By Mark Lisanti at
David T. Cole/Grantland illustration
[Production note: Does it completely disorient you to watch a Thanksgiving episode in early May? And, to make it even more temporally upsetting, to watch a Thanksgiving episode on Mother's Day? Is it just us? Are we weak of constitution and fragile of mind? All we know is that we want some canned cranberry sauce right now, as these Rankings spill forth like so much rotten fruit from our overflowing mind-cornucopia. Shut up, it's late, we should be asleep. Next to a can of cranberry sauce. We're not letting that go until we get some.
Here's the thing about the weeks following those history-making, paradigm-shifting Rankings in which Don slips on the banana peel of Fate and momentarily stumbles into the second position: Order is always, always swiftly restored to the Draperverse; we're not sure what would happen if Our Hero weren't allowed to immediately scramble back to the top of the Power Pyramid, but we imagine that a theoretical second consecutive Monday morning of two-slottedness would involve so much grief-vomiting into a fedora that we'd require an intravenous drip of one part rye to three parts Four Loko just to get straight long enough to mash out a suicide note. (We take this show very seriously.) Thank Anna Draper in Heaven that the Creator (Matthew Weiner) allowed Don to scramble back to his feet after last week's existential knockout, even if he hasn't completely regained his footing (and probably never will).
"Is this the little girl I carried? / Is this the little boy at play? / I don't remember growing older / When did they?" — "Sunrise, Sunset," from Fiddler on the Roof
Having given us what we wanted all season, Mad Men decided to call our bluff and give us what we asked for. This episode was a throwback to earlier seasons in terms of pacing and plotlines, but it wasn't the white-carpeted thrill ride down an elevator shaft to hell we've now been conditioned to expect. As Pete Campbell found out the hard way, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is not considered Madison Avenue's cutting edge by the New York Times or anyone else important. And they're not being kept off the record because they're so out-there and revolutionary. No, SCDP has become a place where safe ideas land B- and C-list accounts. Rather than moving up the golden escalator from Menken's to Macy's, the agency has proceeded laterally toward Manischewitz.
In 1966, an alien crash-landed on Earth. He was an unlikely figure, even considering his cosmic origins: speaking English (if a little oddly) and draped in the trappings of counterculture. He admired the humans he encountered in New York City, though, and soon came to work among them. Thanks to his surprising abilities he was eventually accepted by the Earthmen, even if he could never truly be one of them.
It can’t be a coincidence that Matthew Weiner, Mad Men creator and control freak par excellence, introduced his own Martian, copywriter Michael Ginsberg, the same year Marvel Comics unveiled the Silver Surfer. Like Holocaust baby Ginsberg, the Surfer was an improbable survivor, the product of a desperate sacrifice, his still-beating heart a constant reminder of those left behind. Ginsberg feels like an alien, both to himself and to his new colleagues at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, yet he is eager to belong. As long as he keeps his voice down and his otherworldly skills focused on mundanities like cologne ads, his stranger-in-a-strange-land eccentricities (like understanding The Beatles) can be tolerated. Michael may call himself a spaceman, but inside the sturdy walls of a Manhattan office building, he’s really just another Other, not all that distinct from fellow outsider Dawn. Their differences are folded into the established culture easily enough because, when you get right down to it, they need their jobs more than their jobs need them.
Ah. So that's what was at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Not exactly sure how that fits the episode's overall theme, but whatever, now we get why he didn't just jump down there.
(We really, really hope "What Don Sees at the Bottom of the Elevator Shaft" becomes a meme. Let's make it happen! Let's go go go!)
[H/t to @WalkerT77 for bringing his handiwork to our attention.]
We began this week’s podcast on a somber note, remembering the life, music, and influence of Adam Yauch (1:00), a man whose eclectic taste, in my partner Chris Ryan’s words, basically was the Internet for a generation of ‘90s teens. Then it was back to the present day to consider the wild success of The Avengers (9:40) and the unexpected pleasures of The New Girl (18:45), which ends its first season tonight. We also did our regular roundup of Game of Thrones (26:25) and Mad Men (34:15), focusing on how the characters are knocked around violently on both shows, though it's by generational shifts in the latter and giant, neck-hacking broadswords on the former. What was meant to be a shout-out to Meek Mill’s new mixtape (42:45) quickly devolved into a dissertation on last week's bizarre Rick Ross press conference (and his even more bizarre promotion of the eminently forgettable Walé), but we got it together long enough for the next entry in our Double Down Book Club: Papa Bear himself, James Crumley (48:44). We talked up his masterpiece, The Last Good Kiss, as well as his nuttiest fever dream, Bordersnakes. All told, we learned some very important lessons this week. For instance, two nostrils full of illegal drugs won’t necessarily treat a broken nose — at least not medically — and when in doubt, never (never!) ask Walé a question. Class dismissed!
When you watched Don Draper drop the needle on The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” during Sunday night’s episode of Mad Men, was your immediate reaction, “Holy crap, how much did that cost to license?” You were not alone. As you may recall, when Conan’s band played “Lovely Rita” on air during the last days of his Tonight Show run, a lot of people assumed it was a calculated budget-hit middle-finger to NBC. According to Questlove, who knows some stuff about playing walk-on music for late-night talk shows, the price tag for that blip of Beatles would be $500,000. He turned out to be wrong in that particular instance, because NBC had a blanket license with Apple Corps that made usage cheaper. But, obviously, getting The Beatles is never cheap. So what kind of cash are we talking about? Satiating inside-baseball curiosity, ArtsBeat dug around and got the numbers for Mad Men’s Beatles placement: For that bit of sitar magic, the show doled out a cool quarter of a million dollars. Nuts, right?
By Mark Lisanti at
David T. Cole/Grantland illustration
[Production notes: If you queue up Revolver in your media player of choice and press play at the end of this Production Note, nothing will happen. Well, you'll be listening to some great music as you muddle through these Rankings, but there's no magic synchronization thing that will reveal previously unimagined layers of each work. Maybe we'll set that up for next week. There's probably an intern around here who's both good with that kind of technical thing and a hallucinogen enthusiast.
"Well let me tell you 'bout the way she looked / The way she'd act and the color of her hair / Her voice was soft and cool / Her eyes were clear and bright / But she's not there" — The Zombies, "She's Not There"
Michael Ginsberg pitches an Axe body spray commercial about how Chevalier cologne will make the chicks flock to you as if you were a rock star. A Chevalier exec with a swishy voice demands "chaos and the fun, that sort of adolescent joy" — a theme you might recognize from basically every ad campaign conducted since the '60s. Stan makes the observant point that a dreamy track by The Zombies won't evoke the same kind of carefree glee as The Beatles in A Hard Day's Night. Don has never kept up with music. His aesthetic fascism is mostly visual. The young people all roll their eyes at him behind his back as a result, but how much more would they roll their eyes if he actually tried to keep up with them?
In an effort to keep up with some of the larger issues in the media, every month Grantland Racial Issues Correspondent Andrew Ti will be rounding up some of the biggest questions to hit the Yo, Is This Racist? inbox.
Blackface on 30 Rock! (30 Rock, "Live From Studio 6H")
Ok, first up this month is 30 Rock. If you only have five seconds to spend reading this, straight up, all you really need to know is that blackface is wrong. It's disgusting, it's racist, and it's really a pretty irredeemable image (though that doesn't keep people from pretending it's theirs to redeem).
Chris Ryan and I tried assembling the Avengers this week, but only Tigra and Dr. Druid showed up. So we left them cooling in the Quinjet and had a (spoiler-free!) conversation about The Avengers movie instead (1:20). From there, we segued into a discussion about this summer’s other upcoming blockbusters, The Dark Knight Rises and Prometheus (12:15) before circling back to our own personal tesseract, Sunday-night TV. We unpacked heavy hitters Game of Thrones (20:50) and Mad Men (29:35), as well as the newest candidate for space on your DVR, PBS’s Sherlock (40:10). To finish, we branched out into other, older media by talking up the new Japandroids album (42:00) and launching our new Double Down Summer Book Club (46:38) with a look at the work of George Pelecanos. It’s a guaranteed better time than reading back-issues of Hawkeye & Mockingbird in a Vermont cabin. We promise.
By Mark Lisanti at
David T. Cole/Grantland illustration
[Production note: This one's pretty straightforward, if you're prepared for the sheer amount of blow job jokes that await. Strap yourself in: You don't want to slide out of that leather chair halfway through.
Remember when we told you that Don would drop to no. 2 this week? Well, we lied. Actually, that's not entirely accurate; with no foreknowledge of what challenges this week's episode would bring to the Draperverse, there's no way we could make any kind of valid promise about his position, even if the Madmetricians might have suspected Don's hegemony to continue based on two previous seasons' worth of data. So here Mr. Whitman sits again, atop a writhing pile of his inferiors, absently stirring an old-fashioned with his middle finger. The Power Rankings are a bitch like that.
"Well I've heard your dirty stories about your last affair / And how you got in houses when you knew no one was there / If you want to find a lover gonna love till the end / Go on and find yourself a lover that can be your best friend" —The Lovin' Spoonful, "Bes' Friends"
Do you believe in magic, Glen Bishop? You'd better, because that's what it will take for Sally to ever make out with you. Sally and Glen are still phone friends even though Glen is now in boarding school, where you just know he is top dog when it comes to hazing. JK, you know he gets dicks drawn on his face by the lacrosse team every night. It's beginning to seem weird that Sally still has no friends besides Glen. You're telling me a super-hot blonde girl with new white patent go-go boots and access to a cool mod apartment in New York City has no friends besides a weird overconfident kid she lived next to in the suburbs for a few years? Even if she made the phone cord into a trip wire for Henry's mother and then got credit for saving her life, is a little bit of flattering attention really worth a long-distance phone relationship with Glen Bishop? He is not charming or cute and he has terrible game. Maybe Sally finds Glen's lack of game sweet after seeing what the prize is for winning Roger Sterling's.
It's all smoke monsters and orange sherbet this week as Chris Ryan and I tackle the twin titans of Sunday-night television, Game of Thrones (1:30) and Mad Men (10:30). But talk of nihilism in Westeros and nostalgia on Madison Avenue eventually gave way to a more zeitgeisty discussion about holograms in the desert. Specifically, what does the rise of Hologram Tupac (22:10) say about our taste in music, our desire to relive our youth, and, as Chris put it, life on the bleeding edge of "Jedi technology"? Put down the LSD, Roger Sterling. We have a stranger trip for you.
By Mark Lisanti at
David T. Cole/Grantland illustration
[Production note: Do not recalibrate your Tele-Vision sets: Those vibrant blues and oranges on your screen were intentional. And they're the same hues we're splashing all over our homes in 2012! We are all Howard Johnson's bitches. He's won, he's finally won.
"Can we go back to the days our love was strong? Can you tell me how a perfect love goes wrong? Can somebody tell me how to get things back the way they used to be? Oh God, give me the reason I'm down on bended knee." —Boyz II Men, "On Bended Knee"
Remember the leisurely pace of the early- to mid-'60s? Neither does anyone else, it was so fucking long ago. Everything now happens faster and more intensely. There's no time to dwell on the past on your Kodak carousel, lest you risk getting trapped in a wrinkle in time when you trip with your wife's psychiatrist. Any one of the events in last night's Mad Men would have made for a John Deere tractor accident-type talking point in a prior season; now we get them all at once, with a neat Pulp Fiction–style narrative trick reminding us that while Mars is an enormous planet, everything that occurs on it is happening at the same time.
