On Mad Men, the drama proceeds directly from the characters.
As with much of the products being pitched on Mad Men, no one turns out to be exactly as advertised.
We’re sharing two recent web postings that have stoked our interest.
I started out 2008 as a paid TV critic with a happily stable and sedate personal life that rarely edged into something all that exciting.
Charlie Kaufman makes the basic rookie mistake most people do when they direct their first feature.
So many truths only become clear with hindsight. Here’s one of them: Unbeknownst to nearly everybody, even those closest to him, Andrew Johnston was a superhero.
I was so busy trying to find Anne Hathaway’s face in the frame that I missed the emotion she was expressing.
It seems not at all coincidental that Don is visually defined by that broad-shouldered suit and the hat that shades his eyes.
This being a big-budget American film, there is the obligatory car chase, not bad of its kind.
After hitting fans with bombshells a-plenty in “Six Months’ Leave,” it’s only to be expected from Mad Men that the follow-up would go in an entirely different direction.
Ironically, I watched “Six Months’ Leave” for the second time the night before I learned of David Foster Wallace’s death.
At the end of the episode, the biggest thematic question remains unanswered: Who is the golden violin, apparently perfect in all ways but unable to play music?
I feel awkward whenever I cop to it, but it’s true, and it probably always will be: I just don’t like Peggy Olson.
Once again, there’s plenty of ambiguity about Don’s menschiness.
This week’s episode is longer on housekeeping than any in season two.
Yeah, I stole that from John Ford’s famous “I’m John Ford. I make westerns.”
This has all been a fancy way of saying that Mad Men often feels like a collection of short stories about the characters rather than a conventional TV series.
For a lot of people, the big reveal about the fate of Peggy’s baby will be remembered as one of the episode’s highlights.
Considering his condition when we last saw Roger Sterling, it was pretty startling to see him carrying on as if nothing had happened to him.
Happily, the writers seem willing to exploit their flawed characters, especially their layered leading man.