From here: “1969 An Accutron watch movement is part of the equipment placed on the moon by Apollo 11 astronauts, the first men on the moon. A Bulova timer is placed in the moon’s “Sea of Tranquility” to control the transmissions of vital data through the years.”
Cheers. I’ve never heard them called that before. Maybe it’s a US thing.
Don has always been very much defined by his creativity - the first time we see him he is working on an angle. When he crashed last season he crashed during a pitch. Perhaps the fact that he has done good work for Accutron (even if it didn’t get accepted) means he is on an upwards curve - for now at least.
Why finish in 1969? I assume that has been publicized, right?
What’s the purpose of the two half-season strategy? I suppose it allows all the actors to be more flexible as they go off to do other things…anything else?
They did it on Breaking Bad and it worked out great financially. It’s two eight episode mini seasons instead of one twelve episode season.
Another season for potential awards wins.
I think the biggest motivator for the split season is keep all those Mad Men viewers returning to A&E for another year. It also gives them another year to pull in new viewers before the finale.
Regarding Pete’s Dad, I recall that after his mother fell off the ship, Pete and his brother were realizing how expensive an exhaustive search for her body would be. They justified cancelling the search by saying something like “She’s with Father now.” Laughed my ass off at that one.
“Well, she always loved the sea.”
Not about flexibility for the actors or crew, I believe they’re filming both halves of the season at the same time though so once they’re done filming, they’re done. We’re the only ones that have to wait around. I can’t find the cite though where I read that though so I could be wrong.
AMC.
And they surely want to scoop up more awards now that Breaking Bad is over.
Sorry, AMC.
I’m just not convinced that network executives are using potential Emmy wins as much of a motivation for such a big decision. It’s already won a ton of awards, including 4 Emmys and a Peabody. What good are awards to AMC executives for a show that will be over when it receives it’s final round of nominations?
I’m not saying awards are worthless, but I don’t believe for one second that they’re the driving force behind the decision to split the final season.
They introduced a new series, Turn, around the time of this premier and they can introduce another one next time.
Exactly. I’d bet that’s the kind of thing that is driving their thinking.
Or it could be as simple as keeping the advertising dollars flowing longer.
You really don’t need me, but you keep me hanging on."
Great choice of closing music for the show. And every time I hear that song I’m reminded that Vanilla Fudge is the greatest cover band of all. Nobody on earth who didn’t already know could believe that was a Supremes hit first.
Mad Men legendarily has slow opening episodes that make everybody complain that nothing happens and nothing is developed and all the characters haven’t advanced. Every single year. You’d think regulars would learn to expect that. You’d think critics would know better, too, but they’re just as bad. Why is anybody watching season 7 if they haven’t figured out Matthew Weiner yet?
We should also know that he loves torturing his characters. We love watching him torture his characters. And we all know that the torture is a set-up for what’s coming. Give it time.
But give it up on the Bob Benson love already. What’s with that? He was a big reason why season 6 was so bad.
This is what gives me hope because that first episode was very disjointed and confusing to me.
Yeah, but even with the “first of the season” allowance, it was pretty slow slogging. I think part of that might be the small jump in time frame – other season premieres had more going on, I think, with working an explanation for the past six+ months into that episode’s story.
Why do the two mini-seasons “have to be finished in 1969”? Have they said that they want the story to concluded in that decade?
Mad Men is a story about the 60s so it has to begin and end in the 60s. (Maybe the last show can be a 1970 epilog, but no more.) Ending last season in Nov. 1968 doesn’t give them much room to advance the characters to new realities as once happened. (The show skipped all of 1961, e.g.) Weiner is pretty much stuck in playing off the consequences of season 6.
And he’s also stuck with the ridiculous number of characters that have to have speaking roles and places in the plot. We saw maybe 20 or so in this episode and almost another dozen regulars are yet unaccounted for. Last year they needed a two-hour opening to accommodate them all. Some of them have to go. Personally I’d cut every single person from the Chaough side of the story. They add nothing.