Watching TV with Americans

I’m sure the last thing you all want to read is another blog post on the Mad Men Season 6 premiere and there are lots of people who read this blog who won’t want to know what happens in the episode. So instead of a review with spoilers, I’ve compiled a list of unconnected observations about the feature-length opener:

 

 

1. Despite being a pointedly metaphysical episode, the mystical flow associated with the series is absent and it feels quite choppy, almost like an extended ‘Previously On’ re-cap.

 

2. There are so many non-sequiturs and sections focusing on a single character that you keep expecting it to be revealed that we are watching a montage of everyone’s dreams.

 

3. We get a glimpse of what catching up with TV was like in the days before DVR.

 

4. Unsurprisingly Roger has the best scene, another one in which he is comedian and straight man simultaneously. And we learn that his knowledge of Pacific Island culture comes straight out of From Here to Eternity.

 

5. Harry walking up stairs in a huff is hilarious.

 

6. The opening twenty minutes is like the film spin-off of a sitcom.

 

 

7. Burt is better with buildings than people.

 

8. Don falls back into old habits…and it’s not (just) what you think.

 

9. Peggy ruins New Year for Freddy Crane.

 

10. Nothing is more tense than not knowing how Don will react to a situation outside his comfort zone.

 

11. In male grooming style in late 60s America, you were either a Morrison or a Zappa.

 

12. Sterling-Cooper-Draper-Pryce storyboard the titles for The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin.

 

13. Joan gets more screen time in her Johnnie Walker commercials than in the episode.

 

 

14. Don enters the cast of Scooby-Doo.

 

15. Megan is forced to take work as a maid but turns to violence against her employer after her hours increase substantially.

 

16. Betty stars in her own version of Trading Places but it isn’t her face she’s blacking.

 

17. A shine box makes a better heirloom than a ring.

 

18. Ken’s conversation at funerals is on message.

 

19. Don nearly finds out what it’s like to die.

 

20. Who the hell knows what is going to happen next, if anything?

This entry was posted on April 8, 2013 at 21:57 and is filed under American TV (General), American TV Shows, Reviews, TV Dreams with tags frank zappa, freddy crane, from here to eternity, jim morrison, johnnie walker, mad men, scooby-doo, season 6, the fall and rise of reginald perrin, trading places. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.