Mad Men: “The Beautiful Girls”

This episode begins with Don in his office making a lunch date. The “date” is an afternoon tryst with Faye. Their lovemaking is so intense that it knocks a lamp off a night stand. While catching the lamp, Don notes the time and says that he’s late for a meeting with a client. Faye says that she has a meeting at 4:00, and is coy when Don tries to get information from her about it. Don starts to get dressed and tells her to stay as long as she wants.

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At the office, Roger is on the phone with his agent, Ira, who is apparently having trouble selling Roger’s book. His phone call is interrupted by his secretary, Caroline, who says that Jane is on the phone. An annoyed Roger tries to go back to his call, but find that Ira has hung up. He reaches for a cigarette, and there’s a knock at his office door. It’s Joan, with some papers he needs to sign. He flirts with her and fails miserably. After Joan leaves Caroline comes in to say that Greg is being sent directly to Vietnam after basic training.

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Mad Men: “The Summer Man”

This episode begins with Don alone in his apartment. He is now keeping a diary, and we hear his thoughts via his narration. He talks about his drinking problem, and how it’s affecting his work. He talks about how little he writes, and how he wishes he would have finished high school. We then see him having an early morning swim (and having a coughing fit whilst doing so!) and then getting dressed and heading into work. On his way in, he asks Ms. Blankenship, who has just gotten cataract surgery, for Bethany’s phone number.

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Meanwhile, Joey and the boys are up to their old antics. SCDP has apparently gotten a new vending machine, and Joey has gotten his watch stuck in it while trying to get a Clark bar out for Ken. A couple of the women, including Peggy, stand and watch as Joey and Stan pick up and drop the machine, and Harry offers the guys ideas for getting the watch out. They create such a ruckus that Joan comes to investigate. She orders everyone back to work, and Joey replies to her with a sarcastic “sorry, mom!”. Joan asks him to repeat that, and Joey asks her what he was supposed to do. She tells him to call the complaint number and “let an adult” handle the situation. Pete then walks into the hallway, asking what all the noise is, as he was on an important call. Joey tells Pete that Joan was “handing out demerits”, which makes Joan call him into her office.

In her office, Joan tries to dress down the cavalier Joey. But when she says that Stan might be better at his job than Joey, he asks her what she does around the office, “besides walking around like you’re trying to get raped?” He then calls her a “madam from a Shanghai whorehouse” and leaves the office. Peggy then walks in, attempting to use Joan’s office as a shortcut. Joan snaps at her and tells her to stop doing that, and that she could “use the extra steps”. Peggy, seeing that Joan is upset, quietly apologizes. Joan leaves.

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Mad Men: “The Suitcase”

This episode begins with Harry handing out tickets to a screening of the rematch between Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston. He gives the tickets to Pete and Ken, but makes the newer SCDP employees pay for theirs. Harry laughs at Danny and calls him a Jew, to which Danny asks if Harry’s Hollywood friends know that he talks like that. The gang then argue over who’s going to win the fight. Don walks in, gets his ticket, and puts $100 on Liston. Harry invites him to dinner and drinks at The Palm before the match. Don says he will be there, then orders people working on Samsonite to follow him.

After Don walks in his office and asks Ms. Blankenship to get him and Roger dinner reservations at any restaurant except the Palm, Peggy, Stan, Joey and Danny walk in to give their pitch for the luggage company: a commercial with Joe Namath. Don calls celebrity endorsements “lazy” and says that he doesn’t care for their execution of the ad. When Peggy insists that Dr. Miller says that women buy suitcases, Don asks everyone else to leave the room. Once alone, Don tears into Peggy, who stands there and takes it, and then leaves.

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In her office, she finds flowers and a “gift” from Duck: business cards for “Philips-Olson Advertising” in which she is listed as “Creative Director”. She calls to thank him, and he begs her to join him at his female-centered agency. Happy at first, Peggy soon figures out that Duck is drinking… and has been fired from Grey. She tries to console him, but Duck says that he’s falling apart.

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Random TV Post

Look who made the cover of Rolling Stone:

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Woot! Notice the “best show on TV” line on the cover, too!

And it might seem hard to believe, but according to this interview, Mary Louise Parker has never smoked marijuana:

“I guess if it was going to happen, it would’ve happened when I was younger. But that was never an effective or interesting form of rebellion for me. Because everybody did it. Marijuana was just a social thing. It wasn’t dangerous or frowned upon. If I’d been popular in high school, I’m sure I would have wanted to do it. But I wasn’t.”

Kind of weird for a woman who stars on a show called Weeds, no?

Mad Men: “Waldorf Stories”

This episode begins with Don and Peggy interviewing Danny Siegel, a hopelessly unqualified copywriter. Don flips through his portfolio, each ad a variation on the theme of “cure for the common [blank]”. Don isn’t impressed, even though Danny mentions Roger’s name several times. Don escorts him out of the office, then asks Peggy if they’re on Candid Camera. The two then talk about the upcoming Clio Awards, with Peggy mentioning her own role in the Glo-Coat commercial. Peggy then complains about Stan Rizzo, the agency’s new art director. To her complaints, Don only says that Stan is more talented and that she needs to learn how to work with him.

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Meanwhile, we see Roger rambling about Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy in his office. His secretary Caroline is there, taking dictation for his book, but Roger has gotten off topic. Don walks in to thank him for the “prank” of the Danny interview. The two share a few laughs, but then Roger says that Don must hire him to appease Jane, his wife and Danny’s cousin.

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One last (?) Ashes post

It seems odd to be adding new items for a show that’s been over for several months now, but I know that people still stop by the site for Ashes to Ashes recaps, and I thought you folks might be interested in this.

Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah, the minds behind Mars, Ashes, and several other shows, have created a new website for their production company, Monastic Productions.

You can click here to go to their “Scripts” page, where you can find downloadable PDF versions of several Ashes and Mars drafts, outlines and scripts, as well as scripts from Bonekickers (blech!) and a few of their less popular productions.

I’ve read a good chunk of the draft of the Ashes pilot, and it’s pretty interesting to see how things changed between that and the finished script. One little teaser: in the draft, Alex doesn’t get shot by Layton; instead she and Molly are taken hostage, and Alex falls through a hole in the floor of the decaying warehouse where they’re being held.

Check it out!

Mad Men: “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword”

This episode begins with an amusing scene: Don is in a meeting when his phone rings. He picks up the phone, but no one is there. The phone on the table by the sofa starts ringing, but no one is there, either. Ms. Blankenship walks in the office and tells Don that he has a phone call, but she didn’t know if she should tell him about it or not. Don, exasperated, tells her it’s okay to tell him about phone calls, but not to keep asking if he wants coffee after he’s said no once already.

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Don finally gets his phone call. Walter Hoffman, who writes the advertising column for the New York Times is on the phone, and he wants a comment from Don about rival firm Cutler Gleason and Chaough taking the Clearasil and jai alai accounts. Don says that he doesn’t talk about old accounts, and when Hoffman mentions a snarky quote from Ted Chaough about Don “looking in his rearview mirror and seeing me”, Don says that he’s never heard of him.

Don then goes to a partner’s lunch, where Pete announces that his has gotten the interest of Honda, who is looking to change agencies for their motorcycles advertising. Lane mentions that it’s a $3 million account at present, and that the company wants to expand into automobiles. Roger kills the fun by saying that SCDP will not do business with the Japanese. Pete starts to object, but Roger cuts him off, saying that he used to have a lot of friends, but those friends were killed by Pete’s new “yellow buddies”. Bert cuts him off, and Roger storms out of the room. The remaining partners tell Pete to go ahead, and he says that he’s been advised to read The Chrysanthemum and the Sword to learn about Japanese business culture. Don tells Joan to get everyone a copy of the book.

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Random Hottie: Elizabeth Logue

So last night I was messing around on the Internet, like you do, and came across this:

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She’s a model from the late 1960s named Elizabeth Logue. If you were around in the early 1970s, you might remember her better from this:

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Yes, she was the beautiful girl from the opening credits to Hawaii Five-O. I remember her as one of the very first girls I found pretty when I was a kid.

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Mad Men: “The Rejected”

This episode begins with Don and Roger having a conference call with Lee Garner, Jr. Lee is worried about how some new tobacco advertising restrictions will affect Lucky Strike. Don frequently puts the phone down and uses the down time to pour drinks, approve Peggy’s idea for Pond’s, and to give his okay for Dr. Miller to have a focus group with the 18-25 year old secretaries at the agency. Roger excuses himself to go to the restroom while Don continues the call. While talking to Lee, Don goes through his mail and finds a letter from Anna:

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Roger and Lane (who has just arrived with Pete in tow) walk into the hallway and the two older men tell Pete that SCDP must drop the Clearasil account (which the agency got through Pete’s father-in-law) because Pond’s thinks it will cause a conflict of interest in the agency. It’s strictly about money: Clearasil is being dropped because Pond’s brings in almost twice as much money.

Back on the conference call, Lee worries that SCDP is overbilling him. Roger says that he will have Lane by his side in 20 minutes if he wants to go through the billings line-by-line. Don then fakes a fire near Radio City Music Hall, giving them an excuse to get off the phone.

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