Mad Men Penultimate Analysis: The Milk and Honey Route’s Roots in Season 1

May 11, 2015Kay Gardella Memorial TV Review BlogMad Men penultimate analysis, Mad Men The Hobo Code and The Milk and Honey RouteMarion

images-3 — Cigarettes -- Kill quickly and slowly in this episode.

If Mad Men has taught us anything, it’s taught as that as the man sang, “You can’t always get what you want.” In my previous post, I wrote about my fantasy penultimate/finale storyline. Of course, my hopes were dashed and [SPOILER ALERT] I was as blindsided as anyone by Betty’s diagnosis though god knows someone had to die of cigarettes. It’s also a nice shout back to the death of the original Don Draper who died because Dick Whitman was a smoker. Who would have guessed the gun on the mantel piece was actually a cigarette, and Betty would take a bullet.

My recap of S7 E13, The Milk and Honey Route will be appearing shortly on HNTP. In the meantime, here is an explanation of how the penultimate episode parallels S1 E8, The Hobo Code.

Last night’s episode, ends with Don doing something unexpected. He not only drives Andy to the bus stop, he gives him his car and is last seen sitting with a blissful expression, waiting for the bus. What motivated this extraordinary act of generosity, especially as it was aimed at someone whose actions led to Don’s getting beat up?

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My Mad Men Dream Ending

May 10, 2015Kay Gardella Memorial TV Review BlogMad Men, Mad Men finale speculation, Mad Men penultimate speculation Does Don Draper become Dick Whitman?, Man Men Season 7 speculationMarion

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).

imgres-1 — 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 →

Blood Will Out — Your Thursday Book Review

May 7, 2015book reviewsBlood Will Out, Blood Will Out review, Clark Rockefeller, Walter KirnMarion

The main problem with Blood Will Out is Walter Kirn, who comes off as a guy you really wouldn’t want to be stuck in an elevator with. He’s never heard a name he didn’t want to drop. I couldn’t figure out by the end if he was actually a very canny writer, aware of his vanity, narcissism, and obliviousness and meant to portray himself as an unreliable narrator, or whether he really doesn’t get it and thinks his “friendship” with “Clark Rockefeller” and gullibility are great mysteries he hasn’t quite solved. The thing is at first “the relationship” angle is what drew me in. I was interested in the meet cute story of driving a disabled rescue dog across the country, partly as a favor, an partly to meet an eccentric scion of a wealthy well known family. In retrospect Kirn’s obliviousness to the animal’s suffering is an early clue to his own character — or lack thereof. By the time, I got to the part where “Clark” describes himself as resembling Niles from Fraser, and Kirn uses that to tell us more than we needed to know about his Continue reading →

Mad Men — North by Northwest S7 E12

May 6, 2015Kay Gardella Memorial TV Review BlogMad Men North by NorthwestMarion

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.