“I will not be a failure!” The entire point of advertising is to convince people that they want things, even if they don’t know why. This episode of Mad Men deals with all of its characters working towards their own desires, even when those desires are harmful. Don and Pete are both chasing after a […]
The words of man slowly descending into hell, juxtaposed with images of the beautiful beaches of Hawaii are how we welcomed back to the world of Mad Men. Don Draper is sitting on the beach with his beautiful wife, and has his face buried in Dante’s Inferno. Heavy reading for the sandy shores. It’s strange […]
Matthew Weiner said that this season of Mad Men was about the unhappiness at the center of contentment. The season finale, “Phantom,” dealt with this idea explicitly – making that subtext text by having not one, but two characters explain exactly how little any of our characters’ success means to them. Pete, in a heart […]
This week’s episode of Mad Men (both amusingly and aptly named “Dark Shadows”) was concerned with hunger. Don’s lack of hunger at work, a byproduct of the complacency of happiness, causes him to fall behind the other pieces of his creative team. So he attempts to turbo charge it, working on an idea for the […]
I picked a hell of a week to be too busy to write. Last week’s episode was one of my all time favorites, a roller coaster ride of surprising highs for our cast and a thoughtful, bittersweet ending that challenged the rest of the episode considerably. And I didn’t get to write about it. This […]
This week’s episode of Mad Men was kind of a bummer. A beautiful, poignant, heart wrenching bummer. After last week’s Lane and Pete apalooza, this week focused on Roger, Don and Peggy, in three unbroken segments that detailed the same twenty four hour period. We start with Peggy, all primed to deal with the dipshits […]
Holy shit that was a beautiful episode, a carefully orchestrated tragedy punctuated by bouts of the absurd that made me snort with laughter. This week’s Mad Men, “Signal 30,” focused on Lane, Pete and Ken, and the result is the best episode of the new season. Pete Campbell starts out Mad Men as a character […]
What makes a good man? What makes a bad one? And can a bad man become a good one? The latest episode of Mad Men, “Mystery Date,” tackles these questions head on. For four seasons we’ve watched our central characters struggle to wring happiness out of the lives they’ve chosen. By and large, these are […]