Saturday, April 11, 2015

"REVERSE ENGINEERING" ... (as it were)



"REVERSE ENGINEERING" ... 
 (as it were)




If I'm somewhat ahead of myself in concluding that I've successfully disentangled the seemingly incoherent and ostensibly disjointed story line(s) that resounded loudly throughout last Sunday night's opener of MadMen (the 1st episode appropriately dubbed "Severance" ), it won't be exceptionally long before proof of such speculation is within reach ... will it? That said, I may still have to wait until the very concluding chapter of this rough and tumble ad agency-drama makes its final debut before definitive confirmation a propos my suspicions [about the hidden agendas of Series 7/2015; episode 1] ultimately surfaces. What's more, the last installment of AMC's MadMen might even prove my current hypothesis dead wrong!  Even so, I still believe that well-honed, razor-sharp facets of "reverse engineering" were steadily unfolding "bit by bit" almost the whole time, while thousands watched this hour-long presentation during the late-night interlude of Easter Sunday. I also presume that all figurative loose ends will eventually fall perfectly, flawlessly and entirely into place once we look back from a far more "seasoned" vantage point... i.e., several months from now. Until then, however, what is one to make of the cryptic references, confusing turn of events, and (frankly) "all over the damn place" rhetoric that played across our T.V. screens much like wickedly untamed tresses, several days ago?





   IT HAS TO BE REVERSE 

ENGINEERING AT PLAY!







It's reverse engineering of sorts, I do suspect; in this particular case, a form of roguish fore-shadowing, one wholly sodden with harbingers of every variety and nuance frisking about. Still, I wonder, could the implicit metaphors associated with the connotative irrevocability of SEVERANCE rise up "phoenix-esque" in this series' final chapter; i.e., say, sometime around mid-May? Is Rachel Katz nee Menken vaguely emblematic of the biblical Lazarus? Was the intro episode of season 7-part II surreptitiously crafting a virtual scaffold for a tacit, conciliatory innuendo, one insinuating that 'the first shall be last, and the last shall be first'? Pursuant to the latter, simply look no further than Kenny Cosgrove. And, before I finish this line of inquiry,one synapse of mine makes a formal last request, "IS THAT [really] ALL THERE IS"?






These were just some of the questions swirling about my brain's gentle limbic folds following last Sunday's presentation, even as the  season opener appeared a mere introduction to what lay ahead by way of this acclaimed dramatic series' upcoming  sequences. Many a pundit has both acknowledged and frustratingly accepted that the show's creator, Matt Weiner, is a cipher with a quiver of elite secrets. Storylines are held in strict abeyance, temporarily suspended in the hermetically-sealed confines of Mr. Weiner's secure, but all the same "obscure", mental safe. He plays around with our angst and pre-conceived perceptions much like pulp fiction. That said, I'm sticking with my "reverse engineering" theory. Though, who in fact knows? There are 6 episodes in this final series still on the horizon:

    If I'm wrong, I'm wrong!