MAD MEN

OK - let's try something new here, since I have been so rotten at posting my Monday morning Mad Men recaps/reactions. Live blogging the midnight showing!
Not sure how this will work out, or if this will ever see the light of day, but here goes :

MAD MEN 

S5 e8

LADY LAZARUS

We have skipped ahead in time a little bit

a little before Halloween, 1966

• Metro North New Haven Line - direct to Cos Cob. Insurance selling guy tells Pete he has an apt. in the city where he keeps his lady friend. Men are pigs
• Wow, there are three gays on the planet in 1966, and this one winces and wears funny cloths - Men are pigs ll
• The guys are listing bands.. Don, who used to have his finger on the pulse of everything is LOST , " get off my lawn! "
• I STILL LOVE ROGERS OFFICE!
• Megan has a secret and ANY proper Bama loving woman would kill for the dress she was wearing
• Pete sleeps with his Insurance Salesman wife - Men are pigs lll ( but women are a little piggy as well ...). Shades of the old Peggy. Before they get all nasty on the living room floor the wife complains about how nasty " the city " is becoming...
• HOW cool is Don's entire entertainment set up !! A built in tv in 1966.
• Megan is home, changed back into the houndstooth dress... hmmm.. why did she have to change her dress?

First commercial, what have we learned. Peggy is still obsessing over work, Don is not, neither is Megan. Pete who has always been a sleaze, if a fun sleaze - is back to his old form. Change , change and more change, like the little high school girl back at driving school said, " things seem like they are speeding up ". Don asks Megan, " when did music become so important ? "... Generation gap anyone?

• " got a meeting in the ladies room ", Peggy rips Megan a new one ( Peggy is all the bitchy this week ) Megan went for a call back on a play and still wants to be an actress! Megan and her Orange lipstick that matches her dress wants to quit . Peggy's hair has become much more .. rigid. The Draper's do their Heinz beans little dog and pony show to sell cool whip, which was brand new. In Winder we had Dream Whip that you had to mix yourself....
• Pete calls the wife... " come to the city"  - " No, but we will always have the floor "

Break two : Peggy does not appreciate Megan just tossing away something that she has worked so very hard for, to what? become an actress? 

• Don's asleep - Megan still in orange, wakes him to say she hates advertising and wants to be an actress. He tries to talk her out of it, saying that she really does have talent in advertising. But she is just not having it..." too young to be bitter and all..." Love is all around, the orange Howard Johnson's of this past summer is GONE. 
• Don tells Joan, Megan tells " the team " . Everyone has a different reaction. Michael thinks she is quitting because she is into him for like 15 bucks for lunch! 

NOW THEN!   You have to remember that Betty was a working model in the mid 50's when she met Don - and AND gave it all up for the suburban wife and mother bit! Fast forward a few years and even a married lady is getting out , spreading those  - WINGS - doing what SHE wants to do....

• Pete and have a man to man where Pete realizes that the big V rules the world for the breeders.... " why do they get to decide what's going to happen ?? " I am a master of the universe, and yet women do not jump when I say too???
• OK - a little Twin Peaks  - Don seems Megan off for her last day lunch with " the girls ", then pushes the button for the elevator  - DING, the door opens and there is nothing there! Just all the way down to the Time Building floor- for shadowing ?
• The gay guy sent over a song, his boyfriends favorite - said with not any real malice. Michael HATES it, odd.
• Joan and Peggy diss the ladies who lunch set... well, Joan does. Peggy thinks that Megan can just do anything
• Pete the Pig goes home with his buddy from the train, freaks out Beth the once wild wife - wtf ?

Joan being a little bit , what jealous ? I mean she SO SO wanted to be the Doctors wife in Larchmont... right? And the gay guy, whose name I cant remember - the second time they are talking about him, its just a given fact... not painful like before. Three years out for sure, but NYC was still full of us creative types..

• Don's home to the little woman, literally barefoot in the kitchen! listening to the news as LBJ increases bombing in North Viet Nam....( I have the exact same pot she is using!! )
• The Cool Whip taste test. Ken, Don, and Peggy, filling in for Megan, to pull out a Heinz moment.. which falls FLAT!  BUT, I would swear my mother had the exact same dress that Peggy is wearing. 

It's Peggy subbing in for Megan in the cute-couple act and it crashes and burns. There's no chemistry and Peggy keeps on screeching "Just try it!" instead of the more playful way Megan said "Just taste it!"

Peggy and Don have their first fight of the season. "You didn't want herhere!" he yells at Peggy about Megan.

"She thinks advertising is stupid!" Peggy yells back. All the bubbling resent boils over.

"I did everything I was supposed to do ... and you're not mad at me, so shut up!" Peggy says.

Yes, Peggy told Don Draper to shut up.

• Don and Roger have a chat , " Megan is following her dreams"  Dons says he was born in the 30's , his dream was indoor plumbing.... " these kids today "
• Don gets home just as Megan is dashing out to her acting class. BUT! to catch Don up on " what is going on out there " , She went out and got Don the latest Beatles lp  REVOLVER ( I had to look it up, yall know me , the Wanker and the Beatles - this record came out in August of '66 ) The VERY happy Megan tells him to start with this one, pointing to a song. Don puts it on the turn table..... "Tomorrow Never Knows" plays....

• AS the PURE HIPPY MUSIC plays we cut to Peggy and the OH so cute tight shirt wearing Stan are SMOKING A JOINT AT WORK, while working.... 
• Insurance salesman's wife draws a heart on the foggy widow for Pete to see as they exit the train station parking lot
• Megan is on the floor in , I am sure her method, acting class, expanding.
• Don, turns off the song, half way through and goes to bed.....

So what do we have, many weeks in. A tv show that starts in the full glory of Camelot , and dares to go past Dallas, has got to tell the truth, at least this tv show does. We are living in culturally stagnant times, there have been tons written about this, but for like the last 15 -20 years , as technology has grown in leaps and bounds - culture has not. Design , fashion, music, all in a rut [ one article HERE ] the 1960's changed everything. NOTHING was the same from 62/3 to 69. There has never been a time of more change - well, with out a civil war, than the mid/late 60's ( and plenty of people thought that was where we were headed ) This had to be addressed. Especially in Advertising. "When did music become so important" Don asked....you know THIS must have all but killed him: ( from 1971 )


Don just turned 40, and forty was the old sixty then... what with all that smoking and drinking . Don is old, he is of a different generation. Yes, the baby boomers are to blame for it all.
I will cover the fashions when I get some screen caps......