Important Things to Pontificate While We Try and Play Catch-Up: Is Mad Men Too Sexist? August 9, 2010

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 sexist Mad 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:

A New Season of Mad Men Means a New Mad Men Yourself You! July 7, 2010

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:

This Week in Irresponsible Mad Men Recaps: Sometimes We Just Want to Break Free November 9, 2009

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:

It’s a MotherTrucker to Irresponsibly Recap Mad Men in the Face of Historic Tragedy November 3, 2009

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.

This Week in Irresponsible (and Timely) Mad Men Recaps: Once Upon a Time, When We All Loved Doggy Chow October 31, 2009

My goodness.  Has it really been nearly a week since this past week’s Mad Men?  Shitfire, y’all, it really has been!  And even though the interwebs have already had a week to give us thoroughly considered and Does that mean this week’s Mad Men won’t be recapped?  Absolutely not!  But does that mean this week’s recap is going to make like a Talking Heads’ concert film and stop making sense?  You’d best believe it!

First things first, serious talk and schadenfreude :

I mean, I hate to sound like an unsympathetic monster, but there was something waaay too satisfying having to watch her walk back home after spending half an evening hunched down in the passenger’s seat of Don’s car.  Seriously, I’d about had enough watching Don and Suzanne wreak havoc on my eyeballs plan their romantic getaway vacation this episode, but fortunately Betty and the kids came back early from their trip to Grandpa Eugene’s house, which brings us to the serious talk:

It’s Times Like This That I Question My Commitment to Sparkle Mad Men Motion October 14, 2009

Oh thank goodness!  A video recap of this past week’s episode of Mad Men that spares me the emotional agony of having to really go into detail with this episode:

It’s not as though this past week’s episode was bad.  Au contraire!  This past week’s episode was quite exceptional.  There were little pleasures to be had, like how Pete Campbell spent the entire scene where Sal was filming the Lucky Strike commercial histrionically coughing up his lungs after some of the Lucky Strike fellows convinced him to try a cigarette.  It may not be this:

But then again, what is?  That’ll do, Pete.  That’ll do.

Then there’s Conrad Hilton, and he is one fantastically crazy old man!  When he’s not thinking of his hotels as missions bringing American values to Godless nations or have a depressive episode, he’s getting ornery over saying that he wants the moon and not literally getting the Moon in his ads.  Damn, y’all, looks like somebody needs his gilded Depends changed, ASAP!

Also, I think it’s safe to say that AMC needs to start making webisodes of Betty Draper writing letters that are set to montages of her doing things in the Draper household.  It was like The Lake House, except without time travel and ugly turtleneck sweaters and general awfulness.  So really it was nothing like The Lake House.  I just enjoy referencing that movie because it was so ridiculous.  And Sandra Bullock’s turtleneck sweater was so ugly.  

The Mad Men Recap That’s All About That One Scene in Italy October 5, 2009

A responsible recap for this past week’s episode of Mad Men would go into more detail about all the developments in the plot.  After all, this episode found Pete Campbell home alone while Trudy vacationed with her family, and so he naturally had to take his shirt off in celebration:

Looking good, Pete Campbell.  Sadly, all this free time left him at first helping (how kind!) and then forcing his lovin’ (how gross!) on  his neighbor’s German nanny.  Sure, he’s wormy and pathetic, but I still delight in his ways, but this was a sad new low.

There was also that kiss between Betty and silver fox politico Henry Francis, which was certainly high on the list of Benjamin’s Giddily Anticipated Mad Men Plot Developments.  Then Betty and Don went to Rome to visit Conrad Hilton’s hotel.  Oh, and Sally hit Bobby because she’s a lesbian because Bobby teased her for kissing a neighborhood boy.

Yes, responsible recaps would expand upon such significant plots and use them as opportunities to wax poetic/analytic/philosophic.  This is not that sort of recap, though, and so I give you this video to make sure I didn’t miss any of the important details:

Mad Men Brings the Sexual Intrigue/Grossness. Oh, and Let’s Not Forget the Chaise Lounges. October 1, 2009

I think the best way to start this week’s (much belated) Mad Men recap is by appreciating the perfect perfection of this still:

Huzzah.  Yes, today’s moment of embarrassment comes as a result of Don make the smart decision of hopping in his car with a tumbler full of whiskey, picking up two seemingly innocent ne’er-do-wells, pops a couple phenobarbitols, has a hallucination of his awesomely white-trash father:

And then the two kids beat up Don senseless and take his money.  Given his self-destructive recklessnes, Don seems to be an ad man on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  Perhaps I should muster up some sympathy, but instead I’ll just relish how–as a single image decontextualized from the narrative itself–the Don Draper post-face-plant picture is pure comedy gold.  GOLD!

But it was just Don making bad decisions this episode.  Oh no no no.  Peggy was in the bad decision business as well:

The Mad Men Super-Gigantic, Three-for-One Recapapalooza September 22, 2009

Oh man, y’all.  I get a little bit tardy (for the party) with keeping my blog promise, and then Sunday night’s episode happened, which was the usual Mad Men greatness.  Until the end, which was easily the ballsiest (and most utterly insane) television Mad Men has put forth thus far.  I’m tempted to prematurely insist that this episode was a game changer for the show, but I’m getting way ahead of myself.

Before we talk about the crazy, let’s go quickly recap the highs and lows of the past three episodes.  A blog promise is a promise, after all, which means we have to discuss things like jai alai, the sport that Regina George would have a few choice words for if she worked at Sterling Cooper:

Maybe it’s the fact that any discussion of sports is inherently a discussion I don’t care about, or maybe it’s just that choosing such an obscure sport felt like an incredibly forced way of depicting Horace as spoiled to the point of delusion, but I was not having the jai alai plot.

Fortunately, when Mad Men tries to get all sporty and butch on me, they give us Sal talking about his vision for the Patio commercial:

Sal gets so excited about Ann-Margret that he starts camping about his bedroom.  Kitty makes a sad-face that is totally heartbreaking.  What’s not to adore about this scene? Oh, that’s right: NOTHING!

Also, behold what happens when Pepsi’s bad-idea ad baby shimmies and shakes its way out of the womb:

The Mad Men Recap Where the Internet Threatens to Collapse in on Itself August 31, 2009

As per usual, last night’s Mad Men was par spectacular.  Certain things, like Betty and Don’s ever tumultuous relationship, remained the same.  For example, Dan solves his distaste for Roger Sterling’s blackface performance by making himself an Old Fashioned and cryptically discussing his past with a bartender.  Meanwhile, a silverfox by the name of Henry Francis flirts with Betty at Roger Sterling’s Derby Day party; naturally, she does the only the only polite thing to do if you’re a married, pregnant, and fending off advances from another man: Shoot him the ol’ fuck-me eyes.  That’s just proper social decorum when you think about it, and Joan would probably remind us that Emily Post says so.    They fight when Betty realizes Jane drunkenly reveals that she knew about Betty and Don’s split, Roger gets called out by Don for being a tackyass who flaunts his embarrassing marriage, then Betty and Don hug.  With all that drama, it’s no wonder that Sally turning into a thieving lesbian.

Fortunately Trudy Campbell continued her wearing-the-best-hats streak, and then she and Pete did the Charleston:

My goodness how a dancing Pete Campbell GIF can make everything better.  Right?  Right.

We also discovered that nothing changes the uncomfortable conversation of screwing up a surgery like Joan playing the accordion.  Really, it was amazing, and just another reason to remind us that she’s the World’s Second Greatest Joan.  Her husband is the undeniably the worst, and it’s quite heartbreaking to see her trapped in a marriage that amounts to little more than a case of Stockholm Syndrome that substitutes marital “obligation” for sympathy, but she seems like the character most primed to benefit from The Feminine Mystique (which we all know came out in 1963), so I optimistically suspect that this situation will eventually turn around.  I mean, seriously: