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[This week's episode of Mad Men has been recapped by Benji Meyer, a 10-year-old who lives with his parents in Ohio.]
Yesterday we went to the park. It was pretty good. We played soccer and had veggie hot dogs and pop. But then when we got home I wanted to play Sims on the computer and dad said I couldn’t play Sims because I had to finish my homework and I said I could finish my homework after I played some Sims and he said no because after I finished my homework it would be time to watch the show and I said what show and he said the show about adults at work and I got sad because I forgot I had to watch that show and I don’t like that show. I wish I could have played Sims yesterday. I could have played Sims and then done my homework and I would rather do my homework anyway than watch this show about adults. But dad says to say about how the show starts in a very funny doctor’s office. I don’t know what’s so funny about it. I didn’t laugh and mom and dad weren’t laughing and dad says he doesn’t mean funny like haha but then he didn’t say what he meant like what kind of funny he meant. The redhead lady is in there and it’s really confusing, but the doctor says she isn’t sick, which is good. It’s sad when people get sick and go to the hospital and never get to leave the hospital, like with grandma and Uncle Ron.Everyone is talking about New Year’s Eve. This show is so weird and dumb. Last week it was Christmas and this week it is New Year’s Eve, but outside it’s like 100 degrees and the ice cream truck still comes around. It just seems like a lot more people would watch this show if it was about something that makes sense, like fourth of July or something. Or it could be about Christmas, but then they should show it at Christmas, because that’s when everyone is excited about Christmas. The guy Don is going to go to Acapulco, which is in Mexico. One time, me and my mom and dad and sister Lucy went on a cruiseship that went near Mexico. You had to go to Miami to get on the cruiseship and then it sailed all through the ocean. One day we were on the ship and they said if you look to the right you can see Mexico, so I’ve seen it. The redhead wants vacation but the English guy won’t let her have vacation, but he’s taking vacation. They get in a fight. Then he sends her flowers I think and they get in another fight. They fight a lot. Mom and dad used to fight a lot but they don’t fight as much anymore but when I was 7 they did and mom lived in a hotel and they had a pool that went inside half AND half outside!
Don goes to California and sees this lady who’s wearing a cast on her leg like the cast Tony Perez wore in Kindergarten after he tripped on the edge of the sandbox when we were chasing him for freeze tag and he was out of school for probably a whole week and everyone gave him candy and balloons and cards and presents and everyone wished they had been the ones who tripped on the edge of the sandbox and broke their leg. They go out dancing and Don dances with this other lady and my mom said it was gross and that Don was gross and my dad said that it wasn’t like she didn’t have her own things she did in college that neither of them wanted to say out loud but that she got real quiet and said that it was still gross. Don tries to kiss that girl to make them boyfriend and girlfriend but then she tells him that the other lady is sick with the cancer and so Don sits on the couch and then paints her living room and then gets sad. Another lady tells him to mind his own beeswax and mom and dad talked a lot about what was the right thing to do but I wasn’t really paying attention because when they talk to each other it’s always so boring unless they are fighting but then I hate it. Don rides on a funny looking airplane. Mom and dad said that’s how airplanes used to look and that everything used to look different. Then they said that one day everything that we have now would look as silly to people in the future as that airplane looks, but I don’t know if I believe her, because the new iPods are pretty cool looking and I will probably always think that and one day I am going to save up and get one.
The redhead lady cuts her hand and this guy gives her stitches right at the kitchen table. He distracts her and gives her a shot and says that that is what he does with kids, but I think he’s lying, because when I get a shot I don’t have to look away, I look right where’s it’s going in and I’m not even scared, everyone says how impressed they are with how not scared I am.
Don and the British guy are the only ones in the office and they drink a bunch of juice and take naps just like we used to do in Kindergarten and pre-school and they would give us graham crackers and juice and then make us take naps on cots. Hahaha. They are just like in kindergarten and pre-school! I’m in fifth grade and we do NOT take naps anymore because naps are for little kids and babies. Sometimes we do have snacks, though. They go out to a movie and then to a steak dinner and then they go to a comedy show but I don’t get any of the jokes and I don’t know who the comedian even is. It’s not Steve Martin or Dane Cook or anybody. Then they hang out with some girls and they go to Don’s apartment and drink a bunch of juice and the girls kiss them so they’re boyfriends and girlfriends now. In the morning, the girls have gone back to their houses but the British guy had a sleep over, and he gives Don 25 dollars. I almost have 25 dollars. Last fall I raked a bunch of lawns like almost all of the lawns in our neighborhood and everyone would give me five dollars, but then I spent some of it at GameStop, but then some of it mom and dad said to put in a jar and I did and it’ still in there and I even put 10 more dollars in there at Christmas and there’s more than 20 dollars in there now. There’s 22 dollars and 83 cents in there.
Then they have a meeting. The end.
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[Insert GIF of Lane Pryce's porterhouse belt buckle]
You know what they’re doing, right?… HAND JOBS.
Choice award for best use of a meat prop.
These comments are like a Star Trek replicator!
i laughed so hard at this
Bone cancer. Such a cockblock.
Egregious.
I don’t even know what that means.
Benji, you sound like a cool kid but please leave the recaps to your Grandpa Gabe.
Great-grandpa?
Maybe Grandpa Gabe drank too much juice and can’t write the recap.
Seriously. This is awful.
Word. I couldn’t even get through this.
It’s like a bad parody of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I have a feeling this isn’t Gabe but one of his guest bloggers. Gabe would’ve known this wasn’t working and scrapped it, but he’s too nice to spike someone else’s work.
Nah. Gabe just really enjoys taking the piss out of…well everything.
I think we need to change the name of Mad Men to Boring Men. I have not liked the last two episodes.
These last two eps have been really insightful, in my opinion, into Don’s life. Plus…. Don tears!
How can you not secretly love that??
Because this show is great when it’s like what if you crossed the desperate sales-y intensity of Glengary Glen Ross with the art direction of Edward Hopper the painter. I don’t care about the soap opera lovey dovey nonsense, or the patronizing Wonder Years style of “oh look at the 60s changing things the times they are a changin’.” Don’t give a care about any that noise. Give me sweaty sales action in a dapper art direction world or leave me alone and stay off my TV set.
WRONG.
Every episode can’t be a sales pitch meeting though. That’s what I love about this show. It’s the balance it shows between both worlds. The real world and the work world. Unlike the Office which used to be strictly about work related things (now we’re going to weddings?), Mad Men never was a show strictly about making ads. The show always hinted that it would ultimately be about who the real Don Draper is (among other storylines) and now we FINALLY get some glimpses into that without being bombarded by it.
But, to each his own.
The line where Don says to Lane: “Is that what you want, or what’s expected of you?” was a brilliant moment of insight into Don. Don quoting Peggy with the line that I think might be the crux of the season.
If you take out the commentary, the family stuff, and the back story, you have Entourage in the 60′s.
if you change the show, it’s a different show.
if you take all the characters and replace them with park sheriffs and talking bears, and then turn ads into picnics and sex into chasing, this show is just like yogi bear.
I think we need to change your name to Steve Losewood.
What an insightful analysis of last night’s episode. Don’t we all feel like pre-schoolers every once in a while? On a real note, I used to watch silk stalkings with my dad, but I never had to write anything about it.
“I used to watch silk stalkings with my dad.” Do not bring this up on first dates.
My parents let me watch some pretty inappropriate stuff as a kid too….But I don’t want to talk about it.
My mom and stepdad let me watch Hot Shots when I was little. I promptly quoted the line “it’s about fucking time” to my father when I saw him that weekend. I wasn’t allowed to watch very much after that.
Who has homework on August 8th?
FAKE AND GAY!!!
Benji must be in summer school. Too much time spent playing the Sims I suspect.
You and your logic, psh.
I want a Lane Pryce action figure.
Awesome callback Jeb, way to turn one of the worst comments of all Videogum time into a golden chicken nugget of goodness.
glad to know i’ve made my mark.
That “college student” looked as old as Don. Getouttahere.
Btw, Can don paint a wall in every episode? HOTNESS!
They should have had that cute girl from the harry potter movies
She did, and yet again, Don Draper surprised me by not sleeping with her. Don is full of surprises lately. Just when I think he is going to nail somebody, he nails someone else!
It was kind of a slap in the face if you ask me.
Cancer, remember? Kinda killed the mood, even for Don.
I would like to amend this comment: “Just when I think some chick is going to let Don nail her, he gets shut down and nails someone else instead!”
Did you see the chin on that dimple?
I’d like to see Benji tackle the True Blood recaps. He would be all: “Then Sookie poked that lady and there was ketchup everywhere which I thought was a waste of ketchup because last Friday my mom and dad and me went to Arby’s and I said I wanted a beef and cheddar and my dad said I couldn’t and my mom looked at my dad in a funny way and my dad looked at my mom in a funny way and then I got the beef and cheddar sandwich and I got extra ketchup and my dad took a bite of my sandwich and my mom looked at him funny again and then no one said anything on the way home.”
Hahaha!
…Aww.
Needs more flying water bottles.
flying grown up juice bottles?
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Wait, what? No, nevermind. I don’t want to know.
I’m not angry Steve, but I am disappointed in you.
Did Steve Winwood drink too much juice, as well?
Why couldn’t you have left that in the Bieber thread?
Do you guys hope that “bottles of vaginal discharge” will be the commentator theme of the week? New motif. Plus, do yall remember this little number? “Plop plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is?” Little motif mash up.
What are you even trying to do anymore?
Please don’t tell me Joan’s husband tells that disturbing homeless man anecdote to his kid patients?
“Paging Doctor AWKWARD!”
I’m not a homosexual, I’m divorced.
what is this? there’s plenty of intelligent discourse on the internet regarding mad men, and i normally look forward to videogum’s comical-but-actually-insightful recaps, so why do we have child’s (fake or real, whatever) boring synopsis? maybe i’m not getting something, but who wants this?
And if it is real, this kid clearly doesn’t enjoy doing it. This makes no sense!
Um, it’s definitely not real.
Um, this is definitely not real.
Hahahahaha! Obvs my fave comments of the day.
I need some more dirty-old-man Roger in my Mad Men episodes. However, Porterhouse crotch was the best!
“We’re not homosexuals, we’re divorced!”
Also, what was that movie? It looked like some kind of turtle Godzilla.
Gamera.
The movie was Gamera (like the OG Godzilla) which might be an anachronism because I read somewhere that it wasn’t released in the US until 1966.
This doesn’t feel like the “Anti-Irritation Zone.”
Nothing really says “bro-ing down” like chugging Scotch, going out to a semi-romantic dinner, blacking out, slapping some steak around, watching Godzilla and picking up some whores.
Going out for a couple IPAs with the guys I work with seems so lame now because Draper.
Guess I’ll go over to Gawker for my Mad Men recaps.
They don’t like dissenters over there. I know someone who was banned for calling their recap obtuse.
Try “Vulture.”
Thanks for the tip.
Also, the AV Club. Very good with the write-ups.
Actually Benji, the English guy gave Don 30 dollars. So there.
Okay, last week’s was funny on a novelty basis.
This week, not so much. Please don’t make this a permanent fixture. This show’s too good to warrant that.
On that note, last night’s episode was a fucking emotional rollercoaster. The whole Don/Anna thing completely broke my heart. That time lapse shot of him sitting on the couch was brilliant (if anyone can cook up a gif of that I would greatly appreciate it). But the last 10-15 minutes of it with the whole Don/Price bromancing it up was hilarious and made me feel not quite as depressed by the end.
It’s so interesting that the show had us see Don experience all this shock and almost mourning over the impending death of his closest friend, and all the shit of actually listening to that woman and NOT telling his friend the truth, because he seems to feel like he doesn’t have the right to tell her the truth… that he’s just a man in a room with a check. UGH. To go from that to see him broing out, to see him get goofy and weird and lusty and you’re like ‘wait, but…’ — I just really like that the show does that. We see him in all these states that don’t exactly sit well together. And that’s so true to my own experience.
Oh god, I forgot about the “man in a room with a check” line. Even I could feel the knife in my side from that.
Don’s ability to compartmentalize everything is one of the more interesting aspects of his character, and the show, to me, and it makes visible cracks in the armor like that scene last night even more powerful.
it was like broing out but it was also a HUGE bummer, because both they’ve both newly become bachelors with jerk exes? ex’s? that hate them and they have nowhere better to be than in the office. it just felt like at some point someone was going to take it too far, like they were going to show up at same table playing russian roulette or something. maybe? or it was just a raucous good time that I can’t comprehend.
I did like how Price offered Don the half-sandwich in the fridge. Don said thanks but I’ll pass. Then the next time you see him, he’s sitting in the break area chowing down and planning an evening for him and Price.
um I love pools that go “inside half AND half outside.”
Real recaps in the future please.
“I like deer”
There are lots of recap and deconstruction blogs regarding Mad Men. I love this one too. I now pretend that creepy Glenn/Norman Bates kid is narrating. The only time you ever get to see Don act like a real human being is when he’s with cancer lady. I’m so bummed cancer lady is going away. I am loving Lane breaking out of his repression. More meat buckles!
I find it kind of disturbing that Gabe takes True Blood so seriously (“This show is for ADULTS?! But it has things that are SILLY and NOT REAL!”) and seems to be turning the recaps of a show that absolutely should be taken seriously into weird jokes.
Love ya Gabe but that’s not ok.
Like I said above, Gabe is too reliably funny and good to have written this. I have a strong hunch it was a guest blogger.
Ah, that would make sense. If that’s the case then Gabe and “Benji” should switch shows.