Oh, my recording of The Closer cut off near the end of the Fritz/Brenda conversation. What I got out of what I saw is that there are things that Brenda won't do and won't discuss and I guess Fritz just has to be okay with that. (I saw up to the part where Fritz says something about how if they're going for the bigger house both of them have to want it.)

Anyway, I think that they were talking not just about the house, not just about the not having kids but about the whole relationship.

that veneer of pretty they worked so hard to sell being the complete antithesis of what "real life" was like.

Yeah, I really agree.

Oh, and while we're talking about veneer of pretty, that shot of them all shiny and ready for their AA meeting was just gorgeous.

What I got out of what I saw is that there are things that Brenda won't do and won't discuss and I guess Fritz just has to be okay with that. (I saw up to the part where Fritz says something about how if they're going for the bigger house both of them have to want it.)

I think that the discussion was about them having kids. I seem to recall that her health issues (the ones that made her have to stop eating sweets) had something to do with her ability to have children.

Do folks here know already that the Project Rungay fellows are now blogging Mad Men? This week's post is particularly nice and meaty.

A lot of it had to do, IIRC, with the sense of independence that women had fostered throughout WWII, making up the workforce and having to keep households afloat while the men were overseas. A lot of women who had come of age during that time period had seen possibilities where before there had been none.

My mother was one of these women and boy, was she bitter about it. When she was drunk enough she would rant about how having us and being stuck as a housewife ruined her life.

It was many years before I could see things from her point of view and thank dog that I came of age in the early 70s with the Feminist movement.

I think this is why I feel so uncomfortable with this show. I was one of the kids around the same age as Don and Betty's. Not happy memories.

We're watching Catch Me If You Can tonight and it's set in the same era. It's making me run a mental list of early sixties touchpoints for the show.

One I keep coming back to is how much Betty is like the dark side of Laura Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore on the Dick Van Dyke Show). It was also the era of the classic Doris Day/Rock Hudson movies, of which Move Over Darling is a clear reference point.

Pre-Beatles sixties was an interesting period in pop music. A lot of people presumed that rock and roll was a fad that had passed. The Twist was seen as a separate entity - not even really rock music. Calypso was going to sweep the nation! And it was the heydey of girl groups and teen idols.

The glamour of air travel was probably at its zenith in the early sixties too. The movie The Apartment is also key to the corporate culture.

Random Cheever quote describing the early sixties: "...the last generation of chainsmokers who woke the world every morning with their coughing."

Let's review names!

Anita is Peggy's resentful sister.

Paul is the bearded copywriter with the black girlfriend.

Ken is the blonde copywriter who has successfully published short stories.

Harry is the married and bespectacled copywriter who is now head of Television.

Paul = beardie.
Ken = blondie.
Harry = foureyes.

Colin Hanks = Father Gill.

Oh, that's where I know him from. D'oh!

We're watching Catch Me If You Can tonight and it's set in the same era. It's making me run a mental list of early sixties touchpoints for the show.

How was it? It's one of those I've been meaning to watch for ages.

How was it? It's one of those I've been meaning to watch for ages.

Loved it. Loved. It. It was one of the most completely, utterly satisfying movies I've seen in ages. Good writing, stellar performances (I can't think the last time I saw Tom Hanks and completely forgot he was Tom Hanks), pretty to look at, so many beautifully composed shots (and always in service to the story, not just Look how pretty we can make this! but pretty with a point), comic and sad and totally engrossing, and who doesn't love a great con artist story?

Hec and I backtracked to rewatch probably four or five different con scenes just to savor Frank Abagnale's total balls-out audacity; we'd lunge for the remote and say "We HAVE to see that again" and cackle like maniacs.

It's no Giant Cinematic Event Fraught With Meaning For The Ages, just a totally engaging unbelievable true-story popcorn movie, but it's definitely the popcorn movie that makes other popcorn movies feel sad and small and inadequate. It may possibly have edged Midnight Run out as my popcorn-movie gold standard.