Making a note here: huge success.

Just caught up on Mad Men - the penultimate S3 episode, I believe. I think this show is on par with The Sopranos in many ways, and has surpassed it in some (e.g. the complexity of the women's roles, both theatrically and sociologically, and the amount of attention the writers lavish on their (outstanding) actresses). Pete's still Pete - but his consciousness has grown more quickly than Don's, and this season he's had more surprises up his sleeve than Peggy...

Sidebar: Mad Men's wardrobe work these last few weeks has been unbelievable. As Kennedy's death, the rise of the modern right wing via the '64 election (note the dismal Rockefeller fundraiser), the arrival of the Pill in 1960, and the eruption of the African-American civil rights struggle into public consciousness announced the end of American (read: middle-class white male) cultural consensus, the Great Variegation, so the outfits in 'The Grownups' reflected the splintering of the chilly/cozy grey-suited style that had been Mad Men's symbolic baseline. Check out Betty's groovy leggings during The Confrontation, Pete and Trudy's weirdly uplifting transformation from ironic wedding wear to turtleneck'n'frankness, Joan's evolving style, the evolving hipsteria of Paul Kinsey, Suzanne the teacher's earth-chick simplicity...though the show has sometimes gone with grandly theatrical outfits - recall Joan's magnificent red dress of course - the pinpoint details of recent weeks' costumes have drawn notice without demanding it.

Good thing the writing has been impeccable. Don and Betty's big sequence in 'The Gypsy and the Hobo' was so good I couldn't believe it existed in the same universe as everything else on TV.

Comments

[Sean]

Since you brought it up... lately I'm feeling like every character is so repressed, they speak in tense whispers at all times. The dynamic range of the show and its characters is so limited that it makes the whole thing feel incredibly claustrophobic. In this, it falls far short of The Sopranos, a show that was able to have it all ways - think of the blow-out fights and the silent moments (that often ended episodes), what characters said and what they didn't say, the dread they conjured so well and the comedy they wrung from any and every scene. And the female characters? Perhaps you need to elaborate but I don't see it (and don't try to tell me Carmela or Janice or Melfi aren't as complex as Betty or Peggy or Joan, because I swear I will scream).

Taking the show on its own merits, I loved the first two years and it's still incredibly well done, but this season has disappointed me greatly. Maybe I've just tired of it, but after each episode I've been left feeling unsatisfied, and not in a Wire-esque way of, 'this will all come together in the end' way (although I guess if the finale is a masterpiece of television I might be forced to eat my words). Previously, I found each installment to be a glorious thing, both as part of the whole and an excellent hour in its own right. This year, though, from the very first episode... it's just not there for me. I'll always have season two.

(I should re-emphasize that I'm willing and able to take the show as it is, but you brought The Sopranos into it and I felt compelled to respond.)

[William B]

I have a hard time comparing my experience of watching this season to the last, since I watched the first two seasons in very short succession and have watched this season each week as it aired; as a result, I've felt less satisfied overall with the amount of material per week, but I don't know how much of that is a result of the actual material and how much is a result of

What really impressed me this year was the level of formal experimentation in the types of stories the show tells. It's always had comedy underlying the drama, but the recent episode where Kinsey stumbles around drunk, meets a bizarre character (Achilles!?) and gets a sudden inspiration for mysterious reasons seems to be a pitch-perfect parody of the show's storytelling engine with Don, the only differences being a) Kinsey isn't as good as Draper, and b) we're not privy enough to his emotional life for the sequence to make any sense. And the "Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency" episode played with surreal fantasy-horror in Sally's confusion about her grandfather and her brother as well as ultra-black comedy in the lawnmower incident and the aftermath. The British overlords (not Pryce, his bosses) are so brazenly, emphatically "British" they play as cartoons, which should break the show's emotional realism, but doesn't.

I find it difficult dealing with the long breaks between episodes/plotlines--it's difficult waiting for Joan's plotline to progress when she often has zero or one scenes per episode--and while there are no doubt resonances I have't picked up, many of the side stories (e.g. the guy Don meets up with when Betty's giving birth) haven't grabbed me. But you're right--this show is something special.

[Wally]

William, you're right about the formal bravery of the show - the mix of tones and tempi is getting more impressive as time goes on. I agree that week-to-week watching is frustrating after doing seasons 1 and 2 after the fact, but that's a nice problem to have. :)

Sean --

Since you brought it up... lately I'm feeling like every character is so repressed, they speak in tense whispers at all times. The dynamic range of the show and its characters is so limited that it makes the whole thing feel incredibly claustrophobic. In this, it falls far short of The Sopranos, a show that was able to have it all ways - think of the blow-out fights and the silent moments (that often ended episodes), what characters said and what they didn't say, the dread they conjured so well and the comedy they wrung from any and every scene.

Your observation about the tone of The Sopranos is right on. But I feel like Mad Men has gotten more expansive with time - think of how much ground Roger has covered in just the last few weeks, the range of Pete and Trudy's relationship, the over-the-top lawnmower episode, Joan's complicated relationship with her husband, Jane's outburst, Betty's rapid maturation...yes it's constraining for characters and audience alike, but that's part of the show's mission statement. I think a number of characters have come a long way, even in the quiet. And (in keeping with the main text of this post) I do think the Kennedy assassination marks a turning point for the story the show is telling.

And the female characters? Perhaps you need to elaborate but I don't see it (and don't try to tell me Carmela or Janice or Melfi aren't as complex as Betty or Peggy or Joan, because I swear I will scream).

Carmela is about as complex as women's roles have gotten on TV, yeah. But Janice? Melfi? Great stuff that happily passes Allison Bechdel's test (the Bechdel Rule: a text that understands women will include at least one scene in which two women talk believably about something other than men), but Melfi's a narrative device for the most part, and Janice is Yet Another Fiery Italian Gang-Hag, even if the role was magnificently played.

The supporting characters on The Sopranos were often written juuuuust on the cartoony side of cartoonishness. They were operatic parts. (Makes sense.) Artie Bucco? Paulie goddamn Walnuts? Livia, Janice, Kupferberg, Leotardo's whole gang, the FBI guys...these were broad parts. That meant big dynamic range, but it also meant a certain artificial dramatic texture at times: recurrent scene structures like 'Cartoonish Jerk Shows Unexpected Humanity,' for instance, or 'Mob Woman Regains Self-Respect,' or 'False "Italianness" of Italian-Americans Is Humorously Underlined.' Hey, I loved the stuff, and the richest characters (Tony, Carmela, Chris, Meadow, Junior) were miles beyond just about everything else on TV. But it had a baseline comic sensibility - grotesquerie. The women on the show fit that mold, even Livia. (That was a resentfully written part played generously.)

Mad Men's women are allowed a hell of a lot more freedom of expression. There are many more scenes of men and women actively negotiating and fewer scenes of straightforward Pitiable Exploitation (like Tony Soprano's vicious misogyny giving way, predictably, to sentimentality). Marvelous as the Soprano marriage was, and despite The Sopranos's powerful treatment of generational passage, that show rarely dealt with fully functional adult relationships like that of (yeah) Roger Sterling and Joan Holloway. Their love affair was as fucked as anyone else's, but their post-assassination phone call was a marvelous piece of writing, an honest depiction of a lived-in relationship in which mutual need could be acknowledged and love-beyond-romance enjoyed for itself. (See also: Don and Betty's confrontation!)

Tony Soprano tended to destroy things, especially women. But Wernher von Braun taught me that nature doesn't understand creation or destruction, only transformation. Even within the deliberately constrained emotional register of Mad Men I see all kinds of transformation taking place (see also: Pete and Trudy Campbell) - and that's one kind of freedom that almost no one on The Sopranos was allowed, ever. In that regard I think the (men's and women's) roles on Mad Men offer actors and audience something The Sopranos sometimes didn't seem to be able to accept.

I wanna think about stuff more when I haven't been hitting the chardonnay, though. :)

[George]

That is the best halloween costume I have ever seen.

Saving Money, Fast loans and Common sense for dealing with your money. http://docketdirectories.com/cashloans.html