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Mad Men

Television

Your ‘Mad Men’ Season 6, Episode 8 Talking Points: Body Horror

By Judy Berman on

No current TV show generates more Monday morning conversation than Mad Men. With that in mind, Flavorwire is recapping Season 6′s Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce drama by giving you a handful of talking points to spark your own water-cooler debate. Aptly titled “The Crash,” last night gave us this year’s equivalent of Roger’s Season 5 LSD episode, with the characters’ tripped-out perspectives causing barriers to break down and thin veneers of sanity and stability to shatter. … Read More

Television

Popular TV Shows Improved by Diddy

By Tom Hawking on

Just like pretty much everyone else on the Internet, the inhabitants of Flavorwire central giggled heartily at the news yesterday that Diddy was trying to inveigle his way onto Downton Abbey. The fact that the whole thing was a clever piece of promotion for a pretty amusing Funny or Die video didn’t dampen our enthusiasm any — by then, we’d moved onto envisaging other TV shows that we’d like to see Diddy on, and breaking out Photoshop to make our dreams a reality. See the results of our fantasies after the jump. … Read More

Television

Is John McCain’s Cable à la Carte Bill Secretly Terrible?

By Jason Bailey on

Talk about hitting on a winning strategy five years too late. Forget the Alaska Governor Who Must Not Be Named — if John McCain was looking for a game-changer back in 2008, he should’ve floated the Television Consumer Freedom Act. The new legislation, which McCain introduced Thursday, aims to let cable customers select their lineups à la carte, getting only the channels they want, and eschewing the expensive ones they never watch. It would change the way the television business operates, and it could be a boon for the viewer. Maybe. … Read More

Television

Your ‘Mad Men’ Season 6, Episode 7 Talking Points: “They’re Shooting Everybody”

By Judy Berman on

No current TV show generates more Monday morning conversation than Mad Men. With that in mind, Flavorwire is recapping Season 6′s Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce drama by giving you a handful of talking points to spark your own water-cooler debate. Directed by John Slattery, “Man With a Plan” comes on the heels of Mad Men‘s strongest episode of the season to date — and if it isn’t quite as dazzling as “For Immediate Release,” its fast-paced plot and character friction do seem to suggest that the show has hit its mid-season stride. … Read More

Television

This Week’s Top 5 TV Moments

By Alison Herman on

There are scores of TV shows out there, with dozens of new episodes each week, not to mention everything you can find on Hulu Plus, Netflix streaming, and HBO Go. How’s a viewer to keep up? To help you sort through all that television has to offer, we’re compiling the five best moments on TV each week. This week, some shows wrap up while others get going. … Read More

Television

Exclusive: Brutally Honest ‘Mad Men’ Mother’s Day Cards

By Jennifer Lewis on

Let’s be real — being a mom on Mad Men is hard. Your kids resent you, your husband is a jerk, and your step-granddaughter walks in on you… uh… hanging out with a partner at her father’s ad agency. These fictional ladies can’t catch a break! To celebrate these dysfunctional moms on their special day, we created some brutally honest Mad Men Mother’s Day cards. Check them out — but please send them to your friends and not your actual mother. Unless your mother actually is that bad, in which case, we’re so… Read More

Web

7 Totally Easy Steps to a Spoiler-Free Life

By Jason Bailey on

Jennie Lamere is a 17-year-old computer coder from Nashua, New Hampshire, and the focus of a fascinating article over at Mother Jones. It seems that late last month, Ms. Lamere was the only woman among the 80 competitors at TVnext Hack 2013 in Boston, where programmers and coders were charged with creating apps and programs to enrich the viewing experience. But Lamere won the whole shebang with her Twivo software, which allows users to block mentions of selected TV shows and their characters until they’ve had a chance to watch that DVR-ed episode of Game of Thrones. The whole thing is sort of awesome, a big thumbs-up for developers of both Lamere’s age and sex. And, of course, it is a decisive victory for the Spoiler-Free Rights movement. But does her app go far enough? … Read More

Television

Your ‘Mad Men’ Season 6, Episode 6 Talking Points: May ’68

By Judy Berman on

No current TV show generates more Monday morning conversation than Mad Men. With that in mind, Flavorwire is recapping Season 6′s Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce by giving you a handful of talking points to spark your own water-cooler debate. The title of last night’s episode, “For Immediate Release,” refers to the press release Peggy finds herself writing in its final moments — but the key to understanding Season 6′s strongest installment of Mad Men yet is in the date she stamps on that document: May 17, 1968. … Read More

Comics

‘Mad Men’ Characters and Their Comic Book Counterparts

By Alison Nastasi on

Today is Free Comic Book Day, which promises exactly what it advertises: you get a free comic book just for showing up at your local shop. The offerings have been specially selected, but nothing is preventing you from browsing while you’re there and spending a few dollars to support an oft-overlooked art form that has brought joy to many. To celebrate the occasion, and with a new Mad Men episode approaching, we wanted to combine two of our favorite things: 1960′s ad execs crippled by existential angst, and awesome comic book heroes and villains. The resemblance is greater than you think. See our pairings, and leave your own suggestions, below. … Read More

Television

Your ‘Mad Men’ Season 6, Episode 5 Talking Points: The MLK Test

By Judy Berman on

No current TV show generates more Monday morning conversation than Mad Men. With that in mind, Flavorwire is recapping Season 6′s Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce by giving you a handful of talking points to spark your own water-cooler debate. Last night’s episode, “The Flood,” revived one of Matthew Weiner’s favorite formulas; as with Season 5′s “The Other Woman,” which found Joan making partner by sleeping with a client, it forced everyone to react to a difficult situation, thereby taking the moral temperature of each character. The difference is that, this time, the crisis — the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. — was society-wide. … Read More