02nd Oct2017

Culture Dump #11: What does a show need to become your next TV addiction?

by Simon Bland

Game of Thrones will soon be dead. Proper dead. Deader than one of its beardy warriors or scantily clad ladies or grubby looking extras that met the fiery end of a pissed off dragon and its obliviously incestuous Queen. Winter has come and will soon be gone, leaving a massive hole in our telly social […]

Off
18th May2015

‘Mad Men 7×14: Person to Person’ Review

by Gretchen Felker-Martin

“I want to keep things as normal as possible, and you not being here is part of that.” ‘Person to Person’ is Mad Men‘s final hour, and it opens with Don driving as fast as he can through the middle of a blasted wasteland.  He’s running for the sake of making distance, drawing out wild trajectories […]

Off
11th May2015

‘Mad Men 7×13: The Milk and Honey Route’ Review

by Gretchen Felker-Martin

“You think this town is bad?  Wait until you can never come back here.” You can never go home again.  Not because there’s a shadow on the X-ray, not because your husband broke your family, but because the past is a house that doesn’t exist.  It folded up into nonbeing when the door closed behind […]

Off
05th May2015

‘Mad Men 7×12: Lost Horizons’ Review

by Gretchen Felker-Martin

“We all know that man, because there are millions of him.” You know you’re in trouble when your descent into Hell begins with Meredith standing in for Virgil.  In the windowless labyrinth of McCann-Erickson’s corporate belly it seems as though Don Draper has finally, fatally given up.  “I expect you to bring things up a […]

Off
27th Apr2015

‘Mad Men 7×11: Time & Life’ Review

by Gretchen Felker-Martin

“Stop struggling.  You won.” The Sterling-Cooper dream team has died and gone to advertising heaven. Jim Hobart enunciates the name “Coca Cola” like he’s asking Don and the other partners how they enjoyed their simultaneous touchless orgasms, but in reality he’s stealing their name, tossing probably half their employees out into the street, and consigning them […]

Off
20th Apr2015

‘Mad Men 7×10: The Forecast’ Review

by Gretchen Felker-Martin

“They love the lobby, but the emptiness is a problem.” Mad Men very nearly pipes in a cymbal crash after Don’s real estate broker delivers her withering assessment of his empty penthouse.  What she’s talking about, of course, is Don, and there’s no shortage of people lining up to inform him that he’s a smooth, good-looking huckster […]

Off
13th Apr2015

‘Mad Men 7×09: New Business’ Review

by Gretchen Felker-Martin

“Can’t you see I don’t want anything?” Why do families blow up?  Why can’t we just love each other, live with each other, understand each other?  What happens if, in Pete Campbell’s frustrated words, “you never get past the beginning again?”  What if you never wanted to? The episode begins with Don in pastoral bliss […]

Off
06th Apr2015

‘Mad Men 7×08: Severance’ Review

by Gretchen Felker-Martin

“We had a problem, but we solved it.” -Art Garten One pair of pantyhose is a lot like any other.  You could be forgiven for mixing up brands, for lacking Topaz exec Art Garten’s workmanlike ability to identify them by touch.  They’re just pantyhose, right? But what about women?  What about every woman in your […]

Off
16th Nov2014

‘Mad Men: The Final Season Part 1’ Review

by Paul Metcalf

Mad Men is one of those shows that you often see people complimenting and raving about, but I never really got into it.  It may be a strange thing to do but now it is in its final season I gave in.  Watching Mad Men: The Final Season Part 1 with little knowledge of the […]

Off