Well before the seismic changes that characterized the end of season 3, the changes in both Trudy and the Campbell marriage were evident from the very first episode on. A marriage that formerly appeared to be little more than a disaster somehow righted itself and became a true partnership...

“They taught us at Barnard about that word, ‘utopia’. The Greeks had two meaning for it: ‘eu-topos’, meaning the good place, and ‘u-topos’ meaning the place that cannot be.”   Season 1 Episode 6 – “Babylon” Rachel meets...

Rather than do another Rachel Menken post, we thought we’d continue our look at Mad Men fashion by taking a moment to examine one of our favorite characters on the show, from both a personality and a fashion perspective. Costume Designer Janie Bryant has said that Trudy is one of her...

Unsurprisingly, if you’re doing a series of posts on the fashion of Mad Men and you want to work your way up to the inevitable Joan and Betty posts, the beginning of the series might as well be called “Don’s Mistresses,” because after examining Bobbie Barrett’s...

Darlings, we are so very excited about this series (you heard us: “series”) of posts. You see, we got it in our heads that we wanted to do a Top Ten Betty Draper Looks post as a way of counting down (and building up excitement) to the Season 4 premiere of Mad Men in a couple of...

No more Sal, kittens: “According to Mad Men’s Bryan Batt — who stars as Sal Romano, Sterling Cooper’s closeted art director, fired by Don after refusing to service a randy tobacco executive — he won’t return for the show’s upcoming fourth season. “I was...

We desperately wanted a chance to interview Deborah Lacey, who plays the Drapers’ maid Carla, before the season ended. It took a little longer because of some scheduling issues, but we finally got a chance to do so this week. We could have asked the AMC peeps for a chance to interview...

We got a phone call at 11:02 last night from someone who wanted to eagerly discuss the incredible episode we both just saw. “Did you think it would turn out this way?” she asked. “Not exactly,” we said. “But it’s like they gave every one of our favorite...

Show creator Matthew Weiner has often said in interviews that he was reluctant to take on the Kennedy assassination, arguably the seminal event of the sixties, because it had been explored to death in more films and television shows than you can count and he felt he couldn’t bring...

Unsurprisingly, we have much to say about last night’s intense episode, but one thing’s for sure: Jon Hamm locked up his Emmy nomination. The theme was names and how names hide the truth. Only a show as brilliantly intricate as Mad Men could get away with the analogy that...

We’ll get to the usual long-winded examination of themes and motifs in a minute, but first… LOIS STILL HAS HER JOB?!? What does it take to get fired from Sterling Cooper? Aside from refusing to have sex with a client, we mean. And now, a long-winded examination of themes and...

If last week’s episode was the most cynical in the show’s history, then this week’s may just have been the most depressing. It was all about power dynamics and what happens when people who want what they want when they want it and have the power to make it happen exert that...

Last night, one of television’s most cynical shows had one of its most cynical episodes of all time as it examined the state of marriage in 1963. In a reversal of the normal code on how to depict marriages on television, it was an act of adultery that led to a strengthening of a...

Suddenly, everyone in the Mad Men world is looking up. Roger watches the sunrise and declares it average, Betty looks into the sun and swoons, Carlton claims to stare at the sun every day, Sally and her teacher huddle together in a camera obscura to watch the eclipse, and Don? Don just needs...

Last night’s episode was so big, so jaw-dropping, that we sat through it three times in order to pull this post together and even then, we’re not sure if we have a handle on it. Sometimes though, you just have to stop looking for the ponderous themes of a show, sit back, and let...

It’s not that the above quote really illuminates this episode so much as we just think it’s a fantastic quote. The theme this week was prisons; from the Sing Sing guard who shared his fears and promises to Don in the waiting room to Betty’s suburban hell to Peggy’s...

The theme of last night’s episode, parents and children and disappointment, wasn’t exactly hard to figure out. If anything, it was a little heavy-handed as almost every scene dripped with it, right down to the closing shot of Don standing between his dead father-in-law’s bed...

There it is. The line – uttered by Betty’s father – that encapsulates the entire theme of the episode. Each episode is like a puzzle. At first glance, it’s hard to figure out, but once you get that corner piece, everything falls into place. It’s about money, or...

The Tao of Don. If you want a short primer about the underlying themes of any episode, you only have to pay attention to whatever Don’s pitching. In an ironic twist on the realities of advertising, it’s when Don is throwing a pitch to a client that the truest words get uttered....

Ah, yes. THAT’S the Don Draper we’ve missed so much: the incredibly suave guy making obscure declarations that are nonetheless dripping with meaning and subtext. And of course, making them to a stewardess that he’s going to wind up in bed with, albeit very briefly. Last...

Darlings, we’ve had a tough time keeping this one under wraps but in the latest issue of Metrosource magazine, we got the chance to interview our current girl crush, Christina Hendricks, the fabulous Joan Holloway of Mad Men. See, the theme of the issue is “People We Love”...