Tag Archives: Don Draper

Public relations.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Thank fucking God that Mad Men is coming back, right? Right? After the end of Lost, I kind of felt like I wanted to take a break from TV, and for the most part, I have. The only shows I tune in regularly to in any regard are Party Down and Doctor Who, though by “tune in regularly,” I do, of course, mean via the internet. Oh, and True Blood too. And yet, all that said, it’s funny how I realize what a Mad Men-sized gap there’s been in my life once I really start to visualize the return of the show. Does that make sense? Do I care? Either way, I think we can all take a vote on it and it’ll come out unanimous that it’s time for Mad Men to return, yes?

Mad linkage:

This is the greatest story you’ll see today.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, The Runaway General?

Alleged fugitive drug lord arrested in Jamaica.

Wikileaks founder emerges from hiding.

It’ll be good to have you back, January Jones.

Serial killers, religious cults, human hair.

Various upcoming movies: Inception, The Green Hornet (which looks, if possible, more terrible than I could’ve imagined in my wildest dreams), Pumzi (a short film by Kenyan director Wanuri Kahiu about a world decimated after “water wars”), and A Topiary, the second movie by Shane Carruth, who directed Primer.

Oh, and just so there’s no confusion: According to Wikipedia, “Public Relations” is currently listed as the title of the first episode of Mad Men‘s upcoming season.

Adam Mckay directing Garth Ennis’ The Boys? Whatever.

A tale of Anne Frank’s fictional sex life.

Gigantic green algae slick heads towards China.

Just click here for your moment of daily zen.

Anything you can get away with.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

And now for something completely different: Just a few of my favorite quotes by Marshall McLuhan…

Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.

All advertising advertises advertising — no ad has its meaning alone.

from here.

We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.

Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behavior.

The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers.

from here.

Good taste is the first refuge of the non-creative. It is the last-ditch stand of the artist.

from here.

The nuclear bomb will turn warfare into the juggling of images.

The printing press was at first mistaken for an engine of immortality by everybody except Shakespeare.

Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don’t really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth’s atmosphere to a company as a monopoly.

Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either.

from here.

Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. The machine world reciprocates man’s love by expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him with wealth.

Diaper backward spells repaid. Think about it.

We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror.

Art is anything you can get away with.

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.

I don’t explain—I explore.

(and personally, I believe that the above could and perhaps should be the motto of most writers and bloggers, but maybe that’s just me?)


I don’t necessarily agree with everything I say.

I want to go there.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Yesterday was 23 things and today it’ll be shorter, though not necessarily sweeter, with a mere five things…

1. This:

from here.

Oh, that Nic Cage. Amazing and strange as usual. And totally an animal lover.

2. Molly Lambert’s piece about Tina Fey/Jon Hamm on This Recording today. It’s a wonderful, honed bit on comedians and characters and gender politics and objectification, and it’s brilliant. And aside from that, as she frequently is, so is Molly Lambert, who stands out amongst most internet writers for me in that she writes in quick bursts of sharp, insightful thought on a subject, but also survives in the long form where as so many other writers on the interwebz only seem to generate a few decent pull quotes to be linked to and reblogged ad nauseam. She tackles issues both old and new in a fresh way, in a smart way but one that’s also accessible to all the various levels of the hoi polloi, and she has that quality that you loathsomely envy: She writes in a way that feels like it’s resonating both with the thoughts you had on an issue, but are always worded better through her view on the matter, or, more honestly, she says the things you wish you were thinking/saying.

3. Praising Molly Lambert isn’t exactly a new thing, nor should it be, but the post about Jon Hamm/Tina Fey/Don Draper/Liz Lemon is really that good. And I love that it tackles how weird these characters are in so many ways, but refreshingly weird, but also that these are sex symbols for smart people, or for anyone with eyes, sure, but also for us sapiosexuals in the audience as well.

And she mentions something that I’ve never thought of before, but the idea that masculinity is basically a performance, not just between “bros,” I wouldn’t think, but in general. All the world’s a stage, I suppose, and all the men and women on that stage are players in a game of some sort. Especially those of us with the Y chromosome, which I feel. I mean, it’s not something I really considered before, though I kind of did, but now I really feel it. Never mind, that sounds stupid, but you get what I’m saying?

3A. Can we ever talk about just how fucking weird Jon Hamm the real life person seems? I kind of love the impression that I’ve gotten that he’s the exact opposite of Don Draper, not stupid (but more than a little dorky maybe)(but endearingly dorky, you know?), of course, but closer to his character on 30 Rock. Is Don Draper the ultimate vista to the wider landscape of manhood?

from here.

4. This article here from the BBC, about how scientists have made a breakthrough in “artificial life,” developing the world’s first synthetic living cell. I saw this at work today and shared it with this guy that comes in sometimes, my local atheist friend. He and I have bonded over the years over our hatred of intolerance towards scientific exploration and a favoring of antiquated notions like “organized religion” instead of advancement of all the wonderful aspects of the human race. This phenomenon reached something of a fever pitch during a particularly turbulent period in our country called “The Bush years.”

Anyway, so my atheist friend and I were talking about all of this as we tend to do and laughing and riffing on it and basically griping about how science (especially things dealing with like stem cells, for example) is held back or considered not interesting in America or, my favorite, the work of the Devil. We had a good laugh about that, talking about science as “the work of the Devil,” and because I have a vivid imagination, I literally imagined a guy who looks like this…

…in charge of a lab somewhere, ordering scientists around, approving budgets, and demanding more breakthroughs. “We’re trying to save them, but they refuse to see!” the Devil would say (as I said in my beast throaty demon voice), shaking his cloven hoof/fist angrily, and then they head into the break room to celebrate the birthday of one of the girls in the geophysics department, ha ha.

5. Today I had to make a nearly impossible decision, but also an incredibly mundane one. All the same, it was a tough one. It was the eternal debate of which movie to watch over my lunch break, and the choices came down to…

When Harry Met Sally vs. You’ve Got Mail. I know, I know. Fucking ridiculous, right?

But I do like them both. I appreciate them both. And, well, I kind of hate both as well. But I put it to you, gentle readers, before I say which one I picked, I’m a bit curious, which would you have picked? Metaphorically, the lady or the tiger?

Raids on human consciousness.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

“Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.”

-Don Delillo

And, yeah, I mentioned it last week, but I have to say again how excited I am about a new Don Delillo coming out this year – next month, in fact – entitled Point Omega. It’s a short novel, but one that sounds classically Delillo, and here’s a plot description for you:

In the middle of a desert “somewhere south of nowhere,” to a forlorn house made of metal and clapboard, a secret war advisor has gone in search of space and time. Richard Elster, seventy-three, was a scholar – an outsider – when he was called to a meeting with government war planners. They asked Elster to conceptualize their efforts – to form an intellectual framework for their troop deployments, counterinsurgency, orders for rendition. For two years he read their classified documents and attended secret meetings. He was to map the reality these men were trying to create “Bulk and swagger,” he called it. At the end of his service, Elster retreats to the desert, where he is joined by a filmmaker intent on documenting his experience. Jim Finley wants to make a one-take film, Elster its single character – “Just a man against a wall.” The two men sit on the deck, drinking and talking. Finley makes the case for his film. Weeks go by. And then Elster’s daughter Jessie visits – an “otherworldly” woman from New York – who dramatically alters the dynamic of the story. When a devastating event follows, all the men’s talk, the accumulated meaning of conversation and connection, is thrown into question. What is left is loss, fierce and incomprehensible.

It’s kind of funny now how relevant Delillo has stayed over the years, but how he’s become more relevant as events began to mirror things he’s been talking about for decades. He’s essentially been writing 9/11 novels for thirty years and talking about the race between terrorists and novelists and those who try to make sense of things, either by persuasion or by force. He’s been trying to blend in a post-apocalyptic world into the one we already live and exist in, and it would appear to be a frighteningly easy and seamless fit at times.

And like Pynchon, he’s certainly been mapping the increasing ubiquitous paranoia that has become part of our American DNA. “It was as though Hemingway died one day and Pynchon was born the next,” he’s said about the contributions of both men to the changing nature of fiction, “from pure realism to something more cosmic.”

from here.

And I think it’s fascinating that he used to work in advertising when he was younger, back when it was primarily print work and hadn’t quite jumped into the medium of television yet. The difference between the advertising industry and writing fiction? At least one is honest about what it’s doing and selling you. Most, including his friends, assumed he left the business to begin writing, but he says: “Actually, I quit my job so I could go to the movies on weekday afternoons.”

Delillo has been called, along with Cynthia Ozick, one of the English languages’ two greatest writers by David Foster Wallace, and that’s fitting here since DFW’s great big 12 years in the making novel, The Pale King, is finally coming out (although not til next year, sadly) in it’s unfinished but edited form. The book deals with a group of IRS workers and the monotony and “intense tediousness” they encounter in their jobs, and also employs a little of the good old classic meta post-modern.

Here is an interesting look at DFW’s career, his final years, and his work on The Pale King.

And four excerpts from the novel have already been published in US magazines:

“Good People,” “Wiggle Room,” and “All That” in The New Yorker, and “The Compliance Branch” in Harper’s.

And again, the new Delillo short story, “Midnight In Dostoevsky,” unrelated to the new novel.

And “Still Life,” an excerpt from his previous novel, Falling Man.

Who knows, “The Year We Make Contact” could very well become the year of many happy returns. Hell, one writer is even making contact with us again from beyond the grave. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? How’s your writing going?

The year in pictures, part one.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

…but not for much longer.

“Midnight In Dostoevsky” by Don DeLillo, who has a new novel in 2010!

Plotting the ruination of Radiohead?

Lady Gaga and the Queen.

This is easily the film I’m most looking forward to next year.

2009 was the year to set aside childish things. Namely, the last eight years.

Putin to retire soon? “Don’t hold your breath,” he says.

“Like taking candy from someone who seriously likes candy.”

There’s always time in time and space to stop and smell the flowers.

from here.

There’s water on the moon!

What this decade has been lacking thus far: Authenticity.

Who’s your favorite Beatle?

The end of love, part one.

Person of the year?

Is this what the culture’s come to?

You know what, don’t answer that.

Going where others have gone before.

Iran pisses on itself just a little more.

“You better be in fear.”

If you are neighbors with Sarah Palin, I guess that puts you within visual range of Russia?

New terror in the skies?

First rap is dead, then love (part two)?

Serious contender for best picture of the year, right?

Both Winston Churchill and Pynchon love inherent vices.

LUV U, LILY.

MISS U, SWAYZE.

New Justice.

Hacker of the year?

Just think about all the sex you’ve had in the past year (or should have been having.)

MISS U, Batman (though not for much longer).

MISS/LUV U, Juliet.

Tiger Woods killed Brittany Murphy!

“Memes” and “Contraflow.”

“I saw her again last night.”

Birds successfully begin phase one of their attack on humanity.

In the year full of recurring royalty and ending love affairs, of course the king of pop songs would die. Makes me want to scream.

Was 2009 the year of sci fi?

The end of love, part three.

To be continued!

“So you do want to be in advertising after all?”

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Lets do something crazy!

“From one john’s bed to the next,” and here we are, sitting in our hotel suite office ordering room service and naughty adult movies, ready to ruminate on this past Sunday’s episode of Mad Men, the season 3 finale entitled “Shut The Door. Have A Seat.” And what an episode it was…

Onward to the littlest biggest divorce in the world.

Again, normally August Bravo would join me here, but that guy just can’t learn his lesson. Remember when he didn’t heed Peggy’s mom’s advice and moved to Manhattan and then was thoroughly raped? Well, now he’s moved to Portland and while there’s a bar on every corner and someone you can buy a hanjob or coke or both from every ten feet, apparently there’s not enough of a signal to watch Mad Men on youtube via your iphone.

Howdy Don. I am old and crusty. And if you want a father figure, I will gladly give you a spanking.

A brief recap (if possible): We discover that Don has been sleeping in Grandpa Gene’s room because of the strife between Betty and himself. Conrad Hilton gives him the cold brush off and informs him that PPL is being sold, and with it goes Sterling Cooper. Don tells his would be father figure where he can stick it. Then he goes and wakes up Cooper and brings Roger Sterling back to life and gets them excited about taking back their lives and their company and starting over. Together, they begin picking out their dream team from Sterling Cooper and assembling what will be their new company as Don goes around with both his dick and his tail between his legs and learning to value relationships. And sometimes valuing relationships means knowing which ones to say goodbye to, and so off goes Betty and her new boyfriend to Reno for a “quickie” (six weeks) divorce and Don discovers that he has a whole other family. But this, you see, is just a brief recap, so, as we’re told in almost every scene in this episode, “Have a seat.”

John John salutes.

Well, Kennedy is still dead. John John’s had to make his goodbyes, and America has not quite realized it, but everything is different now. The changes are no longer coming, they’re here.

Alarm clocks do not wake the dead.

And Don starts the episode by waking in a tomb, the former bedroom of a dead man and the newborn baby who shares his name. He then goes to meet Connie, the odd kitten who’s treated Don like a ball of yarn half the season, and really wakes up when Connie cuts him loose and then gives Don a self righteous spiel about how he’s impervious to whiners who can’t earn things for themselves. But Don couldn’t give a shit. His company’s about to get sold and he doesn’t want to go work for some sausage factory.

From there on, the episode becomes just a powerhouse of awesome, giving us some truly satisfying and exciting moments dealing with Don Draper and the exiles of Sterling Cooper as they play the phoenix from the ashes of their company, but before we go there, let’s get to what we all knew was coming, especially after last week…

...when both parties are guilty.

“The state of New York doesn’t want anyone to get divorced. That’s why people go to Reno.”

The thing is, after last week’s episode, this season finale was all set up in our minds to be the ultimate downer as the Draper castle was torn apart and washed away, and yet, back in the office, we saw excitement and joy, and more of a sense of family than we’ve seen in a long time in the cold walls of Don and Betty’s metaphorical bedroom. Just another way this show wonderfully plays with our expectations.

So, Benjamin Light hates Betty, and I can understand why, but I can still see where she’s coming from. And I’m glad she’s going. Don remains characteristically clueless about a lot of what she wants and needs, and really, she’s the same way about him. And now that she sees him, now that he’s no longer the “football hero who hates his father,” but the son of poor co-op farmers, he’s nothing to her. Everything that his double life has brought them is completely illegitimate to her, and she longs for the silver haired loser from the Rockefeller campaign instead.

In fact, I think Betty quite accurately throws it in Don’s face when he suggests that she may have to be sick to want out of their “perfect little world.” Well, actually, he just suggests that she’s had a bad year, which she has, and that she should probably find someone to talk, which she should. But her inference is also correct, I think, when it comes to Don’s real intentions there. I can defend Betty to a point, am curious to see who she’ll become as she now enters the real world that Don and her father have essentially protected her from up until this point, but she has been, and in this episode especially, a bit of a stone cold bitch.

“Why are we in the living room?” Bobby Draper asks, and he’s right. It’s the scene of Betty’s ultimate fantasy world and in it, the cathedral to which she can have those fantasies now ends as the family breaks up. This was easily one of the most heartbreaking scenes on TV, and so harsh, so cruel, so real. Don suggests this new status quo is only temporarily and Betty emphatically shakes her head no. And then there’s the kids, the real victims of the way people treat each other, and as Light suggested to me the other day, though it’s not said, you almost feel that for all the coldness they sometimes get from their father, they’d still prefer it to freezing to death with their mother.

Have a seat, Bobby.

As much of a fan of little Sally Draper as I am, the lasting image from that scene for me isn’t just Betty shaking her head no, but it’s Bobby’s ceaseless clinging to his father, clinging to his world that he barely understands as it all falls away. Oh, the fathers and sons this season. Don and Bobby, whom Don rarely shares moments with, honestly. Don getting kicked out by his pseudo-paternal figure, Hilton, which starts flashbacks of the loss of his real father (or real step father, whatever), Archie Whitman.

Archie Whitman sees you masturbate.

Which brings us to the night before the Draper family ended in their living room, when a drunken Don invades the master bedroom in the house, that his wife and their newborn baby now occupy alone, and he pulls Betty out of sleep and onto her feet, confronting her with what he’s only just learned about: Henry Francis. Don has the greatest line of the season when it comes to Betty: “Because you’re good… and everyone else is in the world is bad.” Don’s cruelty is usually cool, measured, but when he delivers these lines, it’s like he’s finally releasing some pent up venom. But it almost goes to far and we’re taken back to his imagined origins in the late night reverie from the season premiere, as he becomes his father, Betty becomes the whore, and then there’s the baby crying. It’s arguable in that scene that Don is confronted with a subtle choice as you half expect him to hit his wife: Does he want to be Don Draper or does he want to just another dick?

Who the hell is Henry Francis?

Which takes us back to the offices of Sterling Cooper, the kind of place that Don never expected to work at, but where he thrived, or, where he’s thrived for the last three years. With PPL being sold off and the SC along with it by their new British masters, Don is awake, and on his way to wake up Bert Cooper…

The dialogue in their scene is perfect, and I love that Cooper, who’s always kind to Don and his talents and his mysteries, and who purrs like a fat old wise and eccentric housecat with a bit of a Japanese fetish, lets Don know flat out that he doesn’t think he has the stomach for the reality of the future Don wants so brutally to regain control of…

Meow.

Cooper: “Young men love risks because they can’t imagine consequences.”

Don: “And you old men love building golden tombs and sealing the rest of us in with you.”

But something begins in this scene, the start of building something, a bridge out of their indentured servitude and Cooper hits Don with one of those harsh realities he’s going to have to face: He can’t do this on his own. He’s going to need Roger Sterling.

I was going to tell you. Well, no, I was not. Bros, hoes, whatever. Lets drink!

And let me just say: Fuck Yeah, Roger Sterling.

When the highpoints of this episode was literally everything that came out of his mouth. Don and Cooper both make their pitches to Sterling about taking the tough road and starting something new and Sterling breaks it to Don: You don’t care about people. And maybe that’s why you’re so bad at being real with them. And Cooper hits Sterling with some real talk too: You need the excitement and danger of this business to survive and feel alive like you’re used to. Retire now and you might as well move into a plot in the ground with your child bride. It’s funny how enduring Jane has somehow purified Roger in our eyes, made him possibly realize that Joan is the woman for him, not the girl for him like Jane is, and put him on a better path.

From there, they go to Pryce and put forth a plan: He’ll fire them, thereby releasing them from their contracts, in exchange for shared power in their new company, and over the weekend, they’ll assemble a dream team to take with them along with any clients and supplies they can swipe from the office. And the show literally explodes into life. It became the gathering of the dream team from something like Ocean’s 11 or the start of a mission from one of those crack team of guys going on a mission World War II or something. It was perfect and it was exhilarating.

Beg me? You didnt even ask me.

And it was a great moment for the characters to confront their own failures and move past them, to be happy beyond them. Don especially, as he does the walk of shame, first treating Peggy like dirty in assuming that she’ll just follow him blindly so he can beat her about as he pleases and then getting told off by her as she finally stands up for herself to him.

And then Pete, whom Don actually has to compliment for his eye towards the future. He’s not just wanted, he’s needed in the new company, Don tells him. And thankfully, along with Pete, will come his perfect partner, Trudy.

Sorry, August, but I guess Ken Cosgrove doesn’t make the cut.

This guy? Really?

Sadly, they took Harry Crane along too, but maybe since they’re literally sifting through the ashes of Sterling Cooper, maybe they’ll blow a little of those embers into him and ignite some potential. Or maybe he came along just so Cooper could deliver my actual favorite line of the episode, telling Harry that if he turns him down, he’ll spend the rest of the weekend tied up in the closet.

And, of course Joan is back. They’re all brilliant actors and they’re staging what could be a fascinating play, but they need a director, they need someone to coordinate them and make their needs accessible. And of course Roger knows that Joan is the person to do that.

But alas, no Sal. But in a small way, that could be a good thing. Sal may not be able to come back to the new company and the show in his old capacity, but more on that soon. Cause there’s always this:

Fuck doors. Fuck yeah.

And then there’s Don’s return and appeal to Peggy. He stops treating her like his former secretary. He stops treating her like just an employee. He actually sees her as a person. Possibly through a mirror, but still, he’s awake now and really looking at her. He’s really to lay down his sword and shield in front of her and stop holding the fact that he’s a man over her as something superior. I think one of the most realistic and truthful things Don has ever said is when he told her that she’s just like him, she’s his anima, and together they both can conjure the words, the “asa nisi masa,” if you will.

If I say no, you will never speak to me again.

“Because there are people out there who buy things, people like you and me, and something happened. Something terrible. And the way that they saw themselves is gone. And nobody understands that, but you do. And that’s very valuable.”

SHOW ME THE MONEY!

When he says that, it’s not just to her that he’s confessing things, it’s to himself as well. Peggy ventures a guess that if she turns him down, he’ll cut her off forever and, baring his soul to her, he says it’s the opposite: “No. I will spend the rest of my life trying to hire you.” It’s telling that the most touching scene of the episode isn’t between Don and his departing wife, Betty. It’s between Don and himself/Peggy.

Fan Fiction, start your engines.

But of course Peggy is her own creature as well, and I think everyone, not just Don and Pete, are going to see it. So classic was Roger asking her for a cup of coffee and her flat out saying, “No.”

Velveeta really is the cheesiest.

But then the long night of the weekend comes to an end and the sun comes up on Monday morning and the all stars of Sterling Cooper are gone, spirited away to their new home, an office in a hotel suite. In fact, really, all of Sterling Cooper is gone, shredded to pieces in the night…

And now:

Sultry phone voice.

“Good morning! Hello Sterling/Cooper/Draper/Pryce. How may I help you?” It’s nice to meet you.

Pip Pip. Cheerio. And good day to you then, sir!

“Very good. Happy Christmas!”

Pete tried to poach John Deere.

“He didn’t even leave a note!”

Still miss you, Sal, but you’ll have to change or die, as is often the case with history. As the always explosively brilliant Karina Longworth suggests when talking about the end of the episode as the camera captures the joy on the faces of the new SCDP employees/refugees:

The glow in the room that’s reflected on Don’s face in that shot—that is only there because they are all there, because he needs all of them to do his job, and vice versa. It’s arguable (probable, for all the lines like “we don’t have art”) that Sal could be back in Season Four and SCDP (and the show) would be better for it. But his sham marriage may need to fully deteriorate before he belongs in that hotel room.

One can only hope that Sal embraces his sexuality and himself and comes back into the fold as a contracted big time commercial director. Wouldn’t that be wonderful. Also, Fuck Lee Garner, Jr.

Will Sal be forever left on the cutting room floor?

This episode was everything I could ever want from Mad Men. Much like us here at Counter-force, sitting her in our hotel suite/bloggitorium, at least when I’m doing my song and dance, we’re obsessed with the future. But we see it through the multi-colored lenses of the past. The past was bombs, the present is rubble, and the future is fireworks and we’re looking up at the stars, to dangle as many silly pyrotechnic metaphors in your face as I can.

The limeys invade.

The Beatles are coming. Vietnam is coming. The world isn’t done being changed and the light from the future can’t be fully seen yet, but for now, in the world of Mad Men, the characters are happy. Excited. Don Draper has perhaps finally said goodbye to Dick Whitman and is ready to move on. Trudy is showing up with sandwiches. Joan’s husband can hopefully only be guaranteed a nasty ending. There’s Peggy/Pete stuff on the horizon. There’s Joan/Roger stuff on the horizon. And there’s always fucking Jai Alai. We may never seen Suzanne Farrell again (though she’ll live on in Twix commercials). Or Paul Kinsey or Duck Phillips or Ken Cosgrove, for all we know. But what happens in this world and in Don Draper’s life could be anything.

Don and his new family.

Especially when Don places that call to Betty. He won’t fight her. She can have whatever she wants. And he hopes that she finds out what that is. “Well, you’ll always be her father,” she pathetically replies with, but I think it was meant to be a kind statement, something Betty’s always been foreign too. She’s going to leave two older children with a vastly better mom, Carla (so classy, Betty), and take baby Eugene, her youngest child and ball and chain from the past, to Reno with her new boyfriend.

I just called to say I do not love you anymore.

And Don’s going to crawl off into the city, heartbroken maybe, but feeling lighter and hopefully optimistic. We have a general idea of the future he’s going to see, but he doesn’t, and he’s excited for it. And we’re going to go with him.

And, wonderfully, Roy Orbison is going to sing a song about the whole thing. August and I had a great time talking about Mad Men and hopefully you enjoyed it too. And hopefully it’ll only get better since, after all, “the future is much better than the past.”

Future, here we come...

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.

“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.

Perennial with the Earth.

Posted by Marco Sparks on

Speaking of America and advertising…

I really like the commercial I saw the other day for the new Levi’s campaign, called “Go Forth.” The clip was essentially just some images of youthful abandon, half dressed, cavorting around with fireworks and in jeans, and was directed by Cary Fukunaga with an interesting visual flair. You can see it here:

The dialogue comes from an old wax sound recording of Walt Whitman reading four lines from his poem, “America.” Whitman has no problem singing the body electric with the young folks of today, it seems.

There’s another commercial from the from same campaign, entitled “O Pioneers!” It’s not as striking, but it’s still got a good visual style, courtesy of director M. Blash. I don’t know much about Blash, other than the trailer for his upcoming Chloë Sevigny/Jena Malone/Leelee Sobieski-starring indie film, Lying, which both bores and fascinates me, and features a great Joy Division-esque song by John Maus. Here’s Blash’s commerical:

The print aspects of the new campaign, and pretty much all of it except for that single commercial, don’t really interest me. Jeans are jeans and this is America – thanks for reminding me, Levi’s/Walt Whitman – not Russia, and I wonder again and again: How hard do you really have to advertise jeans? The same, I would think, could be said for beer, sodas, and potato chips, right? Whatever, I’m not a marketing major.

That said, I do give Levi’s a little more credit at the advertising game just because they seem to continuously go with a more interesting visual in their commercials. Their ad people keep it hip, keep it interesting. Though it aired easily ten years ago or more, to this day I still remember the levi’s commercial featuring Gael Garcia Bernal and “Playground Love” by Air. Good stuff.

Anyway, this new campaign for Levi’s comes from a firm apparently called Wieden & Kennedy. It’s funny, with all the absorbing of Mad Men and Don Draper speak I’ve been doing lately, I feel like I’m less amazed and blown away by the continuous “indomitable spirit” of this fine country and more by our want and desire to be wined and dined, to be performed to and for, to be good and properly sold on a thing. Our dominion, I’m starting to think, is the desire to conquer not new lands, but not ideals, and to think that we possess them.