Tuesday, August 10, 2010

TV Geek Out 160: Mad Men, "Christmas Comes But Once a Year"

There's no place like Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce for the holidays, especially when Don and company reunite with sadistic Lucky Strike honcho Lee Garner Jr. SCDP scrambles to give their biggest client a Christmas party like he's seen in the movies, and the forced frivolity he gets is just as fake (though it did give us wonderful images of Joan leading the conga line and Roger in a Santa suit). If Lee is the Ghost of Christmas Present, then good ol' Freddy Rumsen is the Ghost of Christmas Past. Though he's been sober for well over a year, his ideas of how to sell cold cream to young women are, much to Peggy's shock, plain old-fashioned. The Ghost of Christmas Future could only be creepy preteen Glen Bishop, who turns vandalizing the Francis household into a tangible love letter to young Sally. Despite some great lines from Roger, it was Dr. Faye Miller of the consumer research company SCDP met with who expressed this episode's main conflict: "What I want versus what's expected of me." Don -- alone during Christmas, failing with the ladies, sloppy drunk and jeopardizing one of the few healthy relationships in his life with his secretary, Allison -- is barely delivering on either count. The TV Geek Out geeks, joined again by AnnArbor.com's Chrysta Cherrie, discuss season four's ongoing prostitution theme, how this show can be so depressing and so funny at the same time, and the brand new euphemism "bringing the keys." Check it out here.

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