fantastic summer series. (For those who don’t know, AMC (A U.S. Cable network) aired the series last summer). I’ll only get so far before the second season premieres on AMC, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.]

When the Emmy nominations roll around in July, one thing is for certain: the Mad Men pilot will be responsible for many nominations, although not for the people we see on screen (who have more showcases later in the series run) but rather the people who created the look and feel of the series.

This is not to say that “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” is a poor episode for any of the series’ actors, as I’d argue it’s a great showcase for almost all of them, but this is a pilot that’s all about setting: in time, in place, and to a certain extent within the psychological mind frame of these people. Although Freud gets a bum review from the people that matter in the episode, psychology largely serves as a way of orienting us to the way these people think and why they think that way.

What the episode does is create this setting, the smoke-filled and complicated sixties where tobacco is only recently a bad habit, where African Americans perform only the most menial of service-based tasks, and where women are never executives or able to act like them. We watch the characters weave in and out of these concepts: those who enter into them with a naive world view, those who have become inhabited by them for the sake of fitting into this world in which they seem uncomfortable, and those who are them.

On these levels, Matthew Weiner and Alan Taylor and their team have created a masterpiece.

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