Did that friend who was in love with Joan back in the first season say that she first saw Joan on a college campus? It was at least implied that they were at college together.
I’d kind of like for something to start happening this season. So far the episodes have been too impressionistic for my taste. After the first double-feature episode, a lot of people were saying that Weiner just gets the ball rolling slowly, that he was setting up a bunch of different things. But after three more episodes, I feel that’s what is still going on. Basically my complaint is that this season is setting up too many things and that I’m not interested in a lot of the things that are being set up.
Over the first five episodes of this season, what has happened in terms of SDCP? We know they have a new floor, and they tried to get Heinz Ketchup but failed. Joan tried to fire a secretary. Harry threw a hissy fit. And during the most recent episode they sat down with some acid-addled crazy person. But nothing substantial, nothing that makes me want to see the next episode to learn more about these developments.
For a lot of these characters, though, SDCP and how they function in that context is what makes them interesting. So this week Ginsberg’s dad set him up with some girl. And last week, Joan went out with some friend that we’d never heard of, and things got wild. And Pete got kicked out of the house by his wife. What do I care? I want to see these people interact with each other, not with a bunch of peripheral and in some cases newly introduced people on this show (same goes for Don and his new friends the Rosenbergs). I don’t want to learn about Ginsberg and his dad, I want to see him interact with Don Draper. And I don’t care about Joan’s fling and how she makes her re-acquaintance with some old friend from that town in the Midwest that she grew up in - I want her to interact with Roger, I want to see her kick Pete’s ass in the partners’ meeting.
If in that process we also get to see how Don’s daughter or Pete’s wife are doing, and if we see how they deal with all the crazy shit that happens in the sixties, hallelujah - but the advertising should be the focus and the rest should be backdrop, not the other way around.
I can’t really disagree. I don’t think the focus is the advertising itself but I would like to see more core interaction this season. I don’t mind Trudy since she’s been around since the beginning but I’m less interested in Ginsberg’s dad or Dawn’s sister or even really Dawn herself (no offense, Dawn).
I wouldn’t mind a “happy” episode. My favorite episodes are still the ones where everyone is hitting their marks. Don’s season one victories, the Great Office Heist, Peggy on a moped… they can’t all be like that but sometimes it’s nice to take a break from all the oppressiveness.
The difference is that Johnson’s removal set the stage for every other major event that year - RFK’s assassination, the Chicago Democratic Convention and Police Riot, Nixon’s “secret plan” to end the war, the all-night vigil of the election returns. At this point nobody can think that Weiner is going to make a major plot point of race, and after the many riots immediately following MLK’s death the rest of the summer was comparatively quiet compared to the major riots of previous years. This was a one-episode swerve. I’ll bet there’s more on Laugh-In and the Smothers Brothers than about race in the rest of the shows.
Unrelated to the plot but just out of curiosity, is there a name for Dawn’s hairstyle? It’s a sort of shellacked helmet look that was similar to Lt. Uhura’s from ST:TOS and very common in pictures of black ladies from that era, and while you still see variants of it it’s as much a timepiece as the beehive, so I’m curious if it has a name. (I’m pretty sure it was a wig on the actress at least, and was wondering if it was often a wig in real life as well.)
I’m not sure if that 'do has a name, but The Supremes were to it, what The Beatles were to the mop top. Like The Beatles, they had evolved past that style by '68 just as mainstream hairstyles were just catching on to the styles they wore 4 or 5 years earlier.
Sorry to resurrect this zombie, but I’m Netflixing the series right now; and this post struck home with me. My mom divorced my dad in 1966. I was going through my mothers belongings after she died and found the deed to the house she bough after the divorce. All of the paperwork had her name listed as “Velma xxxxx - A Divorced Woman” :dubious: Hey at least she got a loan; I guess.