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I Got You Babe.

Posted by August Bravo & Marco Sparks on

There’s no such thing as fresh starts because lives are always going on, or is there? Or are they? I don’t know, but I do know that you can always go home again, as long as your ex-wife hasn’t sold it, because it’s where the heart is (and perhaps where the head is not). That and maybe more as we talk about last night’s “Tomorrowland,” the season finale of Mad Men…

August Bravo: No matter what we thought, well, maybe a little, or what we thought the writers might have thought, this episode, and season for that matter, was about Don Draper, or as some know him, Dick. Lives, businesses, relationships, friendships, and all those other ships we thought were sinking, didn’t. Like Marco told me earlier, this finale wasn’t as upbeat as last season’s. It showed slim promise and some possibilities, but didn’t leave you thinking, “What the fuck is going to happen next?”

Marco: Well, I’d definitely say it leaves you wondering what happens next, but more so than usual, I think you can guess what’s going to happen next and you’re worried that it may not be so great for the characters. Don, especially.

August: Don’s somewhat “redemption” was almost completely omitted from this episode making everyone believe that crises was averted or that it may play a role in his probably inevitable divorce with Megan. Is it Megan?

Marco: “Megan… out there?” as Roger puts it so perfectly. As Joan says, Don’s grinning like an idiot, as if he’s the first schmuck on Madison Avenue/in professional New York/the world to marry his secretary, but having Roger be surprised adds a very special symmetry, especially since Don’s pulling a Roger there, and it’s kind of weird.

Can you imagine the Don Draper version of Sterling’s Gold?

August: The somewhat reference that the rest of the cast ACTUALLY exists was finding out, which we thought we knew, but thought it might be too obvious, but I guess wasn’t, was that…

…Joan is in fact still pregnant.

Marco: I love that Mad Men is such a unique show that amongst it’s many other wonderful qualities, still has it’s own rhythms and ways of going about the rules of storytelling, counter to other popular ideas about narrative. There is a certain pattern you can expect from each season, we’ve finally learned, isn’t there?

It’s usually: The season starts with some intriguing signs of where the characters have landed since the previous season. Intriguing ideas and/or questions are brought up. Should they actually answer those questions, it’ll be in a relatively vague though still meaningful way. That question, which literally started off this season was: Who the fuck is Don Draper? We’ve gotten a multi-faceted answer to that, certainly.

From there, certain problems and dramatic conflicts will arise around mid-season. They’ll seem massive – Oh no, the government is about to discover that Don Draper is a liar and a deserter! – but will fizzle quickly, leaving you curious as to their placement at all. Certain things will pop up, which will make you suspect where the story is going – did Joan actually not get that abortion? – but you’ll think, “No, that’s far too obvious. They won’t go there.” They will, friends. Then, whatever the endgame of the season is, it won’t appear until the last two or three episodes and it will be an all consuming fire.

August: Except for Megan. That carrot was dangled in front of us and we’ve just been waiting for Don to take bite after bite after bite.

Marco: True. It’s funny how we believe certain things from this show. When Dr. Faye said to Don that he’s the kind of guy that would be married again within the year, I think we all believed that.

Though, of course, I don’t think I stand alone when I say that we hoped that it would be Dr. Faye that we hoped Don would end up with, or that she’d be the kind of partner he’d strive to find happiness with. The fact that she’s a feminist and someone who has pushed Don to accept himself, and possibly integrate his two personas as it were, didn’t hurt. She’s helped his business, helped his mind, and helped his soul, as it were, yet there’s certain things she couldn’t provide Don that seemed to really make him look elsewhere.

August: She couldn’t be a caregiver to his children while he was off doing whatever he wanted to. She’s the anti-Betty.

Marco: That and she couldn’t worship him the way Megan seemingly can. Plus, I think that as much as Don wants to be able to stop hiding and stop running from the spectre of Dick Whitman, a part of him enjoys the lies that come with the running and hiding. Don Draper is the greatest product he’s ever advertised, and with Megan, he can find a fresh start at that.

August: But Henry Francis says there are no fresh starts!

Marco: I can’t believe that Henry Francis has lingered this whole season.

Sadly, we’ve really dropped the ball this season, August and I, because there’s so much we could say about this episode, so much that needs to be said, but it all ties into this past season and that’s a dialogue that I’m incredibly sad that we haven’t had here at Counterforce. On behalf of us and directed at the three people who actually reads these Mad Men posts from us, I apologize. I had some shit going on and August didn’t have cable. And refused to buy the episodes on itunes. And couldn’t figure out megavideo.

from here.

August: You just knew where it was all going once Stephanie handed Don that engagement ring from the real Don Draper.

Marco: Oh, seriously. Chekhov might as well have come out to California with Don and the kids and fired that ring out of a gun right at Megan.

It’s funny that I posted this picture from Videogum the other day…

…and sadly it came so true, in a lot of ways, since we’re speaking of Megan and Dr. Faye and Sally and… Well, have we mentioned Sally yet? Cause if we haven’t, we should be talking about Sally this season, right?

August: We haven’t mentioned her yet.

from here.

Marco: Sally! I believe I kept mentioning in our conversations about the show last year how much I liked Sally’s character, how interesting I thought her storylines were, and I feel like that’s only been compounded on more wonderfully this season. Bobby’s still kind of useless, but I’m glad that Sally has really stepped forward and is becoming a real person, even at such a young age, though, again, it’ll be interesting to watch her grow into herself and who she’s going to be while still being the child of Don and Betty Draper.

Anyway, so that once picture: Sally telling Dr. Faye that she’s fired. Ha ha, funny. But kind of eerily prescient in a way, considering that episode, “The Beautiful Girls,” when I know that a lot of people read that one scene there, Benjamin Light included, as Sally kind of picking Megan out of the rest of the “beautiful girls” that surround her father. And maybe Don picked up on that.

I mean, we knew Don wanted to fuck Megan. That notion was exploding louder than bombs for a handful of episodes before it happened, but this picture from Videogum…

…is kind of funny for how very accurate it had become.

August: I can’t write too much about this episode because in my head I’m still processing how to feel about it all. The bit I particularly enjoyed the most was Don telling Peggy that Megan(??) looked up to her, and had the same sort of spark, and Peggy being completely jealous. Maybe Peggy will be wife number 3 (or is it number 4??) Her childlike jealousy really made this episode. To see Don slowly turning into Roger (maaaaybe), or to see the evolution of Betty, and I guess Peggy’s, unhappiness/jealousy, or maybe Megan’s (yes, it is Megan) slow transition into the life of being Mrs. Draper/Whitman will be the most interesting thing to watch next season.

Marco: I don’t trust Megan. Well, no, that’s not true. But she’s very manipulative. And Jessica Paré is, I think, very good at playing that so subtly. Megan’s incredibly smart, but dumb and silly in all those ways that a 25 year old would seem or should see to a 40 year old man who should know better – though Don has two addictions in his life: women and the sauce - but it’s not hard to see the way she’s worked the situation with Don to her advantage.

That’s not particularly insidious because all stabs at romance are some form of manipulation, if you think about it, no matter how well intentioned and wholesome they seem. But she’s told Don exactly what he needs or wants to hear, especially that she doesn’t care about his past, just who he is now. For a man who’s finally started to accept that he has all his life ahead of him, what he really wants to do is live in the now. Especially with a girl like Megan, who seems to adore him, but I think will be much better at getting what she wants or deserves than Betty was.

Maybe this really will be “happily ever after” for Don, but I doubt it. But really, it’s not the happily ever after I would’ve picked for this character. I suspect that he’s traded in one “lost weekend” phase for perhaps another? But let’s face it, Don’s not a guy who will get a classical happily ever after, is he? He’s too prone to a life of solemn remorse.

That said, I would disagree with your take on Peggy. Jealousy? Maybe. But I think that was a very, very small part of that look she gave Don. I think if we could’ve heard her thoughts or seen them in a comic book word bubble floating over her head, they would’ve read as: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? HER?! HUH? WHAT?

But Peggy’s defined her life by Don to a lot of degrees. She has, in her own small way, just saved the agency by finally signing some new business, no matter how small, and here’s Don, her mentor, running around like an idiot. And his comment to Peggy about how Megan reminds him a lot of her is the ultimate slap in the face for a great many reasons. For a season that contained the show’s best episode, “The Suitcase,” in which Don and Peggy finally bond in kind of a real way, it was kind of hard to watch their interaction this year end like this.

But, that scene with Joan and Peggy immediately after was perfect. A Joan/Peggy show? I’d watch that. I hope that next season shows those two really claiming some of the power around SCDP (or will it just be SDP?) that they more than rightfully deserve.

August: I think this season had a lot of ups and downs, but mostly ups. Overwhelmingly ups. Like I said, the storyline I’m most interested in for the next year is the stuff with Don and Megan, should Don and Megan really work out. They didn’t leave us with a lot of answers this season, but we maybe that’s because we were all asking too many questions.

Marco: I think you’re right about that. The status quo’s been changed, some things and people are gone, and some are still with us, just amplified. We think we’re ready for what tomorrow will bring, but we have no idea. Just like Don there, we’re laying awake in the dark with a near stranger sleeping beside us as stare out at the night.

A man from a town with no name.

Posted by August Bravo & Marco Sparks on

Right off the bat, let’s lift a shadow off this evening: The only people for us are the mad ones and there’s nothing nearly eloquent enough to explain our excitement about the return of Mad Men tonight (and the return of us gabbing about each new episode afterward) with the fourth season premiere, “Public Relations,” but August is going to start us off with…

August Bravo: One of those guys is going to leave New York with a VD.

Is it me or shouldn’t this episode have been titled “Don Fucking Draper,” right?

from here.

Marco Sparks: Seriously. That would have been a great title for the season premiere of the show for rich people and rich minds alike.

August: Seriously. This episodes taps into the psyche of Don and who he is now. Maybe who he always was.

Marco: I feel like every single season we’re told that there’s a larger question hanging over that particular year or story arc, and there is no resolution, not clearly. There’s milestones. There’s totems on that timeline. There’s road blocks and rest stops, but that probing question only gets more complicated, more faceted…

But it’s nice that no matter how despicable some of Don’s actions can be, he’s still one of our better role models for men on television. Right? Well… no, probably not. There’s obviously a very masculine energy to him, a complicated creature of intrigue and overflowing with a talent that can’t be denied and a certain enviable confidence. But it’s a weird time for men now, not unlike the 60s in some regards, and it’s hard to find good male role models in this day and age…

from here.

…I mean, right?

Though it’s interesting to watch the new era of Don Draper. The single Don, a man living a sadder life perhaps? It’s like watching an actor without a real role. Don’s always a little more in his zone when he’s lying to a woman effectively and it’s got to be hard for him when the possible new girl in his life sees through a little of the old tricks of his. But, Don being Don, and knowing the ways of the world like he does, and being in advertising after all, he relies on kindly women from the oldest profession who can give him what he wants, a literal expression of what has happened to him thus far: A good slapping around.

August: No need for the hooker to take off her brassiere, she already knows what Don wants.

Marco: Even if perhaps Don himself doesn’t.

August: I’m not sure a lot of people could have imagined Don throwing himself down to this level. But I don’t think it’s like that.

Marco: I’m sure the events of his life sure haven’t helped. The confusion at work as they build a new company. The constant struggle to move out of the darkened corners of invisible anonymity in the creative department to becoming the poster boy, the handsome cipher, the face of the company.

It’s 1964 at this point, it’s Thanksgiving, and Don isn’t finding himself a whole lot to be thankful for. This new found freedom isn’t necessarily good for him, it sure as hell isn’t glamorous in any way, and divorced guys are seemingly considered basically damaged goods. And I think a lot of people came up with a lot of reasons for why Don like or wants or needs a bit of the rough stuff in his sex life, specifically being slapped, but the very first thing I got out of it was a reminder of Betty slapping him back in the season finale last year.

August: Life is just slapping him around at this point. I think it’s about what he said earlier. Every day he works is an investment for the company. He has no time to pick up women and seduce them into copious amounts of sex, to play that particular game that he plays so well. He has work to do.

Marco: Cause in every single way, Don is the star of this show.

I love the use of “John And Marsha” by Stan Freeberg, one of the kings of early satire, and the song is both a lovely inside joke when it comes to the world of advertising and a nice joke on soap operas. And it only becomes so much more meta when you consider that that’s really what Mad Men is.

August: Johnnnnnn.

Marco: Marshaaaaaaa.

August: In the metamorphosis from Sterling Cooper to Sterling Cooper Draper Price I’m glad they’ve updated from their shanty of an office in a hotel room to an actual floor, which unfortunately enough for Harry Crane doesn’t have more than one story, with their name on the door. Sorry Pete, guess they did end up having a lobby. But still no table…

Marco: I think we’re all holding our breath in anticipation of more Joan. And the possibility of Joan and Don… you know. That’s the difference, in just some regards, between a show like Mad Men and True Blood… True Blood is all soft core fan service (at some point everyone on that show will have fucked everyone else on that show for our amusement) and Mad Men is cerebral teasing all the way. It’s about dangling and snatching away at the last moment.

I especially think that’s true in light of this episode of Mad Men, which is all about not being able to close certain deals and not wanting to close others. You gotta love Don’s orchestrated “fuck off” to the prudes manufacturing sex in swim wear and thinking they’re better than they are.

August: I enjoyed the ruse Peggy and Pete conjured in order to garner press for the ham company. Didn’t go as planned, but that’s life I guess.

Marco: “It was going great… until it wasn’t.” Is this the beginning of real publicity stunts as prominent and regular tools for advertising?

August: It’s hard out there for the boys and girls in America. Especially in the 60′s. 1964, if I’m not mistaken?

Marco: It certainly is.

August: Sad to see no one from the old Sterling Cooper in the episode, but I’m sure we will in due time.

Marco: Like your beloved Ken Cosgrove.

August: Ken had cool hair. Terrific few parts of the episode? Don and Roger bickering back and forth about the one-legged reporter and his inability to write a real story. Maybe they should talk to a whole reporter next time? Ha-ha. Roger sure as shit was the comedy relief in this episode as a lot of things/people were so morose.

Now back to Don, who has always been the main character of the show, I guess the protagonist, if you will, who really made this episode what it was. I think he feels this is temporary, this won’t last with Betty…

Marco: Henry Francis just feels like he’s about to get hit by a car or walk off the top of a skyscraper any moment now, doesn’t he? His patheticness almost makes Betty look even more cruel and horrid. It leaves where she ends up because of her frustrations from the past few years even more unchecked. Just as the kids are scared of their mother, I can’t imagine Francis not growing bored of her and then where will Matthew Weiner deliver her( and us)?

from here.

August: Will Don get back with her? Will he want to? The man with no key to his own house. I love his ability to take the jabs by his attorney and Roger in this episode. Usually so defensive, I think he’s just too shot down. Or just doesn’t give a shit anymore.

Marco: I’d be hurt if Benjie Light doesn’t have a few words to share with us about Betty, but I like where they’re taking the kids here, story-wise and post-divorce, the way they’re building on what we’ve seen so far concerning Sally and Bobby Draper. Sally, of course, is going to rebel and be repulsed by the way her little life is going so far and Bobby is going to grow up to be fucking creepy. If they ever do an episode flashing forward to where all the characters ended up, I want to see Bobby Draper, with his new striving to be liked by everyone now, as a politician.

And since they cast Matt Long as Peggy’s little partner, I’m wondering just out of curiosity since I never actually watched Jack And Bobby (and I don’t believe that anyone else did either)(though I think John Slattery was on there too), but didn’t Bobby end up being the one who grew up to become President?

August: No need for Don to try to defend his failing marriage, he’s got other things to worry about. Like mentioning jai alai…

Marco: Fucking jai alai.

August: …in his news story. Maybe that interview with the Wall Street Journal will make it all better?

Marco: Or so much worse. Is this the beginning of Don getting so much bigger in his own mind? Don Draper as Dirk Diggler?

August: His bitterness towards Henry and Betty was no surprise, after all, they’re living in his own house, rent free.

Marco: I hope that Betty becomes the new Don in that house.

from here.

Especially since Henry’s idea of recapturing the magic between involves them fucking in the car, seemingly echoing back to when they had to sneak around? Only one episode in and I already feel like these characters feel like they can’t handle the a-changin’ times around them and they’re flirting with the soft seduction of the past and all of it’s elements, the moments when they felt happier or more dangerous.

August: I couldn’t tell you where this episode may take us, as far as the new season is concerned. I’m just hoping I get to see more of Pryce.

Marco: And Joan. And maybe more Trudy/Alison Brie? And maybe we can slowly grasp our way towards something resembling that eternally elusive question that this show constantly is hanging over us…

August: Who is Don Draper?

The end of Camelot.

Posted by August Bravo & Marco Sparks on

Turn on the news! Turn on the news!

It’s amazing how a single bullet, a magic bullet if you will, can change the course of history. It can turn the kids into the adults and vice versa. As Trudy Campbell said, “I don’t care what your politics are, this is America, and you can’t just shoot the President!” If only that were true, Trudy. But adults can say a lot of things when they’re living their lives in front of the TV, either in the office, in the living room at home, or in the hotel room after your nooner, and last night’s episode of Mad Men, “The Grown-Ups” showed that better than anything. So let’s go back, and to the left, as we talk about the birth and death of marriages and the day that the 60s really began…

Everything is going to be fine.

August Bravo: Dia de los Mad Men! And the whole country’s drinking…

The Madness of Don Draper.

Marco Sparks: I loved the beginning of this episode, the first image there of Pete curled up on his office couch, squeezed tightly into a fetal position, waiting for a woman to bring him warm nourishment. Only that hot cocoa was instant, made with water instead of milk!

August: Watching last night’s episode really made me like Trudy. She’s certainly a trophy wife, yes, but she’s always by Pete’s side.

Marco: On this show, she’s the definition of “devotion.” I mean, she was this close to sleeping with an old paramour to help Pete get a short story published in… what was it? Highlights For Children? Fitting.

Rather disappointing news.

August: It’s probably women like her that made that decade what it was, for better and for worse. Am I envious of Pete here, just a little? I sure am.

Marco: I have to say it’s a joy to watch Alison Brie, who plays Trudy, on Community.

Alison Brie should be on every show.

August: And now we go back to Pete. We all knew he wouldn’t get that job, right? We all wanted him to not get that job. At least I didn’t want to.

Marco: Because you’re the vice president, treasurer, and refreshments organizer of Team Cosgrove, aren’t you?

August Bravo and Ken Cosgrove, sitting in a tree.

August: I think Ken really did deserve it. Maybe.

When you are a little kid, life just passes you by.

Marco: We really have no idea since we never actually saw him doing his job. He was mostly just showing up to ask him people to go get a drink with him or riding lawn mowers into the office.

I hate her, daddy.

August: He never really stressed about it. He was just Cool Hand Luke about it, like, all of the time.

Kinsey smells a booty call.

Marco: Poor Pete. People saw him working, so they assumed he was working. They saw Cosgrove chillaxing with that stupid grin and “that haircut,” they just assumed he had everything under control.

I wonder if this is the last time we’ll see Duck, abandoning his sexual conquest of Peggy temporarily (I love her roommate asking why she was with him if he’s not married) to call his kids.

Lets eat some monte cristo sandwiches and have mediocre sex, baby.

August: Time to get down to business…

Marco: And Jackie turned to Jack Jack and said, “Mr. President, You can’t say that Dallas doesn’t love you…”

ST-C420-13-63

August: We all knew it would happen this season…

Dallas.

Marco: Weiner said he wasn’t sure we’d see it this year, or how in depth it’d be covered, and yet, this was the defining moment of this season, and the moment so strongly hinted and foreshadowed this whole year, with Roger’s daughter’s wedding date and the constant references to Dallas.

In the motorcade moments before...

August: Yeah, we all knew it would happen. Maybe in next week’s episode, I think some of us were thinking, but we knew it was going to happen. Hell, it already did happen. Kennedy is dead.

In the shadow of a gunman.

Marco: I love the constant use of news footage, of the characters literally trapped in those moments, time brought to a standstill as they can hear the beats of their own fucked up, broken hearts. And especially poignant with the deaths of Ted Kennedy and Walter Cronkite in the past few months, too.

Walter Conkrite gives us the straight dope.

August: And Lee Harvey Oswald is dead too.

Oswald and Ruby are going to start a band and it shall be awesome, American History.

Marco: Who cares about justice when you can just hand the situation over to the mafia.

This was the year he rode the subway to the ends of the city.

August: I love the moment that everyone finds out about it, the way the phone calls are ringing off the hook throughout the entire building, going unanswered, and then, all of a sudden, they stop. Silence everywhere. It’s both what you’d least expect and exactly what you expect.

What the hell is going on!?

Marco: And in strolls Don Draper, just a few seconds late to a scene, as he seems to be in every scene in this episode, asking, “What the hell’s going on?”

Actually, the scene with Harry Crane and Pete is what I loved about the actual finding out of what happened in Texas. The TV’s on in the background, broadcasting a special bulletin and they’re whining about their jobs. Pete’s complaining like a sad little kid and Harry’s trying to sound like a mature adult. And then the hilariously ironic line: “I’m going to die at this desk unnoticed.”

August: Man, Roger is just so unhappy. His kid of a wife can’t control herself. And neither can Roger. Calling Joan while his wife number whatever is passed out drunk next to him. That takes guts. And I don’t think Roger even cares anymore.

Congrats on throwing you life away into perpetaul unhappiness, or what we like to call Livable Hatred Of Another Person.

Marco: What a long, strange journey it’s been since the party in “My Old Kentucky Home,” both of which were thrown by Roger, both of which involved Betty having an encounter of sorts with Henry Francis from the Governor’s office, and both ending with Jane passing out from “not eating enough” with her booze.

A good person.Did you notice that Jane constantly reiterates that she’s “a good person?”

Except now this is a world where a President has been killed and Roger can’t find the jokes in the face of this true, uncertain horror. At the end of last season it was the Cuban Missile Crisis and the end of the world. This is worst. This is what happens after. This is the real world and it’s time to be grown ups.

Please feel free to have the prime rib AND the filet of soul.

But, man, Joan is the saving grace of this show always. If next season involves the Brits having sold Sterling Cooper to Duck’s company, I can only hope they get Joan back. Also, I think it’s fair to point out that in Roger’s life, to take Pryce’s words as metaphor, Jane is Ken Cosgrove and Joan is Pete Campbell.

August: Oh?

Marco: Don’t start writing Roger/Pete slash fiction just yet. I just mean that Jane made Roger feel young, like he was invincible, and everything was easy and there was no work required to achieve his needs. And it’s because the women he wanted wanted someone else. But Roger would have to work to be worthy of Joan and he knows it. And it means he’d have to acknowledge that there’s something he desires so passionately in this world.

Phone sex.

We can only hope for good things when Dr. McRapist gets his legs blown off in ‘Nam, all Born On The Fourth Of July-style.

August: Man, this whole episode. No one cares about their own lives. Not unless they’re on the TV. In fact, for the first time the only person who does care is Don. Everyone’s focused on the President, or lack thereof, the wedding, their promotion/de facto demotion, a certain busty redhead, or a Governor’s aide. Everyone’s mind wanders. Their wants and needs. Everything just means nothing anymore.

Sal, you are missed.

Marco: The things you thought were important? Turns out they weren’t, not really.

August: Watching Betty kiss that guy made me die just a little inside. It really did.

Marco: I liked the little bits leading up to that. No, Don, while it may be good for the family, a family drive isn’t going to fix things. Not when they’re determined to be broken.

Parked in an ominous location.

But the actual shot of Betty’s car joining Henry’s in the middle of the nowhere? Interesting. Added with that music, it felt like a very Hitchcock-ian thing for a few moments there. That said, I don’t know that Betty would be all that great as one of Hitchcock’s famous icy blondes. Well, maybe.

I am not in love with the tragedy of this thing. This is not Romeo and Juliet.

August: I was watching that scene and I kept thinking, “Hey, asshole, that’s Don’s wife!” You can’t do that. And she can’t do that! But the lies are finally starting to get to her.

Marco: Sneaky of them last week to think that maybe she had been won over by Don taking the mask off to reveal the inner Dick Whitman hidden beneath. But now he can never put that mask back on.

I really can only see Henry Francis as a plot device rather than as a character. Mostly because that’s what he is, a shade of something, an element to draw out parts of Betty, to wake her up.  But do you think that, by this point in the story now, he and Betty have slept together? I mean, he’s proposing marriage to this not so happily married mother of three, so wouldn’t they have to have? Silly little religious aspects aside, how realistic  is entering a marriage/serious relationship with no time in the lab testing sexual chemistry?

August: Ah, I don’t know. Mostly, I don’t think she’ll leave Don. I don’t see it as realistic. I think this goes back to how they toy with our expectations and our grasp on the dramatic tension. We think she will, but she won’t.

And WTF was that faux proposal? Betty could not have taken it seriously. I really hope not. If you’re tired of being shackled by your husbands lies, then another man is not going to necessarily be the answer. I guess that was just the best available 1960s pick up line.

Forked path.

Marco: Also, had to love her response to him asking why the kids were being allowed to watch the Kennedy assassination coverage: “What am I supposed to do, Don? Am I supposed to keep it from them?” It took me a moment to really feel how subtle but powerful Betty’s weapons were in that scene.

But I think she wants to feel something other than helpless, or maybe just something in general. And that moment as she was watching Oswald get shot, it was almost like she herself had been shot. I think people complain about January Jones’ acting ability, like when her ex-boyfriend Ashton Kutcher advises her to give up the craft, but I think she’s perfect as Betty.

August: And then there’s Don, trying to be a better guy? A better husband? Maybe. I think Don’s trying to work it out in a way. And maybe that scares Betty a little? All the staying home, the taking care of baby Gene in the middle of the night, the trying to care.

Marco: If this is Don’s reaction to having to finally lay all his cards out on the table, Betty can only be wondering what he was really up to all those times he was supposed to be working.

August: Is Betty going to become the new Don Draper? After all, if Don Draper can be someone else, why can’t she?

Marco: Ooh, I’d watch that show. Part of me is starting to think that if these two were to actually grow up… well, it may not be together.

And I liked Sally’s continued role as watcher in this episode, first glued to the television as things that she may not yet understand in the country, but then taking the both boiling and freezing cold temperature in the kitchen and living rooms, the atmospheric changes between her parents.

August: “I kissed you yesterday and I didn’t feel a thing.” This has to be affecting someone other than just me. Hearing lines like that, which I have before, just makes one cringe. It cuts into the heart of you. And Don. Just sitting there. In confinement. In the dark. What does he do? What can he do? His own wife doesn’t love him and the words don’t come to him so that he can fix it.

Derby Day, bitches.

Marco: Again, I think for everyone who’s complained that this season has gone by slowly and just dragged, I would point out A) how much character developments/moments we witnessed within this episode, and not just with a few characters, but spread across the spectrum of the cast. Everyone shined. And B) again, I would use this as a yardstick compared to “My Old Kentucky Home.” Everyone’s changed. Everything’s different now.

August: And there goes Trudy again. Was that a motivational speech? Trying to get him up and go? Who does that? Only trophy wives. Only Trudy.

No dancing tonight.

Marco: Trudy is a trophy prize that Pete has never quite earned. But again, look at the differences and the things that are the same about them from then til now. In “My Old Kentucky Home,” they were the power couple, working together, trying to impress their elders, putting on the dance and show. And now, they’re unified together on that couch, stronger together. The most telling moment is when Trudy, so beautiful in her blue dress, takes off her dancing shoes and sits back on the couch with her husband, the man stuck in the fetal position at the start  of the episode and who is now finally starting to sound like an adult.

August: And then there’s the refuge of an empty office. Except for Peggy, the woman hard at work.

Marco: Perhaps because Don and Peggy are essentially the same? And I think they both realize that that Aqua Net ad is just fucked now in the face of Kennedy’s death.

August: I thought this episode would be a lot more. I mean, it was everything it was supposed to be. And so much more. I just envisioned something entirely different.

What?

Marco: And maybe that’s why it was so good?

I want to scream at you... for ruining all of this.

August: Maybe. And seriously, they can’t give me a good preview for next week’s episode?

A new President and we will all be sad for a while.

Marco: Oh, that preview is genius. Just clips from over the course of this season. Mad Men is a show drifting up the river of history that’s already gone by and sometimes you can only look back at what you’ve already seen and done and just guess what’s next. What happens next could be anything. And whatever you think it is, it’ll be something else, but you’ve got to be prepared. Sitting in the dark while you wait for the dawn to come is just part of being a grown up.

Alone in the dark.

The Names.

Posted by August Bravo & Marco Sparks on

Life in a box.

Halloween fast approaches, both here on Mad Men with last night’s excellent episode, “The Gypsy And The Hobo,” and it’s time to put on a mask and be someone else for a night. Or, even more terrifying, time to take off the mask off. Either way, join us for the dog food focus group that August and Marco have in store…

This dog food is made out of WHAT!?

August Bravo: “I’m not going to sit here and brag about how big I am.”

Bragging rights.

Marco Sparks: You know, if it weren’t for the big confrontation between Don and Betty towards the end of this episode, this would’ve been Roger’s sterling moment, I think.

It was fascinating to see Roger, the guy who’s always lived his life like he was on shore leave, through the eyes of someone else, the woman who got away. And when they try to look back on their lives though Casablanca-colored glasses, she, of course, sees herself as Ilsa. And Roger sees her as Peter Lorre.

Ha ha! Ouch.

August: I can’t get over Betty in this episode. Oh Betts. Trying to get Don to shell out some cash, because you know he’s good for it, and then start asking some questions.

Marco: I felt that moment strongly. Whenever you learn a deep dark secret about someone, especially someone you care about, something so unbelievable, of course you start to think yourself that it might actually be unbelievable. You don’t want to throw all your cards on the table yet. I think she wanted Don to go into his secret drawer full of bills there and give her more justification to get at him about this whole Dick Whitman nonsense. It’s entrapment, but emotionally needed entrapment on Betty’s part.

August: Okay, back to Roger and his old flame.

Marco: An old flame who apparently is still carrying the torch for Mr. Sterling.

August: I think Roger’s probably got a lot of skeletons in his closet. And that bitch looked an awful lot like a skeleton.

Marco: You think so? I wouldn’t mind being her cougar meal, I think.

August: Maybe I’m just too used to his new wife, Jane. The “teenager wife.”

Marco: “Does Mona know?” Which was one of the best lines of last week’s episode that we criminally neglected.

Suzanne, the plans they made nearly put an end to you.

August: Every time Don’s new breeze talks, I like it. She doesn’t push anything. She knows what she wants. She obviously knows what Don wants, yet she never pressures him on it. It’s so unusual. The last thing you would expect is Don to do anything rash because she’s not asking him too, but I could see it happening because it seems so right. I love her character. She’s a woman in the fictional 1960s, but her personality nicely compliments someone in our day and age.

Marco: I think August Bravo wants to date Miss Farrell.

If we hadn’t seen her interacting with other characters, I’d almost think that she was a figment of the imagination of Don Draper’s escapist side. I think she is a dream come true, but not tethered to any concrete reality, except when she gets smart and gets scared of the situation she’s in. A guy like Don Draper could fuck up her life in a lot of ways, and I think she knows it.

Into the mystic.

But letting him off the hook so easily, fear of losing her job aside, is just too much for me. I still ponder if she’s going to reveal a slightly crazy side before this season is out. From going to a place called Mystic, which sounds like a magical Never Neverland for young lovers on the run, to a little Play Misty For Me?

August: Okay, I gotta say this. WTF is Joan still doing on this show?

Joan Fucking Holloway... Harris.from here.

Marco: She’s playing with out tightly wound emotions, for one.

August: It’s not that I want to see her go, but she needs to just come back to Sterling Cooper already. It certainly would appear that she wants to, but that she must also maintain her pride.

Marco: With everything that she’s been put through and put herself through for this husband of hers, I’m glad Joan maintains a sense of pride. As I’ve said before, she is the sexy spine of this show. If she doesn’t have pride, no one on this show should. She’s Joan Fucking Holloway after all.

August: She really, really does deserve better than this shitty fiancee of hers. Wait, are they actually married? This guy is such a pussy little kid. And I hope that she really puts him in his fucking place.

Marco: For now, I just want to see her break a vase over his fucking head.

from here.

OH. WAIT. THAT HAPPENED. And it twas awesome.

But it ties into something that I can’t help with this show, which isn’t just a view of the past, but the way the future sits right on top of the past, from our perspective anyway. I love how we’re watching these characters in this place culturally,and in this time period, and we know what’s going to happen. Not just intellectually, but you can feel it building behind the scenes, between the moments.

Civil rights and women’s liberation and drugs and the Beatles and an even freer sense of free love and geopolitical paranoia are about to wash over all these characters, changing just about everything they know, and you just have to wonder how they’re going to get caught up or lost within these events. One of them being Vietnam. And I honestly can’t wait to watch Dr. McRapist die face down in the shit.

August: Now why does Betty’s little brother care to much about that house?

Marco: I’d like to say that it has something to do with family and memories and a sense of belonging, but this little shit just wants to sell the place, it seems. Perhaps to reaffirm his manliness within the context of his family? And then there’s their dad’s lawyer…

August: Yeah, really. Life was different in the 60s. Husbands can cheat on you, you may or may not know, but you still shouldn’t consider divorcing him, not really, because he “provides” for you and the children.

Peggy and Smitty.

Marco: Remind me to get my next divorce in New York state. For serious.

August: What did Betty want out of the conversation with the lawyer? It just seems like she wants someone to make a decision for her, that she’s so indecisive that she’s wanting someone to tell her what to do, because maybe she doesn’t even know what she wants.

Marco: For starters, I think she got some bad legal advice there. The guy may have been right, in that era perhaps, but it also seems like a very one-sided view of her situation. A very male, perhaps way too pro-family view. I mean, couldn’t you make the argument that by lying to her about who he is, Don defrauded her and therefore their entire marriage is a sham? I think she’d be entitled to something more than the crown she wears in her mind.

And secondly, I think you hit it on the nail there. What does she want? I don’t think Don is the only person who doesn’t know who he is.

Did someone say lung cancer?

August: But does she even want her own husband?

But back to Roger and his old flame. I like that he’s “the one” and she’s, well, jut not. And I love the way Roger puts it, the segue from his first wife to his much younger second wife: There wasn’t much of a window, they kind of overlapped. What a gentleman you are, Roger. At least you don’t lie… much. And how noble you are, you aren’t going to cheat on your wife… much. At least not this time.

Marco: Well, at first, I think he was remaining faithful, as best as Roger can, to Jane rather than resuming things with his old squeeze, the horsemeat peddler, and I think that says a lot about Roger as a man desperate to reclaim a sense of youth, a sense of being hip and interesting.

But then, of course, it’s the curvy redhead elephant in any and all rooms: Joan. For Roger, she’s “the one.”

Real Talk is the name of the game, baby.

August: I just hate how much he doesn’t impress me anymore.

Marco: Really? The way he describes Joan to prospective new employers for her, plus offering to help finish off the bottle (that’s the Roger Sterling I like: total alcoholic), and “You walked around like you were hoping to be a character in someone else’s novel.”

Paris, baby. We will always have it, k?

Casablanca is fitting for the mindset of the men of Mad Men, that they’re perpetually carrying on after having lost something special, that their suffering is noble. But I love that Roger puts his own personal suffering, along with his ex-flame’s pining, into real perspective: “That woman got on a plane with a man who was going to end World War II, not run her father’s dog food company.” That alone impressed me about Roger, a man who life straight out of The Sun Also Rises would be perfect, especially for a show about a Hemingway-esque character such as Don Draper. Call it the Clinton effect, if you will.

That, and the fact that for the most part, Roger was painfully kind in his letting the woman down. And that’s what made it all that much more mean, almost taunting. And wonderful.

I can explain.

August: And then finally, CONFRONTATION TIME! Thank God.

Marco: This show is brilliant with how it plays with our expectations, so manipulative. Don’s got his dish on the side out in the car! And Betty’s all like, “Get your hat later. We need to talk.”

We need to talk.

August: That scene, the confrontation at the kitchen table, was so good, so potent.

Showdown in the kitchen.

Marco: “All this time I thought you were some football hero who hated his father.” For a moment I had to wonder if Betty was finally seeing Don clearly or just seeing herself more opaquely.

August: That scene was so good, the tension so palpable that… for a moment I could almost taste it.

Marco: Yeah, really, you’re right in that moment. I loved Don’s old tricks, the “let me get a drink,” etc. and his inability to really be himself, to properly pour his drink. “I can explain,” Don tells her, his eyes betraying the fact that his wheels are already spinning at full, stunned speed. And Betty is finally on point: “Oh, I know, I know you can. You’re a very, very gifted storyteller.” Don Draper’s writing a bad Hemingway tome and using his life as the ink and maybe just for a moment there, Betty’s onto it.

Bratty though she may be, and may always be, Betty’s slowly becoming a person this year, and it’s both perfect and sad that she no more fully comes into herself than when playing the surgeon who’s taking apart her husband’s long string of lies.

August: And it all pours out. The words, the moment, the scene clearly hurts Don Draper so much that it physically hurts me to watch it.

Marco: In a good way though, right?

August: In a great way! In such a compromising situation, every breath between his words is making my heart skip. We’ve known Donald Francis Draper for such a long time, or, at least the Don that he wants us to know, and it’s so unusual to see him so defensive.

Thats my desk. Thats private.

Marco: But amazing to take in. Don hasn’t been this undone since when Pete found him out in season 1. It’s amazing how Dick Whitman will always be the thread that pulls apart the full Don Draper tapestry.

And honestly, Jon Hamm’s hands seriously deserve the same high praise that I think Tom Hanks’ hands never got for Saving Private Ryan.

August: All I could think of when watching that scene was that he was going to leave. That he had to.

Marco: The cry of the baby and fade into commercials gave him a good enough distraction, but he didn’t take it.

August: It isn’t just that I thought he would run out, it’s that I actually wanted him to do so. It’s honestly what I would have done.

Marco: I loved that he just seemed to completely forget about Miss Farrell in the car. I almost didn’t want that cutaway back to her in the car, I wanted the show to leave us hanging and guessing for a few scenes/minutes.

But again, I have to say, Miss Farrell just took it way too easily. But perhaps she’s truly as much a realist as she is a romantic. The look on Don’s face as he told her to cool it, I think was perfect. Not so much perfect, but… probably exactly what Don wants out of every one of these flings.

The cock and the telephone are major motifs this year.

August: How so?

Marco: I don’t think Don just cheats on his wife. He’s a serial philanderer, definitely, but he’s also a storyteller and I think with each new girlfriend he’s creating a new process. A new excitement, a new running away from his life and responsibilities, but that he ultimately wants it to end with another notch of regret on his belt. He wants to have that pained look on his face as he does bad again…

Mr. Telephone Line.

August: Interesting you put it that way. I can’t wait to see each and every new scene with Joan and Greg…

Could Joan look any unhappier than she does here?

Marco: Dr. Don McRaper.

August: … It’s just wonderful to me how young and stupid he is. Of course he failed out of psychology.

Marco: “It’s not even medicine!”

August: His psychology is so fucked up. Such a man. And yet it’s like men haven’t changed a bit.

These would be so awesome, but so distracting too.from here.

Marco: Every man wishes that his flaws and darkness were deep and interesting and exciting. That they had meaning and purpose and that each was a strength, something worthy of making a TV show about. Or worthy of an ex-pat sitting in a cafe in Paris to write about. We’re flawed, sad, tender creatures at times, and yet, despite how full of ourselves we are, I think we have to flirt with that darkness just a little. Hopefully it gives us perspective and a little illumination.

Of all the gin joints and dog food companies in the world, Rick, why did she have to walk into yours?

Which brings us back to the notion of trick or treat and All Hallow’s Eve. Beyond my desire to Dr. McRape die in the muck, I still have to worry what the future has in store for little Sally and Bobby Draper, with the guidance they’re being given, the idea of family they’re being shown. I mean, this is a world where Minnie Mouse and the astronaut can end up as the gypsy and the hobo.

Minnie Mouse and the astronaut.

August: I hate this segment in Don’s life. I’m sure it happens quite often though. The record hits the end, it gets flipped back over, and the song starts over again, the pattern resumes anew: and Don resorts back to the family man.

Marco: I think that’s one name you could put on Don Draper/Dick Whitman. But maybe it’s been poisoned, and while a new one that can possibly stick may not be easy to find, it’s just “a label on a can.”

The hobo and the gypsy.

August: And I just have to ask…

Marco: You have to love how the realistic little accidents in life fit so seamlessly into the show’s narrative in that the neighbor could perfectly sum up this time in another man’s life with…

Trick or treat.

August: And who are you supposed to be?

You can’t frame a phone call.

Posted by August Bravo & Marco Sparks on

We don’t know about you, but every time we hear “and then” there’s another chance for the ladies at home to misunderstand. We get that a lot. But in the meantime, let’s talk about last night’s Mad Men, the appropriately titled “The Color Blue,” and then go drink and listen to jazz in our office, have a chat with the Greek night janitor and the maybe masturbate into our special box of secrets…

August Bravo: 40 years wouldn’t be a significant year if it weren’t the average lifespan for a man in this business.

Marco Sparks: I really liked that scene of just Bert Cooper and Roger Sterling together, talking about the good old days together. And the present, what there is of it. It’s fascinating to hear Roger constantly go on about guys he knows in “this business,” or things that have happened in “this business,” as if he really is an old pro. And he may be, but not to the extent of Cooper, and yet Roger really wants to be in that previous generation, to live in the ebb and flow of their rules, their ways.

August: Now we know what makes Don Draper smile. Its 5,000 dollars! And we know what doesn’t make him smile: Meeting his mistress’ brother. Tsk tsk. He doesn’t want to ruin this.

Marco: I’m fascinated by those few occasions that Don picks up a sense of right and front, something that seems to him fleetingly at times, but in this particular case, he wants to do right by his new inamorata, since she seems to be refreshingly bold and pure in his eyes, but at the same time, no one wants to hear the brother of the new chick you’re sleeping with bitching about their problems in the middle of the night on a long road trip, am I right?

August: Yeah.

Marco: Though I love his comment on Don: “He knows how to leave a room.”

Marco: What do you think of Miss Farrell now? She was a character of much speculation as this season started to pick up steam, but now we’re here. And we’re steamy, right?

August: What do I think of her? I’m in love. That’s what I think.

Marco: Word.

August: She wants Don. Everything about him. She barely knows him, but she’s crazy about what she knows. And I think she will go crazy if she doesn’t get him. Or get him more than she has him already. Her eyes make her look like she’s on the brink of insanity without her.

Marco: And Don Draper is attracted to two things in life:

1. Waking up in the morning next to a mistake.

2. Crazy women.

August: Apparently Pete isn’t the only guy mad at Peggy for having those constant ideas.

Marco: Peggy Olson, the ultimate feminist.

August: Women in the 60s had it hard, man. But maybe they put themselves in that position. They don’t care about your marriages, your jobs. They just want you. They set themselves up for disasters.

Marco: They court disaster in the best ways, then eat it up and spit it out. Like spontaneous ideas in a pitch session. I loved Don and Peggy and Kinsey’s moment of not so much bonding, but of understanding over the lost idea. Oh, the bits of angelic genius lost to us when we’re shitfaced and not terribly close to a pen and paper. Also, I think we found something that Kinsey is really good at: Being in awe of Peggy.

August: Kinsey, my man. Almost got caught doing the dirty in his own office. On himself. If that’s not classy, I don’t know what is.

Marco: I don’t mind sharing with the world that the shit that goes down after hours in the offices here at Counterforce would shock the pants off of you. But it does involve a lot of jazz, some self harm, forgetting to write down golden ideas, and Greek janitors.

August: Achilles! Born leader. Also born to give inspiration.

Marco: I think the sad thing is a lot of guys want to be Don Draper, but instead they’re probably, at best, Roger. At worst, Pete. It’s bad for the intellectuals to, cause you don’t realize that you’re actually a Kinsey.

August: London calling! Ha ha, did I catch that right? Sterling-Cooper is for sale?

Marco: They’re lean and profitable now, ready to go to the highest bidder.

August: Even though his wife is ready to get the fuck out of New York…

Marco: Reasonable.

August: …but I’m really going to miss Lane Pryce if he goes.

Marco: If he goes being the key part. I could see him staying behind, maybe sans wife. Also, I have a feeling that Bert Cooper isn’t long for this world. Maybe Don and Roger and Lane will be running the company next year. Hopefully with Joan back and a much happier, more out of the closet Sal along for the ride.

Which will be totally worth since I’d love to see that flashback episode to when Don and Roger met and Roger found Don working at a fur company and going to night school.

August: Betty and Don both think the phone call is for them.

Marco: “Jeez Louise!”

August: What kind of sham marriage is this?

Marco: Probably the same as most marriages during that time period. The difference is that Betty’s really getting hers too, which I love. It’s sad that Don not only doesn’t respect Betty’s intelligence to hide his running around better. And it’s a toss up between whether he doesn’t respect herself enough to not realize that he’s pushing her away (though not necessarily into the arms of another ma) or that he trusts her more than that.

August: We know Don loves her, but he clearly doesn’t respect her. And there she is, just longing for that phone call from the man in the Governor’s office.

Marco: And Don is fearing that the phone call is from Miss Farrell, who, to be fair, does seem a bit… obsessive, even if she does know that things between Don and her probably won’t end well. I’m not convinced that it wasn’t her calling the house.

August: Both of these women just want these men more than they’re wanted, I think.

Marco: I think that Henry Francis from the Governor’s office had a bit of a point last week, Betty did need to come to him. She is married and he shouldn’t be going after her. That doesn’t stop the guy from being a dick though.

August: Betty says he family doesn’t need to go to church every week. I love that. No repenting in the Draper household.

Marco: Repenting? Fuck the past. Put it out of your mind. It will shock you how much these things you don’t like never happened.

August: OMG. FML. Betty found Don’s secret stash.

Marco: His secret identity. Literally.

August: What’s he going to do?

Marco: Can’t wait to find out. But more importantly, what is she going to do? I think we’ve seen some mountains and valleys in the debate over Princess Betty this year, but really it’s all setting up that the ball is in her court now.

from here.

August: Yeah, really. For a second it looked like she was going to hesitate with that drawer…

Marco: …and she never would have found the key if it weren’t for baby Eugene’s crying leading it to being within her grasp on laundry day.

August: But then Betty just dove right in!

Marco: Good for her. The unexamined marriage is no marriage to be fantasizing about other people in.

August: There’s been so much character development this season with Betty. Finding out she is and what she dreams of. Cause she’s just been so pent up all this time. And now she’s going to lash out.

Marco: She is. She totally is, but I think it’s going to be more controlled this time. Don lying to her isn’t something new and she knows that. Granted, she doesn’t know what she knows yet. There’s some divorce papers and the deed to a house belonging to an Anna Draper. And pictures with her husband in the war and just a name: Dick Whitman.

August: The drama! What is Don going to do next! And what is he doing now? This entire season he’s been so full of surprises, I feel. Sure, he is every season. I mean, he’s always been the man of mystery.

Marco: Maybe especially to himself?

August: But this year he’s even more spontaneous, more reactionary. Everything he does now merits a WTF?

Marco: And that’s the best kind of leading man for a television show of such literary depth. But back to the new tension between Don and Betty over knowing Don’s “secret,” I was literally just gripping my chair watching Don make the phone call (that call, the mysterious call to the Draper residence, and the fact that Don’s phone service calls Miss Farrell’s home – who knew the phone could be such a perilous weapon in 1963?) to Betty, telling her what time to be ready for the Sterling Cooper birthday bash. Betty’s not feeling good and Don’s telling her he wants to show her off and… ah, the drama.

August: Seriously. And you can’t frame a phone call.

“How do you say ‘Hamburger’ in Japanese?”

Posted by August Bravo & Marco Sparks on

We want to get hammered on Prohibition-era hair tonic and open a hotel on the moon and make the rock full of cheese as American as possible (and be greeted as liberators)(before we blow it up) and maybe, just maybe, Conrad Hilton agrees with us. With a little bit of “wow!” as a lady friend of mine once said, between our dreams and our desires, we existed with last night’s new episode of Mad Men in the “Wee Small Hours.”

August Bravo: That Betty sure is a dreamer…

Marco Sparks: You may say she’s a dreamer, but she’s not the only one…

It’s really shaping up that this season is all about the meeting of dreams with desires, two things that aren’t necessarily the same thing.

August: So it seems. Betty is afraid to give into these desires. Don, however, is not.

Marco: I think Betty’s a smart person, a worldly person of sorts, but not a person of depth. Is she really afraid to to combine her wants and dreams of a silver fox lover from the Governor’s office, or is she just trapped within the boundaries of her princess mindset? It seemed like she would’ve fucked that guy (had the show been set in the present day, they would’ve been twittering naughty little missives towards each other) as long as it hadn’t been so “tawdry.”

But that aside, I loved that the episode started off with Betty laying in the dark with her dreams and ended with Don finally asleep in bed with the thing he wanted.

August: I think she’s still trying to see if she still has it. Don neglects her because, let’s face it, he doesn’t seem to give a fuck anymore…

Marco: They’re practically roommates raising kids together.

August: Yeah, and she wants some attention. Some naughty play on the side to get excited about. Reminds me of my ex-girlfriend, actually.

Marco: Which one?

August: Actually, all of them!

Marco: Yikes. Betty just reminded me of my feeling for this show, at least this season, when she’s patronizing  her nanny/housekeeper Carla about “her station” and talking about those four dead girls in Birmingham. “This has really made me wonder about civil rights. Maybe it’s not supposed to happen right now.”

And I feel like when you really get down to it, everything Don does is a reaction to something. Quite probably everything.

August: Betty may actually want the guy from the Governor’s office, but she’s just reacting too, I think. Betty is slowly becoming a more interesting character to me as this season progresses. And more like Don.

Marco: He is one of the most influential characters on TV or in real like in, like, forever.

August: I think Betty wants without thought towards consequences, and last night she got lucky in her covering of them and not getting too caught up by them.

Marco: I loved that Betty A) of course had a hard time discussing civil rights with Carla, but B) threw that fundraiser pretty much to cover herself with Carla, who had Henry Francis, the man from the Governor’s office, coming over for an illicit hello.

August: I don’t think Betty’s going to be so lucky in the future. And yeah, Don does just react. I don’t think he starts a lot of the situations he finds himself in. They just present themselves and he does what he can to craft them, to shape them. He is crafty. But for now, Don isn’t going to stop doing, getting, or taking what he wants. He’s in that 1960s mindset, and why wouldn’t he be?

Marco: The 1960s were like a theme park for insecure men with money to walk around just being better than everyone. Especially their women. And the women of Mad Men have to be careful because they can be let go when they reach their full potential.

August: Yeah, really. Don is the man, quite literally, so therefore he’s accepted as being better than Betty. He deserves more.

Marco: And takes more.

August: He brings home the bacon. And sometimes he wants a woman to play with that bacon. And why shouldn’t they?

Marco: He is Don Draper, after all.

August: He works hard, he plays hard. I think that’s how he feels.

Marco: Don Draper is secure enough in his awesomeness to show up to work late pretty much all the time.

August: But usually because he’s at home reading the bible with his family, of course.

Marco: Oh, of course. You’re really feeling Don, aren’t you? So is Don beginning the relationship with teacher, the very “close to home” relationship, based on the disapproval of his new father figure with unrealistic desires (like the moon), Conrad Hilton?

August: Oh yeah, definitely. I think Don’s just fed up with everything lately. “Give me more ideas to reject,” he says.

Marco: “Now that I can finally understand you, I am less impressed with what you have to say.”

August: Having to say things like that daily and put up with your underlings while constantly being jerked around by a powerful man like Hilton can stress a guy out. At that point, Don really needed something his life to go right, and go right the way he wanted it to. He needed a good powerfuck.

Marco: And the teacher was perfect for him because she presents herself to the world he lives in like she’s from another planet. And I’d like to think that, deep down, she’s outing herself as being from the same planet Don is from, or heading to as the show progresses, but who knows.

She jobs along lonely stretches of highway at all hours of the night, she lives above somebody’s garage, and she advocates not staring right into the sun. And she’s seen their entire affair, and knows exactly how it’s going to end. Who knows what Don Draper’s views on fate and predestination are, but I think he knows the one thing he can control, whether doing so is a reaction or something else or not, is to fuck this woman’s brains out, especially if there’s a higher risk of him being caught than ever before. “Doesn’t that mean anything to a person like you?”

August: You can tell that Don’s giving less and less of a shit about Betty, it seems. She asks if it’s okay to have the fundraiser there and he says sure, as long as he doesn’t have to go. Don’s a little like Betty in that he wants what he wants, and right now it’s the teacher. He’s drinking too much coffee, he’s not sleeping, he’s giving more and more of himself over to Connie, I don’t know.

Marco: Everyone’s walking around hunched over, with burnt fuses sticking out of their necks.

August: Exactly. Everything, especially everything with Don is a ticking time bomb at this point. Especially when it comes to Conrad Hilton. Don may want Connie’s approval, but I don’t he’ll be able to give Connie the love he wants.

Marco: Speaking of time bombs, I feel like yet another fuse was lit last night in the coming hardcore show down with Roger and Don.

August: Seriously. Even though Don and Roger technically agreed on aspects of the Sal situation last night, there’s still going to be a showdown. I’m hoping for a fistfight!

Marco: More American bloodlust as usual, huh?

And Don did cause all of us to step back a little with the way he treated Sal in this episode, wouldn’t you agree?

August: He knows about Sal, knows about what went down on in that hotel room with the bellhop and Sal, or was about to go down in that hotel room when they were out of town together. Sal’s being bit in the ass for not having given in. Don’s a cool guy with a lot of the things that flow outside what is currently considered the social norm of his time, but it seems he doesn’t trust that lifestyle. The way he mutters to Sal, “You people.”

Marco: It was absolutely chilling, wasn’t it? It’s kind of funny that when Don is mean to people like Pete Campbell or Ken Cosgrove or Kurt or Smitty, Kinsey and Crane, and the rest, we kind of cheer it on. We want to see more of it. Maybe even with Peggy, a little. But when I said that Joan was the spine of this show in a lot of ways, I think you could make the argument that Sal’s part of the ribs of the thing.

From his first scene in the first episode, when he walks in and you can tell he’s gay, and you instantly know how hard his life has to be in this time period, I think there was too much of a chance that this character could’ve been a joke, but he’s always been written well and Bryan Batt has played him with such class. And I think we’ve come to realize how much we like Sal this season just by watching him suffer so. Especially at the hands of Don Draper.

August: But Don had to do what he had to do. Lucky Strike is their biggest client, after all.

Marco: They were there since the pilot too, weren’t they? They’re “toasted.” But in Lee Garner, Jr. we have a villain you can really hate. A bully. He wants what he wants, as do all the characters on this show, and he won’t be told no too.

August: You upset him and Lucky Strikes and you’re fucked. Like Sal is now.

Marco: I blame it all on Harry Crane, who looks more like young Isaac Asimov to me than Perry Mason.

August: When I said that Sal was fucked, well, it was Harry Crane who did the fucking. He should’ve done something when he got that phone call, and his silence is what did Sal in.

Marco: Yeah, it is. It’s funny to me that a majority of the other characters all have better gaydar than Sal, in that they can all tell that Sal is gay and he’s clueless about them. But then again, that commercial was super homoerotic, so maybe it wasn’t so hard to figure out.

But, to be fair to Don, it seemed like Don and Sal never talked about Sal’s sexuality, so with Don witnessing Sal’s hookup with a bellhop out of town, he may’ve assumed that it was a regular thing with him (as I think you could call all of Don’s extramarital partying around) and Don may be upset that Sal didn’t follow his vague advice of: “Cover your exposure.” Eh… then again, maybe not.

I just hope that Sal finds some temporary solace there in Central Park…

August: Seriously.

Marco: …and then teams up with Joan for a comeback at Sterling-Cooper.

August: Is it too late to make a comment about Sal being shafted? Sal got shafted!

Marco: I guess it’s never too late.

What about the moon?

August: And you reminded me, where the fuck was Cosgrove? I think I liked Roger’s line the best, the one about what the company is going to be known for…

Marco: ”That’s what you want this place to be known for? That and some guy losing his foot in the lawnmower.”

August: Yes!

Marco: I think that Betty actually got not just the line of the night, about the meta-statement of the season, maybe the entire show itself when she was referring to Baby Eugene and Connie at the same time…

August: “‘I want what I want when I want it,” as she feeds the baby in the wee small hours…

Marco: “…and you don’t care what it does to the rest of us.”

“I’m only in Rome for one night. I won’t have my heart broken.”

Posted by August Bravo & Marco Sparks on

When in Rome… well, when you’re in Rome, you can pretend that your life isn’t so bad, that you’re not so bored in upstate New York, and that you’re maybe getting picked up by some guys straight out of a Fellini movie. Or, who wish they were in a Fellini movie. So, let’s get out of the office for the long, hot weekend and go make some accommodations while talking about last night’s episode of Mad Men, “Souvenir.”

August Bravo: Pete Campbell, man of reason.

Marco Sparks: And a reader of Ebony magazine!

August: And always so smart, so capable.

Marco: And ambassador to the Republic of Dresses! That would totally be a great indie rock band name, by the way.

August: Can you blame it on the kid for the ruined dress? Maybe you can, but Pete doesn’t. He’s just the man to step up and fix things on his own. But why just for a stranger?

Marco: He’s a sucker for a foreign accent?

August: Is he even really that good of a guy or does he just want a piece of ass?

Marco: Piece of ass. Definitely. Also a little boy…

…pretending to be a man. But without a proper understanding of what a man is (if any of us so called “men” really know).

August: And then there’s Betty’s man from the Governor’s office, coming through in a clutch. Is that more than she can say about Don? I think she thinks so.

Marco: It would seem that, as the show’s progressed, Don humors Betty less and less. But he did let her name the baby Eugene.

August: The reservoir is the only thing she’s shown passion in recently… or did I speak too soon? Who is this guy really and why is Betty so interested?

Marco: Perhaps it has more to do with the fact that he’s interested in her? Everyone sees Betty as an object of some kind, and more and more in a less favorable way since that’s all they see her as, so perhaps she’s entertained by this guy who definitely only sees her as an object that he wants to get into. Much like one would get into a reservoir, I would imagine, if I were to end this paragraph with a bad gender-related analogy.

August: She’s always had such a strange and wandering curiosity. And then she’s all smiles after the kiss in her father’s car.

Marco: Of course he compliments the car. Is this guy just lucky or does he know exactly how to play Betty? And as she drives off, who is she looking at in that rearview mirror? The man who wants her, or… just herself, satisfied?

August: Such a twisted woman. I’m slowly thinking she’s becoming more like Don with the deviousness.

Marco: It’s possible that, unlike Don, Betty knows how to be good and disgusted with herself after a bad time.

August: And then there’s Joan. Kicking herself maybe for leaving Sterling-Cooper?

Marco: Maybe, but she’s gonna play it cool. She’s Joan, after all. The fact that she showed up right then was perfect though, because, well, no matter how much Joan is used, she’ll always be underused. She is the climate of this show. She knows how to handle all of the characters on this show perfectly, including Pete, but except for herself. I mean, psychology? She knows her husband is less than pathetic. But I think she probably handles her marital lack of bliss better than Betty.

But it was also perfect that she showed up then because just as my disgust-o-meter with Pete was getting higher and higher, Joan showed up, cooled the whole thing down, played him like a fiddle, and reminded me of the only man on the show I think is more detestable than Pete Campbell: Joan’s rapist husband. But Pete will straddle that line before the episode’s end again.

You know things are bad for these characters when the recurring mantra on this show, said here and several places before, is: “This never happened.” It’ll shock you how that’s only a slighter worse philosophy than “When you have no power, delay.”

But your buddy Cosgrove had one scene in the episode and two fabulous lines, including this one, and then: “New York in August? It’s like a great big melting wax museum. Nothing but those fat girls with the hairy armpits putting their feet in the fountain.”

August: And then there’s Italy.

Marco: Just a quick jaunt over the ocean. When you look down at the water from the window of the plan, is it clear enough for you to see the bottom or do you only see your own reflection?

August: Don the big tipper?

Marco: Such a manly thing. I don’t know how much money I’m handling you and you know what? Fuck it. Take it all. Whatever. Get lost. The same with when Carla wanted to talk to Betty about Sally. Don’s all like, “Oh, this is about the kids? Shit. I’m gonna… go get the luggage. Or something.”

August: And apparently Don is the cock blocker of his own wife? Ha ha.

Marco: A scene that perfectly reverses what I said earlier about Don humoring Betty less and less. I found that scene both perfect and wonderful and also chilling. Roleplay adds so much excitement, but then again, it’s kind of sad when a couple needs that excitement. Betty wants to be someone desirable, and hopefully that someone is her, or the alternate universe her that never got married to Don and had kids? And Don? Don wants to roleplay as a guy who’s going to get laid.

August: Where the fuck did Betty learn Italian? Wait, she was a model there, wasn’t she? No idea she knew the language. Apparently this just attracts Eurotrash douchebags with bad hair  to hit on her.

Marco: The Eurotrash have been hitting on pretty girls with big, ridiculous 1960s hair and telling yankees to go home for a long, long time. Nevermind Franz Ferdinand, Pearl Harbor, and the Holocaust, I think that’s what the two world wars were actually about.

I love that Connie is fascinated by Don, and by Don’s wife. And he wants Don to see what it’s all really like in a Hilton hotel. It’s like he wants to tame and break Don. Or maybe at the end of the season he’s going to claim that Don is his lost son and give him his fortune?

August: Best moment of the episode: Sally asserting her dominance? I think so. All she wanted to do was play being married and kiss Ernie? Tsk tsk. She’s growing up so fast.

Marco: Sally’s going through a little kid version of what Betty’s going through, but she doesn’t understand it. Not that Betty does either. Not that Betty would explain it to her daughter even if she did. I was amazed to see Betty being calmly motherly about the first kisses, of which there’ll be lots of, so true, but not addressing a recurring problem that’s been coming up more and more: Sally’s latent anger.

Little Sally Draper’s still in my top 5 of favorite characters on this show just because of the scene where she watches her mother put the make up on in the mirror over her shoulder. Again, Betty sees herself, sees what she wants others to see, something desirable, something more, and ignores her daughter, and then leaves. And leaves her daughter only to ponder things that she’s too young to understand.

August: I guess that dress line/move does work! Man, is that what I should be doing?

Marco: No.

August: Shouldn’t I be walking around, trying to fix young German girls’ dresses? I guess that could get you into trouble…

Marco: Not only is it sleazy to the nth degree, it’s scary to see that Pete them forces himself on that girl. This is the little boy who yanks his shirt and tie off over his head once he gets home and his wife is gone, but then wants his “kindness” rewarded and his manliness affirmed. If not for the editing of the show, I think we would’ve been questioning if Pete Campbell was a rapist as well, making that au pair go through kleenex box after kleenex box afterward…

August: I was surprised at Pete’s feelings of guilt afterward, his silence as a confession to his wife.

Marco: The guy’s never been called out on his shit good and properly before. I’d like to say that maybe this will be a turning point for him, and it probably will be, but not necessarily for the better.

That’s one of the things I really liked about Peggy letting Pete know about the baby in last season’s finale: It’s not that we didn’t get a chance to see his emotional breakdown/reaction to the news, it’s that her telling him that left no space for it. She was making it clear what happened and that she didn’t care what he thought of it.

August: And now Pete wants Trudy around more? WTF? It’s the 60s. Who wants to be around their wife more?

Marco: As someone far smarter than the two of us put it: emosogyny. Also, Trudy can do better. But her reaction to his admittal/non-admittal fascinates me. It’s like there’s one thing on the mind of or on the tip of the tongue of every 1960s married couple: fidelity. And it’s fragile.

August: Betty keeps changing and changing. This woman is full of it. And yet, so empty…

Marco: The same ways as Pete. In fact, I feel like Betty and Pete are the same, with a few differences. Both want respect, both want to be desired and admired. Both are afraid of being in their house by themselves, or with kids (who aren’t really people yet, let’s face it). Both need their spouse to make this a home. But right now that may not be good enough for Betty…

But I’m going with that for now. The same as Peggy is a junior version of Don Draper, Pete is a junior version of Betty. Both couples, whether they know it or not, are destined to be stuck with each other.

August: Home is where the heart is. But where is the heart?

Marco: It’s in Italy.

“Maybe I’m late because I was spending time with my family reading the bible.”

Posted by August Bravo & Marco Sparks on

From unexpected visitors to camera obscuras to “fender benders,” starting in media res and not letting up until someone’s soul was signed away (for three years) last night was another great episode of Mad Men. And August and Marco want to talk with you, from their fainting couches, of course, about “Seven Twenty Three” and…

August Bravo: A thousand reasons why I’m so great. Confessions of a Mad Man!

Marco Sparks: You’ll have to excuse August here, ladies and gentlemen. He’s been staring at the sun. That, and he’s both an Ogilvy fan and a Duck Phillips fan.

August: What a great beginning. Where did he wake up? Who cares. All that matters is that Don knows how to clean up.

Marco: Everything about that beginning was so great, from how short each little intro was to the way it effortlessly let us flashback into the main thrust of the story. But there was just something hypnotically perfect about the way Peggy’s arm falls down to the bed, right?

In fact, and it’s fitting that this episode airs (and this is by no means a defense of the man or his crimes, just his films) right as Polanski’s getting arrested, but this episode’s beginning captured a certain sense of dread that’s been missing from the cinema, I feel, since Polanski’s early days (especially in a movie like The Tenant), and is all too rarely ever attempted on television.

August: “Maybe I’m not on time because I was with my family reading the bible.”  The greatest quote of the season? I don’t know, but I think so.

Marco: I think you’re right. “I’m Peggy Olson and I want to smoke some marijuana has faded in my memory, and Don talking to Connie was perfect. I like how Don’s primary mode of respect/getting long with the previous generation involves smart ass remarks. The Draper charm!

August: I’ve never laughed out loud during a scene, not until Don said that to Hilton. I loved that Hilton took the desk and assumed the power in the office, something he proably felt Don took from him in their meeting last week. And what’s with the clapping after Connie leaves? The guys know who he is, but don’t know what’s going on.

Marco: They just know he’s Don Fucking Draper and if Conrad Hilton is stopping by to wish him a good morning and tell him about his weird urges and desires and have him pass some kind of bizarre moral test, well, then they better give him a standing ovation. Whatever happened in that office, you just know it was good. As for what’s going on…

August: I’m not sure Don knows either, especially when it comes to Connie. Why the sudden rush to him? What makes his eye wander?

Marco: Good question. Is it the curse of powerful men with unsatisfiable appetites? Or is it a comment about the Hiltons in general?

August: Uh oh. Contract time for Don. Something he’s not too fond of. Especially talking about it with his family. And why would he? It’s none of their business.

Marco: He’s managed to avoid it before but now they’re closing in on him. But for Roger here, do you think that he called Betty at home out of a dastardly sense of business or was he just trying to stick it to Don in their ongoing hostilities this year? Or both?

August: Definitely business. I don’t think he’s got something against Don. I think he thinks he’s still this young guy, compared to him, who’s going to learn the ropes of the business one of these days.

Marco: I’d say that Roger is certainly hurt and confused by Don’s dislike of him. I don’t think Roger is capable of understanding what it could be that’s caused the rift between them, and these aren’t the most “cards on the table” of men. I love this exchange:

Roger: “I watched the sun rise this morning.”

Don: “How was it?”

Roger: “Average.”

August: I like the recurring return to Betty on the couch. Something happened to everyone in this episode, that’s the point of the beginning and the flashbacks, but it was very clearly something else for her. What’s she thinking about?

Marco: Fucking that guy from the Governor’s office.

August: Yeah, her exchange with him just reeked of an extramarital affair in the making from the get go.

Marco: He doesn’t care about her fucking water tank, but he will stop her from staring into the sun. Like an idiot.

August: Yeah, that really won her over. She wanted him like I want to watch new episodes of Heroes.

Marco: I don’t know what that means.

August: But she won’t get with him, I don’t think. At least not yet. But, seriously, who the fuck is that guy?

Marco: Some Republican asshole who goes around caressing pregnant women’s stomachs at parties and happened to squeeze himself in at a time when her father was dead and her husband was a little too honest about how self centered she is. Just remember: “It’s not adorable to pretend like you’re not adorable.”

August: Something’s definitely always on her mind these days. It makes her a much more interesting character this season. Finally speaking up and expression her opinions.

Marco: Especially when Don explains his thining on the contract situation with her. “They can’t have me,” so of course that makes them want him more. Which is exactly how he’s always treated her.

August: She’s very un-lady-like this season. But in a good way.

Marco: But I think the fainting couch almost screams too loudly as a metaphor at he end of the couch, not just for the wandering eye/mind/spirit of the clearly upset and confused Betty – remember, the fainting sofa, a perfect thing for Betty, was introduced to her by her potential new suitor – but for what she’s bringing into the Draper family home, and what she thinks of it. “That’s your hearth, darling,” the interior decorator tells her. “That’s the soul of your home.” And rather than have it filled with love, Betty’s going to put a tacky couch there, so she can faint and not deal with the world.

But, then again, Betty’s potential suitor is only slightly less interesting than Sally’s teacher, who has locked her sights on Don, and has accepted that relationship with Don is just going to happen. Because, like Peggy pointed out before, he’s got more and is obviously bored.

August: Don’s verbal bitch slap to Peggy was so awesome, so eye opening.

Marco: “You were my secretary.”

August: “You’re good. Get better. Close the door.”

Marco: And the most devastating, in Don’s rage, of telling her that she’s brought him nothing that he couldn’t live without.

August: It does get annoying to see Peggy keep asking and asking for things. Just because you can move up quick doesn’t mean you should keep moving up the ladder that fast.

Marco: I will admit that while Peggy is clearly talented, her rise is unprecedent, obviously, and possibly undeserved. She’s probably very unprepared for a lot of what she’s inherited. But then again, this is advertising, and that’s the nature of that particular game.

And this is why she’ll always be tied to Pete, because in a lot of ways, they are the same. Where she’s good, he’s devious and insidious. When he’s vulnerable and heartfelt, she’s clumsy or scheming. Their individual failings nicely fit the other’s virtues. And so I think it’s interesting that Pete essentially asked for the gig with Hilton earlier the same as Don assumed Peggy was doing when she caught him when he was upset from dealing with the contract stuff.

August: And then there’s Duck…

You are Don’s girl, aren’t you?

Marco: Uncle Herman!

August: Duck should maybe keep his fantasies to himself.  Who just wants to see Peggy everyday?

Marco: I can’t believe that line worked.

August: It’s all about the teeth line.

Marco: Duck is a hungry man. And he was going to give her a go around like she’d never gotten before. Suck it, Pete. Though, comparitively, Duck is very much a man, if a failed one, compared to Pete. And it seems like Peggy really gets amorous and vulnerable to the physical desires afer Don chews her out.

And then it starts all over again and we come back to the end.

August: And the end is the beginning. Don was mugged by a couple of “young lovers.”

Marco: To me, that felt very similar to the California storyline from season 2. Don likes to flirt with crossing the boundaries, both his own and society’s. Especially when his freedom and the persona he’s worked so hard on are threatened.

And don’t forget Archie Whitman, telling Don in a hallucination (on reds!), that he’s a grower of bullshit.

August: And Peggy slept with Duck. And he apparently rocked her world. And Betty… well, who knows what’s really going on in Betty’s mind?

Marco: She’s looking for a little something she can have control over. Something all the characters in this episode seem to have lost a little grasp on. Certainly within themselves.

You mentioned the loss of the sitting behind the desk, hence the power in the room, which makes me glad that Cooper was there at the end, the real fatherly figure to Don. The man who can call Conrad Hilton “eccentric” completely without irony in his tone. The man who can say, “Would you say I knw something about you, Don?”

August: “After all, when it comes down to it, who’s really signing this contract anyway?”

Marco: Good question.

American jokes are better than British jokes…

Posted by August Bravo & Marco Sparks on

…because American jokes sometimes end with a British guy losing a foot to a secretary on an out of control John Deere tractor. No joke there.

Alright, so you’re here, and August and Marco are here, let’s talk about last night’s incredibly fun and surprisingly grisly episode of Mad Men, “Guy Walks Into An Advertising Agency.”

August Bravo: What’s Sally so scared of? The opening scene of each episode is always interesting, always setting up each individual episode, always so full of promise, but this one… not so much for me.

Marco Sparks: Sally’s scared of ghosts! And freaked out that her mom named that baby after her dead grandpa. Will by the baby want his $5 too?

Last week while Mad Men was on, the nation was watching the perfectly scripted drama of Kanye West, Taylor Swift, and Beyonce, and this week… did they win the emmy?

The answer, of course, is yes, yes, yes! And this was a good episode to have airing while they were winning the emmy for best outstanding drama, and best writing, because there was quite a bit of outstanding drama here and, again, some surprises.

August: Big accounts move slowly, but the John Deere sure doesn’t. That Ken Cosgrove sure knows how to make an entrance.

Marco: Yes, he certainly does. “You may want to shave your beard.”

August: “What, who the hell are you people?” Kinsey asks, quite rightfully too. I think that man would rather quit than shave that face fur.

Marco: It’s the ultimate sign of his prestige and pretensiousnes, isn’t it? The persona he’s perfected of himself, and fully believes me, demands that he have that thing on his face.

Poor Don. He really seems to get his hopes up, thanks to Bert Cooper, about leading this jet set life of traveling back and forth between New York and London. What a fun show that would be. And then… not so much.

August: And then he has to bury the hatchet with Roger. Don’s always been one to be pretty upfront with people…

Marco: Painfully upfront.

Augut: …but he never seems to like to confront Roger.

Marco: Probably his closest male buddy. And besides, what good does confronting Roger do? He’s a horny little child. Like he’s said before: he lives life lik he’s on shore leave.

August: And Don tries to put all that animosity behind them. I wish that feud would continue, and would escalate. It would be so much more interesting.

Marco: You may get your wish. We’ve got a whole half a season left. But I enjoyed Roger’s little anecdote about the severed hand. What a bizarre bit of foreshadowing.

August: And then there’s Pryce, my favorite new character. Ah, poor Pryce The snake charmer. To Bombay he goes!

Marco: Bombay. Ha ha! That’s where I send all my ex-wives!

August: He’s not moving away, he’s moving up.

Marco: And you have to love Jared Harris, song of Richard Harris, and his quintessential Britishness, especially in this scene. The pride, the “Oh, you shouldn’t have, chaps!” look on his face as he gets the box. Then he opens it…

August: But he’s a man who always does what he’s told. I was liking him too, like I said,and sad at the thought of him leaving so soon. And what was up with Roger not being on that org chart? Something’s up there.

Marco: “I’m being punished for making my job look easy.” Story of my life, man.

August: I love what Bert says. We took their money, now we have to do what they say. I’m afraid Roger isn’t quite aware of that yet.

Marco: I think that basically sums up Roger throughout the course of the entire show/1960s. The times, they are a-changin’.

August: I think Don’s the same way. He’s just better at not showing it.

Marco: Time magazines Man Of The Year, 1963. Fighter of communists! And lover of parties and drinks with strangers in empty bars.

August: I love the appearance by Conrad Hilton, my girlfriend Paris’ grandfather requesting a meeting Don.

Marco: Don’s right. Mice and hotels? Not a great combo, Connie.

August: So, he was offering Don a job there, right?

Marco: Or at least a reach around, definitely. But I don’t think that Don Draper would be satisfied with either, not really.

August: But it’s nice to be offered.

Marco: Oh, definitely.

August: What was with the Prime Minister and the prostitutes?

Marco: They were referring to “the Profumo affair.” And then there’s that scene. That scene!

So good. My favorite ever. Yes, I’m that guy. And fuck Chekhov’s Gun, I’m waiting for the wikipedia article on Chekhov’s Tractor now.

August: You know, I actually happened to be out of the room when that scene ran. My chicken bake had just finished cooking. Woe is me. Luckily, it came on two more times before I went to sleep. Poor guy. The doctors say that he will never golf again. Tsk tsk.

Marco: I love the subtle implication there. No golf? Your career is over, limey.

The monkeys at Sterling-Cooper: “He might lose his foot.”

Roger: “Right as he was getting it through the door.”

August: And that fucking look that Don and Joan give each other as he tells her to get home to her lucky husband.

Marco: Her lucky bastard of a husband. I, for one, would like to see that guy go become a surgeon in Alabama. His hands have shit for brains!

August: And he’s a bit of a rapist.

Marco: I like that everyone at the Joan Going Away/Welcome, British Invasion/Hack n’ Slash party all thought that Joan was crying from sadness of leaving her job, or the beauty of Guy MacKendrick’s speech. But really, she was realizing that her dream of the perfect life as a doctor’s wife was not all it was cracked up to be and she was stuck with that loser.

Also, Guy MacKendrick? With a name like that, you deserve to have your foot fed to a tractor.

August: But during that look, all I could think about was how Don and Joan needed to sleep together right then and there.

Marco: Right in the middle of the waiting room? Nice.

August: And why haven’t they slept together yet?

Marco: Because America can’t handle that jelly just yet.

August: They’re so much alike, it would be something ever viewer would cherish. And maybe tha’s why it’s never meant to be?

But I loved Roger’s reaction to the foot situation, the glibness. The not giving two shits.

Marco: Somewhere in this business, this had to happen before, he says. That’s the kind of thing I love from Roger. That he knows this business inside and out, even when he’s not really doing shit in it.

August: He’s getting paid, that’s what he’s doing. But with his concern/tantrm about not being on that slide/chart, I think he migt be getting a little worried.

Marco: He might need another chocolate sundae and a shave! Who know that Roger was a pre-metrosexual.

August: “They reorganied us and you’re the only one in this room that got a promotion.”

Marco: My closet fear is that when all is said and don, Harry Crane will be the president of Sterling-Cooper.

August: And Pete Campbell still won’t be the sole head of Accounts.

Marco: I feel like Bobby Draper’s query about petting his newborn brother is another clear step towards him being a serial killer or just an all around bad dude when he gets older.

August: And the barbie doll in the bushes, a clear rejection by Sally of her new brother, baby Eugene. Does she even look at him at all when Bobby asks if he can pet him? Does she feel like he’s replacing her grandfather? Maybe. The worry about him taking Grandpa Gene’s room and her terrifyng cries in the night might persuade one to definitely think so.

Marco: I think at the start of the season, I was worried that this year would be haunted by Gene Hofstadt, the way he elderly always haunt us, even when they don’t have the courtesy to die, and thankfully, he did. And now Sally feels that the baby is Grandpa Gene, reborn and tinier and uglier and probably just a bit messier.

August: And Don finally reveals his true feelings for Betty’s dad. And that name. Something I’m sure she knew very well.

Marco: Betty, again, the worst mother of the 1960s. She treats Sally moderately better than Bobby – though, she’s right, he is boring, and probably should go bang his head against the wall – but only because she sees in Sally a little version of herself, one placated by gifts, even if she can’t be bothered to deal with the little version of herself.

But that thing with Baby Gene “giving” Sally the barbie? That’s creepy. But I think Don summed up this storyline well as he sat Sally down and properly introduced her to the newborn. “We don’t know who he’s going to be yet.” So true. And with this show, who you become isn’t necessarily who you have to continue to be.

August: I liked this episode, as I like them all, but it felt shorter than usual. Quick, I guess. Nothing too crazy about it, or in it. I think they expected the John Deere scene to dominate the entire episode.

Marco: Just a little temporary frenzy. Don’t get too comfortable, kids.

August: But, you know, I wasn’t feeling it.

Marco: Let’s leave this, like the episode itself did, with Bob Dylan singing to Woody Guthrie about Cisco Houston, Leadbelly, and a bunch of dead miners. Andthat’s why you never shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater.

Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song,

‘Bout a funny ol’ world that’s a-comin’ along.

Seems sick an’ it’s hungry, it’s tired an’ it’s torn,

It looks like it’s a-dying an’ it’s hardly been born.

“Are you aware of the number of handjobs Im gonna have to give?”

Posted by August Bravo & Marco Sparks on

The week works through it’s cycle and here we are again, the fog clearing in the aftermath of another great episode of Mad Men, this one being last night’s “The Fog.” And it’s time for us to think upon it, is it not, August?

August Bravo: What time is it? What time isn’t it? And, yes, after being sodomized during my move to Manhattan last week, I am back. Sorry about the absence. Let’ just dive right in.

Marco Sparks: Last night’s episode, and I feel like I could be saying this every week during season 3 of the show, but last night’s episode was probably my favorite so far.

August: Oh yeah, definitely. Last night’s was such a great episode. So good from the get go.

Marco: Do you think Don’s going to go the easy route and hook up with Sally’s maypole-dancing teacher, the anti-Bobbi Barrett, who feels her job a little too much? And equally importantly, are we, the fans, almost hungering for that?

August: No, But I definitely think he’ll get a chance to this year.

Marco: Fuck yeah, he will. Evening phone calls with a drink in hand, hugging the corner of the room, and that seductive bra strap hanging off her shoulder? Lesser men would puddle at that sight.

August: Yes. But do you think that maybe Dennis the prison guard’s little speech may have sunk in with Don to a certain degree? I’d like to think so. I think it’s what everyone wants. That would be awesome.

Marco: Nah, not me. I’m anti-hugging, learning, crying, or understanding. I’m against redemption in pretty much all forms. Redemption gets passed to me at a party and someone’s all like, “Yo, you want a hit o’ this?” That someone could be Peggy’s drug dealer from two weeks ago, mind you, but even still, I’m like, “No, thanks.”

August: Also, I loved seeing the little bit part/cameo by the woman who voices Lisa Simpson.

Marco: Yeah, really. Seeing Yeardley Smith totally stunned me right out of that scene for a moment, you know?

August: I thought it was really funny. Also, I love Don’s constant annoyance with Pryce. Walking into that meeting and then walking out only seconds later after realizing it’s extremely pointless (to him), that was one of my favorite Don moments this season. After all, why should he have to worry about money?

Marco: I think Don does worry about money, just not the company’s, you know? I feel like that’s a big part of his conversation with Peggy towards the end. Peggy, voicing the feelings of everyone, sees Don and thinks he has it all together and has everything. And he does. He’s Don Draper, after all. But I think at every single moment, Don’s afraid of losing it. His “greatest fears lay in anticipation,” after all.

But speaking of that money, and I have to love the way Jared Harris makes the alliteration of “pencils, pads, paper, and postage” sing. Also, Sal’s expense account was higher than Don’s, right? Did he have to pay for that half a hand job?

August: Good question. And one better suited to an accountant. I enjoy finding out more and more about Don’s previous life in each episode…

Marco: …and the way little bits of his previous self filter into his current persona?

August: Yeah. There’s nothing particularly revealing about that in that first scene in Sally’s teacher’s classroom, but everything about that scene, as they’re there to deal with Sally’s misbehavior in the wake of Grandpa Gene’s passing, was just perfect. And awkward. And perfectly awkward. And was only made better by the teacher then calling Don that night, and seemingly after some drinking. Why would she do that? Again, I’m sure there’s a hidden agend at work, even if none of the characters are aware of it yet. Maybe you’re right and her and Don will sleep together.

Marco: Or, at least have… a confrontation of some sorts. And if the game is seduction, maybe it won’t be Don Draper who seduces her, maybe it’ll be Dick Whitman?

I just love the tease the writers give us as super pregnant Betty comes down the stairs, seemingly out of nowhere to ruin Don’s budding conversation with Sally’s teacher, and announces that it’s time. And then asks who was on the phone. “No one.”

August: The waiting room scenes, like we said, were pretty interesting. Don’s chat with Dennis, the prison guard, who’s having a baby. And there’s been a breach. “Our worst fears lie in anticipation.” And Don, always so cool, calm, and collected. And playing the alpha male around someone who’s just it is to always be in charge.

Marco: It seems like when put into an social situation that he just doesn’t really care to be in, Don will have a drink with just about anyone. In that regard, Don Draper is Ernest Hemingway. And next time, I think Don will remember to bring a bottle.

August: That part, he stuff in the waiting room, was just a great aspect of that storyline in this episode. Dennis’ last words to Don are what I liked the most. The stuff about how Dennis can just tell that Don is an honest man. And how this, being fathers, will make them better men. . Nice lingering thought to leave with someone, either inspirational, or…

Marco: …meant to make them feel guilty?

August: Yeah.

Marco: I think there’s a bit of that, the guilt, maybe, in Don based on that chat. That, or Don listens to Dennis’ naive take on the nobility of a man’s sperm conquering his wife’s eggs and spawning a life and therein lies redemption just kind of cute. I think Don was thinking, I used to think like you did, and now I’m just drinking your booze, buddy. And then afterward, in the hallway, they act like strangers.

But I tell you, Augustus, the show is tugging on me about Betty again. Deep down, I’m honestly rooting for her, even though, really, I’ve grown to hate her. But the way she’s basically just passed off at the nurse’s station amazed me. That girl is just so, so alone.

August: Betty’s vision question as she was induced and the dreams of her mother and father are so intriguing. I feel like she’s slowly losing her insanity throughout the progression of this show. And the horrible nurse, and her accusing said nurse of cheating with her husband, wow.

Marco: “I don’t want to be here.” I imagine you don’t, Birdy. I’ve seen a lot of people online loving the nurse’s analogy there: Betty is on a boat. And Don is on the shore. And right now, it doesn’t really seem like he’s waving her away from the rocks.

But I’m fascinated by how, even in her dreams, Betty gets no respect from her father, and knows the place that she’s been stuck in for so long. “You’re a housecat. You’re very important, but you have little to do.” There’s a whole other discussion/bit of bloggery to be done on the pop feminism dripping out of Betty’s storyline in this episode alone.

August: It was a very interesting, very revealing dream, I think. But who was the black guy sitting there in the kitchen? And the blood? And that was the Hofstadt’s longtime maid, Viola, right?

Marco: I’ll admit to a bit of confusion there as well. At first I thought it was meant to be Medgar Evers. Especially since his death was mentioned earlier. Now I’m pondering if it was just supposed to be someone from Betty’s past? I don’t know.

But, you know, Medgar Evers, that Tibetan monk, Gene Hofstadt, and the upcoming assassination of JFK: This is the year of death on Mad Men.

August: I like Duck – now with ducks on his office wall – trying to scout Pete and Peggy. So good. And especially doing it at the same time.

Marco: And the suggestion that they have a secret relationship, which, of course, they do in a way, but that’s an offensive notion to Pete, who always sees Peggy as less than he. Starting with the fact that she’s just a woman, and continuing with the fact that she is a genuinely talented woman. She represents everything Pete hates about woman,and everything women show Pete has within himself: weakness.

August: Peggy always seems to be breaking down. Or crying about something. Not having enough money. Having a baby. Life being too hard. Or too expensive for her. She puts up a strong front, but falls right into every woman’s stereotype of being a whiny little baby herself.

Marco: I am not going to touch that one with a thirty foot pole.

But I do like Peggy, and like that she gave Don the baby present, and that it was an elephant. Of course it’s an elephant in that room, considering her past and his secret knowledge of that!

August: And I like Pete Campbell. Ah, Pete and “the negro” in the elevator. Always taking work a little too seriously and undervaluing people a little too much.

Marco: He’s always a bit racist, though he doesn’t like being called a “bigot,” but poor Hollis there just wasn’t going to be respected by Pete in that elevator because of the color of his skin anymore than Peggy will ever be because she’s a woman, and because she has power over little Pete Campbell.

It’s kind of funny that Kinsey thinks he’s cool because of his knowledge/fetishizing of black culture. I feel like Kinsey and Pete come at this group of people from just opposite directions.

August: Little Pete Campbell? I tell you, I love his initiative. He basically created the idea of the urban market last night. And I think a lot of his disgust with Peggy comes from his not respecting the decisions she makes. But he is such a controlling guy, even when he shouldn’t be. Or, maybe he should? He is that baby’s daddy.

Marco: I think Roger summed up Pete best last night: A lot of times this business comes down to just, “I don’t like that guy.” That, and chocolate sundaes.

But Pete sums up one of the larger things going on in this show perfectly. We talked before about characters relationship with the previous generation and how they feel out of place with them and that they can’t learn anything from them, but the thing is… they’re just like them, in their own way. Everyone on this show, to use the ship metaphor, is essentially a passenger on the Titanic. And social change is about to hit them hard like a motherfucking iceberg.

August: I hate how everyone dislikes him there at Sterling-Cooper. He’s not the most noble man, no one there is…

Marco: It is advertising after all.

August: Right, but he does have the occasional good idea, you know? It’s a shame some companies worry about image when dealing with “undesirable customers” and not money. I guess Pete’s ideas aren’t good enough that Roger won’t have to give out a few handjobs in 1963.

Marco: Been there, done that.

August: And we cut to the credits. Also, totally unrelated: Kanye West is the shit.

Marco: Kanye is just the new Joe Wilson. Actually, he’s like a wrestler who’s grown too old for his good guy storyline and now has to flirt with evilness and rudeness.

The thing I was hoping to see the most in this episode was, since I knew that it’d be some Pete stuff, a scene with his lovely and wonderful wife, Trudy. Especially since the actress who plays Trudy so wonderfully, Alison Brie, is in this month’s Esquire, in their slightly condescending Funny Joke From A Beautiful Woman segment. Anyway, we shall end our chit chat today with her joke, which I think you’ll find oddly fitting to this episode of Mad Men…

A guy walks into a bar and sees a sign that reads, “Cheese sandwich $3.50. Chicken sandwich $4.50 Handjob $5.” He checks his wallet and calls over the waitress. He asks, “Are you the one who does the handjob?”

She smiles at him seductively and says, “I am.”

He says, “Well, wash your friggin’ hands. I want a cheese sandwich.”