On the Next Mad Men: otnmm

April 16, 2012

January 12, 2011

October 25, 2010

I Love It!

From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some transatlantic giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe and Asia could not, by force, take a drink from the Ohio River or set a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever, or die by suicide.

(Abraham Lincoln, address to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, IL, January, 1838)

Let's get right into it, shall we? In case you missed Saturday Night Live this past weekend, during the Weekend Update segment funny-man/writer/comedian, John Mulaney, was introduced once again by -man, Seth Meyers. Mulaney writes for the show and is a legitimately funny person and someone I respect. He's come out in the past before during Weekend Update with commentary on things that he likes that are happening in the world. It's a funny segment and it was funny again this week. You can go here and watch it (it's only a couple minutes long).

If you can't spare 2+ minutes of your life then I suggest that you at least skip ahead to the 2:10 mark in the video to watch something that might seem familiar if you've ever visited this site before.

That's right, folks - it appears that John Mulaney and the fine folks at SNL have ripped me off. In a way, I guess they have by just addressing the absurdity of the Mad Men previews in the first place, but they really haven't ripped me off at all. It's not like what I've been doing here has been featured on any significant internet websites like this one, this one, or even this one (which only had 18,000 views). Plus, what Mulaney did was only explain the joke that I implied and took one step further. To be fair, my whole On the Next Mad Men thing was a really specific joke in the first place (that I'm still shocked that people outside of my friends even saw). Here were the things you have to know in order to understand my previews:

1. You have to know that Mad Men is an award winning, critically acclaimed, pop-culture juggernaut on AMC (yet its premiere had only a third of the viewers of Jersey Shore's premiere)

2. You have to actually watch Mad Men episodes.

3. You have to stick around to the end of the episode to see the preview for the next episode.

4. You have to realize how ridiculously they cut those previews in order to make it look like something major and dramatic will happen in the next episode, when really Don Draper just wants you to "shut the door."

5. You have to have seen the episodes of the various programs that I use to parody the Mad Men trailers.

That's pretty specific, huh?

Maybe if John Mulaney was around a couple months ago to explain why my videos were so funny, we'd never be in the position that we're in right now. Though if that happened, I probably would've never made the previews at all because he went there first.

So, really, there's no reason to be mad at all. I guess I should feel honored that someone else out there who is funny saw the same absurdity and hilarity that I did and talked about it live on television (and got laughs). Saturday Night Live (no matter how the quality has fluctuated over the years) is a comedy institution that I've spent most of my life watching and still sometimes enjoy. There are many reasons to be angry with the show and what it's become, but this isn't one of them. Still, though, it doesn't mean that I can't have a little fun at their expense: