Category Archives: Kay Gardella Memorial TV Review Blog

television reviews

My Mad Men Dream Ending

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The biggest tease

Wanted to post this BEFORE the penultimate episode of Mad Men airs on Sunday, May 10th (which of course I’ll be recapping for HNTP).

The next creative director at McCann-Ericsson?

Mad Men is the biggest tease on television. It frustrates us by throwing out hints about where things are going, and then not going there. This constant business of creating expectation and then subverting it is at the same time awesome. It’s sweet and sour. It’s slap and tickle. It’s like the entire series is one long Pine Barrens episode. Hell, many of us are still waiting for the return of Salvatore Romano. There’s no question that the showrunner, Matt Wiener, is aware of the various theories and enjoys misdirecting us and/or acknowledging our speculations.

The Draper icon falling through the air in the opening credits has led to speculation that sooner or later someone – most likely Don though for a while it looked like it would be Pete – was going to go out a window or fall off a terrace. But now Don works in an office where the windows don’t open, and he’s sold the apartment with the terrace. It’s not going to happen. We can also pretty much rule out Megan’s either being Sharon Tate or being killed in a Sharon Tate like manor. It’s 1970 and the Manson family has been mentioned, so Megan’s Tate-identical tee-shirt, and comments about her isolated Valley home were all part of an elaborate con. We know that Don is not Continue reading My Mad Men Dream Ending →

Mad Men — North by Northwest S7 E12

Kay Gardella Memorial TV Review Blog

As we near our end (Can you say antepenultimate?) episodes are becoming increasingly self-referencing and movie/style references are getting louder. My recap of this week’s episode is finally up at Happy Nice Time People. It was delayed due to travel and indirectly because apparently a lot of hotel cable packages don’t include AMC. Who knew?

Don is on the move west. Where will he stop? My money is on San Francisco. Why there as opposed to LA? Mostly because San Francisco, per Oscar Wilde, is where people who disappear are said to show up and that would be perfect for Don or Dick or Bill or whatever identity he takes next.  I’m hoping he falls out of no window, no terrace or bridge. For god’s sake, he’s an ad man, not a broken bad meth manufacturer or a mafia kingpin. But perhaps I’ll give you more ending speculation another time.

Meantime, catch my full recap when it’s up. Really, am I the ONLY recapper to notice the very specific North by Northwest references in the last episode? I’m talking about da plane da plane, and the cornfield he’s driving through at the end, and of course the fact that from Racine Wisconsin to St Paul, Minnesota the direction is uh north by northwest.

The Americans Season 3 Finale – Honesty (Song to the tune of…)

Kay Gardella Memorial TV Review Blog

My much too detailed snarky recap of The Americans S3 – E13 is now live at HNTP. I know you’ve been waiting patiently for many hours to relive the moment and get my take, OR just to read it so you don’t have to watch yourself.

Spoiler alert: Were you shocked by Paige’s betrayal? Or did you see it coming? This pretty much makes the Russians 0 for 2 in their next generation program, but at least she hasn’t slaughtered her family — yet. No wonder they lost the Cold War. Wouldn’t it be a kick in the head if it turned out Pastor Tim was also KGB or maybe working for the Chinese? Next season just got a whole lot more interesting. Also, now that the mujahdin have been discredited thanks to some good work by Philip and Elizabeth, does this mean we can please drop the need to bug Kimmi’s house and thus drop the icky subplot — which the writers seemed to have dropped already.

Anyway, happy nice time people!

The Return of Glen Bishop — Mad Men S7 E10

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My full recap is up at HNTP where you will also find many other lovely recaps not written by me. Some stray thoughts. I haven’t read any of the early caps yet, but I’m willing to bet the return of Glen got a lot of attention. Anyone else notice the Greg Brady resemblance? Right down to the huck-a-poo shirt. And Mary LeTourneau’s Betty’s reaction was priceless! I seem to recall reading that Barry Williams had quite the crush on Florence Henderson and they even dated once.

Again, details on the full cap later, but can I just say I really hope we’ve seen the last of the following people: Mathis, Lou, Diana and All the Calverts? The only minor player I’m dying to see again is Sal. I so want to see Sal successful, out and happy, and in a position of power where he can fire people.

(After your visit to HNTP, you might check out the new cover of my novel, Loisaida, a story of gentrifications and its discontents or my sexy vampire tale for opera lovers or my whacky speculative fiction novella about big pharma and the death industry, or maybe you’d prefer this tale about grief, madness and the multiverse.)

Julia and Juliette

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Julia Ormond as Marie Calvert

Just a couple more hours to go till one of the last episodes ever of Mad Men. I will be furiously scribbling notes for my recap which will appear tomorrow on HNTP.

Last week I made a mistake which an astute commenter caught. I’d thought Megan’s mom was played by Juliette Binoche – a brunette, French actress of a certain age. Which would have made perfect sense as the character, Marie Calvert is a brunette French woman of a certain age and she sure looks like Juliet Binoche. However, this is

NOT Julia Ormond

not the case. She is played by Julia Ormond. That is a picture of Julia Ormond on the left. On your right, here is a picture of Juliette Binoche.

I had heard both these names before. I have probably seen movies with each of them, but if you named a bunch of movies with either one of them and you asked me to guess which was which, I’d probably totally fail – even if you showed me pictures.

Since the error of my ways was pointed out to me, I  learned some things. Julia and Juliette are almost the same age (51 and 50 respectively). And they’ve both appeared in a lot of classy films, plays etc. But guess what? Julia Ormond isn’t even French! How is that possible? She’s English. Totally English although it looks like she’s played French before. So in one sense given that the character is French, it makes some sense I’d mix them up or maybe it makes sense because they really do look alike. Have they ever actually been spotted in the same place at the same time? Here are two more pictures. I’m not labeling them. You decide. Julia or Juliette?