Basket of Kisses

Those of you who have watched “Seinfeld” may remember an episode called The Smelly Car.  A parking valet drives Jerry’s car, and later on Jerry and Elaine discover to their horror that the valet’s body odor is still in the car. Jerry gets the car thoroughly cleaned, but the stink remains. (Concurrently, Elaine, who has [...]

This is something I started writing in a comment, and want to expand upon here. I want to be clear that, in saying I think Megan Draper has a depressive illness, I am not judging or criticizing her. If she was wheezing and I said I suspected she had asthma, that would not be judgmental. [...]

Matt Weiner has said how much he likes that a loyal Mad Men audience means that, years into the show, he can build on his characters’ pasts. Last season, Don and Joan in the bar talked about the past, and Don obliquely referenced Bobbi Barrett, and in Season 4, one word, “playgrounds,” brought up a [...]

I’ve heard therapists say this: That a suicide is an expression of rage, a “fuck you” in the face of a world that has angered, disappointed, rejected, or thwarted the victim. You can see it in the notes left behind, and you can see it in the methods used. People kill themselves in places where [...]

Mystery Date is all about violence against women (the Speck murders, Don and Andrea and the fever dream, the Cinderella pitch). In Christmas Waltz, women strike back. Three women are violent: Joan throws the airplane, Lakshmi slaps Harry, and Megan throws her dinner against the wall. The tables turn again in the next episode: In [...]

Guest post by Basketcase d davies denver Peggy Olsen, The Other Woman, as she leavesNext to Lane’s sad and untimely demise, Peggy’s departure from SCDP in The Other Woman is the big shocker of Mad Men Season 5. I suspect that for the Basketcases, Peggy’s decision was not quite as surprising as it was for [...]

(As you may have noticed, I’m catching up with the end of Season 5 before S6 begins. That means re-watching and that means posts.) Harry visits Paul at the Krishna Consciousness Center, and Swami Prabhupada lectures about materialism and its harmfulness. Paul has taken a vow of poverty. This directly parallels the play that Don [...]

I don’t know how to put this delicately, but from time to time, I pass gas. I’m not horribly inappropriate–I’ve never done it in a job interview or during the Inauguration or something–but take me out for a good masala, and things are likely to get comical later that night. I’m not ashamed or proud; [...]

I work pretty hard on the timeline for the Mad Men Episode Guide, making sure I have evidence for what day things happen on. We know that Matt is super-careful about things like that, going so far as to have the weather on specific days match the actual weather report, and adding references to things [...]

You’re not a good man, you never were, even before we were married. And you know what I’m talking about. —Joan Harris, Mystery Date Greg Harris raped Joan Holloway in Episode 2.12, The Mountain King. We all watched. It wasn’t erotic or ambiguous or okay. And then she married him. And we all died inside [...]

(Lotta caps there. I am very excited.) Sunday, April 7th. 9:00pm, AMC. Set your alarms. The episode, written by Matt (show-runner/executive producer Matthew Weiner for anyone stopping by the Basket for the first time), and directed by executive producer Scott Hornbacher, will be another 2-hour season opener–this was the case for the first time last [...]

Peggy has, in the immortal words of Laura Nyro, the Wedding Bell Blues. At least that’s what we’re led to believe in At the Codfish Ball, in which Peggy gets a decidedly nontraditional proposal from her boyfriend, Abe, and is told off by her ultra-traditional mother for accepting it and letting Abe move in. And [...]