TV In Which We Just Don't Understand What Joan Holloway Sees In Him
Monday, September 15, 2008 at 12:40AM 
Mad Men: Catch Up On The Storylines, The Gingers, And The Lack of Upward Mobility for Women
by Alex Carnevale and Molly Lambert
Molly writes about gingers reflexively:
So I wonder if red hair dye is spiking due to Christina Hendricks as Joan Holloway? While in a recession women cut back on most beauty luxuries, they also get depressed. And what better way to fight depression and malaise than to dye your hair? I wouldn’t know, I’m all natural. Have I mentioned that before?
Somehow Alex killed the American Dream in this one:
“The skies are the frontier,” Don muses, in between making sure his sweater looks fetching on Take Your Daughter to Work Day. The rhetoric doesn’t match the situation, or the outfit, for that matter. And is it just me, or are Don’s pitches starting to resemble one another? I keep waiting for him to crow, “Men want to a bang a new woman…not an older one” and leave his minions to craft the accompanying menus. The frontier is such a dark and dangerous place.
- We Gotta Get You A New Daddy
A pro-adultery article should have been more popular with our overwhelmingly liberal fanbase:
Cheating on someone is about going beyond the image, the static way of things, and into the deep Rothko red, as a way of surrender. Perhaps more importantly, adultery sells 20,000 copies of Leaves of Grass every year.
- Rothko and being a man who cheats on his wife
The only scam worse than masculinity is the one which convinced women that men have any fucking idea what they’re doing and we ought to depend on them. Depend on a man for your sense of stability and you will be disappointed. Depend on yourself and you might still be disappointed, but at least you’ll only have yourself to blame. Not just some schmuck who you believed would not let you down and inevitably did.
- It Will Shock You How Much It Never Happened
Don't forget our Mad Men wishlist
We want to be date draped.
And then there was Molly's Prezler-winning essay that by all rights should be linked from your tumblr:
Though there are antecedents to Mad’s style of humor in print, radio and film, the overall package was a unique one that stood out in a staid era. Throughout the 1950s, Mad featured groundbreaking parodies combining a sentimental fondness for the familiar staples of American culture, such as Archie and Superman, with a keen joy in exposing the fakery behind the image.
- Mad Men and the world of Mad magazine
The genius of the greatest show on television:
Characters can change and learn over a period of time longer than two hours. Especially with the advent of DVD, which allows viewers to watch at their leisure, TV can produce much greater depth of story and feeling than film can even aspire to, due to the lengths at which they can draw them out.
- The Sea Was Mad That Day My Friends
Sarah Palin and Mad Men should be at least 30 paces away from each other at all times:
Basically what we’re looking at here is a Peggy Olson situation. Palin’s daughter Bristol gets pregnant, is deemed too young to deal with the responsibilities of having a child. The Mother won’t let her abort the baby or give it up for adoption and offers to raise the kid.
Molly doesn't understand male self-loathing:
Matt Weiner and the cast talk gender politics and underthingies. Also, maybe this is just my experience, but wouldn’t Don Draper be stoked chicks thought he was a stud? I mean what slutty guy is ashamed of being a slut? I’m still trying to think of one.
- Inside Every Woman Is Two Sexy Women
The patriarchy has its advantages:
In a way, it’s a relief to learn, as we do in Mad Men, that there are only so many kinds of women. It implies that groups of women can be satisfied in similar ways, and that Jennifer Aniston probably won’t settle down.
- The Crafty Corporate Climber
US AGAINST THE ARCHERS
"The Weight of the World" - Us Against the Archers (mp3)
"The Hands" - Us Against the Archers (mp3)
"Escape This" - Us Against the Archers (mp3)
PREVIOUSLY ON THIS RECORDING
New York casts its own shadow.
Oh my god, it's all over your body.
Resurrecting the dead on Planet Jupiter.
The best way to raise a boy is to introduce Ayn Rand to him at an early age. Otherwise he’s guaranteed to end up as someone’s assistant. You should probably home school your offspring, too. If you don’t, you’re that much more likely to wake up one day, check your e-mail, and discover your first born is talking shit about you on his blog.