they're running every episode until Sunday, started last night at 6.

I watched a few and they all look so much younger. I mean, duh, they were, but a lot. Don has gone from about 35 to 43. Pete looks like a baby and so does Betty and Peggy. Sally was even younger than I remembered.

I also found it interesting as while I remembered the main plot points of the show, several scenes didn't even ring a bell with me, although it is 8 years ago and I've probably seen most of the episodes only the one time they aired.

Great, show, gonna miss it.

Here goes nothing. I have a terrible time getting anything right as Wiener kicks all our azzes on a regular basis.

But for fun:

1. Don never gets on a bus or at least we don't see it if he does. A hot chick picks him up in a brand new Rivera, she has more money than him.

2. Don ends up thinking up the iconic Coca Cola song/ad and instead of going back, he calls Peggy and gives it to her. She polishes it and becomes famous.

3. Roger, Roger, Roger??? I'll stick with my idea of a come-uppance of epic proportions, a figurative death. Flash to an important boardroom meeting where he is asked by one of McCann's VPs , "Roger would you go get me a cup of coffee from the break room? NO cream, two sugars." Switching places with Joan as disrespected nobody.

4. Peggy becomes a superstar off Don's idea, gets Stan.

5. Don, he can't leave the kids, but that does not mean he goes to NY, does it? He will find out from Sally within the week so no matter where he is, I feel he will have to go back. But not to McCann.

Mour guesses later!

The Time Machine: The History of Mad Men - an exceptional look back at Mad Men, its greatest moments, and what it all means by James Poniewozik of Time. It's a long article, but well worth reading all the way to the end.

quote:

---

So this is what we need to ask about Mad Men before we ask anything else. What's the benefit? It's a show about advertising, of course. (The "Mad" is short for Madison Avenue, the center of the advertising business.) It's a show about sex and gender roles. It's a period drama, a historical tour of upheaval. It's a serial about secrets: stolen identities and secret pregnancies and office intrigue. It's a love story, and sometimes a hate story. That's the literal, pitch-meeting descriptionwhat you might say to someone who had never watched the show before.

But what is it really?

Well, let's start with Don's answer. Mad Men is a kind of time machine, but it's a complicated one. It doesn't go in only one direction. You start watching and it takes you to the pastearly 1960when you can smoke in any restaurant and doctors are just starting to prescribe the Pill. It moves forward: the Kennedy-Nixon campaign, Camelot, the Moon landing. But it also transports you from there to Don's childhood as Dick Whitman in the Depression. It flashes to the Korean War, when the aimless orphan seizes the chance to reinvent himself, Gatsby-like, by stealing the identity of a fallen comrade (killed in an accident involving, natch, a cigarette lighter). It reminds us that the past has its own past. It moves, as Don says of the Carousel, "backwards and forwards.

At the same time, Mad Men is very deliberately a story about our present. Creator Matthew Weiner is notoriously exacting about the show's immersive period detail, yet surprisingly, as he explains in a series of interviews in 2014 while making the shows final season, he's highly conscious of current events when he writes. When sketching the mood of the later seasons, set amid the assassinations and upheaval of the late 1960s, he says he was thinking of present-day America. "People were exhausted and terrified by the economic disaster of the last few years," Weiner says. "They had low self-esteem and they were anxious about our place in the world."

---

i don't think there's necessarily any meaning in this that predicts Sunday night but.....


I was re-watching a couple of episodes recently, which I've rarely done with this series. I've always liked the episode in which betty confronts don about his true identity, and he loses his composure in the kitchen, fumbling a cigarette. not long thereafter, toward the end of season 3, they divorce, and he's on the phone with her as part of the goodbye and he says "I hope you get what you always wanted." I may be crazy, but isn't that also what he told Megan during their last call?

that leads me to this - has don ever truly wished ill on others?

I don't know what the future holds for him, but I don't think he does either and never has. all along the way he's made comments that indicate the life he has had as don draper far exceeds anything he ever dreamed of as dick Whitman. it's as if while living as don he has been acting the role of a persona that isnt himself, an escape from the *****'s son who he is. with any luck, he's come to terms with who he is and discovered that which makes him happy. he smiles so rarely he may not even know.

I've never been more pissed off at Comcast than I am right now.

I have this recurring sound problem in which certain channels are periodically muted or switched to the Spannish dub, all beyond my control. AMC is one of those, so if anyone wants to come over watch the Mad Men marathon in Spanish, give me a holler.

No es genial, Robrto!

It's back in English. That little kiss ass Pete just became head of accounts.

Love watching these old episodes. So much I have forgotten. Going to miss this show!.

Ranking of every Mad Men episode

I 100% agree with the top 5.

5. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes - Premiere
4. Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency - Lawnmower
3. The Wheel - Kodiak
2. Shut the Door, Have a Seat - Fire us
1. The Suitcase - Don and Peggy

quote:

---

Love watching these old episodes. So much I have forgotten. Going to miss this show!.

---

Yep. Really glad I re-watched the series in the month or 2 leading up to these final eps. I had never gone back and re-watched this show, only watching week by week with the rest of America. It was great to go back and see all of the old eps again.

I'm even checking in here and there when I have some free time this week to catch a few random eps again. Re-watched the most recent 2 eps last night.

I'm in full Mad Men mode for this finale.

Good gravy I dunno what I'm gonna do when this is over.

Do we think that Don's accountant will make an appearance in the finale to tell him how broke he is??

quote:

---

Good gravy I dunno what I'm gonna do when this is over.

---

That's exactly where I am right now. It's really starting to sink in. Not only is my favorite show of all time about to end, but I've seen a couple articles now about how this officially marks the end of the Golden Age of TV. Most everyone seems to agree that the Mount Rushmore of modern television is The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men. And after Sunday, that era will officially be carved in stone / over and done with. There's obviously plenty of phenomenal TV still out there, but there's nothing on the horizon that quite compares to what's come before. Game of Thrones and True Detective obviously come the closest, but they're different animals altogether (one is based on a series of books and the other has a changing cast/setting from season to season). Hopefully in the next year or two something comes along to rival Breaking Bad or Mad Men in terms of long form storytelling, with a single cast from season to season, not based on anything we can go read/spoil), but who knows. Point is, we have no idea when or if we'll ever see something like this run again.

Have you watched The Americans? Not saying its in the same family as those shows, but its damn close IMO. Notably season 3

quote:

---

Have you watched The Americans? Not saying its in the same family as those shows, but its damn close IMO. Notably season 3

---

I watched the pilot way back when and wasn't super into it. But since then I've heard so many people say it's amazing, and just keeps getting better, so I may give it another shot this summer. Besides eight episodes of True Detective and the second season of Halt and Catch Fire - which I'm debating whether I want to watch or not - there's not a lot of great TV this summer, so I may use the time to catch up on a couple shows I've missed.

It's not Mad Men, but The Americans is awesome.

Americans (right now) is so much better than Mad Men (right now).

It's not really all that close.

Losing Parks and Rec and now Mad Men in a matter of weeks is tough.

And Justified

I wound up liking Fargo better than True Detective.

Netflix changed tv for me.

This spring I've been looking forward to the nights when I recorded mad men, Americans and Better call Saul. I havent looked forward to new episodes of current tv shows since probably Seinfeld or perhaps six feet under. Netflix changed that because of breaking bad, and after I caught up on that I watched mad men and others. Both of those were down to the last season before i had seen any.

So it's very strange to realize all 3 of those are over, one for good.

Within the last 13 months I've binged Breaking Bad, Mad Men and The Wire (also The Walking Dead and Arrested Development... don't do the math, I know I have a problem). I'm working on The Sopranos now (in season 3). I think I've been high on TV the entire year, it will be a helluva withdrawl.

quote:

---

what if don goes to africa to climb mt Kilimanjaro

---

Someone's watching the reruns on AMC tonight

I forgot how much I love this show. Just watched Megan and Don close Heinz at dinner with the "some things never change" pitch.

And I had forgotten how ridiculously funny of a dynamic that the Calvet family had.

just read an interesting theory....Don going to Italy (he and Betty had talked about going to Italy before and he said they would go later but never did) to run advertising for the International Hilton brand...Rememeber Conrad Hilton took his business elsewhere rather than Mcann-Erickson but at some point told Don they might work together at some other time. Sally also mentioned going to Madrid in a recent phone conversation. If he was in Italy he would be close enough to see Sally. Also remember both "The Woman of Rome" book and The Godfather seen in the last epsiode.

Also, when Don goes back into the motel office before returning the money he talks to the desk guy who says he doesn't get Don...that he was there 5 days or sp,ething and made 2 phone calls so he implies he is a loner and con artist type...So we know Don called Sally and he told her he was going to call the boys later but we don't know if he really did. Perhaps that other call was to Conrad Hilton??

As far as the crazy DB Cooper theory....I don;t get it. First Don does not need money at all, why would he have some crazy scheme to just get $200,00. He has more than that now. And Don as far as we know knows nothing about aircraft mechanical type issues, or parachuting for that matter although he could have done some in the service. Seems way out of left field to me.

1) the Don goes to Italy/goes back to work for Hilton theory has been out there a while.

2) no one seriously thinks Don will go be db Cooper. I was more making light of that theory as it gained a lot of steam last year and in season 6 when there became this crazy blogger obsession to take little bits of info from 6 different episodes spanning the entire series and trying to tie it all together into some epic finale twist or plot line .

Wiener says Don's not D.B.

looks like I lost the office pool...

By the way, did anyone else notice how wide Don's tie was in the episode where he rattled the window? I knew he was safe because he didn't have a skinny tie.

About to say goodbye to lane price again