SPOILERS FROM LAST NIGHT'S EPISODE FOLLOW:
"Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner was nervous about TV critics revealing too much when we chatted at an AMC cocktail reception earlier this month. He reportedly asked one critic not to reveal what year the new season of "Mad Men" is set in, which seems ludicrous. It's not like the show time hopped to 1980; the third season premiere takes place just a few months after the second season finale. What surprise does it give away to say Betty is still pregnant, as I did in yesterday's TV Week review?
But Weiner's other concerns about plot revelations were warranted, especially any relating to how Don learns that Salvatore (Bryan Batt, left) was intimate with a hotel bellman.
"All viewers want to know is, is Don going to cheat? That's the story they should be paying attention to," Weiner said. "The other part of it is, Don's not in trouble walking out of that hotel. He's got a naked stewardess in a raincoat and he's like, what? What do you expect, I'm Don!"
Weiner said the most important theme from the episode is the notion of being stripped down.
"I don't know if people are going to ge this, but for me, it really is Dick Whitman's birthday and that's why Don is remembering his," Weiner said. "Him in his bare feet, there is the story that there is this man underneath all this and he's trying not to be arrogant about what he is but he is who he is and everything else on top doesn't go with it. When you see that origin as a story and see how much shame there is under that, hopefully that fits the other story as well. I think he's ashamed of who he is."
Weiner said he didn't think Don was being judgmental with Salvatore in the post-revelation airplane scene, just offering advice: Keep it to yourself.
As for Don's decision to cheat on Betty after all the drama of last season, Weiner offered this explanation: "He says to her why: It's his birthday. It really is and nobody knows it. There's a hole in the guy that he's trying to fill. Midge said to him in the first season, 'You come down here and you change. I don't know what it is but I'm your medicine.'"
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CBS's "Three Rivers" was back in Pittsburgh to film the first scene of its new opening episode yesterday, a day earlier than planned. It's not at all unusual for production schedules to change. Plans to shoot a scene with series stars Alex O'Loughlin and Kate Moennig on the Duquesne Incline observation deck were scrapped. O'Loughlin was the only series regular in town for the shoot at Bigbee Field in Mt. Washington/Allentown. A second unit crew also filmed shots of the city and aerial views of an ambulance driving through the streets. I'll have more on the location shoot, including photos, in tomorrow's blog entry. Check out PG photographer Bob Donaldson's photos on the Local News section front in today's PG.
Posted
Aug 17 2009, 12:01 AM
by
Rob Owen