Mad Men

[Nina]

I know, there are already several Mad Men threads dead. But I want to try it again, next Sunday it will start again.


AMC site with the season 3 promo

Jenni Lou has the beautiful promo pictures for season 3 on her site: click

"The Sopranos" writer Matthew Weiner who won already 4 Emmys, got the chance to finally make his idea into a series 3 years ago. AMC saw something in Mad Men (After HBO didn't want it.) and gave him a chance. And I don't think they are sorry.

Also fun to know, from the 9 writers, 7 are women. (Incl. Marti Noxon) Something that is pretty special, only 23% of all writers is female and 80% of the shows doesn't even have a female writer on their show. I loved finding this out, especially because Mad Men is of course very misogynistic.

So who is going to follow the stories of the people at Sterling & Cooper this season?

[Ameer]

I'll certainly be watching. I've only recently discovered that I can watch the series on the AMC website so I won't have to wait for the local channels to air it here.

I can't wait to see how the new season will start. Are they going to jump a few years? It'll be interesting to see how Sterling Cooper is functioning after the takeover. I'll also be looking forward to seeing how Don and Betty are going to be with each other after their separation.

I've always thought the women of this show were far more interesting than the men. January Jones, Elizabeth Moss and Christina Hendricks deserve a lot of acclaim for the superb work that they do on the show. I'm very glad Moss got nominated for an Emmy this year because she truly deserves it. The other two deserved a nod as well, as did Vincent Kartheiser, but then again they can't nominate everyone.

[Nina]

I believe that they make a tiny jump, only some months. Not sure if they are going to skip JFK's death or not.

I figured out that I really watch for the scenes at Sterling & Cooper. I love the workfloor and how all those different personalities work together.

Especially the weirdness that is Pete & Peggy, I'm not sure what to make of their relation... but it's amazing.

The cast is amazing, every single one of them. Which is great because the most are no big names. They played some minor roles ...sometimes a bit bigger but no huge names. I love it when producers and showrunners can find talent like that.

[Nixennacht]

I'll absolutely be watching. Mad Men is so wonderfully twisted and I love the take on the characters. It's a bit hard to describe, since I can't say Iove the characters themselves, but more how the effect the world and it's stereotypes has on them.

Mad Men is never drawing a pretty picture of the past. It's also not showing some horror version. It just feels so real, the way people develop.

Don's wife, who was obviously almost a child when she got married and had children of her own and is just now starting to grow up. All this stuff, it get's to me and I've rarely to never seen it done on screen.

[Nina]

I think that the characters of Mad Men are characters you work with. The most characters on tv are super cool pretty people with two or three flaws to make them *human*. The Mad Men characters are actually human; unlikable because they are just as imperfect as we are. There are also no characters who are super quirky or way stronger than we are. They are good in their job but they all have no idea what to do with their life.

In the most series, Joan would leave her rapist boyfriend after kicking him in the crotch to run away with a knight on a white horse. While she will probably marry this guy on Mad Men because that's what happens in real life a lot. Just like Betty who will probably never leave Don, no matter how many times he is going to cheat on her, she will have his baby and she will cook his food no matter what. Pete will go back to Trudy even after figuring out that she is really not what he wants and Sal will never tell Ken that he is in love with him.

[Nixennacht]

I think that the characters of Mad Men are characters you work with. The most characters on tv are super cool pretty people with two or three flaws to make them *human*. The Mad Men characters are actually human; unlikable because they are just as imperfect as we are. There are also no characters who are super quirky or way stronger than we are. They are good in their job but they all have no idea what to do with their life.

In the most series, Joan would leave her rapist boyfriend after kicking him in the crotch to run away with a knight on a white horse. While she will probably marry this guy on Mad Men because that's what happens in real life a lot. Just like Betty who will probably never leave Don, no matter how many times he is going to cheat on her, she will have his baby and she will cook his food no matter what. Pete will go back to Trudy even after figuring out that she is really not what he wants and Sal will never tell Ken that he is in love with him.

Yes, that's exactly what makes the show so attractive. This people aren't these larger than live TV people, they are the people who make them up. They constantly colide with what society expects from them and suffer from it but most of them will never actually try to defy society, because there's always money and social acceptence to compete for.

[Jenni Lou]

It's just a really pretty show to start with. And the promo pics for season three just floored me. WOW.

I believe I read somewhere that they would be skipping the JFK assassination but I am not positive about that. I do recall reading that they didn't want the JFK incident to take away from the story. Maybe I am confusing this with what a reviewer or someone wrote though.

Peggy and Pee should be interesting. I am curious to see how he will deal with her now that he is revealed how he feels about her only to learn the shocking truth about a child they had together.

I hope Joan gets some great stuck to work with!

An I am sure Don will be getting himself into his fair share of trouble.

[Ameer]

I believe I read somewhere that they would be skipping the JFK assassination but I am not positive about that. I do recall reading that they didn't want the JFK incident to take away from the story. Maybe I am confusing this with what a reviewer or someone wrote though.

Peggy and Pee should be interesting. I am curious to see how he will deal with her now that he is revealed how he feels about her only to learn the shocking truth about a child they had together.

I hope Joan gets some great stuck to work with!

I hope they won't skip the JFK assassination. I was really looking forward to watching how the writers would deal with that. Oh, well.

I'm really excited to see what they're going to do with Peggy and Pete this season, too. Elizabeth Moss just keeps getting better and better, in my opinion. However, I'm more interested in seeing how things will be like for Don and Betty. I was half-hoping she wouldn't take him back but I knew that was bound to happen eventually. It's always satisfying to see the show depicting a realistic view of the social norms of the 60s.

Joan Holloway is probably my favorite female character on television right now. She is simply spectacular! Christina Hendricks just blew my mind in the season finale. Seeing her character become so helpless in the very same office where she yields so much power was heart-wrenchingly tragic.

I agree with you about the promo pics, Jenni. The cast is ridiculously stunning.

[Nina]

Wow Pete, that was one pathetic little happy dance you did there. It's a miracle, everytime you think he can't do something more dorky ... he finds something. And what was his wife wearing on her head. Their marriage is so incredible fake that it makes me laugh ... both know that they don't love eachother but the play the game no matter what.

I hoped Don would stop cheating, but I guess that this is not possible. And his real name is Dick because of his father's manpart? Wow, ackward.

And I guess that Vincent won't be Brennan's assistant since it looks like he won't leave Mad Men any time soon. Actually I think that Moneypenny (real name?) will be Joan's new boytoy.

[Ravynnia]

Most period shows try to do the big historical events through the reactions of the characters-- but inevitably, they get the time & the tone wrong, because there are too many layers of memory & feeling & controversy between lives as they were going on at the time & the present. 'Mad Men' gives us the manners & habits of a small slice of the subculture which did so much to determine the taste of the time; and we see the effects of the larger changes, with Betts' restrained self-suppression, with Don's double & triple identities, with Peggy's unideological personal & career changes. The show has an unexpected feel to it; the writers all seem to say "Let's forget what we know & ask what our CHARACTERS know." They stick by that.

[Jenni Lou]

I finally watched the first four eps of season three this past week. It's funny how once you start you can't wait to watch the next one.

That head guy from the England office is fantastic! The actor, I mean. He's been in a lot of things. Most recently I saw him on Fringe where he had a small recurring role. He's so different in this. I think he deserves an Emmy nod! Can't remember his name right now....

An interesting thing about this show, for me, is how all the actors fit so delicately into the era they are trying to capture. Sometimes you watch movies that take place in another time and you can just see how it is window dressing. That it's theatre. It all blends so fluidly and completely in this show. Everyone looks like they belong. It's incredible, really.

[Nina]

Does somebody else have the feeling that Pete is ahead of his time? He is a distaster with people and has no idea how to behave himself in the most cases, but his behavior towards Peggy getting an office or towards black people (last week with black face and this week with the guy in the elevator) is different from the others. And wasn't he a Kennedy supporter as well?

He was also right about the British guy being not clear about him and ken sharing the job. I know he behaved like a big baby (although the dead stare was brilliant) but he had a point. It's not the way you treat your employees.

[Nixennacht]

Does somebody else have the feeling that Pete is ahead of his time? He is a distaster with people and has no idea how to behave himself in the most cases, but his behavior towards Peggy getting an office or towards black people (last week with black face and this week with the guy in the elevator) is different from the others. And wasn't he a Kennedy supporter as well?

He was also right about the British guy being not clear about him and ken sharing the job. I know he behaved like a big baby (although the dead stare was brilliant) but he had a point. It's not the way you treat your employees.

Hm, Pete seems to be caught in a more conservative worldview than actually suits him (like most of the others). And this season it seems to be the topic that the new management and the clients are more backwards than is good for them, first with the Padeo add and now with this.

I wonder if Peggy is going to overthink the option she's been given. She's presented with so many blocks at Sterling & Cooper that it would be hard to blame her if she tried to get on elsewhere, though I think her loyalty to Don will eventually win over her ambition.

[Nina]

That last episode! Lois is really a walking failure, isn't she? It was gross, the bloodspray on the faces and walls. I would probably faint as well.

And Guy who can't be any longer from any help without his foot not because he can't do his job but because he can't play golf. And Mr. Fran the nanny returned, I already wondered if we would see him again.

Poor Sally, fraked out by the returning barbie. And how is it possible that two parents can't find a name that both suits them, you can't pick a name that the other hates.


Great episode and the title of it was brilliant.

And *yay* for the two Emmy awards, not a huge catch, but at least "Best Drama" is on board again this year.

[Nixennacht]

That last episode! Lois is really a walking failure, isn't she? It was gross, the bloodspray on the faces and walls. I would probably faint as well.

And Guy who can't be any longer from any help without his foot not because he can't do his job but because he can't play golf. And Mr. Fran the nanny returned, I already wondered if we would see him again.

Poor Sally, fraked out by the returning barbie. And how is it possible that two parents can't find a name that both suits them, you can't pick a name that the other hates.

Thought the episode was great too. Just for the way Pryce looked when they gave him the snake .
Also loved how awesome Joan was with taking care of the injured man. It's almost painful to watch how awesome she is and how she's tied herself to that horrible man. I loved the little piece between Don and her.

Sally really breaks my heart and Bets and Sally together are just...so sad. The scene where she gives her barbie, it's like the coldest bit of parenting I ever saw.

[Nina]

Why the coldest bit of parenting? To me it looked like Betty tried but failed in the execution of her plan but I've seen her much colder. Especially when she is talking to Bobby, poor kid.

[Nixennacht]

Why the coldest bit of parenting? To me it looked like Betty tried but failed in the execution of her plan but I've seen her much colder. Especially when she is talking to Bobby, poor kid.

Ok, coldest I've ever seen was over the top...it was just, it was so terribly ignorant. She could see that something was dead wrong but still didn't really talk to Sally or ask her what's up, she just assumed she knew what the problem was and that she could solve it with giving her stuff (also the scene reminded me of Momo, so maybe that added creepyness to it).

[Nina]

Well I guess that Don's lie really starts to crack. He is losing power at work, with the teacher and Betty also knows the truth. I guess that ignoring your past is not the greatest solution there is in the world.

But OMG, Betty knows. Poor Betty. Although I don't like how much the last episodes were about Betty and Don while others have almost no screentime.

But after Don's storyline, I expect that Peggy will be haunted by her choices as well. Maybe if Duck's new company buys Sterling Cooper? Or when her affair with him becomes public? I've the feeling that Pete kind of gave up, so he probably wouldn't do much. Talking about Pete... I thought he was doing better. Is he going to kind of rape the nanny of the neighbours. ugh!

And Sal is fired ("Your kind of people." Ugh Don, burn!) but Lois isn't? That's how you do it people!


and Roger's mother is fantastic; "Jane is my wife." "Oh, does Mona know?"

[Ameer]

The way Don fired Sal was really cold. I've never really liked Don's character much and have always rather begrudgingly tolerated him but this season he's bugging me endlessly. After the way he's treated Peggy and Sal this season, something bad had to happen. I'm glad Betty finally knows about his past. Am I the only one who thinks January Jones should be nominated for an Emmy next year? I think she's done a phenomenal job so far. The kind of repressed frustration that she portrays so masterfully with the necessary amount of subtlety is something that I truly cannot get enough of. It will be interesting to see how this season ends.

[Emmie]

I'm a fan! *joins the club*

After watching each episode, I go to Alan Sepinwall's blog to read his reviews. Most of the time, I agree with much of his interpretation. But one line in his review for last night's episode "The Gypsy and the Hobo" felt so completely wrong to me and how I'd interpreted the story:


Or, if not mature, then secure - as in, maybe he really does think Jane is The One, does love her enough to not cheat on her (as opposed to just being afraid of getting caught), and has genuinely been looking all his life for someone just as carefree as himself.

"This woman is important to me." - Roger

I think that quote says it all. Roger references Jane as an easy excuse to disentangle him from Annabelle's clutches, essentially hiding behind his marriage, but in other interactions, we see him lighting up at Joan's call, resurrecting his nickname "Joanie" for her, devoting his time and delighting in being able to help her. Just as she is "important to [him]", he's happy to know that she thinks of him and that he can be important to her. It's rare for Roger to feel needed and we see how much he's come to value being needed recently (Guy's appearance threatening to make him irrelevant was the nightmare vision of his future that reawakened his need for relevance).

He was talking about Joan being the love of his life, loved and lost, not Jane. I think the significance can be shown in the way Roger treats Annabelle in the first meeting, before Joan calls him asking for help, and then when he meets up with her again. When he set the dinner "meeting," he seemed eager to stroll down memory lane with Annabelle and perhaps have some fun. Yet after Joan, he acts caustic to Annabelle, resentful of the way she ended things. Before Joan's call, he was the carefree playboy looking for fun. After Joan, he'd leveled out to this moment of honesty with his emotions and his history with this old flame. Then you have the lines, "this woman is important to me," and that he likes being on Joan's mind. The setting of the late-night call is also special - after the failed dinner, does Roger go home to his wife who he loves so dearly? No, he goes to the office and works (works!), calling buddies to line up a job for Joanie.

When Roger uses Jane as an excuse to untangle himself from Annabelle (happily married, this girl is different, the newlywed stage) and you hear him say "this girl is different," does anyone honestly believe that he means Jane? Would anyone call Jane different? We've seen Roger telling people it's different this time, desperate to convince them and himself, but that's just an illusion he's clinging to because he so desperately wants to be happy. Roger's good at spinning lines too but we see through his humor and sense of irony that he's able to call a spade a spade, that he's very perceptive of the differences between reality and the face one presents to the world - he might say Jane is different, but he knows Joan is different. Just as we, the audience, know Joan is different, that she's special.

I think it's always been clear that Roger views Joan as "different," a cut above the rest, special because he never has been able to control her and when she defies him, that seems to only make him more fond and admiring of her. She sets the tune and he likes that, the way she plays the game and, in fact, makes it him play her game. I think his disappointment in her settling down and marrying the doctor was very much rooted in seeing her giving up the game, kowtowing to society's demand that a woman marry and settle down - he loved the way she defied convention, that she was her own person. It was seeing the quality he most admired in her tossed aside.

Roger/Jane/Joan/Annabelle seemed to also be paralleling Don/Betty/Suzanne/Anna. Both Roger and Don have hard-to-define emotional attachments to their wives that revolve around her being their ideal notion of a partner. Both men have women (Joan for Roger, Suzanne or Midge or other affairs Don has had) with whom they share more passionate encounters that reflect equality; these relationships are less about illusions of ideals than they are about people connecting and genuinely enjoying each other's company. Finally, both men have women in their pasts who've shaped who they are today (both Roger and Don have adopted personas, the Playboy vs. the Mountain King, covering who they are emotionally underneath, though of course Don's is the more pervasive illusion).

Annabelle was the birth of Playboy Roger, while Anna helped resurrect and solidify Don's borrowed identity (she gave him the divorce, her acknowledgment of him as Don removed the greatest obstacle to his facade). When both women are revealed, the men are forced into a place of honesty. Roger acknowledges the truth about his history with Annabelle, that she was never "the one" for him. Instead of reigniting their affair as any good playboy would do without a second thought, he devotes his time and energies to Joan who is "important to [him]," who needs his help and he likes being needed by her, more so than he likes being needed by Annabelle to rescue her company.

When Anna is revealed, her discovery forces the Betty/Don confrontation and the real man underneath the Don Draper facade comes to light. Both women helped build the facade and when the women behind the men are revealed, the facade topples like a house of cards. The reveal of Annabelle added another layer that brings Roger and Don closer together as brothers, mirrors of each other - and considering how similar they are in how they approach the world, it only makes the divide between them more layered.

One final thought. Is the title "The Gypsy and the Hobo" meant to only reference Don? Or could it also be about the facade that Roger sheds here - both gypsy and hobo connote the image of the wanderer, but gypsy also includes the idea of a freer type of love and sexuality. The wandering eye as well as the wandering spirit. That's something both Roger and Don share - affairs outside their marriage - and it's something both men reject in this episode when they drop their facades, instead returning to their homes. Interesting to note that for Roger, his "home" is the office of Sterling Cooper.

This show. My god, this show. The relationships are so complex and intertwining and reflective. Love love love.

And finally, this moment made me cheer out loud, "Yes yes yes!"

What did everyone else think of this episode? And does anyone want to join the Roger/Joan club with me? And I desperately need a Mad Men icon - anyone know of some good fan artists out there?