Mad Men! Very late starter. Enthralled ...

[PerditaProvokesEnmity]

Until last weekend I'd only watched about half of one random episode. It has completely taken over my nights and days. I'm coming to the end of Season 4 and the real world's going to seem strange and unfamiliar by the end of Season 7.

Anyone else? Or, if no one wants to play, was there ever a particularly engaged thread I can seek out in the archives?

If you like Mad Men you should try Halt and Catch Fire next. It starts in the 80s and follows the early computer revolution. It filled a Mad Men shaped hole for me!

Done. Finished.

My heart is thumping.

Wow ...

Pretty good, eh.

More than!

I have a lifetime of catching up on episode reviews now.

If you havent seen The Sopranos make that your box set.

I loved the ending of Mad Men.

Just stumbled across this thread! Mad Men is my favourite series of all time and I still feel sad that it's finished. So many amazing moments and episodes (The Suitcase and the finale just off the top of my head). I love so many of the characters (Peggy, Joan, Roger, Lane, even Don) but my heart belongs to Pete

I watched it as aired originally and also use to follow the Tom & Lorenzo Mad Men style blog. Hilarious and so accurate.

I loved that blog @SorrelForbes! The attention to detail was mesmerising.

I would have said the blog was insufficiently detailed. (But thank you Sorrell for introducing me to it!)

I have been wondering about Joan's clothes ... In the real 1960s world it would surely have been unusual for women of her occupational class (pre-partnership) to have all their clothes made for them. But I can't see how she would have been able to buy off-the-peg clothes that fitted so exactly at both shoulders and chest. It bothered me ...

(In the TV world did the costume designer win prizes??)

I've enjoyed reading this thread. I remember the first time I watched the series I promptly went out and bought myself a cigarette tin & holder like Betty's!! Didn't get much use out of them really.

I did however call DD2 Betty!

Oh no - I've just watched the start of Chernobyl!

Was that Lane? Again.

Betty is a cool name.

Was that Lane? Again Yes it was. I think he won a Bafta for that performance.

@itstheyearzero Thank you! Just watched first episode of Halt and Catch Fire. Brilliant follow up (after brief Chernobyl intervention).

Yes it really is excellent @PerditaProvokesEnmity

Okay ... HCF is becoming a bit of a slog. Am on Season 4. What it lacks is humour - Mad Men was so sly and hilarious. And the characters just aren't as individually delicious.

But I kind of have to see it through to the end, after investing so much time ...

I watched it over a period of about 3 weeks at the start of lockdown and felt bereft when it was over. That final scene and DD’s smile on the cliff top will stay with me forever. Also Peggy gliding through the empty office on roller skates!

Jon Hamm is such a great actor - I’ve seen him in other things and he’s so versatile. I’ve even seen him in things where his character isn’t great looking and he can even act himself nondescript - or was he acting handsome in this one?

I am old enough that I can remember some of the fashions, events and attitudes shown in the series and although it’s obviously often enhanced for dramatic effect, a lot of it rings true. I can definitely remember my mum and the doctor both smoking throughout surgery visits. Back then people really did smoke everywhere, all the time. Also the sexism in corporate life - I can remember serried rows of copy-typists all giggling and fluttering if an executive paid them attention and that was in the early eighties. I even worked in one building in London where the senior management (all men obv) got priority over rank and file in the lift queue. They would breeze right in and us lowly female plebs were not allowed to travel In the life with them. The same place had executive loos that needed a key to access and obviously they only had male loos. There was also an executive restaurant separate from the staff cafeteria which had waitress service. Both the cafeteria and the restaurant were always completely fugged up with fag smoke.

@PerditaProvokesEmnity - sorry if I'm a bit late, but there are detailed episode recaps on the television without pity archives, for the first 6 seasons (the website was scrapped before the last season)

www.brilliantbutcancelled.com/show/mad-men/

Oh good Lord - 13 pages for Ep1???

When will I ever pick up a book again?

( Thank you MrsS! )

I still feel a bit lost and bereft too, cobwebs. It was such good company.

After seeing your post I decided to try Mad Men. I’ve watched it all over the past week and a half...wow it was amazing! I loved it all

@EachandEveryone

If you havent seen The Sopranos make that your box set.

I loved the ending of Mad Men.

I loved the ending too. And I think it really fits in with the theme of how people don't really change. It's now the 1970s, but Don is essentially back in the same place as he was in episode one at the start of the last decade. Still messed up, still a bit lost... and about to hit upon an iconic ad campaign. From 'It's toasted' to 'I'd like to buy the world a Coke'. From an old-fashioned New York bar to a laid-back hippy retreat in California ... the times had changed but Don really hadn't, and he never would.

Sorry to ressurect my old thread, but need a shout-out to @MrsSlocombesPussy. Thank you for the gift of the Television Without Pity archive! At first I was sneaking the odd few minutes with it and feeling guilty for not spending my time more profitably. Then I realised just how much of it there was - and decided to give it as much respect as a novel.

So I've been reading the long recaps like a book and laughed and loved every second. (Well, maybe not some of the descriptions of female anatomy, but everything else.) I have just finished the last one. Immensely frustrating that they don't have the final season, but this is the last day of September: Michaelmas term is almost upon me, it's a good day to put it all behind me.

Thanks also to everyone for all the thread company while I was watching the show. Good deed in naughty world ...

Never forget the scene where Betty and Din have an idyllic picnic with the kids then get up and leave all their rubbish and drive away. Something horrifying about that!

@PersephonePromotesEquanimity I'm glad you enjoyed it. When the website was running I used to be addicted to reading episode recaps for all my favourite programmes. Some of the reviewers were a bit annoying and treated each recap like a Thesis, but most of them were entertaining!

@PerditaProvokesEnmity

I would have said the blog was insufficiently detailed. (But thank you Sorrell for introducing me to it!)

I have been wondering about Joan's clothes ... In the real 1960s world it would surely have been unusual for women of her occupational class (pre-partnership) to have all their clothes made for them. But I can't see how she would have been able to buy off-the-peg clothes that fitted so exactly at both shoulders and chest. It bothered me ...

(In the TV world did the costume designer win prizes??)

In one episode, she advises Peggy to get a dress tailored, so I assume that's why her dresses fit so well. Must have been annoying to live in a time before stretchy fabrics!

Fair point - alteration would be a more affordable option. Though she would have been taking frocks to the seamstress every week.

But I'm not sure I'm convinced ... She'd be buying dresses a size or two larger, then having them altered at the shoulders and waist. The latter is easy, shoulders are the devil to get right, and the shoulders of her dresses always looked perfect.

And her clothes were usually plain colours and smooth fabrics where every flaw would show.

Hmm ... Outside of the costumes department of a billion dollar production company I'm still not entirely sure she would have found it easy to dress well in exactly the way she did.