Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - Mad Men

another episode. But here's the deal. Ordinarily, the Weekly Roundup would have been on Monday in the latest Fusco fest here on Friday, but two events conspired against that. First, the new Netflix series The Four Seasons premiered yesterday. That's the one starring Tina Fey and Will Forte and Steve Carell and others, and it's based on the nineteen eighty

one film written and directed and starring Alan Alda. My frequent co host HP and I did an episode about the film, so there was no time like the present to release it. Also, the next film in the Fusco filmography is Thunderheart. HP is currently out and about Chris crossing these here United States, so we had to postpone and Thunderheart is a fucking great movie that has only gained relevancy over the years and now tragedy with the

recent passing of Val Kilmer. So I wanted that film to get the proper attention from both of us, and it will be along directly. If you're a new midnight

viewer because of Fusco Fest, thank you for joining us, and welcome to what this crazy bullshit is like when I'm left to my own devices. A lot of things have happened since last week got together, So you and I shall we begin my condolences to God for the recent passing of Pope Francis. You can send flowers to heaven. Actually God took him, so no condolences to you, sir. Has it ever occurred that sending flowers to a funeral is like sending dozens of corpses. I don't sleep a

lot gang midnight viewers. You're like the Peanut Gallery, and I'm gonna have to cook up some cool midnight viewing promotional shit. Ripley jeans slatbrace. How about a bubble enclosed drawing a father Malone? But he's bald and there are little mental shavings in there, and you use a little wand with a magnet on the end to give me a hairstyle. Maybe just a button, you know, a pin. I was big into buttons in high school. Oh man,

My lapels were the leading with buttons. There was a priest at my school who knew my name but called me Badge. Badge did you see The Doors? I was watching it and I thought, Badge is gonna love this movie. He was a cool clergyman. And I still love a good button. I still have every one of those goddamn lapel pins. I have a Gremlins two promotional button that does not announce it's a Gremlins two promotional button, which

is my favorite kind of advertising obleak. It just says Splice of Life, Genetic Labs in the most eighties font imaginable. When Patrick Nagel dreams, he dreams in this font. I got that button at a creation convention back in nineteen eighty nine, and now three fucking decades later, I'm gonna be giving out my own at a convention right here in Las Vegas. What convention? Well, I'm glad you asked.

That's the Nightmare in Vegas show in October at the silverton I can do some other shit other than buttons. What are the kids into these days? Wacky wallwalkers, oversized novelty sunglasses, those little puzzles that's a ball bearing and you gotta tilt it to navigate around a little plastic labyrinth? Or is everything popcorn buckets? Sincerely? What is going on with popcorn buckets? It was cute for two fucking seconds. That is the promotional item we're obsessed with from movie theaters.

Why because that one ill designed to sandworm? Now everything is how can we make this molded plastic most look like a seventies blow up doll? Did you see Thunderbolts? No, but I fucked the popcorn bucket.

ahead and completely thrown the upcoming musical episode into chaos by introducing a second contender. That's how low stakes this shit is. Gang. We've had two votes and now we officially have two candidates. One is American pop that's the Ralph Bakshi animated grimy, grubby take about American popular music that I'd like to point out that that movie predicts that the future of American music, the future that we are living in right now, is Bob Seger working on

a night move. Not Bob Seger, but now, thanks to mister Blue Ray seventy eight, we have the Frank Oz, Howard Ashman, Allan menkin Rick moranis starring Little Shop of Horrors. Oh no, don't make me watch what is potentially the best rock and roll musical of all time. Don't do that. Don't make me once again endure the zenith the Paramount, even though this was a Geffen production of mechanical special effects. Don't make me listen to the velvet gravel of Levi

Stubbs voice as Audrey two. Who needs Ellen Green bursting out of that leopard print number while knocking down the walls of skid row with that fucking powerhouse voice. Certainly not me. I'd much rather watch a bunch of rotoscoped hippies shooting Heroin while an oil projector beats in time with Janis Joplin. As the cost effective method of animated

backgrounds continue. I don't want to have to reevaluate the missing ending of a Little Shop of horse where dozens of Kaiju sized plants take over New York and eventually smash through the movie screen. So here's the contact at Father Malone. That one's easy. That's all these socials or Father Malone seven to one at the gmail dot com. Those are in the notes. If you want to click vote for the one you want us to talk about American pop No or a Little Shop of Horrors. Yes,

I don't think I'm swaying anything at all. In fact, as mister blu rayceivity, it has beautifully illustrated. You can also suggest your own turn this into a fucking horse race or a greyhound race. You know, in my hometown of Revere, Massachusetts, they had a greyhound a dog track. People would go and bt on the dogs. My grandmother, in her later years, was the nurse on staff at the Wonderland Dog Track. Come to think of it, there was an entire section of Revere, part of Revere Beach

known as Wonderland. There was the Wonderland Ballroom, and the final stop on the Blue Line, the above ground and then underground train line was the Wonderland Stop. There's a movie it's terrible, called Next Stop of Wonderland. It was always kind of a thrill heading home from a day in Boston and going back to Wonderland. Anyway, send votes for musicals or maybe suggest your room, and maybe don't suggest Popeye. I already did that over on the Projection Booth.

I don't want to watch it again, Okay, next Penn palfrom Around the World. I got some backups about the recent Tales from the dark Side episode we did over on the Friday Show. That was The Milkman Cometh co host Chris Dash who bulked at the idea of a milkman still in operation in nineteen eighty seven when I had a milkman and a frequent show collaborator, Jasmine Eva tell's tale of milk delivery into the two thousands in glass bottles. No less, that's to probably three centuries of

milk delivery. The Milkman Cometh, by the way, didn't mention the fact that that is probably an ejaculation joke as a title. I mean, it does end with a guy's wife giving birth to the Milkman's inhuman child. Our man in Scotland sent in the button Ness Lighthouse in Dundee for perusal. It's actually closer to a town called and now I'm going to butcher it Carnowsty. The lighthouse itself looks damn fine. I'll take it. That is my ultimate goal.

My lighthouse fascination goes way deeper than Stevie Wayne and the Kab Lighthouse in the Fog. I've been not obsessed with them since I was very wee there just practicing for my future residence. What are the chances for an

unskilled American to naturalize to somewhere like Scotland. I have nothing unique to contribute, but you always hear about situation like there are these chain of islands in the government will buy you a house and set you up because the general store needs tending to Are any of those opportunities actually real? Because sign me up for a lighthouse keeper. Speaking of remember Clockwork Orange On the soundtrack, Kubrick added that song I want to marry a lighthouse keeper and

keep him close to me. You added it as kind of an ironic statement, but I totally bought it, And give me that lighthouse. I honestly don't care where it is in the world. If you know of a Lighthouse opportunity, hit me up. I'm serious. I am on the record of hating that fucking movie The Lighthouse, by the way, fell asleep three times trying to watch it. I did eventually see the whole thing piecemeal. And you know who

Dave Angers reminds me of. There was a sketch on Mister Show with Bob and David and David Cross played this fucking insufferable hipster droning on about the merits of defunct technology sir for.

my help anymore. What a fucking heartening event that that movie is doing so well and good for you Ryan Coogler, who apparently is taking over the X Files. You know, when we'd got out about the deal he has for Sinners, too many people started calling it the death of the studio system because he's getting the rights to the movie in twenty five years. What is wrong with everybody? Racists? Lucas had Star Wars outright and everyone called him a genius.

The other big news is Thunderbolts. That's going to be next week's weekly round up, this coming Sunday, I think maybe Monday. Another reason for the weirdo schedule of late Keep an ear out for that one. Okay, listen, you

know sometimes you fall down the proverbial rabbit hole, bouncing from random topic to random topic till it's eight hours later and you don't know why you even picked up your phone to begin with. Well, I have the opposite of that, apparently, because if you dedicate an entire channel to one of my favorite shows and then I stumble cross that fact, and guess what happens. It fucking consumes

my life. That's what happens. We are talking about mad Men here, a show I own in its entirety on DVD, and one i'd been thinking about a lot lately, but its gravitational pull wasn't strong enough to get me to drag those out and fire up the old DVD player. But then one day I turned on the TV and the Roku channel said, Hey, you want to watch mad Men twenty four hours a day? And I said, fuck, yeah.

It's nominally the tale of Don Draper, a man simply born to sell you shit, including his own version of reality, and the various copywriters, account executives, secretaries, lunatics, switchboard operators, beat nix and others that orbit the agency of Sterling Cooper or Sterling Cooper, Draper Price or Sterling Cooper and Partners, or well, you get the idea. The show covers quite a lot of ground and social and societal upheaval. It won all the accolades, got all the awards, and it

has all the talent. Now. I've spoken at length recently about how potentially detrimental it has been lionizing the worst of us on TV and in film, the Sopranos and Breaking Bad being the obvious examples. But Don Draper, as villainous as any of them, gets a pass. His brand of villainy is too subtle and elegant to ever be emulated by the kind of ding dongs that think Project

Mayhem and Fight Club was really fucking cool man. When the show came on, there was quite a lot of uproar and pearl clutching about the casually deplorable actions and thoughts and behaviors on display, which I find just as hilarious as the solemn reaction to one time Mad Max and as of the last thirty years, completely demented person Mel Gibson's film Passion of the Christ You Broke My Heart,

Melt my Brave Heart. The kind of Christians who were shocked by that movie are the kinds of Christians who dig Christian rock. They were the ones fainting of the depiction of whipping and torture of their Lord and Savior.

Clearly no Catholics were doing that, because on Good Friday, we'd all huddle in the lower Church, the cavernous, freaky church, where the columns that lined the walls were festooned with frescoes depicting fourteen terrible moments leading up to Christ's burial, and we go around that room and we'd all chant the words in unison and contemplate how frail human beings are and how fucking cruel this world is. Jesus falls

the first time, oh my Lord. By the way, really looking forward to Gibson's Passion of the Christ too, where Jesus descends into Hell and kicks ass for the Lord. I wish I was joking about that. So much like that. Same with mad men. Yes, there was a ton of fucking out and in your face sexism. They were smoking everywhere and didn't give a shit if you were a child or had emphysema. And yes, you could still throw a big soiree at a country club and perform in

blackface and the crowd would find it charming. It's that aspect of the show the uh huh, the yeah, the how else do you think people were behaving? That might not make it the most appealing across the spectrum. One of my best friends was lucky enough to be born both black and gay and in Boston, and after watch during one episode, he said to me, why do I need reminding how terrible white people were fifty years ago? I'm dealing with this shit now, so I get that.

I would say, however, it's probably a good thing that a wildly popular show was stating plainly, what a lot of halcyon memories about the sixty we're obscuring? Those are the halcyon memories most boomers have been shoveling in our direction just as soon as they got themselves into a hardware store. And there are dozens of portrayals of societal

upheaval that are worth examining on the show. But the fact is there isn't a whole lot of time here in the round up, And quite frankly, I'm not that deep. But upon re emerging from this mad Men hole, I'll never actually be all the way out of it. It's like fourteen oh eight. Even if I leave Lucky Strike, I can never leave Lucky Strike. I was struck by the excellent stories of the women of Mad Men, the Big three, starting with Joan Holloway. Joan Holloway is the

perfect woman. Now Christina Hendrix, who plays her, although she's about ninety percent of that reason. I'm talking about Joan, efficient, whip smart, a full partner at one of the biggest ad agencies on Madison Avenue and therefore the world, and she can play the accordion and you know, love av a voom. I know this paints me as piggish as the men being skewered on this show, but my god,

she out Jessica Rabbit's Jessica Rabbit. In fact, in the first season, there's an ad campaign that's predicated on the notion that every woman is either a Jackie Kennedy or a Marilyn Monroe. One of the copywriters asserts that Marilyn is actually a Joan, and you're fucking right she is. Jon's story is the chronicle of the single mom, working woman of the sixties and all the dodging and weaving, of all the casual objectification and rampant misogyny firing off

from every direction. Let's not forget how Joan gets that partnership, unless you don't know. I'm going spoiler light here for this show that's been off the air for a decade, because I sincerely hope if you haven't watched it and you don't know, or if you're gonna rewatch it and don't remember that, I'm not ruined anything before you, but I will say this. Joan is the keenest observer of human behavior on the show, way more so than Don Draper. He doesn't read a room so much as nazzle it

into submission. Joan knows she has consistent terrible taste in men, but she knows what makes them tick. This is Joan dressing down pseudo bohemian and overall blowhard Paul Kinsey in the second season, after it's been revealed dramatically by Kinsey that he's dating an African American grocery store cashier.

advice alongside where to find the typewriter ribbons advice. She spends a goodly portion of the first season dispensing to the second of the big three women of mad Men. Overall, the series itself is concerned with its own big three. That's Don Draper at the center and two recently hired employees when the series begins. Those are junior accounts executive Pete Campbell more on him later, and secretary turned copywriter Peggy Olson, played by Handmaid's Tail and invisible man Stomper

Elizabeth Moss. Peggy takes to her new position in the traditionally male dominated feel of copywriting like a duck to water, but not duck Phillips. I will never forgive you for turning your dog loose on the streets of Manhattan. Duck, What's wrong with you? Peggy is one of the few characters depicted on the show with a real world counterpart.

That would be Mary Wells Lawrence. She died last year at the age of ninety six, which means Peggy Olson was bound to have outlived everyone from Sterling Cooper, including those kids. They all had heads full of bad wiring. I don't have any hope that those kids were going to live past the turn of the century. Lawrence was responsible for a ton of influential ads throughout the twentieth century, PLoP plomp, PiZZ phizz for Alca, Seltzer or Ford. Quality

is job one, raise your hand if you're sure. And the wildly simple and yet fucking indelible I Love New York. The I Heart NY logo is Mary Wells Lawrence. Like Joan, Peggy transcends her occupation and the station in life society

has deemed for her. And it's through Peggy we get glimpses of not just the underground in avant garde art scenes of New York, but as perhaps the poorest character on the show, he delivers a lot of the class struggle plot lines of the nineteen sixties, and while spoiling nothing, Peggy's romantic outcome is particularly sweet. Artists and writers belong together, and she has one of my favorite scenes in the

whole show. The Agency is switching buildings, leaving the old one a shell except for a lot of broken drywall, fallen ceiling tiles, and an electric organ. Mad Men's resident rake Roger Sterling, ends up playing that organ while Peggy glides room to room on roller skates. It's breathtaking Peggy in the first season is also the guinea pig and first victim of mad Men's crazy adherence to fat suits.

It would improve in future season, both in the padding and the prosthetics on the face of Miss Betty Draper. You remember fat suit Betty? Don't you? Whoa fat Betty rayam malamlamb? Whoa fat Betty rayam alamb Missus Betty Draper or missus Betty Harris, Let's just call her Betty. She is played by non human Luminosity. In January Jones, Hey, what's up, Marvel? You got room in your multiverse for Electra, who no one ever cared about, and none for Emma Frost,

who no one has ever cared about. You know who else was in the first class with miss Jones, Kevin Bacon. Kevin Bacon is part of the MCU. At any point in the future, Kevin Figy can bring home the Bacon. Did I mention? We have a Patreon channel Patreon dot com slash father alone where you will get episodes early and free from fucking terrible jokes like that. Okay, I'm gonna indulge in what the kids are are calling kids being people in their thirties. A hot take Betty Draper

is the best character on mad Men. Oh I know, boo, she's awful. Well, you can piss up a rope, you pricks. Betty Draper is the pinnacle and the tragedy of American advertising. You want to get down to them, brass tacks. Don Draper starts out as a dirt poor farmer's orphan. He's raised in a whorehouse, and then he assumes another man's identity, eventually becoming an ad executive. The reinvention that he represents and the advertising that promises it is the pointed theme

of the show. But Betty is the only true victim of advertising, because the America that Madison Avenue kept screaming about during the forties and fifties had a rapidly decaying shelf life. And while the generation just below her would make a meal of rejecting all of those ideals they'd been sold, it was too late for Betty. She's got the pearls, she's got the tiny soaps shaped like seashells, and she's got her own horse and a stable. Benny

is an easy character to hate outright. I think I did the first time I watched the show, until I really figured out who the villains were. I thought Betty was a nag, and I thought she brought down the good times with pitdling complaints like the total lack of fidelity of her partner, or frankly, any support from him at all. But on Rewatch, I was quickly on Betty's side. Yeah, she can be stringent with Sally and Bobby and even Henry, and she's too old fashion at times, and she's never

going to be hip or clued into current culture. But all those fantasies of what America should have been in the fifties, which on the surface are pretty fucking great fantasies, are fantasies only except in Betty. She's the anthropomorphized American fifties, perfectly quaffed, perfectly styled, loves her man, loves her kids, loves her home, and loves showing them all off. Betty embodies that ideal. She's carrying that torch long after the

rest of America has collectively blown out the flame. There is a beautiful sorrow in watching such an otherworldly creature absorb so much of the worst that times have to offer. And as one who's kind of always felt this way, she's a great representative of the character who has out lived their time. She would fit in with the Wild Bunch or film projectionists. Part of my admiration for Betty as a character, a lot of it, if I'm being honest,

is because of the performance of January Jones. There's nothing more I enjoy than seeing an actor thinking on screen, not just thinking, but coming to a definite conclusion. Watch any Spielberg film, You're likely to find a shot nestled in there somewhere like Doctor Jones. We're talking about January Jones here. January Jones is a fucking master of a reaction,

mistress of reaction. She's fucking amazing at reacting. Now, given most actors will tell you acting is reacting, that's a pretty fucking great skill to have, particularly the way she employs it. It's one of the few performances I've ever seen where a character is not thinking of some labyrinthine plan. She's thinking of the next thing she's going to say, not I can't remember my lines. It's Betty Draper confused or angry or engage, listening to what's being said, absorbing

and reacting. There are so many fucking gunslingers in this cast, as far as talent is easy to overlook subtlety. But the next time you watch or rewatch, keep an eye on her. A different kind of value, a different kind of value pervs. Now, before we leave these madmen, that's a fake term made up for the show. It gets a pass because the whole series is based on deception, but it's a writer's creation. No one, by the way, has ever broken bad fake term. You're more likely to

gleam the cube, you know what. And along those lines, even the most ardent John Hughes apologist has to admit that Neo Maxi Zoom Dweeby was a whole cloth creation of some forty year old dude. And it makes Bender lame when he says it. Anyway, before we move on, I said we'd get back to Pete Campbell, the other third of the unholy Triumvirate at the series center. Pete Campbell is awful. He's at times racist and sexist and

petty and cruel. He's told in the pilot he's going to end up bitter and bald and alone because no one likes him. He ends up bald anyway, a fact of which I'd like to share Vincent Cartheiser, who plays Pete Campbell, instructed hair and makeup to shave back his hairline a little more each year at the start of each season to mark the passage of time and Pete's approaching baldness. In the end, he's a shiny marshmallow of

a man like Benny. I would also like to defend Pete Campbell, mostly because I fear I'd be just like him in that time period. But I'd also like to think that I would evolve the way Pete does. He never stops becoming a fuller person, a better human, unlike most of his contemporaries. But it's his romance with his wife, Trudy,

played by Alison Brie that really gives me hope. They have every kind of up and down happen to them, and they still manage to muddle through as a family, and Trudy and Pete in an early season have my absolute favorite scene in all of Mad Men. They're attending a function when a swing band starts up and they dance. Watching them is pure fucking joy. If you could solidify, crush it up, and snort it, you'd be an instant

millionaire without any advertising required. And you better save me some If by somewhere chance you want more of this

mad Man coverage, please drop me a line and let me know. I for one would have a blast getting super granular with the show, but that's up to you. This Sunday Round Up is going to be back with fellow midnight viewing host Chris Stashu and Mike White as we take a look at the newest Marvel offering Thunderbolts asterisk by the way, two months ago, I told them how excited I was for Thunderbolts and the scoffing that

they uttered could be heard from space. Just to rip off a suicide squad tune in Sunday, I guarantee you they're going to have a different opinion for a little miss Ripley gen No no rip speaks this week, maaa next week, baby, I am father Malone. Here's Betty Draper talking to a nine year old Glenn.