Roger Sterling: You know what? I am very comfortable with my mind. Thoughts clean and unclean, loving and… the opposite of that. But I am not a woman. And I think it behooves any man to toss all female troubles into the hands of a stranger.

–Ladies Room

In a video posted on AMC’s Mad Men blog, Alan Taylor (who directed Smoke Gets In Your Eyes as well as Ladies Room and Nixon vs. Kennedy) talks about stylistic uses of the camera that set the period every bit as much as the costumes. Interesting!

Check it out.

I wrote the following yesterday. And then after I wrote it, I dug around AMC’s website.

I am so outraged. Like, speechless. (Well, my version of speechless is kind of word-heavy, but you get it.)

Those stupidheads at AMC are NOT GOING TO BE SHOWING MAD MEN AT ALL IN MAY. NOT AT ALL. NOT SUNDAYS AT MIDNIGHT, NOT WEDNESDAYS AT 3AM, NOT SATURDAYS AT 6AM TO COMPETE WITH ANGEL ON TNT, NOT ANYWHERE AT ALL.

Heard about this great new show but still haven’t gotten around to seeing it? Been waiting for the latest run to wind up, (which it just now has) and maybe you’ve even read that the first two episodes will be airing over the next two weeks?

WELL TOO BAD FOR YOU!!! Guess you’ll have to wait until July.

Way to build momentum, Jack. Or, what’s that other thing… LOSE ANY STEAM YOU HAVE WITH POTENTIAL NEW VIEWERS WHO WILL FORGET ABOUT YOU ONCE THEY START WATCHING NEW EPISODES OF HOUSE AND ER.

Anyway, I think this little intro perfectly sets up the rest of what I had prepared. Enjoy:

I’ve been thinking it’s time to recap AMC’s sins. Some of you are new, but also, like when your shitty boyfriend starts acting all sweet lately, you might be losing perspective.

Let’s take a moment, shall we, to think back to a simpler, happier time.

July, 2007. It all started so perfect. I, like so many others (well, there were like twelve of us, including Matthew Weiner’s mom) had been breathlessly awaiting the premiere of AMC’s new original series.

We watched. We were smitten. We were beholden. We were in its thrall.

(And in some cases, we were unemployed, and so in those early, blissful, income-free days of summer, we watched the episodes over and over. In what turned out to be an uncanny lack of foreshadowing, AMC was repeating each one all over its programming schedule, all week long, both nights and days.)

Okay also we told our friends (and in some cases, siblings) about it. And many of them wanted to see it, but wanted to wait until they could see it from the beginning. A respectable choice in these Netflixian times. We hoped at least for a Mad Men marathon to play catch-up with. (Apparently there was one fairly early in the initial season, perhaps pre-midway through, but I somehow missed it. Was certainly not well promoted.) As the season rolled on, and writers were striking so there was NOTHING ELSE ON TELEVISION, and Mad Men was beginning to receive accolades, AMC just kept sitting on their golden egg, wiggling around, proud of what they’d laid but unwilling to share.

(Yeah. No Mad Men marathon leading up to the season finale. Whatever.)

And then a blog was born. Basket of Kisses beginnings coincided with the blowup that was Peggy’s giving birth. We were going to give that child a home. A basinet of kisses, if you will.

(Okay that was just weird. But I’m having fun so it’s staying.)

And we wait with the collective bated breath for one week later, right there in its regular time slot of Thursdays at 10pm (with an encore at 11) for Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, the pilot.

And now here is the recap, with links to outraged post after outraged post, of what AMC has done wrong. Wrong, wrong wrong.

AMC You’ve Harshed My Happy
The first thing I notice is that the pilot is chopped up into smaller pieces. The commercials are in the wrong spots. Also, they have done away with the cool little branded ‘fun facts’ that appear between commercials and tie in with the advertising.

AMC You’re Harshing My Mellow
Week two I’m all set to watch Ladies Room, and they skip three episodes ahead to New Amsterdam.

AMC You are Damaging My Calm
Nothing new here, I just continue to rant my devastation over the unnecessary, premature editing.

AMC You are Wrinkling My Smooth
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water… they show episodes 4-6, then they skip to 10; Long Weekend. Included in what they skipped was Hobo Code!!! (An award-winning, revealing and important episode.)

AMC’s Got Stinking Paws
This is where I finally put it together that there were scenes deleted from the premiere airings. I knew they were chopping up the episodes, but I had assumed the content was still untouched, that it was simply a matter of shorter but more frequent commercial breaks (and shorter “acts” in between commercials). But no. Scenes and lines are missing. Not only that, but it has been this way since the very first. During the very first run, The 10pm airing was pristine and intact, and the 11pm was re-editing; missing scenes. Oh god, it still hurts to think about it.

AMC and I are barely on speaking terms.
So now the second run (if you can call it that, what with five missing episodes) is wrapping up, and what’s next? Not only are they showing it in the worst time slot known to time slots, but the AMC website buried the information. It’s like they don’t want people to find it. (It has since been reworded.)

AMC You are Perching My Nerves
This is just irksome. They are flooding the airways with Breaking Bad. Which is like, a great idea. Wish I’d thought of it!

AMC Schedule
And uh… this latest (midnight) run is almost done. You’d think your fans, both the loyal ones and the potentials, might want to hear some news about your future plans to air/not to air? Your scheduled for the airings (still in that same crappy time slot) for episodes 1 and 2, but can you maybe commit?

AMC You do NOT get points for this.
It hurts my heart. The AMC website is showing “deleted scenes” like it’s something to be proud of. And confusing the fuck out of viewers in the process.

Hope this helps. I am totally depressed.

Kisses,
Roberta

Cecelia Antoinette is now credited on the IMDb as the Ladies Room attendant in Ladies Room.

This has only been bothering me for 2 months.

Betty, to Mona: I don’t know if I told you, but my mother died three months ago.

Mona: (says nothing. Nothing!)

Ladies Room attendant, to Betty and Mona: I’m sorry. There are other ladies waiting to use the mirror.

So what you hear is:

Betty: I don’t know if I told you, but my mother died three months ago.

Anyone in the world who is finally responding to Betty: I’m sorry.

Matthew Weiner spoke to the casting of Robert Morse.

He can’t take credit for it; he knew they wanted some “old luminary”. It was Tom Palmer who suggested him, and Weiner was thrilled at the idea.

(There’s no one who reads this who doesn’t know that Robert Morse originated the role of J. Pierrepont Finch in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and who doesn’t get what a brilliant and hilarious nod that is to the fourth wall, right?)

He had to audition, like everyone. He wasn’t at all insulted by that, but he “had nooo idea what was going on”. He kept saying, So much yarn, so little time, which Weiner put into the show. (Was it New Amsterdam? In Ladies Room, in reaction to all the boys running around in t-shirts playing with Right Guard.)

He still doesn’t know the name of his character. He calls himself Sterling Cooper.

Awesome.

Weiner then spoke a bit about the Asian-influenced behavior of the character. He said he’d wanted that from the beginning; that it fit the period. He said that while the shoelessness is Asian, he could also wear house shoes, but he took that from someone specific he had known.

And then he revealed…

Really, like most of the things that he does, they come off as eccentricities, but they’re really a way of controlling other people.

See why we could talk to him for like… EVER?

When Roberta and I first saw Marriage of Figaro, one of the things we discussed was Don sitting at the train tracks. Was he contemplating suicide? In The Ladies Room, Paul says he’s late for a meeting because someone jumped in front of his train and killed himself. You don’t drop a remark like that for nothing. Especially Matt Weiner doesn’t drop a remark like that for nothing.

So all through season 1, I absolutely believed that Don was contemplating suicide that afternoon; that’s why he sat at the train. Sure he’s a bastard: He’s a bastard for walking in with no explanation or apology, for choosing a moment when his daughter needed him to fall apart like that, for acting as if there had been no crisis in the first place. But he’s also so horribly wounded that it seemed to me that he could not for the life of him leave those train tracks. It just hurt too much.

Only now I don’t think he was suicidal. I think it was the train.

The second major motif of Mad Men (other than birds) is trains. Don doesn’t get off the train in his home town, leaving the real Don’s body to be Dick Whitman. Don’s identity is first hinted at (in Marriage of Figaro) on the train. Trains are escape.

One thing we learned about Don in Nixon vs. Kennedy is that he always wants to run away. Running away is the only thing he’s 100% sure he knows how to do. I think, now, that’s what he was contemplating in MoF, he was looking at the train and deciding whether or not to escape.

So, before tonight’s airing of Marriage of Figaro, I thought it was time to write up some random thoughts on re-watching Ladies Room.

There’s a deep, soulful emphasis when Joan says “That sandwich is making me sad.” I really think that we’re going to learn more about Joan. (File that under Season 2 Speculation: I think Joan gets major backstory and I think it’s going to be full of sadness.)

In the realm of general sexism, we have Don telling Betty, “Leave the dishes for the girl.” “The girl.” Because, y’know, she’s a thing; specifically a thing that does dishes. “The girl,” by the way, is eight. Not to young too be the maid or anything. Yeesh.

But this is mostly Betty’s episode. When she’s with Mona in the ladies room and she can’t hold her lipstick, her remark is “It’s hard to hold onto anything these days.” The first time I saw this episode, I didn’t notice the “hard to hold onto” connection. The psychological meaning of Betty’s numbness is even clearer than I’d thought.

(By the way, anyone know the name of the actress who played a ladies room attendant; who said “If their purses get any smaller, we’re going to starve”? She reminded me very much of Yvette Freeman (Haleh on ER), but it’s sometimes hard to recognize actors through the period clothing and hair. IMDb and TV.com both come up blank, so if you know who it is, PUH-leeze tell me.)

Later, Betty talks about her fears regarding the accident: She’s not afraid of death, but of loneliness. If Sally were scarred, she would never marry and live her life alone, and this is what Betty can’t bear to consider. Loneliness. Not having a man. Not having a perfect appearance. Shit, I’m in Roberta territory here, stunned at what goes on behind Betty’s facade.

And one more thing about Betty: In the psychiatric session, she takes off the watch Don gave her. You know: The watch to make her happy, the now-you-have-everything-you-don’t-need-a-shrink watch. That watch.

A while back, we were discussing all the bird symbolism in Mad Men (thanks to our genius commenter hullabaloo), and I mentioned that I couldn’t recall Don calling Betty “Birdie,” only “Bets.”

So, for the record, last night I rewatched Ladies Room. There are two uses of “Bets,” and one of “Birdie.”

Weiner was just asked about this show being Hitchcockian. This is a theme we began exploring when we looked at all the birds in this show. (I’ll retro-hyperlink.)

He says the theme of the episode (is it the 2nd?) is

A) It’s not polite to talk about yourself and

B) If you’re a woman, you cannot cry at work.

He also refers to Betty’s line at her first psychiatric session; We’re all so lucky to be here as a classic statement from a depressed person.

But I want to say this… I can’t remember what episode, and it might be the Wheel, Betty is laying on the psychiatrist’s couch in a perfect gray suit. And seeing that I can only think of Hitchcock’s women.