"When is everything going to get back to normal?"
Just how unique are we? Are we ever, in a sense, irreplaceable, or is our position in this world, and the lives of those around us, so tenuous that we're able to be replaced the very moment someone new and shiner appears on the scene?
There's an irresistible sense of replacement hovering over the action of the latest episode of AMC's Mad Men ("Tea Leaves"), written by Erin Levy and Matthew Weiner and directed by Jon Hamm, which served to not only fill the audience in on just what happened during the between-seasons gap to Betty Francis (January Jones), but connected her plight to something deeper and more poignant. Just as the old guard must give way to the new guard, progress and change are inexorable twin spectres in the lives of all of us.
Standing on the precipice of incalculable change ahead, there's a sense of both doom and possibility, that our lives--even in the face of such monumental life-and-death stakes--are forever changing. You can either plant your feet and get left behind or move with the changing tide.
It's through this perspective that we see several sets of pairings emerge over the course of "Tea Leaves," the title of which makes an unmistakable emphasis on the unknown, unseeable future. (Even an alleged fortuneteller, sifting through the tea leaves left behind by Betty, can't predict just what will happen to the unhappy housewife.) Just as Megan (Jessica Paré) has supplanted Betty in Don's...
Read the full article at Televisionary (http://www.televisionarytv.com).![]()
Read the full article at Televisionary (http://www.televisionarytv.com).
