Fucking great film noir closing line. Super campy and I love it. Fuck it this was a great episode and I loved it.
Okay, I'm trying to convince my friend that television is art because it is a contemporary read of the culture, regardless of the genre. Star Trek and race relations in the 60s. Battlestar Galactica (the modern one) and the War on Terror. Sex and the City and nth wave feminist revolution. Mad Men and our modern existential crisis.
Mad Men is for Gen X and the Millenials. We were told we could be anything we wanted to be, and we are having some kind of writer's block, but in life. In all honesty, we can't be anything we want to be. It's just not possible and we are slowly realizing that fact. (Fight Club touched on this but was woefully misinterpreted.) So who can we become? How do we make the most out of life? All the characters start with such potential: Don as a genius without a past or anything holding him back, Peggy as a pioneering career woman, Megan as one who has it all - a career, a family, beauty. But their flawed personalities cause them to stumble and fall time after time.
It has long been noted that the men in this series are confronting growing old. The women speak to a younger generation, who are growing up without dogmatic precedent.
Here are some notes on observations on this weeks episode
1.) So the first thing that struck me in this episode is that Megan answers the phone with a simple "Hello." Up until now it's been "Draper Residence" or "Francis Residence." Never just "hello." Megan is set up as a thoroughly modern woman without all the formality of the 1950s homelife, and this salutation speaks to that fact. She is untouched by the stereotypes of the times, and she is trying to navigate uncharted territories - the girl who really can have it all. But poor Megan, she is slowly realizing that you can't be sexy wife on the weekend and a respectable coworker on Monday morning at work.
There are a lot of phones this episode. Emile calling his lover. Sally calling Glen. The last one is interesting because Sally identifies herself as his father. In this episode she is trying to be an adult - from knowing to do the right thing when Pauline falls, to dressing like an adult, to trying the food. He foray into adulthood is quickly aborted when she walks in on Emile and Roger.
2.) Oh Peggy, Peggy, Peggy. So adult yet so naive. I can't help but feel the living together is such a big mistake. How much does she really like Abe in the first place? Who invites their
boyfriend to eat lunch in the office with coworkers? She
has a better banter with the coworkers than the kid she's boning. Not to mention the whole weird hand job incident last week. And did any one else feel she was kinda embarrassed of his behavior at Megan's party?
But she settles with him. And she settles with living together over marriage. She says it's what she wants, but watching that conversation it seems like she is expecting/fantasizing that it's something more than it is. "how would we do that..." and "i
do." It's as though she is prodding him in the direction of a proposal that never happens. But then she pretends that it's all she ever wanted, to Joan and to her mother.
Two women and one girl, trying to figure out how to be adults. Not that they are particularly immature (certainly that have their shiite together more that the men), but they are going without a rulebook. Trying to evolve to adulthood in modern times where the rites of passage are not defined the way they are for the modern man. Getting married seems to push you back into girlhood. Having a career is unheard of. Of course Millenials can identify with this feeling as our economy and social spheres are drastically different than those of our parents.
And so this is why I champion television. Everyone is watching the same thing, and everyone has different takes on it. We gossip about it, we blog about out. But really we are talking about ourselves. Just like interpreting dreams. What happens in the dream isn't as important as our interpretation of it.
BTW: great analysis of the fashion in this episode: http://www.tomandlorenzo.com/2012/05/mad-style-at-the-codfish-ball.html
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