Basket of Kisses

So I finally watched my Tifaux of Conan interviewing Christina Hendricks. It was (a) a rerun and (b) pretty worthless. She was charming and relaxed, and he was incredibly flustered by her attractiveness and couldn’t say anything except to flirt and ask her what she liked in a man. She couldn’t get a word in edgewise, but she giggled with great charm.

This morning when I went to pick up my carpool buddy she said “Quick, come inside!” because John Slattery was on MSNBC. He said shooting for Season 2 starts April 21 and he’s really excited.

I was watching Long Weekend tonight, and taking extensive notes. I’ll have more to say later on. But for now, I was noticing this. That Don is not a womanizer.

People all over the Internet are angry at Don for cheating on Betty. And yeah, Don’s a cheater. An adulterer. These are bad things and we can be mad at Don. But he’s not a skirt-chaser. He’s not, to put it plainly, Roger Sterling. (And I have some thoughts about Roger I’ll also be fleshing out—no pun intended—in the near future.)

In Long Weekend, Roger says he wants to use Don “as bait.” He knows the way to go is to pick up two young women and end up with one. This isn’t new; he’s after the same thing in Red In the Face, and only wrangles an invitation to dinner when his plan fails.

Roger is a womanizer. He wants warm, lovely flesh. He wants a young woman to remind him of youth. He wants beauty and soft skin and lips like strawberries in milk. Don wants something different.

When Don says he wants to go home he means it. He doesn’t want to be with Roger, with twenty year-olds on their laps. He’s a bad husband, but he believes in the salvation of being a husband and having a family. And it’s when that salvation doesn’t pan out that he goes for Midge, and then for Rachel. He tells Rachel in Smoke Gets in Your Eyes that he doesn’t believe in love, but he’s deeply romantic; he believes each of these women might save him.

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The Futon Critic discusses the panel discussion of Mad Men actors, and Matt Weiner, at Paleyfest. He’s asking not to be quoted, just linked to. So click away!

And for our own hullaballoo’s take on it, check out her long, fascinating essay in comments here.

Update: Here’s the Matt Roush write-up.

This has been driving me crazy. I will state right now that I haven’t researched this… I suppose the trick would be to find a book cover from 1960 of Exodus, or even some other best seller from the period that was re-issued while the movie based on it was in production. For my purposes, to find several books. Or print ads for those books.Because in Babylon, when Lily Meyer slides Exodus across the conference room table and over to Don, she tells him that it is “soon to be a major motion picture”. And she says it with the quotation marks as part of her inflection; she is lifting a popular phrase.

My gut, and my gut alone, tells me that turning this kind of phrase was not commonplace. That even if the industry was using it, people were not. People just didn’t lift catch-phrases the way they do today. Especially people to whom English is a second language. I really don’t think that started until the 70’s; I believe it to be a post-modern phenomenon, and in 1960 we were just broaching modern.

Now, Deborah suggests that perhaps she was directly quoting, and not being ironic. Maybe that’s it. But I don’t see why she would be inclined to directly quote rather than rephrase.  (more…)

Roberta’s thoughts about Joan reminded me of this quote:

Joan: “That sandwich is making me sad.”

Something poignant about a person who is moved to sorrow so easily.

What a lovely and interesting thread I found woven through Long Weekend.

Roger to Mirabelle: Look at your skin, it’s translucent.

Don to Rachel: He’s gray and weak. His skin looks like paper.

Moments later, Don: Sit with me. Rachel: Why? Don: Because I feel like you’re looking right through me over there.

So now I wonder if that was the theme of this episode; seeing through to the truth. Underbellies exposed. You know what’s on the other side of all that crap, Roger? A heart attack. You know why your roommate is your roommate, Joan? Dooyah?

There is one moment in this episode where we catch a shine of reality that has been previously unexplored. In the scene where Roger tries to get Joan to spend time with him, and they talk about the movie the Apartment, Joan pipes in with, The way those men treated that poor girl; handing her around like a tray of canapés. She tried to commit suicide. That is the first, perhaps only in the whole first season, indication that Joan is less than content with her lifestyle. Maybe a little lonely, maybe a little angry, maybe a little not proud.

Our very own insightful commenter, hullabaloo, just won tickets to see the Mad Men cast speak in a panel in LA. Congratulations!!!

And where did she hear about the ticket giveaway contest thing? Through us, of course.

How is that a health benefit?

I haven’t worked that out yet.

Anyway, have a great time, loo. Get quotes and photos and tell anyone you can about BoK. We know that at least Weiner and Rich Sommer have stopped in here. What we don’t know is whether or not Hamm made it over for his birthday week.

This is part of a review I wrote on my other blog, before we started this one, when I first saw Mad Men. I do discuss politics regularly on my personal blog, and one of my favorite topics is the intersection of pop culture and political/social issues.

Anyway, I thought the conversation still had value, so here it is:

The “values conservatives” of the world, David Broder, Jonah Goldberg, and other people with pseudo-brains filling their skulls, believe the 1950s were an idyllic time. Women knew their place, none of that pesky feminism to mess around with their pretty heads. Abortion was illegal. Sex was never discussed in the public sphere, and when it was alluded to, it was only the heterosexual sort. Men wore skinny ties. (I kind of agree about the skinny ties.) The notion, of course, is that mid-century was a happy, innocent time. Families were all Ozzie and Harriet or Leave It To Beaver.

The fact is, the man behind the curtain was already visible at the time. Kinsey published in 1948 and 1953. Brown vs. the Board of Education was 1954 and the Montgomery bus boycott was the following year.

What Mad Men shows is direct and uncompromising. It is a man’s world, but the show has strong female characters, struggling in a world where they must choose between career and marriage, where most opportunities are closed to them, and sexual harassment is not only legal, it’s encouraged. As oppressive as the sexism is, it’s matched by the casual, normative racism and anti-Semitism. Homophobia isn’t even mentioned, but there is one character who is clearly closeted and struggling to be ‘one of the boys.’

Maybe I’m naive to think it would make a difference for people to actually see what they’re idolizing. I’m well-informed, I know a lot about the world my mother grew up in, and yet I found it shocking. There’s something about the visual impact that can’t be denied.

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.

Jon Hamm was on Bill Maher this week. Sucks, ’cause I don’t have HBO.

But maybe you do. It repeats tonight.