Mad Men: Season 6, Episode 8–The Crash

“When you start something like this, it takes a lot of convincing. It’s all about whether or not the other person has as much to lose as you do, because you want to be able to trust them when it’s over.”

MMDonPeggy

This week was one of those rather surreal episodes that Mad Men does so well, with a disjointed, hallucinatory feel that mirrored the perspective of the protagonists in its main plotline. Having found prestigious new clients Chevrolet to be demanding and impossible to satisfy, the staff of… whatever the newly merged agency is called pulled an all-weekend brainstorming session. OK, we’ve seen them do that before, usually with the aid of prodigious quantities of alcohol. This time, though, at the urging of new partner Jim Cutler, they were doing it with the aid of some pretty hardcore stimulants. The results were as messy – and as entertaining – as you’d expect.

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Mad Men: Season 6, Episode 3 – Collaborators

“Now I understand. You want to feel shitty – right up to the point where I take your dress off.”

MMDonSylvia

Never a show with a straightforward approach to dialogue or characterisation, Mad Men this week took its usual obfuscation of motive and events to new heights, in an episode directed by Don Draper himself, Jon Hamm. The ep was ostensibly another of those juxtapositions between Don and Don-wannabe Pete Campbell, showing their failings both professionally and socially. But, even more than usual, grasping what was truly going on relied on interpreting the Unsaid as much as the said.

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