Basket of Kisses

Don Draper: American Airlines is not about the past any more than America is. Ask not about Cuba. Ask not about the bomb; we’re going to the moon. Throw everything out.
Paul Kinsey: Everything?
Don: There is no such thing as American history, only a frontier. That crash happened to somebody else. It’s not about apologies for what happened. It’s about those seven men in the room on Friday, and what airline they are going to be running.
Salvatore Romano: So what does that mean?
Don: Let’s pretend we know what 1963 looks like.
~Three Sundays

That crash happened to someone else.

Bobbie Barrett: I keep forgetting the accident. It was terrible. And it keeps getting stranger.
Peggy Olson: Well, if you’re lucky, it will disappear.
~The New Girl

Don Draper to Adam Whitman, his long lost baby brother: I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.
~5G

Let’s pretend we know what 1963 looks like.

Bobbie Barrett: You have to start living the life of the person you want to be.
~The New Girl

Don Draper: I guess when you try to forget something, you have to forget everything.
~The New Girl

I know we’ve discussed themes throughout Season Two. But I think that as overarching themes go, Reinventing Yourself is a front runner. And sure, it started with Season One, but it seems to have reached beyond the Don/Dick situation. Again and again and again, we’re hearing about it. Vicky introduced herself to Roger as Marty Hasselbach’s wife. Salvatore is a husband. Duck tried to reinvent himself, and is fraying; he knows the old him is still in there, ready to leak out.

And so, with five episodes to go, it will be interesting to see what’s next. Betty has just taken a pretty damned big step.

And can we talk briefly about the brilliance of writing ‘ask not’ into Don’s ’speech’? Because when you’re feeling strong, when you’re feeling, I don’t know, epic, you naturally draw upon the words of one of the great speeches in recent history.

(And here’s part 1.)

Normally I don’t think the IMDb Mad Men board has much conversational oomph, but I found two fascinating thoughts in one thread.

First, that the book of poems may have been sent to a mentor in the “in between years.” My thought following that was that it could have been sent to the blonde who came looking for Don Draper in The Gold Violin.

The second thought was that Bert Cooper already knew about Don Draper’s past, and that’s why he was so “who cares?” nonchalant. That Cooper was the mentor (not “Teddy”).

Dear Basketcases,

Come sit. We need to have a little talk.

We’re starting to get a lot more spoiler-spoileresque comments. Deborah and I deleted about five from this week’s open thread.

Please check our About section for our spoiler policy.  G’head. I’ll wait.

Okay, get it?

Here is an example, with the spoiler content edited out, of what seemed innocent but crosses the Basket Boundaries:

But I tell ya, I have read several places that someone is going to blah blah blah this year on MM, so you gals might be right, blah blah blah blah!

See, one of the things that happens is that you start to get mixed up. Between what you saw in a preview (which is not considered spoiler) or what you read in an article or what you heard as an educated guess in here or what you heard from a friend who got it from an actual spoiler site. All mixed together in your brain.

But the other thing is there are super spirgins who don’t want to know one single tidbit beyond, perhaps, the promo for the following week. They don’t want to know episode titles in advance. Don’t want to know legitimate scoops hand-fed from Mr. Weiner himself to say, Mo Ryan. We try to protect all our readers, so even when Deborah and I publish a scoop, we always do so below the fold.

Please see fold for demonstration. (more…)

Best yet this year - told you 5 is the magic number …

Pete & Trudy’s doctor’s office

Trudy’s about to burst

S-C Office

Would love to see what’s inside the thought bubble over Don’s head while Fred (“slow and obvious”) Rumsen tells him a joke.

Pete & Trudy’s doctor’s office

“Have you ever fathered a child?”

“No.”

“Have you ever fathered a child you didn’t know about?”

“No.”

“Do you know what a blue Easter Egg symbolizes?”

“No.”

(more…)

Why talk about it?

Why not?

So, I thought Don’s conversation with Bobby was quite revealing. In The Hobo Code, Don told Bobby that he’d never lie to him. In Three Sundays, Don told him more about his father: he looked like me, only bigger; he died a long time ago; he liked ham (hee, I like Hamm, too). But when Bobby asks, “what did he do?” Don replied, “I told you. He was a farmer.” That suggests to me that they’d had this conversation before. I can’t say when within the scope of the series they had this conversation, whether it happened five minutes before, or two years ago, but it suggests that Don and Bobby have discussed Don growing up.
(more…)

The picture of Sheila on Paul’s desk? That was foreshadowing. Someone is going to see it; someone other than Sally. Someone who is none too comfortable with it.

Just sayin’.

All of them in service roles, except for the beatnik party.

But each one was cast with a memorable actor… I identified that busboy by his voice alone, I can still hear the voice of the woman in the ladies room (if those purses get any smaller); Hollis and Sonny–the elevator operators, the janitor who witnessed carnal couch-age, and Carly/Carla. All strong presences. To most of the characters on Mad Men, they are invisible; barely even window dressing as the scenes are set. But Weiner made sure they jumped off the page.

(Grant you, race aside, every bit role in this series seems to be well cast and fully rounded. It’s like, if they decided to go back and focus on any of the characters that have ever had a single line and give them a fuller storyline, they’d have an actor who could well carry it. Any of the other neighbors from Marriage of Figaro. The salesgirl who wouldn’t give cash back for the chip-and-dip. Helen Bishop’s ex-husband.)

Weiner is still being accused, right here, in our own Basketcases’ comments, of neglecting to show more blacks. He’s not neglecting anything. He is being very, very deliberate in his moves. This is a show about a white man’s world, and he is working his way out of that circle. The white women are the next ring out (I’m picturing rings around a planet here; work with me) and then we meet some Jews. We’re getting to the blacks; their story is coming. I do suspect that, as we all hope, we’ll be seeing more of Sheila White. But he’s not going to force it on us. If he had included a black person’s experience trying to be a copywriter in Season One, it would have been too heavy-handed; too preachy.

We’ll get there.

There’s a new challenge to writing about S2 episodes.

See, I was thinking about Don and Betty’s marriage. For the record, it is rough viewing. I was much more comfortable watching Don cheat and Betty long (the verb) than I am watching Betty pummel and castrate and Don wither and sob.

But I was thinking about the scene in the kitchen at the end of Flight 1, of Betty saying all that stuff about how Carlton damn well better be happy (I am entirely making up the dialogue) after what he put Francine through, and Don’s response of, essentially, I’ll say whatever you want me to say, but I won’t argue.

And I thought, well okay then. They have never discussed their own marriage. Dr. Wayne may or may not have told Don about Betty’s knowledge of his affairs; we don’t know. But I bet my… bet-ables that they have not once directly confronted their marriage. That Betty has constantly used Francine, conversationally, as her way to say everything there was to say to Don, without ever having to say it. And Don, it seems, has taken it all.

And I thought… that’s your post. Go home and write it.

But then I thought… well, let’s wait an episode or two, because we might find out that’s not the case.

And that’s when I had this sky-opening realization about S2. (more…)

Deborah had mentioned that she can’t wait to see Sal after Stonewall. Which got me to thinking… will it really break him out? Or will he stay a miserable, closeted queen for the rest of his bitter, unfulfilled days?

One of the interesting things about this show is the careful attention to individuality. No one is a caricature. Midge, the bohemian, won’t run off spontaneously to Paris. Peggy, the smart girl, carries a baby without knowing it. Harry cheats with Hildy. Betty cheats with a washing machine. Nobody is predictable.

So if the show were to go all the way to 1970, who will change?

Weiner, I think, and Hamm, I’m sure, have mentioned, (in response to the notion of 1970 Don with mutton chops) that Don could be the guy who never changes his hairstyle.

(I have an uncle like that. Still uses hair grease. Kind of totally gross. But I think he might have been hip once.)

It will be interesting to see. Certainly, we will watch each person faced with realities they’d not before encountered. And how each person reacts to these will inform their future.

Pete, I suspect, will glimpse what an asshole he is. It will smack him in the face, and it will cause him pain, to see the pain he’s caused to others. And he will have a choice, in that moment, to continue on as he has been, or take a step towards being a human being. And that moment will be something to see.

But really, the question we’ve all got to be asking ourselves is, will Harry ever stop wearing that bowtie?

I have one of AMC’s s2 promo shots as my wallpaper. For a while now, something has been odd about Peggy’s dress. I was just looking at it, and I realized what it is: It’s a summer dress. A frock. Peggy would never wear that to the office. And if we’re seeing that, it means we see Peggy away from the office.

So, cool.