Morning Snip:
Happening at Once

David Hare on Mad Men. (Guardian)

It needs courage to withhold, and withholding is what this series is all about. Feature films in the English language seem to obsess more and more on only one thing at a time – they concentrate on their given subject with a kind of furious, exhausting dullness. But in Mad Men, nothing is dwelt on very long and, as in life, lots of things happen at once. It’s entirely typical of Matthew Weiner’s complicating techniques that when at the climax of three series, Don Draper drives home to find that his wife Betty has finally opened his desk drawer and come upon evidence of his previous self, he meanwhile has another woman waiting for him in the car outside. Even when facing the crisis of his life, our hero’s mind can’t help, partly at least, being on something else.