"Mad Men" Episode 4/28/13

Does anybody here watch this show? Tonight's episode was very moving. It centered around the assassination of Martin Luther King, and all the rioting/looting that went on in the black neighborhoods of New York and Washington.

In April of 1968, I was living in an integrated apartment complex surrounded by black neighborhoods on Chicago's South Side (my then husband was interning at the hospital across the street). I can clearly remember watching the continuous news coverage of his death on TV. But what I can't remember is whether there were riots in the area ... or whether we were afraid to go outdoors. I suspect there was trouble in the streets, but I just can't remember it. It's hard to believe it was 45 years ago.

I'm feeling very old tonight. My ex-husband (father of my kids) passed away last night. We'd been divorced for 40 years, but it still affected me.

I watch the show, although the most recent episode is still waiting for me on the DVR. The primary attraction for me -- apart from an uncanny replication of 1960s minutia -- is the unflinching depiction of life in America, as it unfolded and evolved in my lifetime. Without that, the show is little more than a primetime soap opera.

Although ... sometimes all I really want is the workplace intrigue. When I attended art school in the seventies in preparation for a career in advertising, Madison Avenue was my mythological Olympus. It's nice to pretend I now have a window into that world. The older I get, the easier it is to pretend.

I was an angry young man in 1968. I suspect this episode will rekindle some of that.

I'm sorry for your recent loss, Sue.

So sorry for your loss, Sue.

I was a senior nursing student in Memphis, living in the dorm when Dr. King was killed. I think we students were all pretty much asleep when the dorm mother came knocking on doors and telling us to get over to the hospital (connected by a sidewalk). Because of the 'rioting' (I never actually saw any) and/or just plain chaose, fear, etc. the night shift nurses couldn't get to work and we had to fill in. I was assigned to Labor and Delivery. We could see National Guard tanks rolling down Union Ave., a major thoroughfare in the city, from the hospital.

I don't doubt that the city had scenerios like on Mad Men last night, but I never actually saw any of that. Guess I was insulated living in the school dorm. For some reason I was suprised to see the reaction in cities other than Memphis...naive of me, I'm sure.

I love Mad Men though too young to remember the events of that decade. I love the Music, TV, Movies and Culture of the 1960's. Mad Men's attention to details of the era is amazing. I sometimes feel I was born a generation too late. I would have loved to grown up in the midst of Beatlemania.

Mad Men's handling of Dr King's assassination as an earlier season's episode on the loss of JFK made me feel at least a little what life must have been like in that incredible decade. My Condolences Sue.