Was Don Draper Mumbling More Than Usual This Week?

Did anyone else notice who directed this week's episode ("Hands and Knees") of Mad Men? Right, probably not. So it's a good thing God invented SMC.

The answer, as you will know in mere milliseconds, is Humpday director Lynn Shelton. I'd like to get all pompous with a discourse about how her indie aesthetic captured the transitional malaise of the the mid-60s landscape, but I didn't notice any difference. It's TV and all the episodes are supposed to look the same, like one long movie. Not being an industry insider, I can only guess that she would have been back filming Mark Duplass's ass pretty quickly if she whipped out the hand-held.  Still a good opportunity and welcome exposure.

While we're here, I think Mad Men is edging closer and closer to overtaking The Wire for best show ever status. It's not really fair to consider an active show since so much depends on the series wrap-up, but it's worth keeping an eye on.

Playlist: Humpday

If you've been an SMC fan from the jump, you probably know that our very own Vin has been waiting patiently aboard the Duplass Brothers bandwagon. I'm not going to say he discovered them--he might, but I'm not going to because, one, it's not true, and two, his head doesn't need to get any bigger after his stunning win at the company potato sack race...really, who has their own custom-made potato sack?--I have no idea what I was saying.

Anyway, I loved Humpday. While not made by the Duplasses, it stars Mark and looks like it was filmed on the same roll as The Puffy Chair. Quick recap that doesn't do it justice: married guy gets a visit from his old free spirit college roommate and one thing leads to another and he agrees to do an "art porn" project where the two of them have sex. The key to it working is that it is handled without the zany theatrics that a major studio would have dictated for, let's say, an Aston Kutcher-Dane Cook version (god, that was even painful to write). It's real and uncomfortable and really uncomfortable.

The three main actors carry the film and give it heart and a center: Alycia Delmore as the wife trying to come to terms with the ridiculousness of it all, Joshua Leonard--finally out of the Blair Witch woods--as the friend, and the aforementioned Mark Duplass as the average guy who is missing "something" from his seemingly all-together life. Or at least thinks he is. Duplass is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors for his lo-fi charm that makes you feel like he is living in his character.

And then there's the final scene. Have you seen it? What did you think?

SMC BONUS: During the bonding scene between Delmore and Leonard, they knock back a bottle of Bowmore Single Malt. Which was probably the film's craft services budget right there.