"innocent spying"…. bit of an oxymoron

Preach. I've been watching a number of things merely for his sake and I don't regret it, since I usually find something to like about his performance. I just wish he'd be in something truly worthy of him more often. The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby seems to be getting good reviews though, so I'm looking forward to…

Oh, absolutely, it can have its charms. But something like Mad Men doesn't have much in the way of plot either and still manages to have consistent character development.

When I'm watching the shit women have to put up with in a period drama like Mad Men, my main takeaway is really not so much a warm fuzzy feeling that things are so much better now, but rather a sinking feeling that so much of this feels suspiciously familiar. But yes, the fact that things _are_ better now to at least…

After the promising start with Proteus, I was a bit disappointed that they're now back to playing it comparatively straight, although I found the choice to make the creature do double duty as the Phantom opera rather inspired. Just like the vampires are apparently doing double duty as mummies, complete with ancient…

Yeah, it really makes you think it might have some kind of plot with various narrative strands actually being tied together at some point.

It just works. He reminds me a bit of Lex Barker, who played Tarzan and Old Shatterhand in the Karl May "westerns" of my childhood. And he also played the hero in a German horror movie of the 60ties based on Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum, which was one of the first horror movies I watched and which apparently left…

He's obviously beautiful, but in way (ie. blatantly, blandly) that's fairly easy too resist in his usual shlock. (Granted, I'm only really familiar with Pearl Habor, where he outsquarejawed and outblanded even Ben Affleck, and the Virgin Suicides, where he was appropriately dreamy however.)

Nah, it was a bit too run-off-the-mill for that. Caliban eviscerating poor Proteus properly got to me in the last episode, but everything that followed pretty much just hit the expected beats. Murphy at his best would be more batshit.

It's nice to imagine, but prepare to be disappointed. The showrunner also worked on the Sopranos, and that ending…… well, it was somewhat controversial at the time. (I also suspect that Don himself might have a slightly more complicated idea of happiness. But I defintely do want to seem him develop a stronger…

Cars are a recurring motif in the show, as are cigarettes and airlines. I wouldn't say the show is centered around cars. And "selling people their dreams by selling them their dream cars" doesn't sound like a particularly rewarding creative challenge to me. It's endless variations on essentially the same pitch - I…

Berlin Wall coming down was pretty great in my book. I also quite liked "First Black President of the United States" - my mom and I cried, and we aren't Americans. Didn't think you had it in you, never so glad to be disproven. Of course I realize that there are a lot of legit complaints about his track record so far,…

That's the one thing Mad Men could do to ruin it for me.

It's interesting that you would frame this as Don giving up love in favour of control, when I viewed his choice in this episode as pretty much the opposite. He sacrifices his shares/his controlling interest in the company to defeat Cutler for the love of his colleagues who would all be screwed over by Cutler's vision.…

Which could be just because he was the same age as her own and therefore triggered painful associations.

And don't think that sexually assertive automatically translates to indiscriminate. Even Don, who _is_ actually promiscuous, isn't necessarily indiscriminate. We've seen him turn down a number of opportunities. He's not unselective. I'm surprised that the dictionary definition would conflate these things.

Alternatively (because I'm in a mushy mood): The alpha-male jock was what her father pretended to be/is often mistaken for by people who fundamentally don't get him (Cutler, Betty), the sensitive soul is what he truly is. She's rejecting the pose for the truth. (She's also rejecting the values of her mother, who was…

Noble or not, it's his craft and he always took some pride in it. Don never necessarily cared about the quality of the prodict he was selling, but he definitely cared about the quality of his pitch.

That's a cute idea for fanfiction, but not a particularly plausible direction for the show.

She's a single mom of modest origins who has only recently made it into a more plumly rewarded position and hasn't had the same opportunity as the other characters to accumulate capital.