Obviously this is you right now in light of such news, but calm it down, Sally Draper. Simply put, the decision to bring back Irresponsible Mad Men Recaps has come on the heels of a few pressing issues I’ve been meaning to address:
Sure, I had a few bones to pick with the last season of Lost, never mind the series finale I couldn’tshut up aboutbefore it aired (because of all the excitement) and couldn’t much remember afterward (because of all the gin and tonics–just kidding! It was on account of the rage strokes). I also recognize I’m still tragically behind on this past season’s irresponsible Mad Men recaps, so perhaps this comes as something of a blog beat FAIL, but no matter. The internet has blessed us with video where Lost‘s Hurley and Mad Men‘s Don Draper attempt to carry on a conversation with their respective verbal tics. As a video smash-up, it’s pretty much what you’d expect (amusing, but in a very interweb sort of way), which is precisely why it’s totally worth your while:
Oh man, y’all. If there’s one thing that’s great about summer Fridays at my place of work, it’s that I get every other Friday off of work. If there’s one thing that’s not the new hotness, however, it’s that putting in the extra hours to get those precious Fridays off has made me a raggedy-ass bitch when it comes to tending to this particular corner of the interwebs. Blog productivity has shamelessly fallen to the wayside, egregious errors have been made, and I still haven’t gotten around to discussing the eagerly anticipated/probable train wreck that is Burlesque. Sure, this little blog may not buy my bacon and eggs, but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel obliged to those of you out there who so kindly indulge my crazy. Anyways, apologies are like the Lost series finale (obligatory, yet wholly unfulfilling), so point being: IT’S TIME TO BUST SOME BLOG ASS AND START GETTING CAUGHT UP ON EVERYTHING. (That’s my motivational speaker voice.)
In the mean time, though, let’s all ponder the following important question:
I remain of the opinion that there’s no such thing as being too sexistMad Men strives to create an accurate–not revisionist–portrait of the 1960s, and leveling charges of sexism at Mad Men confuses the sexual and gender politics of the era with those of the show itself. Mad Men‘s “sexism” is in fact a meta-commentary on sexism, if you will, but that’s just my interpretation. That being said, let’s go watch a short video that attempts to get to heart of the matter:
Well well well, we finally have a recap for “Public Relations” nearly a week after the fourth season of Mad Men premiered? Looks like somebody has certainly been slacking off as of late, and I’m not talking about Don Draper:
Okay, maybe just a little, but the man’s probably been day drinking, so give him some slack. I, on the other hand, have no excuse save for the fact that irresponsible recapping–much like love or hating on sweet potato casserole–means never having to say you’re sorry.
Anyways, the fourth season of Mad Men premiered this past Sunday, which means a whole lot of this was happening, particularly when this scene happened:
Okay, I lied. When Don had The Luckiest Streetwalker in the World (that’s my name for her because that’s what she is) over for a little Thanksgiving stuffing and face slapping, my brain stopped exploding because I was too busy with all the rage strokes. Seriously, someone in Mad Men gets paid to have sex with Don Draper AND slap him across the face, even though anybody in their right mind (or naughty bits) would do that for free? There’s only one acceptable response in situations like this:
So in case you’ve been under some sad, sad rock where the gentle glow of quality television program does not shine, Mad Men‘s fourth season fast approaches, by which I mean why the f*ck isn’t it July 25th already? Seriously.
Anyways, should your sad, sad rock happened to be buried under a boulder where the interwebs dare not tread, you might not have heard about how AMC has a Mad Men avatar generator over at MadMenYourself.com as part of their online marketing campaign. Well, they do, and it’s brilliant, and now Mad Men Yourself has been updated in anticipation of the fourth season, so you know what that means: it’s time to Mad Men Yourself all over again! Everybody’s doing it, and by everybody, I mean me:
See, last season’s Mad Men Yourself me was all about sartorial simplicity (cardigans and ties) and shameless alcoholism (martinis…EVERYWHERE), but a new season of Mad Men demands a new Mad Men me (and you!), so I decided The Look for season 4 is all about “business pizazz!” (plaid jackets and briefcases) and “slightly more conspicuous alcoholic” (oh, Bloody Mary, the drink that’s never too early to drink and can always just be “tomato juice, but fancy” to your coworkers). My Look also says “Someone’s taken their love of Joan Holloway’s accordion playing one step too far,” but this isn’t a rip-off of a tagline for post-modern slasher, so let’s go see what sort of zany moments from Season Three your Mad Men Yourself you can get yourself into:
I mean, I could try and prattle on about the way the washed-out New York City backdrop recalls the striking minimalism of Mad Men‘s glorious opening credits, but I’m too distracted by Don Draper pensively staring out the window (which, like Don Draper doing absolutely anything, is sexual catnip) and the fact that the fourth season premiere is so close (JULY 25TH!), so let’s just leave it with the fact that this poster has my SQUEE!s of anticipation rapidly approaching SQUEE!CON 1 (Catastrophic Ear Bleeds Imminent).
Besides, I’m still mourning over the recent retirement of Amanda Bynes, actress extraordinaire. Now we’ll never find out what zany hijinks Daphne Reynolds gets herself into in What a Girl Wants 2: Bangers-and-Mash Boogaloo, so LET ME WEEP IN PEACE!
Oh, and in tangentially-related-to-this-poster Nobody Puts Baby in a Horner news, irresponsible recaps will most certainly be returning for the fourth season of Mad Men, so rejoice! Now in case you’re uninitiated and in need of knowing what sort of half-crazed, frequently camp beast you’re in for (or you’re just in the mood for a trip down a particularly batshit stretch of Mad Men memory lane), I’ve collected the entirety of the third season’s recaps (along with their corresponding episodes) after the jump:
Seriously, when you’re as starved for some good Mad Men news as I am–particularly in light of Mattthew Weiner’s claims that the next season will probably be no homo and that Mad Men will end after its sixth season–I’m pretty sure this news is my personal enthusiasm equivalent of finding out about free root beer floats at Sonic:
Seeing how I love Mad Men almost as much as I abhor waiting for things, I’m naturally torn by these on-set photos taken during the filming of the fourth season. Sure, it’s assuring to know that (SPOILER ALERT!) Jon Hamm’s Don Draper is still capable of setting your genitals to stunned by wearing a two-piece suit:
But the problem comes in the fact that Jon Hamm doesn’t require a suit to start a five-alarm fire in your pants. Seriously, you can stick him in a white tee at a craft services table and that won’t stop me from losing all sense of focus and wishing I was coming home to a Duncan Hines Brownie Husband. For example:
Let’s just start off by addressing the moment I’m sure we’ve all been buzzing about from last night’s season finale of Mad Men:
That tea set is gorgeous, and those scones look scrumptious. If you’re going to let a person know that you’re selling their company after barely a year of ownership, you damn well do it with fine china and tasty pastries. That’s not good business, y’all. That’s just good manners.
Anyways, in not-as-exciting-as-scones developments, Sterling and Cooper and Draper voted to start a new ad agency, and Lane Pryce is coming along as well:
Seriously, watching the four of them scramble to get everything lined up for Puttnam, Powell, and Lowe was nearly as delicious as I imagine those scones to be. Pete in his bathrobe negotiating his role in the new firm and getting Don to acknowledge his talents? Delightful, and only surpassed by Don’s plea to get Peggy on board as well. But obviously the best part about the forming of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is the fact that–by episodes end–nearly everything I love in this show is all under one roof:
While much of this season, from the utter shock of the John Deere accident to the abject horror of Peggy taking a roll in the hay with Duck Phillips, much of this season of Mad Men has been one surprise after the next; however, one thing that had been foreshadowed from the moment we saw Margaret Sterling’s wedding invitation flash across the screen was John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Well, it finally happened in this past week’s episode:
While my irresponsible blogging instincts have me inclined to skip all the way past all of this quagmire of historical seriousness and get straight to the matching shoes and dress Trudy was going to wear to Margaret’s wedding before Pete decided he was kaput with Sterling Cooper (seriously, that blue was fabu!), I think the above image really sums up what this past week’s episode was actually about, which was watching television.
Seriously, if we weren’t actually watching archival news footage reporting on JFK’s assassination and the subsequent murder of Lee Harvey Oswald this past, we were likely watching someone watching news coverage. While Don assured his kids that everything would remain the same, and Joan assured Roger that the world was still turning as usual, the near omnipresence of the television in this past week’s episode served as a reminder of how things really were changing in the 1960s, and how integral a part television (and particular televised news) would play in this cultural shift that has led to our current era of media oversaturation.
There’s something so antiquated yet prescient about being reminded of a time where news didn’t travel by Facebook or 24-hour news network. Added to that, seeing the phones at Sterling Cooper go dead from the overload was comically surreal in that it was like seeing 1960s version of Twitter go down, but nobody turned to Western Union telegrams to vent their frustration.
