Aw, man. Revenge, why you gotta get so complicated? We can’t keep track of what the hell’s going on anymore. It’s like Game of Thrones in shorter skirts and higher heels. Can’t we just, for at least a little while, let this be about Clarke-style justice raining down on...

With families and family trees being so central to the story this time, it’s not surprising that the two branches springing from the Hofstadt-Draper union are both being defined through their clothing, and that subtle points about the differences in each household are being made. Here,...

We’re thinking that, since the “standing up and announcing tonight’s theme” schtick is by far the worst development in the writing for Mad Men this season (but to be fair, it’s the only thing worth complaining about), it might be more truthful and a little more...

Last night’s flashback-within-a-flashback story was a big plate of fudge. The end. What? Too obtuse? Oh, fine: it was a big plate of fudge because it was fun to see the parade o’ hairstyles (even if Victoria’s been sporting essentially the same hair for 20 years now) and have...

There were some interesting callbacks to earlier episodes and the ghost of Betty Draper loomed large once again. Let’s get to it. This outfit served as a focal point because an actual story point hinged on the audience realizing that she had changed into a cocktail dress. It’s an...

Mad Men has always been very clever about utilizing real products of the time to comment on the very people who are scrambling their asses off to make the public buy those products. In the early days of the show, the characters and the company of Sterling Cooper were dominated and defined by...

Call it “Thorne’s rose,” the Revenge version of Checkhov’s gun. If you place a rose on your parent’s snow-covered grave in Act 1, then Victoria Grayson will find it and look off into the distance with her nostrils flared in Act 3. It was an inevitability, and with...

We’ll start off slow, with a couple snapshots of 1966 teen and tweenhood, upper middle class-style. This episode was the story of three daughters, and while Sally’s clothes definitely played a part and made an impact in this story, the costuming really worked its ass off telling...

There was a time when Sally Draper would have been appalled to admit it (and that time is probably still happening), but the divorce of her parents has been a good thing for her. She may not love Henry as much as her father, but the relative stability that comes from living with people who...

These past two episodes have nicely illustrated that Hamptons Batman doesn’t just make plans or make faces at her enemies; when it gets right down to it, she can be positively brutal to bad people who get in her way. Unfortunately, last night’s episode ended on Emily’s...

Let’s go on a trip, shall we? Before we get into the weeds of it all, we want to point out something that’s not strictly style-related, but since we’re all about the visual motifs here, it’s worth noting. Three parallel, overlapping stories were told this episode. Those...

We noted, earlier in the season, that the writing had changed slightly. It seemed to us that the writers wanted to address head on the oft-mentioned complaint about the show that “nothing happens,” and we wondered if perhaps this was a result of the long, sometimes nasty...

Last night, as we watched Hamptons Batman get in some righteously furious head kicks, we looked to the the heavens and silently whispered, “Thank you.” Revenge is finally back in our lives. Don’t get us wrong, we loves us some Mad Men, but sometimes, you don’t want to...

Because this episode was dominated by men in suits, it’s a little tougher to pull out any sort of inferences or meaning from the costumes. To our amusement, we found ourselves desperately scanning all the ties, looking for something to present itself. To our surprise, something...

So, a handful of people asked us what happened to our Smash post last week. Nothing happened to it. It doesn’t exist. We figured we were doing you all a service because yet another post from us about how we hate the direction of the show and don’t care about Julia’s...

Mad Men landed like a pop culture bomb (even if it’s never achieved a massive audience) in part because it provided a much-needed unromanticized look at a world yet to be changed by social changes like feminism, offering a view of women’s lives   under a patriarchal, consumerist,...

Darlings, in our ongoing efforts to be as transparent as possible, here are some pictures for nerds and fangurls to squee over while we have coffee and figure out what else to write about today. It’s Doctor Who‘s Matt Smith and Karen Gillan shooting the show’s 11,000th season...

It’s true in every episode, but in this one, color stories really took center stage in the costuming. Walk with us. The staging on this scene was very smart. Don’s coughing caused Megan to move away so that when Andrea entered the elevator she had no idea they were together. The...

The horror of the Richard Speck murders loomed large over the story this week, sending multiple characters scrambling to (or under) their beds after opening the door on a Mystery Date they’d rather not have. Yes, the imagery was perhaps a little obvious and forced (Stan’s stocking...

Zip yourselves up and let’s get to it. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Could there possibly have been a more shocking way to reintroduce Betty? Did you gasp like we did? The combination of the bejeweled cuffs and collar (very much in style for the older crowd at this time),...

Hey, remember when we said this, in the early days of Smash blogging, when the world was our oyster and anything seemed possible? “Smash is no less a fantasy world (by virtue not only of being a musical, but of just being a TV show) but the entire tale is structured around the things...

We thought it was signaled pretty hard last week, what with all the eyeliner and miniskirts, but in case there was any doubt left in the audience, it’s gone now, like a puff of pot smoke backstage at a Stones concert. The sixties are here in the world of Mad Men, in full force, with all...

Part 1 here.   There’s a lot of signalling here that says “British” even if it’s not obvious. Lane has always had a distinctive style that set him apart from the other partners and subtly reinforced a European vibe in opposition their entirely American ways of...

Wake up, children! The SIXTIES are here! Like most viewers, we were struck by Sally’s newly stretched-out body and suddenly deeper voice. And probably like a lot of viewers, we originally figured this was her new house she was waking up in. The scene was designed to be as confusing as...

Sometimes we long for the early days of serialized drama on the radio and TV. Not because we have an aversion to HD television but because sometimes, after watching a bloated, go-nowhere episode like this one, where all the most interesting things happened in the last 10 minutes, we find...

Everyone in this episode, from the civil rights protestors fighting for a better world, to Pete Campbell angling for a better office, to Joan trying to keep her place in the hierarchy, to Megan Draper putting her foot down in her own unique way, was in the midst of a power struggle. The...