Monday, June 2, 2014

Waterloo - Mad Men - 7x07

Early in the season, the partners held a meeting with the West Coast office on the phone.  It was held in Cutler's office and he was calling shots.  By the end of the season, Roger makes an end around to McCann in a last ditch effort to save Don's job and in the process put himself in charge.  The meeting is held in Roger's office.

How perfect was it that Harry, who feels constantly disrespected and undervalued*, shoots himself in the foot by hemming and hawing about the share they offered him.  Long enough to miss out on the sale to McCann, and a windfall of over one million 1969 dollars.


* Probably rightly so. 

My watch stopped as soon as I got back in the country last week.  I couldn't help but think of Bert Cooper.

Pedro Pascal should win the guest star dramatic Emmy, but it's going to go to Robert Morse.

Ted's looking even more despondent than Lane Pryce ever did.  It's probably Lane's English sense of propriety that kept his stiff upper lip all the way to hanging himself, while Ted mopes around.  We got a lot of hints about this from Pete and Harry, complaining about how Ted is the worst.

Mad Men has always given us a good picture of how some people had views or opinions of major events that we look back now, aghast.  Whether it's Roger complaining about the picture of Kennedy still up at the bar a few weeks later, Harry calculating how the news coverage of MLK will affect the ad buys, or here some idiot kid complaining that NASA costs too much.  This leads into Sally parroting her crush's views, not unlike Betty*, and the smoking a cigarette in the most Betty pose we've seen yet.**  Or how the moon landing was far from a lock and Peggy considering how that would affect the mood of the pitch.  Or how Stan speculates that the moon could be made of quicksand.

* "We don't know who we're voting for yet"...which is funny because Don also states "I don't vote" which I'm not sure is a combination of apathy and nihilism, or an attempt to stay off the grid as much as possible in his Don Draper life.

** One are up holding the cigarette, other arm lower, to the elbow, parallel with the ground.

Joan again votes entirely with her pocketbook.

I like Cooper's views on leadership, how inspiring loyalty is about being loyal to your team.

Peggy has a ten year old neighbor.  She had her kid in November 1960 and he'd be about this kid's age by now, which I wonder if that has anything to do with her taking him as her television watching ward.  The way the kid would turn on the set and sit down, it was clear he spent a lot of time there.

The way the partners vote, if they can't get on board, they get out of the way by abstaining or flipping their vote to join the majority.  Worst case for Cutler, he gets millions and millions of dollars and no longer has to worry about Don affecting him so directly (as Don now affects McCann).

No comments:

Post a Comment