I have never been anything but totes honest with you. It's true I didn't understand at first but I know when I learned to believe in Hamm. It was that interview with Miss Piggy. He was funny and charming and was the only person who didn't try to get fresh with Miss Piggy. I ain't even playing with you.
I swear to you on the eyes of and the honor of House Bort.
Peggy Olsen is my hero. She accidentally crushed it with Belle Jolie and I'm just now watching the meeting where she introduces the Rejuvinator. She used her words and named the damned thing and I was all BOOM! HEADSHOTS!
Poor, poor, bort! Here I am playing ketchup and watching the show and trying to judiciously read this thrad so as to not be enspoiled! So I have to watch some episodes in a row and then read and then say YES OKAY YOU ARE RIGHT I SAW THAT AND I THOUGHT THINGS TOO. And it's terrible because I want to just poste and poast and post but I don't want to say the same things already because then you people will be BORING BORT WE BEEN THERE ALREADY.
Way back, if you can remember, when Connor was trying to blackmail Don into being his friend? I thought it interesting that Don's first instinct was to ditch everything and run. He'd been Mr. Draper for a very long time (though in a later episode I see that he'd been discovered before too) and had all these years as a shrewd business man and a successful family man but was going to throw it all away and try to run off with a practical stranger. He's so portrayed at this super cool ideal manly man and that's how he reacted. Maybe it's too much television paradigming in my head but that's not what I expected, and it was sort of refreshing.
Also about Don. His loyalty. Okay, most accurately, his business loyalty. Yeah, yeah, they write the show that way but it's interesting how time and again Don is always right but the Big Wigs still try to leap frog to better success. And as much as I can admire that I do have to remind myself that as loyal as he is to his professional relationships he's equally unfaithful to his wife and family. I really feel sorry for Betty. She tries so hard to be what society says she should be and that alone is killing her a day at a time.
And that segues into the brilliance - the disturbing to modern eyes brilliance - of the show. Every woman is a fascinating study in what the world was and how far it has come and also how far we still have to go towards equality. Each lady character could be a show all by herself but somehow they (the writers et al) wrap all of them into this one show. I cringe, I cry, I cheer for each of them. You can hoot and laugh all you want but it's like a serious take on 9 to 5.
BORT. YES. Betty is my favorite character on the show. I found myself a few times actually getting sort of mad when people said mean things about her. I also think that people sometimes misinterpret Betty's flat affect as bad acting, when I assume it's intentional. The role of the mandatory mid-century housewife was miserable and stifling, so she's depressed and unfulfilled and just sort of trudging through her life. Plus everyone, even her kids, treats her like shit, so I'd usually be rooting for or at least sympathetic to her when she'd say or do something mean or thoughtless. Because fuck those guys, anyway.
Plus I also came late to the show for much the same reason you did. I just kept seeing people talking about the costume and set design all the time, so I thought it was just some shallow soap opera storyline designed as a vehicle to showcase period clothing and decorating and stuff.
I watched it last night and I dug the hell out of it. Just hearing the theme music gave me butterflies. I forgot how much I loved the show.
Don Draper makes infidelity look soooo hot!
It was cool to see Sal almost start to get some. I hope he gets some for real this season.
I didn't even realize I had started the third season until I hovered over the thing so I could reference what episode I was on when I started yammering away.
And, dammit, Steve! Wouldn't you know you started talking about the things I was going to talk about! FREAKY.
All of y'all are already way past this so I'm not even going to bother respoiling things SO DEAL. The whole scene in the hallway with Bill Don and the flight attendant got right under my skin. I mean, he only just reconciled with Betty! WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS MAN. I mean, for reals, right? And as I am vicariously angry I was just agog at how easy he makes talking and etc to strangers look!
I get it, livius. I really really get it now, I think. On some level I only sort of understand, mostly on the intellectual level, why you like the actors you do and how the parts they play work for you. But now I really for reals get Hamm. All the way to my marrows, I get it. Not that I was unappreciative before. But now. From now on I'm disappointed when Jon Hamm isn't playing a character in that thing I like.
And now for some Sal action. The reason I was anxious to maken a post now was because of the flight to Baltimore/DC. I loved how Sal became Sam and was the greatest wingman of all time. I couldn't imagine that cock-blocking Connor doing it. Heck, even Don's buddy Cooper might not have made that switch so readily.
And then while I was thinking about Sal I remembered how my heart broke for him a few episodes earlier. You know, when that foreign guy came out and everyone was all lolomghomo? The incredible subtlety Bryan Batt is capable of is simply mind blowing. Like in the elevator (oops, back to S3 opener, sorry) when he forced himself not to look at the bell boy. And then they went and almost did it. And how I was cheering for not just Sal getting his penis touched, but that the show would go there.
Just. Ugh. This show, right? I want it in my veins.
My favorite quote from Mad Men was actually written by Frank O'Hara; 'Meditations in an Emergency' ...
"Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting and modern. The country is gray and brown and white and trees. Snows and skies of laughter are always diminishing. Less funny, not just darker. Not just gray. It may be the coldest day of the year. What does he think of that? I mean, what do I? And if I do, perhaps I am myself again."
I despoiled some things and I know he's not coming back. And it breaks my heart because he's the only dude character I liked.
I can't speak to the rest of what happens in season 3 because I haven't gotten that far yet - though I have unspoiled through that far. But oh. my. glob. I'll probly break my two episodes a week rule just to finish it. Just to see it and know what y'all talking about.
Fucking Mr Lucky Strikes. If I was a smoking man I'd quit just on account of that.
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
I just allowed myself to read this thread because I finally got to watch all my dvr'd episodes and the thread is just bort rehashing the lovely? This is not helping with my desire to start watching from the beginning via netflix.
I have watched the most recent season from beginning to end about 3 times just because it's sitting there on the DVR. I keep asking myself, why couldn't it have been a better season?
I was SO disappointed with this past season. I thought the quality of the writing went downhill - no subtlety, like in past seasons. It also felt like they were trying to pack a lot into one season, and they ended up cluttering it up with too many storylines.
I'm finishing up season five as I write this. I've accidentally read too far and know something I didn't want to know before it happened. And in addition to be shocked and angry now I am preparing to be sad.
There's been a lot of little things happening that I thought were cool (and also some things that were not cool) but I didn't want to interrupt my marathon to post about. I didn't even write any of these things down so I could at least give them a nod. And also because I knowed you people would have already hashed them out.
Pete Campbell. What a lecherous dickhole. I mean, it's bad enough that this guy has everything going for him. He's got a great job that doesn't demand every bit of his attention. He's got a darling wife who adores him for no reason I can see. And a little babby. But like the other dickholes at that company, he wants to stick his penis in other vaginas for no other reason than because he can.
Little Sally Draper. O. M. G. Is she not just the greatest? My little heart broke just a little when she caught what's-his-name getting a polish by Megan's mum. In addition to all the other little heartbreaks she's had to deal with, right? Oh but then! THEN, omg, after Betty tried to wedge out the new Mrs Draper, she pulls out that perfect get-back. If it were possible, she should totally hang that on her wall forever.
I haven't yet gotten to the episode about that thing that I didn't want to know about yet, but consider me saddened by its happening. But. The last guy in that company that I thought was up to shenanigans was completely assassinated this season. My man Layne Pryce didn't have a great time of it all, all things considered, and then he tries to have affairs and is doing illegal things with money and I was unhappy about it. (I think a lot of characters were being written as more venal than they were in previous seasons.)
But you know what, all the good and bad and entertaining, you know I gots to come back to mother fucking Campbell. That slimy mother fucking piece of shit deserves to be at the top of every cock punching list there is. You all know why and I don't even know if I can talk about it. I can't believe he discussed it with anyone, let alone her without the partners and then the partners without her. That kind of shit makes me want to burn down whole goddamn buildings.
Just.
Ugh.
Right?
(And as Season 5 comes to a close, now I have to wait for who knows how long until Season 6 is available for me! )
I finally watched all of it that my dvr saved. I don't know what I think about it. I wanted better for most of them. Were the 70's that much of a depressing let down in real life? Here's what you get?
Um, yes, yes they were. I'm too young to remember the bit of the Sixties for which I was alive, but I remember the Seventies and they SUCKED. From the boring adult show pre-empting all the good TV that was Watergate to my seven-year-old mind, through the horror that was Abba and Grease and the general malaise of the Carter years, the Seventies sucked hard. And, my gods, look at the fashions and decor if you dare!
Hey, why don't we have an avocado smiley so I can complain about appliance colors?
__________________
"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette