Mad Men

[crlygrl]

Season 2 starts tonight and I'm excited. I hear they fast-forwarded the plot into two years into the future.

I seem to remember that some other ASTers liked this too, so I thought I'd start a thread.

Also, I have a girl crush on Christina Hendricks:

[gigglechick]

i love this show. hadn't seen it, then 2 weeks ago watched all the episodes On Demand.

addicted.

[Itslikeimsayin]

Is it too much to ask for at least one minor story arc to be completed in an episode? I feel like absolutely nothing happened in this episode.

[Jouster]

Still great.

ILIS - it was the premiere episode. I'm not sure what the problem is. Unless you're asking about arcs from season one. Also, the photocopier "arc" was resolved (hey, you said minor).

[nadsat droog]

The new episode felt very stylized compared to last season, and I liked it a lot. The montages were really cool, especially the opening with "Let's Twist Again". I think a lot happened in this episode without happening at all. Don Draper, although seemingly still on top of his game, is beginning to lose his luster because of his unwillingness to acknowledged the American youth movement. It didn't really point us down one direction, but I think it sets us up for a season that focuses on change as a whole.

[crlygrl]

And, Betty is gonna get saucy with a cute older mechanic.

Or at least it seems so...

I'm also looking forward to Pete's impending breakdown.

[Babychoby]

I love this show! I'm so excited it's back. I haven't watched the new episodes yet cuz my future mother in law is in town and only watches PBS and home improvement shows and says that rock and roll music gives her heart palpitations. My mother on the the other hand had me smoke my first joint (in utero) at a Jimmy Hendricks concert. They would NOT have gotten along I think.

[Bucky_Sinister]

I love this show! I'm so excited it's back. I haven't watched the new episodes yet cuz my future mother in law is in town and only watches PBS and home improvement shows and says that rock and roll music gives her heart palpitations. My mother on the the other hand had me smoke my first joint (in utero) at a Jimmy Hendricks concert. They would NOT have gotten along I think.

Hendrix.

How much time elapsed between the seasons? It didn't look like two years. And when they were talking about Peggy, it seemed it hadn't been that long.

Also, is the Frank O'Hara poem he quoted at the end of the episode available online? I don't remember enough of it right now to search for it. I know it's from Meditations in an Emergency, but that's about it.

[Jouster]

15 months.

I couldn't find the poem online, but I know it's the last one in the book and it's entitled "Mayakovsky."

[angryrobot]

I hope they know what they are doing. I would have liked to see at least one more season of 50's - everybody knows their place - America, I found it fascinating. I don't think I'm ready for this show to go all counter-culture on me. In my opinion that's the part of the sixties that has been done to death. Hopefully the producers will find a fresh, unique angle to portray but this is well-worn territory and they better be going there for the right reasons - not just to get a larger audience.

[crlygrl]

I hope they know what they are doing. I would have liked to see at least one more season of 50's - everybody knows their place - America, I found it fascinating. I don't think I'm ready for this show to go all counter-culture on me. In my opinion that's the part of the sixties that has been done to death. Hopefully the producers will find a fresh, unique angle to portray but this is well-worn territory and they better be going there for the right reasons - not just to get a larger audience.

I dunno. Did you watch the episode last night? I thought it was done well...

[isoS]

I think the fresh, unique angle will be showing the counter-culture movement from the perspective of corporate old schoolers and their suburban families, of which Draper is a card-carrying member. That's what you never see in the cliché-ridden '60s movies and TV shows: beyond the love-ins and protests, what we think of as conservative '50s America survived in boardrooms and subdivisions nation-wide. (Actually, for all its sentimentality, "The Wonder Years" did a decent job of showing how the '60s was not all long hair and bell-bottoms.) While he may be wrestling with deep-seeded conformist angst and fighting the instinct towards self-discovery, I don't expect Don to suddenly be wearing tie-dye and running through Central Park singing "Age of Aquarius" any time soon.

And to its credit, this show has never been about only one thing. I expect "youth movement vs. the status quo" will be one thread among many running through the series. In a broader sense, the show is about identity in America: how it's defined (by job, by marriage, by lifestyle), how its rules are constantly changing, and yet in many ways immutable, and how it can haunt those who seek to manipulate it.

[waxpop]

Loved the first season and the new episode. I'm excited to see Betty coming into her own, even if that means sexually taunting a mechanic.

Also, I found this via Videogum today.

The Top 10 Un-Pc Moments On Mad Men

[Jouster]

Mad Men doubled its season one average viewership last night

[littlegirltree]

Does anyone have any thoughts on the fact that Dick was significantly younger than Don? In the flashbacks it looks as though Don might be a good 10 years older than Dick. So when Dick took over Don's place, he suddenly had to live his life as a man 10 years his senior, right? I wonder if the issue of a young man trapped in an older man's life will end up factoring into Dick/Don's storyline...

[Bucky_Sinister]

Mad Men doubled its season one average viewership last night

Thanks for the O'Hara tip, Jouster.

I hadn't watched Mad Men until it hit On Demand. I like watching shows from the first episode in order. So if I hear about a show midseason, I wait for the DVD or the On Demand to tune in.

I think that Comcast (and likely other services) running the full season on On Demand attributed to the doubling in ratings. It allowed us Mad-Men-Come-Latelys to catch up with the rest of the crowd.

There are many things about this show I loved. But one of the things that really impressed me was the Pete Campbell character. I started off hating him, not as a person, but as a shallow plot device type character. Then they filled him out. There were reasons to not like his character as a person, but also reasons to sympathize.

After that, I started to see that in a lot of characters. They were filled out with flaws and good attributes, character defects and hidden strengths. I think this is what hooked me on the show. No one's all good or all bad, or beyond "rooting for" or "rooting against." It's what has hooked me in the past in shows like The Wire, The Shield, The Sopranos, and so forth.

[isoS]

No one's all good or all bad, or beyond "rooting for" or "rooting against."

Except Peggy. She's allll good.

(that wasn't meant to sound creepy)

[nathansmart]

so, do we think she got an abortion or what?

[crlygrl]

so, do we think she got an abortion or what?

She had a kid in the last episode of season 1. It seems she didn't know she was pregnant...

[nathansmart]

oh wait
that's right - I forgot that she had the kid already..

last season is a blur for me...