"Babylon"

Usually the pit of winter, which is now, only features unrelenting cold. Today was bonus miserable: No colder than freezing, but wind and drizzle.

Ran across something unusual the other day -- an intelligent comment in the text comments section of YouTube. Posted by one castaway50, it's under a clip of the last two minutes of the sixth episode of the first season of Mad Men, "Babylon."

Not too much background is necessary to appreciate the clip, or the comment, but it's useful to know that the characters at the very end are Roger, a senior partner at the ad agency, and Joan, the office manager there, who are having an affair. They dress and emerge separately from the site of their latest rendezvous, and stand apart as if they were strangers.

"The final shot of Roger and Joan on the street is absolutely gorgeous -- like an Edward Hopper painting," notes castaway50. "[A]nd the fact that the street is sloped in Roger's direction can't be a coincidence."

castaway50 is on to something. Here's the clip. And here's some Edward Hopper. The comparison is apt, whether that was the conscious intentional of the director or not. I wouldn't have thought of it without reading the comment.