Mad Men Season 4

I rewatched Season 3 this week and saw the second half of "The Gypsy and the Hobo" and "Shut the Door, Have a Seat" (the last episode of the season) twice. Amazing acting by everyone, especially Jon Hamm. I don't want to be too spoiler-y, but when he's Dick Whitman in "The Gypsy..." it's an amazing transformation.

The last line of that episode is terrific: Who are you supposed to be?

 

Thought that last line was way too heavy handed.

 

Hamm joked on a podcast that he made more $$$ guesting on 30 Rock than he did for the first three seasons of Mad Men. I wonder what he's getting now. AMC doesn't have a ton of money to throw around.

 

Interesting column by the Star's Geoff Pevere on Mad Men & The Sixties

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/television/article/839568--mad-men-world-makes-the-60s-feel-new

 

Read somewhere the Progressive spokesperson played on Mad Men. Anyone remember her?

 

She was one of the telephone operators in Season 1.

 

I LOVE that ending. As good as it could be, just great writing.

My daughter is busy watching all of the previous three seasons so she can pick up the show when it starts. There's a lot of her kind out there. Me, I picked up season 3 early, and only really got the whole background and Dick Whitman and such on these marathons AMC has been running Monday nights.

This will be a good season to pick up, kind of a new start kind of thing, although there will obviously be things that it would help to know.

 

Oh, an aside: Don obviously is no role model. But Don, as a person being capable of great things and also absolutely terrible things and horrible judgment? I've had a lot of people like that in my life including, at least on the edges at the worst of times, me. So I've certainly understood the concept of Don.

 

A very cool and interesting article...

 

Holy crap.

One thing you can't say is they were afraid to change the formula of the show.


This new season is like a shock to the system. Just them walking down the aisles of that cubicle-laden building with bright lights and younger co-workers was jarring.

Lane Price and Bert Cooper won't last long in this new venture. They seem so out of place in this shiny, bright 1964. Even Roger Sterling and his three-piece suit look hopelessly demode.

I need some time to digest this. It's a completely different show.

All I know at this point is that it's bold.

 

I thought it was just kind of easing along setting everything up -- the new Peggy! -- and then Don kicked the swimwear guys out of his office, and now he's going to tell the "real story" to the Wall Street Journal, and oh, boy, for next week.

The hooker for Thanksgiving was -- what, sad? Pathetic? Don?

This whole Henry-Bets thing -- I can't decide what to make of it. I thought for a while they'd make it that she had "needs" and he wasn't taking care of them, but then they had sex in the garage.

My bizarre thought, and maybe Weiner actually wanted me to think it (I don't know about the rest of you): Don came home, house was dark, they weren't on time. They had gotten into their car, and she had told him the garage door was closed when Henry started to take off his clothes. What if he had actually started the car, with the garage closed.

Seriously, I thought that.

Carry on.

 

Turns out Betty's a horrible person even when she's not reacting to Don's infidelity. January Jones is hot and all, but her character is one of the least-likable in television history.

When they said the reporter lost his leg in Korea, I figured he was going to dig up the real story of Don/Dick's past. But then Don got burned by not revealing enough in the Ad Age profile. Interesting.

And who says Mad Men has no connection to sports? Don was clearly watching an Ivy League football game (Princeton-Cornell?) at one point. (I guess Ivy League football was legitimate television programming in 1964).

But anyway, I don't see how they get out of the mid-to-late 60s without Joe Namath coming up as a topic. He was such an advertising/marketing phenomenon that they've got to touch on Broadway Joe, don't they?