06.15.12 |
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Critic Todd VanDerWerff nails the unevenness of “The Phantom”:
Some of what hampers “The Phantom” is, surprisingly, Weiner’s direction. He’s done such a fine job with all of the previous finales—even nailing the tricky tone of “Shut The Door. Have A Seat”—that I’m surprised at how weirdly flat this episode feels, confined by lots and lots of unimaginative shots and brusque directing that might have been standard on any TV drama. The pacing is all off in the first half of the episode, as everything jumps between storylines somewhat haphazardly, and though Weiner comes up with one magnificent image toward the end—the five partners of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce in their new office space, looking out toward what’s to come—so much of the rest of the episode feels like it’s trying to fit three or four episodes’ worth of plots into one hour and just barely pulling it off.
There were clearly some highlights – Roger’s mixture of happiness and genuine melancholy with Marie, Pete’s final speech to Beth – but I found this to be a pretty unsatisfying finale. Compared to the eloquence of Season 1’s “The Wheel”, or the surprise and movement of Season 3’s “Shut the Door. Have a Seat” and Season 4’s “Tomorrowland”, it was a pretty tame episode.
06.10.12 |
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I’m very late in weighing in on “Commissions and Fees”, this season’s second to last Mad Men episode from a week ago. It was well executed but something felt distinctly off. Todd VanDerWerff really expresses this well (warning major spoilers ahead):
I’m not sure Mad Men is the kind of show that desperately needs character deaths. I’m not saying I didn’t think the show built unbelievably to Lane’s end, nor am I saying that I wish it had just trundled him off to England to hang over the final two seasons of the show. Once Lane reached the point of hopelessness he reached around the midpoint of “Commissions And Fees,” having him kill himself was one of only two or three options that would have made any story sense, and the show accomplished this task with its usual mordant sense of humor…
Yet at the same time, the show seemed to constantly be fighting against the whole cheap, desperate feel of any TV death that comes up at the end of the hour and is meant to both shock and move us all at once. Please understand: It mostly was able to overcome this. But the whole thing felt just a little sordid, as though the show were stooping beneath itself.
I can’t wait to find out how this season wraps up when it drops into my Apple TV queue sometime tomorrow. I’m not suspecting a surprise on the level of Tomorrowland, last year’s closer, but I think we’re in for something fairly big.
06.01.12 |
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Matt Zoller Seitz, wrapping up his recap of Mad Men’s “The Other Woman”:
I want to go on record saying how flat-out amazing this season has been…Something Sgt. Peppers-level major is happening on Mad Men this year, a seismic creative flowering comparable to season one of The Sopranos and season three of Breaking Bad. Every season five episode is a creative experiment that draws on the cumulative power of every episode that preceded it. We’re nearing the point where everything on Mad Men seems to connect to everything else — not just from episode to episode within season five, but backwards, as if the new episodes are somehow unfurling tendrils into the past, fusing the whole run of Mad Men into a fiendishly intricate mega-story. It’s just extraordinary.
Damn right. I rarely get those “on the edge of my seat” moments when watching TV. Yet it happened with the The Wire, season four. Breaking Bad, season three onward. And now I can clearly add season five of Mad Men. We’ve had a few so-so episodes (e.g. “Hare Krishna” from last week), but many extraordinary ones: Signal 30, Far Away Places, and now The Other Woman.
05.29.12 |
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Thorough and excellent analysis of this week’s Mad Men by Salon writer Nelle Engoron (spoilers ahead):
But it’s Joan’s story that sadly underlines the circumscribed state of women, circa 1966. Having kept the firm running smoothly for 13 years, she deserves to be made a junior partner on those merits. But instead she must sleep her way into the position, and not even with a powerful man she desires like Roger (who seems never to have considered rewarding her in that fashion) but with a repulsive man who sees her as a pair of breasts between which he symbolically hangs a tiny jeweled chain.
It was an extremely sad, almost tragic episode that, as Engoron focuses on throughout her piece, centered almost entirely on feminism and women in the 1960s. Christina Hendricks deserves major praise for her acting this week; I suspect when we look back at Mad Men series highlights her work in “The Other Woman” will stand out.
04.30.12 |
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Really interesting analysis and breakdown by the opinionated Tom and Lorenzo couple of Mad Men’s fashion. It’s deeper than just what’s trendy in the late 60s; by reading their episode recaps (with plenty of helpful screen grabs) you learn a lot about costume design and how subtle choices can help characterization on film and TV.
04.25.12 |
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This week’s Mad Men episode was probably my favorite of the year, and I couldn’t at first put a finger on why. Then I read this excellent point by Slate critic John Swansburg:
One of the pleasures of Mad Men has always been its unpredictability—it’s a fool’s errand trying to guess how the plot will twist—but that unpredictability has reached new heights this season. It’s no longer merely a question of story—now it’s a question of form, too. “Mystery Date” incorporated elements of horror, “Signal 30” culminated in a hilarious comic set-piece, and, as you guys have noted, last night’s episode dabbled in noir and the psychedelic while also experimenting with chronology. When I tune in on Sunday, I’m not just wondering what’s going to happen, I’m wondering how’s it going to happen—what mode will the series operate in tonight?
I love noir works like Chinatown and L.A. Confidential, along with fragmented chronologies like Pulp Fiction and Memento. Seeing how Mad Men borrowed from both the noir and fragmented timeline genre, it makes a lot more sense why it clicked so well for me.
04.11.12 |
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Looking through this list late one night over the weekend, I’m first struck by both the number of repeat directors, and how some of the most repeated and talented in the bunch end up directing both some of the best and worst episodes of the series. Exhibit A: Jennifer Getzinger. She’s directed what I felt was a crazy weak episode, “My Old Kentucky Home” from Season 3. Yet she also directed Season 3 highlight “The Gypsy and the Hobo” and Season 4’s “The Suitcase”, the latter of which has one of my favorite scenes in TV history.
04.06.12 |
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Slate writer Patrick Radden Keefe:
Betty, the writers tend to deny us those redeeming, sympathetic moments. As an artistic matter, this may be unassailable; in real life, some adults really are vapid children with few redeeming qualities. But on a show where each character possesses a distinctive ratio of vinegar to sugar, Betty feels out of proportion to me. She’s almost all vinegar, and that strikes me as cruel.
It’s late in the week for Mad Men commentary on Sunday’s episode, yet Patrick nails it. Something about episode 503 felt very off – I think Betty’s storyline had a lot to do with that.