Thanks.

The search facility doesn't respond to "Mad", "Men" or "Mad Men".

This weekend then. Or Monday, for us, (Or sometime next year for those that want to wait for the BBC showing.)

No spoilers for anyone that doesn't want to know, but the cast photo does answer at least one question:
www.lippsisters.com/wp-content/uploads/2...admenbig-custom1.jpg

The search facility doesn't respond to "Mad", "Men" or "Mad Men".

When I wanted the Season 3 thread, I searched for Draper, a less generic term than the words from the show's title.

I take it that the entire thread is spolier alerted?

Peggy is gaining more and more confidence. I have a feeling that the whole show is gearing up to the final scene Peggy putting the dagger into Don Draper, Brutus-stylee. Or act as the agent of Draper's redemption (the Catholic angle and all that).

I quite like Don's potential new love interest. She seems like she'd be quite good for him - telling him to bog off when he was trying to weasel up to her flat on the first date.

Isn't that just the difference between the married Don and potential future boyfriend Don? He's no longer just a night of passion in the eyes of women who know that he is divorced.

The feel is rather different now in the slightly grungier new offices. The interior design obviously is a character as well (remember the photocopier in copywriter Peggy's office?). It seems to me that the new, struggling agency with its less glitzy and more chaotic office symbolises the break with the certainties of the 1950s as '60s take hold.

Interesting choice of song at the end: An American pop number that sounds like British invasion clone.

BTW, I'm intrigued about where Betty's character is going. Her depression seemed peripheral in the first season (therapy notwithstanding), and then was overshadowed by her growing realisation of Don's infidelities – she didn't have much to smile about even without her depression. Now she has the new husband (or BF; are they married?) who gives her everything and treats her with utmost respect, and she's still totally down.

It's the sort of show that will run a storyline about depression without, erm, advertising that it is doing so.

Interesting choice of song at the end: An American pop number that sounds like British invasion clone.

It was an American pop/country number by a British band: John D. Loudermilk's Tobacco Road by The Nashville Teens.

I'm reserving comment for another episode or so. At the mo the plot seems to have gone seriously Greek, what with Betty turning into Medea and Don's attack of hubris.

One of the show's weaknesses has been the soundtrack. Just about everything else (costumes, mood, stories, acting,...) has been very good to excellent. They could have done so much better with just a little bit more 60s sounds in the background, but it looks like they're off to a good start in season 4.

Tobacco Road's became one of the most famous 60s early psych tunes by the Blues Magoos, a local (NY) band, but that version only came about 2-3 years after the current season.

The casting was great for this show. The main character is basically a more serious version of Cary Grant's man in the grey flannel suit, who was the original Madison Ave period icon. Hamm's resemblance with Cary Grant is uncanny (particularly from his profile), there were several shots in the series that played this up, particularly when he hopped into the convertible on the way to Palm Springs.

He's paired with the obvious complementary character: a Grace Kelly lookalike. Like Draper she is a more serious and colder character. She's also a bit of a Stepford character. At this point she's unlikely to get back with Draper, if it doesn't work with Henry (it does look like a rocky road) she'll probably pair up with a wealthier socialite down the road. She's too hard a person (and mother) to ever want to get back with Don.

Peggy can't really start her own agency; this is 1963, it would take another 15-20 yrs before a woman could pull this off. There is a bit of mid-70s ad agency action in Tales of the City (one of the best TV miniseries ever made) that showed how this was still a very masculine and misogenic domain more than a decade later, even in San Francisco. Interestingly enough there are a lot of similarity between ad agency characters from the two series, like the aging main partners.

The one major weakness/inconsistency in the plot though is about Peggy's relationship with Doc, how come he's not in the picture since they were sleeping together?

Pete was going to be the obvious choice for the new firm because of his social background as well, and Sal couldn't be brought back because he's gay and middle-class italian.

While some of the minor characters in the series were likable (like Trudy, the teacher and Rachel), none of the major ones were, their flaws were clearly portrayed.

PS for those who want to catch up on the series:
watch-series.com/serie/mad_men

Tobacco Road's became one of the most famous 60s early psych tunes by the Blues Magoos, a local (NY) band, but that version only came about 2-3 years after the current season.

The Nashville Teen's version — from the show — hit #16 in Billboard in October 1964. Which is close enough to show's time priod as makes no difference.

The one major weakness/inconsistency in the plot though is about Peggy's relationship with Doc, how come he's not in the picture since they were sleeping together?

Well, the show leapt ahead by nine months. Peggy evidently is not sleeping with Duck anymore (it was rather casual anyway) and has had a rather good make-over.

While some of the minor characters in the series were likable (like Trudy, the teacher and Rachel), none of the major ones were, their flaws were clearly portrayed.

I disagree. Don is very likable despite his serious flaws. I think most viewers are in hi corner. Peggy is a sympathetic major character, and in many ways the show's moral centre.

I even like Betty, who is clearly depressed and confused, rather than by nature mean and vindictive (though we saw a brutal streak in her when she shot the pigeons, when she was fiercely loyal to her children). We saw in season 1 that she is a good person; Don's betrayals were just too much for her to deal with, seeing that she was already depressed. She is so chasing for the Stepford Wives ideal — it's her identity — but Don destroyed that. Her resentment is understandable. Now her depression is getting in the way of that dream, because the second marriage isn't going to last.

Good point about Pete and Sal, by the way, and supported by the reasons Bert Cooper gave for not firing Pete in the first season.

I like Betty too. She's an interesting character and illustrative of shitwomen dealt with at that time.

$100 bonus? That's worth about $700 today. More than I got for a bonus last year, but kind of insulting.

I don't think the amount of the bonus was really the issue.

In 1960 Paul Goodman's Growing up Absurd was published. It was one of those books that you look back on now and think "yeah, he got it pretty much spot on." In it Goodman argued that Organization Men, like Don Draper, the Beats and so-called "Juvenile Delinquents" of the 50s were just differing responses to affluence without purpose or meaning. He also predicted they were only the forerunners of what was likely to be coming.

It's 1964, turning '65 and — in my memory — that's when things started to get weird, which they do when you're sixteen but it wasn't just that. The first serious race riots happened in late summer 64, as did the Gulf of Tonkin incident. LBJ's inaugaration in January. Then Bringing It All Back Home and The Byrds, everything just kept getting stranger. More real yet somehow less believable. And Grant, the kid down the road, is the heir apparent to all that. He represents Goodman's absurd tomorrow. One way or another Don, Roger and the rest are moving out, they just don't know it yet. This series — and the next two or three — will show us how they handle it.

It wasn't? What was the point then? I mean of the bonus in particular. I got that she was shattered that she thought their quicky meant something and he didn't even have the decency to discuss it.

Was she - I don't even know her name - on the show last season? I have only seen some of last season and am trying to catch up now.

Giving her money then with no reference at all to what happened the night before, made her feel like a whore. It wouldn't matter if it was $10 or $1000.

Yeah, I thought of that, but he told her before that happened that he was going to give her a bonus so, it's nuanced, I suppose. In any event, I think her feeling like he was making her out to be a whore would have been worse if it had been a lot of money.

There's also the implication that the bonus was a lot lower because they had to blow so much for a party to impress Mr Lucky Strike, which doesn't really have anything to do with her in particular, but relates to another plot thread.


The show got be interested in the history of divorce in the last 100 years. This seems to be the most comprehensive and reliable paper. Its long. I haven't read it all.

bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/Papers/Ma...Divorce%28JEP%29.pdf

What my hour of research yielded:

• The divorce rate skyrocked in in the 1970s, but has dropped since then. This suggests the sudden introduction of no fault divorce unleashed some pent-up demand for divorce, but the scientific-looking analysis I found indicates that it hasn't really made an impact in the long run


• The rate looks so high in the 1970s and 1980s partially because it was relatively low in the preceeding decades. If the rising trend from the late 19th century had been followed on a line straight through, it would predict roughly where we are right now


• So it seems that roughly "my generation" took the biggest hit on divorce. So I'm even more lucky in that respect.


• Divorce rates in the US are declining, but so are marriage rates


• younger age predicts higher divorce rates


• so does lower education, independent of age


• Americans are more likely than ever to live together before getting married. In most cases these couples say they probably plan to get married but in fact only about one-quarter do


• couples that lived together before they get married are more likely to get divorced but since cohabitation seems to convince lots of people not to get married, it's plausible that the rising acceptance of cohabitation is lowering the divorce rate


• marriage rates are lower and cohabitation rates are higher in Western Europe, especially in Scandinavia, but living together isn't as frequently seen as a run-up to marriage there.


• and, most importantly, kids are more likely to live with both their biological parents in Western Europe than here.


• I don't think I'll get married or have kids, but I'm glad other people do. Free booze.

I so love this programme. It's not like Dr Who where you love it but with a slight sense of foreboding because you don't know how good it's actually going to be from week to week, you can love this unconditionally knowing it's going to deliver every time. Two cracking episodes already, the first was mostly scene-setting and lining up some potentially interesting storylines - but with several great one-liners. This week we had the welcome return of some old characters and then straight into the meat of it. Poor Allison, she might have been a silly sausage to expect anything else but that didn't make Don's behaviour any more excusable. I'm guessing Joey won't react too well if he finds out about it. (And yes, she was on the show last season, in fact she's been kicking around in a minor role since the first year though she only becamse Don's secretary last year.)

The lad who plays Glenn is Matt Weiner's son, apparently. And Freddy is played by Bill Murray's brother.

Cavalry Trouser Tips wrote:
I quite like Don's potential new love interest. She seems like she'd be quite good for him - telling him to bog off when he was trying to weasel up to her flat on the first date.

No no, she's another Betty. She got him by playing hard to get too. He'd be much better off with Rachel or Suzanne who at least understood him a bit.

linus wrote:
While some of the minor characters in the series were likable (like Trudy, the teacher and Rachel), none of the major ones were, their flaws were clearly portrayed.

Does having their flaws so ruthlessly exposed make them unlikeable? I don't really see that. No one in Mad Men is entirely good or entirely bad but pretty much all of them you can be sympathetic to on some level, and mostly they're people who'd be pleasant and easy enough to get on with on a personal level. Don can be a cunt, certainly, not least this week, but he also has his own moral code and in many circumstances a knack for doing the right thing by people.

On the subject of US attitudes to divorce in the 60s, I was interested by this comment from Weiner in an interview last week:
"that power struggle between the two of them and how that relationship works with a divorced man in this period, at this age - I honestly couldn't find stories about it, anywhere. I couldn't find movies, I couldn't find anything."

www.hitfix.com/blogs/whats-alan-watching...er-talks-season-four

No no, she's another Betty. She got him by playing hard to get too. He'd be much better off with Rachel or Suzanne who at least understood him a bit.

The "New Love Interest" is destined to be either the nurse down the hall, or, more likely, the market research maven, no? Or possibly both. Actually this is getting a teensie bit predictable. Episode 1–2 of each series has introduced a NLI. Even if said interest isn't consummated until later — like last year — you can count on her being gone by season's end. It's getting a bit rote Matt.

Within the episode both of them turned out to be red herrings though. You're probably right that we'll see more of them during the series but thus far neither of them showed the slightest interest in biting. He's in danger of losing his touch.