Or when Shatner did that easily parodied Nightmare at 20000 feet episode? :)

I liked the one he did with the fortune telling machine in the diner (Nick of Time) better.

I watching Mad Men, series 1, episode 1 last night. Kristen Schaal who played Mel in Flight of the Concords played the part of a telephone operator for the agency.

Really? You watching Mad Men? Does you liken it?

Srsly,
Mel was great in Flight. That was an excellent show. My kids were calling themselves Rhymenocerous and Hiphopopottamus for a while.

I can't watch Mad Men at all because that was my dad's profession through the 60's and 70's. It's really, really too close to home.

So far, I'm only up to episode 3 and the copy I've got is a dodgy pirated one, so the sound quality isn't always the best. Can I ask which bit of it specifically is too close to home? Draper and the other executive's lifestyles/attitudes/all of the above? If the attitudes displayed by the women about the other women and also, the men's attitudes to women are close to what it was really like at that time (and I'm guessing they are from your post), then I am thanking Germaine Greer and her generation.

Hard to put my finger on it exactly. My dad, who apparently was the quintessential party animal, told me he finally got out of the business because he saw too many of his friends die of cirrhosis of the liver.

Typically, accounts came and went based on how much of a good time you could show people and how much sunshine you could blow up their asses.

After he passed away, his sisters made a few cryptic remarks about how marriage and a family slowed him down a bit.

His charm and charisma went up to 11.

Part of what I find hard about the show is the moral/ethical darkness. I was too young (dob 1960) to really have much of an idea about what was happening, but for some reason, the show is too intense.

Maybe it's like thinking about your parents as real people who get drunk and have sex or whore around like the 20 somethings they were.

It's funny how every generation thinks they invented sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll.

After the war my dad went to NYU and lived in the village with beatniks and proto hippies. I can only imagine...

I've been watching Mad Men on Entertainment on Demand (free) and only missed the first couple episodes. I'm always late to the party for good shows.

I think Mad Men is one of the best shows EVER. I like it almost as much as Six Feet Under and that's saying a lot.

Oh, and Flo from Progressive Insurance plays a part on Mad Men. It took me a minute to place her when I saw her, but yep!

http://blogs.amctv.com/mad-men/talk/...he-progres.php

Oh, and Peggy Olsen is the bomb!

I'm still on Season 1. Last night I watched the episode where Draper's brother comes to the agency hoping to re-establish contact with his long lost brother and later Draper goes to his lodgings and pays him off so that he'll disappear. I found this much more disturbing than the multiple infidelities. Obviously, the makers of the show have not provided a lot of detail to keep people wondering about Draper's past so that they'll continue to keep watching.

To me the whole thing seems very foreign-both the time period and the world that it is set in.

In terms of finding movies/series difficult to watch, I found the Australian movie Little Fish (former drug addict tries to make good, but is drawn back in to contact with her previous lifestyle when an old boyfriend reappears) starring Cate Blanchett exceedingly disturbing as although it's not a world that I've ever inhabited, I imagine that it's not one that you have to try very hard to find.

Can we extend the game?

Which sets have you seen pop up in two or more movies/TV series?

Different Strokes, The Nanny and The Cosby Show all used the same set. The staircase, kitchen door, sofa and father's den all were in exactly the same place.

Also, putting my observation skills to excellent use, I've noticed that in a number of movies/series set in NY, the characters go and look at an apartment which is apparently in a much sort after apartment block on the top floor of one of the older NY apartment blocks. The windows are basically floor to ceiling and lead on to a balcony and the main room is very long. I think that they've used this same set on Sex and the City (first movie-the apartment that Big and Carried buy before they get married), Mad Men (the baby faced executive and his wife buy it even though it's above their budget as the wife has her heart set on it and he doesn't have the heart to tell her they can't afford it) and Did you hear about the Morgans (the apartment that the two characters move into after patching up their marriage and adopting a baby)?

Here's one I just found out today. Lumiere, the candelabra in Beauty and the Beast was voiced by non other than Jerry Orbach, the Law and Order guy.

Mrs. Z. and I also noticed Baker as a doctor in a Season 7 episode of House.

I'd forgotten about this thread. The actress who plays Peggy Olsen, a character on Mad Men, has a commercial about tylenol or some such pain relief. She looks younger than she does in Mad Men, and I don't know if that's just because they make her look older on MM or if it's just an older commercial that they revived because of her popularity from the show.