Author: Loula

Don throws a Hail Mary through the New York Times. Calamity ensues.

Well, at least Peggy’s getting laid.

Shit is gettin’ REAL.

All about the women at SCDP this week, plus a farewell to an astronaut.

A new leaf for Don

At last, the sublime Don/Peggy bonding episode we’ve all been waiting for.

Peggy gets a new boss/loses her clothes. Don gets a Clio/loses a weekend.

Sally Draper: One step closer to hitchhiking topless to Woodstock.

Pete gets great news, Peggy gets a new crowd and Don loses a secretary.

Ringing in 1965 with divorce, Vietnam and cancer.

Tis the season for awkward drunken couch sex.

Don gets his mojo back! Kind of. Maybe.

Ellen knows that Paula isn’t really gone. She’s just a spastic seal clap away! And if we all spastically seal clap hard enough (and also maybe leave our medicine cabinets open) we’ll bring her back to life! If there is such a thing as the opposite of American Idol, it’s Mad Men, which is my [...]

Byebye, Sterling Cooper set! I think I’ll miss you most of all. Already? Yep, this is it! And if I had time I’d go back and watch all 13 hours of it and see all the little pieces being put into place. The Draper marriage appears to be over, for reals this time, and I [...]

Shit? Meet Fan. Hello, and welcome to the EXACT OPPOSITE of last week. I was so happy with everything after the last episode, so I kind of set myself up for it, but the stark, gut-wrenching sadness of this one bummed me out in an unpleasantly visceral way. The JFK-shaped shoe drops, finally, and everything [...]

Holy crap. Seriously. Holy crap. So yeah, remember how last week I said the craziest most shocking thing they could do with this whole BETTY KNOWS! arc is for Don to sit her down and tell her the whole story? Well, it was! And remember a few episodes ago when I had that beautiful fantasy [...]

Nothing like a cigarette, a glass of wine, and a shoebox full of your husband’s darkest secrets to wind you down after a long day of being horrified and devastated. So this is the week Betty finally gets a look inside Don’s Mysterious Drawer of Secret Mysterious Mysteries, and what she finds is something she [...]

“What? I’m an asshole! That’s the whole point! What show have you been watching?” So hey, remember the past couple weeks when we liked Don cause he was all “I’m gonna comfort my daughter!” and “I’m gonna flirt with my hot smart wife and remember that she really actually is my dream woman after all!” [...]

“Ding dong! Asshat calling!” Oh, Pete. Pete Pete Pete. Not making it easy for me, are you? Let’s get this out of the way first: There is a huge “Pete is a creep” vs “Pete is a creepy rapist” debate raging on the intertubes. It is my opinion that we don’t have enough evidence to [...]

Isn’t this so much better than waking up in your giant comfy bed next to your impossibly beautiful wife? Peggy, waking up in bed, and not alone, and not in a crappy foldout bed like some random co-ed she picked up at a bar! Betty, in repose, pretty as the Disney Princess in her crazy [...]

Raise your hand if you saw that coming. AAAIIIGHHH! Holy crap. So yeah, the British are coming, the British are coming, and they’re restructuring the Sterling-Coop hierarchy yet again. And then re-restructuring in light of unforeseeable gruesome but kind of hilarious events. Joan officially learns that her husband is not nearly as competent at his [...]

Did you know that in the 60s, childbirth turned you into an impossibly beautiful Disney princess? This show is so educational! Well, it’s time! It’s time for the new Draper baby, it’s time for Sterling Coop to consider the crazy idea that black people also might want to buy things, and, according to Duck Phillips, [...]

Thmile while you can, Thally. Poor Sally. This is even more her episode than the last one was, and she’s officially my new favorite Draper, but wow, not a great week for little Thally. Or Grampa Gene. But Sal’s officially a commercial director, and his wife has officially noticed that his Ann-Margaret impersonation is just [...]

In an alternate universe somewhere, this is what JFK’s “Happy Birthday Mister President” serenade looked like. This week’s theme: Performance! **jazz hands!** In addition to her increasingly strained performance as Mrs. Dr. Asshat, Joan is trotted out like a novelty act to sing (and play accordion!) for his guests. Other performances were squirmier, like Roger’s [...]

Huh huh. “May Pole.” Well, so far we’re 2 for 2 on episodes I liked a zillion times better the second time around. I know most people don’t have to watch these things as closely as I do, but it’s certainly not the worst thing you could do with your spare time. Anyway, it’s mostly [...]

“You’re as handsome as Cary Grant!” “And you’re as beautiful as my hugely pregnant wife!” So first of all, hi folks! Welcome to the third season of Mad Men, and the first season of me trying to write about Mad Men for tvgasm. I’m coming from Prison Break, a show I genuinely enjoyed but pretty [...]

Swan song Sigh! And squee! And noooo! I won’t spoil anything right now, just in case, but I have to tell you, I enjoyed the hell out of these last two episodes, and in terms of tying everything together and bringing it all back around, I can’t think of many series finales that have done [...]

(Note: I’m so sorry this is so late. Weekend in New Orleans + Backlogged Work + Lost Season Finale = Tardy, Tired Loula.) LINC MAKE FRIDGE GO BOOM Well, here we are, limping to the finish line together with the handful of characters that managed to survive this long. This was kind of a placeholder [...]

“THIS is for that BIRDHOUSE KIT I got for CHRISTMAS instead of the MILLENIUM FALCON!” I had a great time watching this episode up until the last couple of minutes, at which point I was like “Nooooo, we already did this! Exactly this!” They only have 3 more episodes to write their way out of [...]

LINC SCARED OF MAN WITH GUN! LINC HOLD BRAINS IN HEAD! Well, things are moving right along here in Miami! Team Michael and Team Linc are totally mad at each other, but their separate sleuthing adventures lead them to the same place at the same time for an anticlimactic whispery showdown. Those fake passes they [...]

WHY MAN WITH TELESCOPE LOOK AT LINC GIANT HEAD? Hey, you guys remember that show Prison Break? Something about steely-eyed glares and lots of schematics hung on walls and giant monosyllabic oafs and a really whole lot of dead people? Me neither, it turns out! It seems like a really long time since the last [...]

“We’re white!” Salt Lake City. Full disclosure: This is the first episode of American Idol I’ve watched without using a fast forward button, and it was a very different experience. Well, actually, it’s the second episode I’ve seen the old fashioned way, the first being the Hollywood Week ep I covered for TVgasm last year [...]

This was the third thoroughly awesome episode in a row. Sadly, the awesomer the episode, the harder it is to ridicule. Boring/stupid episode recaps are way funnier, but I do my best. Anyway, awesome: Michael totally gets Scylla from Self! For like an entire minute or so before he steals it back! T-Bag has a [...]

Oh, the wackiness that is sure to ensue with this zany duo! So remember how Self turned out to be a total bastard? Yeah, turns out he’s a real piece of work. Not one of those conflicted, desperate villains this show is so fond of, just a plain old bastard. So surely his boss at [...]

Well, shit. So this is what happens when I go on vacation! That’ll teach me to enjoy a lovely beachfront Thanksgiving. Sheesh. Good news: Michael’s wacky hare-brained schemes totally worked and he didn’t even drop dead trying! His ragtag band of criminals totally came through! Hooray! Bad news: Oh, the bad news. So very very [...]

Get it, because it was really quiet, and also they drilled a lot of holes? Get it? Huh? Mission: Implausible! Anyway, this is what we find ourselves with this week. Their break-in plan turns out to be pretty cool, which is one of my favorite themes in this show: 1) Impossible task is proposed; 2) [...]

“I’m sorry, sir, but the rare Plot Contrivancanoma is notoriously resistant to treatment.” Despite the usual silliness, this was my favorite episode in weeks. It’s been like two entire seasons since T-Bag made me all teary-eyed, then made me feel like I needed to take a shower for letting a fictional psychopath make me teary-eyed. [...]

Waaaaade (Williams) in the water, children! Attention Fox Promo Monkeys: stop it with the “OMG somebody is totally gonna die!!!” teasers. We figure it out who it is in the first ten minutes and the rest of the episode is one big deathwatch. It’s very distracting. Anyway, something weird and gross goes on between Gretchen [...]

Thanks, Prison Break, for getting “Viva Las Vegas” stuck in my head, which inevitably morphs into “Viva Viagra” and makes me want to kill myself. Thanks to the beautiful, beautiful miracle that is DVR, I don’t normally see commercials, but I couldn’t help but notice that the Fox promo monkeys have pounced on Stephen King’s [...]