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Recap

Recap, Dark Matter, S1 E2: Fight or Flight?

When the crew of the Raza makes a plan, they don’t let any space dust gather under their feet. Which is good, since the Multi-corps descend on the miners’ neck of the woods, tipped off that the Raza hasn’t done what they were apparently sent to do. In episode 2 of Dark Matter, the crew of the Raza grapple with questions of identity and purpose – and do a lot of shooting. The reveal of their (alleged) criminal pasts has shaken the crew. One, aka Jace, and Two, who doesn’t want ot be called Portia, are distraught; Three, aka Marcus, […]

Dark Matter cast, Syfy
Recap

Dark Matter, Series Premiere Recap

  A ship drifts, directionless, in space. Inside, alarms sound, lights flash, showers of sparks rain from panels into an empty corridor. The onboard computer announces that life support is at 15 percent, and still we haven’t seen a soul. Until a door opens on One (Mark Bendavid), who steps out of a stasis pod looking confused and runs to the ship’s bridge. He’s soon joined by Two (Melissa O’Neil), who attacks him, takes over the console and restores life support systems. “What was that for?” One asks. “You were in the way,” says Two in the series premiere of Dark […]

Don Draper in Mad Men series finale
Recap

Mad Men series finale recap: A perfect ending?

Mad Men series finale recap Season 7, Episode 14 (original air date May 17, 2015) It took just over an hour, but Matt Weiner put Mad Men to bed with a flourish, and the endings are more hopeful than we had any reason to expect when “Person to Person” begins with Don doing a speed test in a 1970 Chevelle on the Utah salt flats. Echoes of Don’s past reverberate through the episode — his post-Korean War job as a car salesman, his lack of scruples with women, his identity as Dick Whitman, his moral reckoning with the man whose […]

Mad Men Episode 13 Betty Draper Francis
Drama

Mad Men recap Season 7 Episode 13 – Everyday, the end’s a-getting closer

Mad Men Recap Season 7 Episode 13 (Original airdate Sunday, May 10): “The road the real hobo follows is never ending. It is always heading into the sunset of promise,” says the author of The Milk and Honey Route, a 1930s handbook for hobos — also the title of the penultimate Mad Men episode. “You follow on hopefully from one bend in the road, until in the end you step off a cliff.” Which brings us to Don, waking up alone in a Kansas motel and discussing his proposed route toward the Grand Canyon on the phone with Sally Don’s […]

Drama

Mad Men Season 7 Episode 12 recap: Don is floating in a most peculiar way

Don’s new apartment is almost ready. If he’ll just choose paint, he could move in next week. Despite Meredith’s efforts to ground Don, we know he’ll never live there. And though Jim Hobart and Ferg make him say it – “I’m Don Draper from McCann Erickson” – we know he never will be. In this lyrical, reference-laden episode called “Lost Horizon,” Shangri-La is lost to Draper and company. Can Don find it again? Will he even try? McCann is mission control, Harry informs Roger as the computer is wheeled out of SCP’s rapidly emptying offices: statisticians, programmers, 15 people just […]

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Drama

Mad Men recap Season 7 Episode 11 – There’s No Time, No Life

Mad Men recap Season 7, Episode 11 “Time & Life” (original airdate April 26, 2015): McCann Erickson has finally done the dirty deed, pulling the plug on SCP without notice – except the eviction notice on their two floors of the Time Life building, that is. Convinced this is a mistake, Roger, with Joan eavesdropping, calls Ferg and discover’s it’s not. “I think you’ll see it’s all good news,” Ferg says. Roger is crushed, Joan stoic, as they inform their fellow partners. Though the McCann coup de grace is supposed to remain secret, the entire office eventually gets wind of […]

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Drama

Recap of Mad Men Season 7 Episode 10 – “The Forecast” calls for diminished expectations

Recap of Mad Men Season 7 Episode 10, “The Forecast” (original air date April 19, 2015): When Roger assigns Don the task of writing a vision statement on the future of Sterling Cooper for Roger to deliver at an upcoming retreat with other division presidents of McCann, we learn the theme of “The Forecast”: What’s your vision of the future? Reasonable hopes and dreams, Roger advises: “It doesn’t have to be science fiction.” Joan’s in Los Angeles. Why? No matter — it’s all just an excuse for Joan to meet Mr. Too Convenient to Be True, who walks into the […]

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Drama

Mad Men recap: “You’re nothing but a liar. An aging, sloppy, selfish liar.” Ouch!

Mad Men recap, Season 7, Episode 9 “New Business” (original air date April 12, 2015) Mad Men Episode 9 New Business opens with a Don and Betty 2.0 moment — he’s in the Francis kitchen making milkshakes for their sons when she returns late from a function (some distant Rockefeller) and they discuss her evening. She’s enrolling at a university in fall, pursuing a master’s in psychology. “I know it’s beyond your experience, but people love to talk to me. They seek me out to share their confidences.” Don jokes that it should be fascinating for everyone involved, and they […]

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Drama

Mad Men Season 7 Episode 8 recap: “Severance”

The second half of Mad Men’s final season begins with a dark gem of an episode, framed by Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?” In case you’re not yet sure where this ride is taking us, Ms. Lee says, “I stood there shivering in my pajamas and watched the whole world go up in flames/And when it was over, I said to myself/‘Is that all there is to a fire?’” It’s April 1970, and Don is restored to his corner office; with him, an ingenue wearing not much more than a $15K chinchilla coat. “You’re not supposed to talk. […]