Monday November 23, 2009
Mad Men Season Three, Episode One
After long last (and amazingly enough, now that the whole season is over - that was fast!), I've started watching the third season of Mad Men. I had originally intended to start over at the very beginning, watch every episode, and read another Mad-Men-Episode-Analysis blog rather like I did for the second season. In the interest of a serious lack of time, I ended up settling for watching the last four episodes of season two in quick succession, reading second season wrap-ups, and then watching the first episode of the third season, "Out of Town" and reading as much analysis of it as I could. It is, as you probably well know, a fantastic show, and the thoughtful writeups and comments are fascinating and open so many doors into the characters, plot and period. The digging really deep is also what prevents me from staying up all night, glued to the TV, watching episode after episode after episode!
Here's what I've been reading (and this is for just the first episode - there's far more and when the next season comes around, I'll meet you back at these blogs for more):
- The House Next Door (which used to run by the late Andrew Johnston, the TV critic for Time Out New York.
- The AV Club at The Onion, but skip the commments - they're garbage
- The Wall Street Journal by an old (female) ad hand from Leo Burnett
- What's Alan Watching? by the TV critic for NJ.com who also has great interviews with Matthew Weiner, the shows creator
- Film Freak Central which I've bookmarked but into which I've not yet delved though the video at this link, which is only about the show's cinematography, is one of the most moving things I've seen in some time
- ...and aprapos of nothing, The Footnotes of Mad Men a site of tangential historical and advertizing trivia; interesting and spoiler-free
Up next: Love Among the Ruins Old Kentucky Home The Arrangments. I seem to be catching up faster than I thought I would.