 |
| who could put a price on the lovely Joan? ... Pete Campbell could. |
Mad Men S5 E11 is the kind of episode they should teach in screenwriting school. It had a theme and that theme was the price society puts on women and women's work and each element of the theme mechanically worked its way through the various plots and subplots until the end. I imagine the writers of this episode were very proud of themselves at how slickly this was achieved, in fact, this episode was so well oiled it reminded me of those Season 5 Seinfeld episodes where each one of the four main characters would have a story and all four stories would come together at the end of a tightly edited 22 minutes.
...
Peggy has been feeling undervalued all season and so she went to see her mentor Freddie Rumsen (it was great to see Bill Murray's brother back for an episode) and after consulting with consigliere Freddie she finally took a job offer with a rival firm. At the end of the episode she told Don she was tired of his hot and cold routine. He thought she was kidding and seemed genuinely distraught that she was leaving. He kissed her on the hand in a moment that seemed to break Peggy's heart, but in a clever touch (by the director?) as she walked out of Don's office she grinned to herself as the Kinks played over the titles.
...
Joan too has been feeling undervalued and when a creep from Jaguar offered to give SCDP the contract for the car if she could be washed and scrubbed and brought to his tent, it was Pete Campbell who brought her the news. Instead of slapping him on the face she told him that SCDP couldn't afford her. And then it became that old joke "we know what you are, we're just haggling about the price." Don thought the whole thing was distasteful but Lane said that if she was going to sleep with the tubby creep she should at least hold out for a partnership. She did and she did with only a few teary surface regrets at the end but, no doubt, icebergs of trouble lying underneath.
...
Megan...ah who cares about her. The casting directors at her audition wanted her for her body, not her acting ability. She was shocked. Shocked! Isn't she French? Doesn't she have any knowledge of the world?
...
So all the women were feeling used and abused and throughout the episode SCDP Creative were pitching a campaign to sell a Jaguar E type as a man's expensive, high maintenance mistress...You don't have to be Gloria Steinem to work this one out folks. And yeah to me this all seemed a bit heavy handed. We watchers of Mad Men are not stupid, the writers don't have to hit us over the head with their themes, they don't have to block capitalise, they don't have to shout. Shout they did though.
...
So what are we left with at the end of this pretty great, action packed ep? Joan's a partner, Peggy's gone, Megan's wise to the ways of the wicked city. Don let another women slip through his fingers...A lot going on and that big easy, yummy theme that Emmy voters will lap up.
25 comments:
... each element of the theme mechanically worked its way through the various plots and subplots until the end.
That's pretty much my love/hate relationship with Mad Men. When it works it's great but when it doesn't it really defines 'bag of hammers' writing. I always respect the show for trying.
I won't see this episode until tonight, but last week's "fraud" theme fell into the bag of hammers, I think - Lane has to pull an actual fraud, are the Hare Krishnas a fraud, or just Paul Kinsey's interest in them? Is advertising a fraud? What about acting?
Still, it'd nice to see one TV show where the writers can use the word "theme" and not get cancelled right away.
Good acting, but the story was in some ways trite.
I only saw half of last week's due to technical difficulties.
I find that I'm liking the proceeding show, The Killing, more as it goes along, even though it goes along at a snail's pace.
And I'm also thinking it a bit of a shame that Awake got cancelled. They made the mistake of waiting till the end to start pulling out all the stops. Jason Issacs finally gets to use some of his acting range. Although I haven't seen the very end, so don't tell me.
John
Yeah, exactly, its infuriating and impressive at the same time. At least you cant complain that it wasnt done well. It was. Very slick work from Weiner and his team.
Seana
I've only seen the pilot of Awake. So they tied up all the loose ends and explained the whole thing in one season?
I think I'd flip you on Mad Men. I liked the story but I've never been that impressed by the acting on the show. Its a pretty B list cast (except for John Slattery) who somehow hit the big time. To rip off Dorothy Parker, John Hamm's emotional range runs from A to B.
I know it will probably turn out that this week was written by a woman, but it seems more like men writing about women and women's options.
Hamm is good when he has a good acting partner, like Peggy or Joan.
I haven't seen the last episode of Awake yet, but at last Issacs was allowed to show some emotion about the likelihood that one of his family members might be dead. They allowed him to walk around in a trance for far too long.
Seana
No the writer's probably a man. The story with Joan is very much a male fantasy.
I dont find Joan or Peggy or January Jones that convincing as actresses either. The best actress on the show is the kid that plays Don's daughter.
Hmm. She may be a good actress, but I don't find her role all that convincing either. She's a bit too knowing in some way.
Seana
Yeah she's a little like a Glass family child from a JD Salinger story. As are all the children in Wes Anderson's films.
In fact except for comic relief roles children are not allowed to be average or even a bit slow on the uptake in todays TV/Film culture. They have to clever clever.
Seana
I see that the title of that Awake episode is Turtles All The Way Down which I think is a reference to a famous Bertrand Russell anecdote: when attacked by a flat earther he asked her what the Earth was resting on. She said that some people believed it was resting on the back of 4 giant turtles. But what are the turtles resting on, Russell asked. Ahh, you can't trap me, the woman replied, its turtles all the way down.
Having been a child of that era, I would say we tended to be a bit more clueless. But then, my father wasn't Don Draper/Dick whatever, either.
Yes, I noticed the title of the last one, but haven't been able to see it yet. What I'm wondering is if they knew it was ending and so give us a satisfactory closing, or if it will just be one more unsatisfying series finale.
Let's just say I'm not getting my hopes up.
I wonder if the Mad Men writers' room works like network rooms where the stories are outlined by the whole team and then each script written by an individual writer and the showrunner then gives it one more pass?
I like that each episode has something it's trying to say, it's very Aaron Sorkin like that.
I think you and the show's real fan base, which I'm not really part of, likes that feature more than I do, John. I like shows where the writing is less obtrusive.
Well, I finally saw this week's episode and I couldn't help but think, hasn't a single guy in that office read Hammet? Here's their chance to get a private eye and a camera in the hotel room and they have the Jaguar account forever. So now Pete Campbell goes from rapist to pimp, it's an interesting career path.
This episode was co-written by the Canadian writer. Too bad, I really wanted her stuff to be good but so far they are the worst episodes.
John
Whoa, I liked it better than you it seems. Yes it was heavy handed but so much happened and I thought it moved all the stories along nicely. The Megan-Don thing slows everything down but at least they didnt try and force in a Betty Draper story.
Overall very happy with this MM season. Maybe I missed something, but I am still trying to figure out what Lane did, other than maybe tax evasion, which was touched on, I think, two episodes ago. Looking forward to seeing how that part plays out as he already extended their credit, and forged a check. Really thought he was going to jump out the window, when he was alone in the office, before joining the other partners to announce the Jag win.
Sean
Yeah I found that bit rather puzzling. Why didnt he just ask Roger to lend him the money for a few weeks? Or just tell the British tax authorities that the check was in the mail. That would have bought him a few months, no? Embezzling seems way out of character.
I think they're trying to make it look like everyone might jump this season, so maybe it's no one who has looked like they might yet.
Adrian, I see this news about Cold Cold Ground in your twitter feed side bar, but when I click on it, there's no access. So what's going on?
Seana
Dont know why the link wont work from here. It works on twitter. Anyway here's the listing:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Cold-Ground-Detective-Troubles/dp/1616147164/
Funny thing is, I still havent had official confirmation of this. I hope I'm not jumping the gun, but if its up on Amazon it MUST mean something...
As for the link, I think it's probably just a problem with my set up. Anyway, yes, it looks pretty official, but if you scroll down it looks like it isn't being released until mid November. Which actually should be pretty good timing, even if its a wait.
I suppose they'll get around to telling you round about Halloween.
In any case, it's exciting.
Seana
They'll probably tell me that the contracts are signed three weeks after the book has come out. That seems to be the way the world works.
As long as they do tell you that, it doesn't really matter the sequence.
Also, I just finally saw the ending of Awake, and it was actually pretty good. I don't really know where they could go from there, but a second season might have been good.
Seana
I watched it on itunes. I saw the first episode and the last episode and it kind of worked out fine like that.
I had a feeling they were going to go with the St Elsewhere/Dallas ending and I suppose they did. I still dont get how he could have recited the US Constitution in his dream though.
"Embezzling seems way out of character."
That's the trouble with this 'theme-first' style of writing, once the episode was about fraud, everything had to follow that. And I think they're still playing on the 'proper Brit' stereotype quite a bit.
I didn't actually take the ending as a dream.
Post a Comment