There is more than enough David Lynch worship to go around, but talking about current styles that look like they could be pulled from his television series and movie about the murder of Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks, Washington, and the city’s unusual inhabitants after reading a 1990 issue of Sassy Magazine you had lying around, that’s certainly something a little better. Follow Vol. 1 Brooklyn on Twitter, Facebook, Google +, our Tumblr, and sign up for our mailing list.
A Girl on Mad Men: Something’s Lost and Something’s Gained (“In Care Of,” S6/E13)
Last season ended with a pretty memorable tableau: “You Only Live Twice” played while Don walks off the set of a lavish commercial starring Megan as a princess. Season 6, then, was set up rather archly, by a high-camp Sinatra stretching out the word “dream,” cooing that you drift through the years and life seems tame. As this show has always been insistent upon dreams being shattered, upon curtains being admired then pulled back, it makes sense that Mad Men would […]
A Guy Watching Mad Men: A Desk Into A Business (S6/E13 “In Care Of”)
We, or maybe just I, sort of expect bad things to befall the people of Mad Men at this point. Maybe I’m a little more of a fatalist than most, but I’m working with a “and then they all die in the end…” scenario that includes Roger’s heart finally tapping out, Pete comically falling down a very large flight of stairs one last time, and the earth opening up and just swallowing Don whole. Somehow Bert avoids these disasters, lives forever, and […]
A Guy Watching Mad Men: The Real Bob Benson (“The Quality of Mercy,” S6/E12)
Last night’s episode of Mad Men could have only been topped if the whole gang attended a wedding where Joan was to be married to a partner at Gray, only to be ambushed and slaughtered by a battalion of Gray copywriters in the name of J Walter Thompson resulting in Don and Joan’s death. Instead Don Draper, after helping his neighbor’s son avoid a court martial, slept with his neighbor’s wife in front of the all-too-mature eyes of his daughter. […]
A Girl on Mad Men: “You Killed Everything. You Can Stop Now.” (“The Quality of Mercy,” S6/E12)
It took me a second to recognize it, but I laughed once it came to me: the song that closes this episode of Mad Men is from Head, the 1968 cult film starring the Monkees. Critics like Renata Adler and Pauline Kael trashed it upon its release, but the film has found its aficionados like all hypnotic messes tend to do. Critics like J. Hoberman have contextualized it as a significant, albeit disastrous, part of counter-culture cinema, at least as […]
A Guy Watching Mad Men: Hero Takes A Fall (S6/E11 “Favors”)
I’m just going to go ahead and come out and say this: I knew about you, Bob Benson.
A Girl on Mad Men: Be The Man that I Admire (S6/E10,”A Tale of Two Cities”)
When Don has gone to California in past seasons, his trips have taken on redemptive qualities. He’s out of his element, but never entirely. He has gone to parties where the protocol is not totally unlike the one in this episode, where women flirt with him and the sun and refreshments wipe him out. In season 2, Don dallied with a woman named Joy and went for a swim in the ocean, and this pattern of sin and absolution has […]
A Guy On Mad Men: Everybody Must Get Stoned (S6/E10, “A Tale of Two Cities”)
Let’s talk about expectations, because right about now I’m expecting Megan Draper to get killed.