Really, another split season?

Written by Brendan O’Meara

Breaking Bad’s final season was broken up into two eight-episode mini-seasons. It has worked to great fanfare. Namely, it allowed people to catch it on Netflix (like me) and then attack the cages when the show began airing its final eight episodes in August (I don’t have cable, so I bought the season on iTunes, the best way to a la carte your TV experiences). It has worked brilliantly for them as the first episode of Season 5B, as Vince Gilligan, the show’s creator, calls it, was the most-watched episode of the show’s history.

Now Mad Men, the golden child of AMC, has adopted the same strategy for its final “season.”

It’s one thing for a show with action, drama, and suspense, like Breaking Bad, to adopt this strategy. A cliff  hanger in Breaking Bad is watching [spoiler alert] Jesse Pinkman shoot Gale in the face, or stop an episode mid-gun fight while Nazis rain bullets on Hank and Gomey. But for Mad Men? The brooding drama set in the 60s? What’s our cliff hanger? What brunette will Don Draper throw it in in the final six? Last season’s ending when Don brought his kids to the whore house he grew up in was a nice scene, but no cliff hanger. This show isn’t built on that. And as my friend and fellow writer Richard Gilbert once wrote, the arc of Mad Men should have ended long ago.

Perhaps they want people to binge-watch Mad Men on Netflix to similar a outcome from the Breaking Bad camp. One Mad Men a week is fine by me, but I can watch 16 straight Breaking Bads as blood pours out of my eyes and ears.

Frankly, this is a stupid move especially since, at this point, it is so unoriginal. AMC’s goose-laying-the-golden-eggs is about to die so they’re making sure they squeeze out every last egg before the time is up.

The Eroticism of ‘No’

[subscribe2]

Written by Brendan O’Meara

When I need a dose of motivation, I watch Don Draper in action. When a fire lights under his ass look at how he burns.

At the beginning of this scene, Don enters Roger’s office and grabs a drink right away. Even Roger is taken by this “drinking with a purpose”. Don doesn’t want piddly business, he wants big fish. Screw bagging a few marlin; he wants Moby freakin’ Dick.

Don laments how his letter denouncing Lucky Strike has effected his mojo with potential clients. Rogers throws it right back at him, “You used to love no. No used to make you hard.” He goes on and I do hope you watch the entire 5:20. After all, it’s what we do.

What?????!!!!!

All we are are salesmen. We are always on the clock.

All publishers, magazines, newspapers, are are customers/clients looking to benefit/profit from our services. At every turn you need to give them reasons to say yes, of course, but you need them to question why on earth they would even consider saying no.

Now, imagine you go into a meeting, or a phone pitch, with any editor and you pitch cold the way Don does in this scene? Can you imagine facing rejection? Can you imagine the gall should they say no?

So. Go on. Say no. I want you to say no in my face so hard that spittle gets on my sunglasses. I also want you see the face of doubt in your own reflection.

Because ‘no’ … ‘no’ is one step closer to yes.

Have a great week, I’m on the road.

[subscribe2]