Live Blogging Mad Men: Your Fantasy, or Mine?


Heat. Serrrrious heat. Heavy sultry steamy air. Beads of sweat luxuriating down the small of the back, bodies crushed together—

It’s another August day in the New York subway.

But Thursday night, it’s also part of a repressed tension just beneath the sleek, cool, color-saturated landscape on AMC. Mad Men is the perfect deep summer escapist fantasy—-vapid enough, so far, that we can each imprint our own particular daydream against its stunning visual backdrop. I think that’s what’s pulling us in each week. It certainly isn’t genius of storytelling.

Cool, wet whiskey sours quench the day’s troubles—and there’s no reason to drink alone. Come back at 10:00 p.m. ET tonight and clink glasses with the neighbors.

9:55 The end of High Plains Drifter is a terrible lead-in to our swank series. It’s a real fantasy buzz kill. Spencer Tracey and William Powell in Libeled Lady over at TCM was more appropriate. Must send note to Matt about this.

The title of tonight’s episode is “New Amsterdam.” Whether it has anything to do with the Dutch in NY remains to be seen. If it never becomes clear during the narrative, Matt will probably tell us why he called it that in the postscript, which are waay too much of a narrative crutch for him.

Newhart’s Button down humor! We want Lenny Bruce

Giving babies–and a chorus of chortles from the men. Pete seems to have a very clear job description for his marriage. Must look into that while I’m still shopping myself–

Mr. Leo, I hope you are now in a Pierre Cardin suit. Nothing less will do here–

Don wants to be alone

Any other Angel fans? It’s very hard not to see psycho-kid Connor in Pete Campbell. It’s bad casting

Good line about the damaged parents

I think someone listened to Mr. W’s complaint that the crackerjack ad team never showed a storyboard or layout

Account Execs always want to be on the creative side–

The first act’s scenes have been wildly disjointed. Yet again, nothing unfolds. There is no actual story here. What can we do to help??

We want more Don Draper. At least he holds a scene.

The yellow and blue and reds in that taxi cab were pure Doug Sirk

This series should be called Mad Men and Creepy Children

Oh, I thought the doodle was going to bring in the New Amsterdam concept. Matt’s got 20 minutes to poetically tie this together. Can he do it?

Thanks God the old boy network is kicking in. Power families RULE!

Wow. The existential imaginary wound. A sharp turn here into the edges of some substance.

Ella. This is lovely. Woody Allen-like Manhattan final shot.

Now for the “you are all idiots out there, so we’ll tell you what just happened” recap–

At best, it’s an impressionistic show. But for me, the whole is less than the sum of the parts.

Thanks for coming by. We haven’t yet recreated the party scene from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but hopefully it’s in our collective future.

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August 9th, 2007
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