I'm not ashamed to go here : TKO ! Get comfy readers, I'm on my second big cup of coffee and have been up for hours already today... We are going to dissect this one.
May 25th, 1965
I've been all over the papers and blogs this morning, I really can not think of any other tv show that generates this much cyber ink, but this is really the only non news show I watch, so for all I know the mega popular Jersey Shore is being written about hourly. What really blows me away, it shouldn't but it does, is how just outright dumb people are.
SHOCKED at some of the things people say! " How could Trudy be so mean to Peggy ". " THERE ARE RACIST IN 1965! " ( This is a big one, lots of folks shocked by this..) , and Jews, making fun of the Jews....
A 26 year old unmarried, childless woman in 1965 was a thing to be pitied in Trudy's world. Were she not a well bred Yankee, she would have patted her hand and giving her a " bless your heart". I really loved how in 30 seconds of television Matthew Weiner summed up the whole coming battle. Younger unmarried working girl admiring Peggy, older traditional Mom to be, throwing her a little pity. There is a new world coming ladies, and our Miss Peggy is riding the wave.
" If I wanted to see two Negros fight, I'd throw a dollar out the window" . SAID OUT LOUD, IN FRONT OF PEOPLE, By Ida, the Hellcat. 45 years ago, something you just have to deal with, and move on. Odd that so many folks can't understand this, [ example ] or can't see through anything except 2010 eyes. Hey, I grew up in a world where the freaking KKK collected money in full hate drag at Winder's biggest intersection, Hwy. 29, right where the McDonald's is now, and that was well past 1965. Yes, it was and is racism.. just as bad them as it is now , but it was also the law of the land until 1964, just last year. You really have to view the show in a that was then this is now outlook, or you will just make yourself crazy.
We will get to the not having sex part in a few, but right now, let's deal with the city part. Mad Men.. yes, Don is sometimes crazy, but it's Madison Avenue , New York City. Pure center of the universe.... and on it's way out. The Giants and Dodgers had already started the West coast trend. Johnny Carson and his tonight show would follow in a few years, but for now, still in the mid-sixties, New York City was king. All of television came from here, all the news, most of the gossip. America was still pretending to be urban, even though the Levitowners were already in charge.
People forget how different life was then. Don and Peggy's big night could not have happened in Atlanta. Office, Greek diner dinner, some place darker ( with out that icky water stuff....), the restaurant full of boyfriends and ( AND ) your mother, that home place... all that tiny grid that was and is NYC. So much could and did happen, because everything was right around the corner. You have to keep in mind, while watching that to Don and Peggy and , everyone else, they are still the masters of the universe. [ a gentle bosa nova ]. Class over... time for the show.
The Suitcase
( I believe in coyotes and time as an abstract )
Work, work, work, with beer and buddies. It's a mans world, and tonight is the big fight.
Not sure how much time has passed since we were last here , but Danny ( the hobbit) and Ken
Cosgrove are well blended into the fold. It's Peggy's birthday.. and no one really seems to care.
Drinking, drinking, still drinking.. and even talking about drinking. Poor Rodger is off to the
watch the big fight with AA folks... how much fun could that be. Begs Don to come with...
But, things are not ok with Mr. Draper. The day, the event, that this whole season has been
leading to is happening off camera, and all Don can do is hang on till it is over. Anna is dead.
Drink , drink , drunk.
You know something is coming, but just don't. want. it. to . happen.
Even Don Draper has needs. Well, yes, there is that need.. but, as stonewalled as he is,
as many iron walls as he has put up in his life, when his chips were down, so to speak, he reached
out to a fellow human being. He knew he was going down a rabbit hole, and had to have an anchor
to pull him back. I wonder if Peggy even knows what she did ?
Here is the thing about this show, and I am going to use an adjective for Mr. Weiner that
I never thought I would: Sorkinesque. [ really, as high a praise as I can give ]
People have pasts. Shocking to television writers. You have
a wedding, you invite the people that are on the show that day. Your live exists ONLY in that
hour or half hour of the show, period. Not so with our Mad Men family. They are in and out
of the office, almost flesh and blood with a time machine. This is hard to write!
But, he pulls it off. So this complex world boils down to fractured Don, sick, with his head in
Peggy's lap. Something he could have NEVER done with Betsy, and how interesting now that she
had her had in new hubbies lap a few episodes ago.
It was the Peggy and Don show, but a lot went on. I mean, Duck pooping in Rogers chair AND
Miss Blankenship as the queen of perversion! Mad Men was getting a little freaky. A much needed getting
rid of Peggy's mousy boyfriend and we learned A LOT about Peggy and Pete's baby. Who knew the
Mother thought it was Don's baby. See what I am talking about, real action , between people off camera!
Do we think Anna's death is the rock bottom that we have been waiting for Don to hit? Next week
will tell us, I guess. Neil had not seen last weeks Lost Weekend show, so, we watched it again. One
would hope that that was the bottom, because, it was ... bad.
TLo has the weeks Mad Men fashion round up posted, go , dwell in 1965 for a bit.
( sorry if this post seems a little disjointed, it took me a couple of days to write, things
kept coming up, and I have no idea why the tabs are so odd. )
2 comments:
I didn't pick up that Trudy was being mean to Peggy. I think she thought she was being nice. We have seen no evidence of Trudy being mean so far. (Manipulative, yes, but not mean.)
Not overtly mean, but she pitied her. Poor little 26 year old unmarried working girl.
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