Showing posts with label I am still not convinced on Mad Men yet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label I am still not convinced on Mad Men yet. Show all posts

May 28, 2013

I know I say this every week now,

But I am officially "over" Mad Men.  I am watching from pure grisly fascination at this point.  And, it is not just me anymore.  (h/t to Melissa V-H for the link) Perhaps the real Mad Men backlash has begun at last?

Mad Men now is simply a new Twin Peaks.  Weird interior lighting on top of weird dirty soapy characters doing weird dirty things in front of wood paneled walls, or crazy 60s wallpaper. It is so weird! And dirty! And that wallpaper!

Hey Polanski, stop saying sexist shit at film festivals. I'm one of your biggest defenders but my patience is running thin.



(And this whole Sharon Tate Megan Manson family red star t-shirt connection just makes me roll my eyes, ...  And, what book will they read this week? I can not wait! Maybe some Thomas Pynchon book, like V or The Crying of Lot 49.  I should start a Mad Men Book Club Betting Pool here at work.)

See ya next week!



Ardent


Apr 2, 2013

Last night the Wife and I finally learned

Why people abandon grocery carts full of product on the sales floor.  They do not pay for the product, they simply leave the store.  We learned it watching an episode of Mad Men.

************

(Yes yes yes, I have finally bowed to enormous outside pressure and have decided to give Mad Men another chance.  Renee and I have started at the very beginning, naturally, and have knocked off about seven episodes of the first season in two days.  The Wife likes the program, but, honestly, I feel much the same way about the program now as I did before.  I still believe that they cynically use the anti Semitism, and sexism, and racism in the show to "sex" up the program, and make it "edgy", and more attractive to the viewers.  I also feel that the writing is horribly uneven, with many scenes rambling on incoherently way too long.  Another good standard for films or plays or scripted television or whatever for me, is that even if it is a serious drama, is that there should be a good deal of humor, and Mad Men just does make me laugh, at all, ever. The period detail and costumes are fantastic, but I also think they are so heavy handed with it at some times, that it makes me want to scream.  In an episode I watched last night, we must have seen a half dozen inset close ups of the lettuce and tomato "chip 'n' dip".  I get it.  Someone built or found this amazing 60s artifact.  Give the PD and the props person a raise, already.  Some of the sets are great, yet some of the sets do not play well under nighttime lighting.  Notably, the Draper kitchen makes for a terrible nighttime setting that reminds me of high school theatre.  And, no, I am not buying, or care about Don Draper's secret hidden past.  At this point, the only characters I really seriously care about are Christina Hendricks' Joan, and Maggie Siff's Rachel Menken.  But, I will keep on watching until the end, and keep everyone updated, even though I am seriously underwhelmed at this point.)

************

Anyroad, let us get back to abandoned grocery carts:  There is a scene in the first season where the notorious divorced Kennedy-supporting neighborhood walker, Helen Bishop, confronts the dopey, annoying Mrs Draper about the fact that Mrs Draper gave Bishop's very strange son a lock of her golden hair, which he is keeping in his "treasure box".  Bishop scolds Draper, and asks why a woman like her would give something like that to a nine year old boy.  Draper loses her cool, and slaps Bishop.  She then buttons up her pocket book, abandons her full grocery cart, and exits the scene.

I immediately turned to the Wife and said, "That's why people abandon their carts at the store!"

The Wife said, "Sometimes bitches gotta slap some bitches!"











All my love,
Ardent








"She needs the ten inch bamboo cigarette holder, and the black leather patent gloves"







P.S. This post has been corrected for Renee's real quote, as she has given the go ahead for such.

AH