Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

Don's fever dream was unnecessary imo. The tension of will he/won't he has been neutered by being answered (he will, apparently).

Agree that Henry's mother was a guilty pleasure this week.

Also, WTG Joan!

New guy reminds me of Chachi...of Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi.

omg yes

yah, fever dream was that bullshit

Ken Cosgrove's "you almost got fired right then" was awesome.

Thought it was just too gratuitous. Maybe it will become something poignant later.

New guy reminds me of Chachi...of Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi.

YES! was going to point this out last week but forgot. especially in profile.

http://gif.mocksession.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/PEGGY-COUNTING-MONEY.gif

Peggy has the best gifs this season.

(and pretty much every season)

I loved this episode. I thought the fever dream worked okay since it was telegraphed pretty hard. I don't think it was much as a "will he/won't he" thing as a weird way of looking at how Don feels baout things in his new marriage and whatnot.

Sally Draper is the best. Peggy shouldn't get so drunk, but maybe she doesn't have much more tact when she's sober tbh. She's definitely a better negotiator than Harry Crane though.

Epic lols at Roger sneaking through the office behind Pete as Pink Panther-like music played.

If Peggy had just grabbed her purse from the coffee table in one fluid motion without stopping to think "OMG RACIST BEHAVIOR" it would've been no big thing. I'd take my wallet into my own room no matter who was staying over. It was nice of Dawn to leave a thank you note, though.

peggy-roger scene was probably the funniest thing in the history of the show. or maybe i'm just mad tired, i dunno. sally and henry's mother also a great duo.

my take on don somewhat confirmed by this episode

and yeah, peggy and roger bartering was one my favorite moments in the show's history. moss really on top of her character there.

nice character bit: michael's moral revulsion when others found the murders exciting didn't prevent him from exploiting that excitement in his "dark" cinderella pitch. also intrigued by the creepy parallels between that pitch and the story of the speck murders as told to sally by betty's mother in law. both narratives revolved for a moment around the possibility of a stranger's handsomeness, though to very different ends. tied together in the middle by don's dream.

god i had forgotten about those murders in chicago, christ. my mom says that was really, really upsetting to her.

felt like this was one of the better episodes of this show.

d'you guys take the 1st half of the woman in yellow's visit as real or dreamed? i like to think it was dreamed and in don's subconscious it's important to him that she'd point out that he was a good interior decorator

100% dream when she shows up at the apartment imo.

Yes, I doubt the elevator lady felt compelled to track down and then try to have sex with the sweaty coughing mess she saw in the elevator.

also if she hadn't seen him for six years she had fuck-all chance of finding where he lives now

I'd take my wallet into my own room no matter who was staying over.

otm, esp as she's used to living with a flatmate. this was v unfair to Peggy imo

</capnsaveapeggy>

thought the purse thing was unsubtle and lame, right up to I LEFT YOU A NOTE ON YOUR PURSE YOU SECRET RACIST

I'm glad now that Greg didn't get killed in Vietnam because seeing him get told off and thrown out of the house was way more satisfying.

Tminus how many episodes until Peggy sleeps with Ginsberg

He'll still get killed in Vietnam.

IMO, the purse thing wasnt to show Peggy's secret racism but more to show that race/racism as a social reality.

I thought it was to show peggy as trying too hard, because lonely.

but I mean it was a great mad men moment because awkward and not too outrageously contrived and v. much of the time with a whole bunch of context and meaning and interpretation captured basically by deft editing and not much else.

also still LOVE the mystery date jingle

wait that was madchen amick

thought Henry's mother's knife underscored the "I AM SCARRING YOU, BETTY DRAPER" a bit too heavily but man those scenes were creepy/lol

seconal, passed out under the couch omg

er SALLY Draper

Giving Sally a downer a week after recommending Betty start taking uppers!

peggy's purse faux pas was the capper on a kind of overall misfire on her part -- trying to reach out but really making everything about herself. I love glimpses into unguarded peggy's mind, but dawn was clearly hesitant to trust her and peggy was kind of bulldozing over her the whole conversation. which is unflattering to peggy but a totally worthwhile thing to highlight imo, the different levels of privilege occurring within SCDP itself.

Like we know we can trust Peggy, but her boozy "don't worry about it" attitude when Dawn asks her not to tell Don...it wasn't convincing at all.

by my count Roger's tally for bribing people in the office into doing things for him is up to $1410 so far this season

Yeah, kinda hoping this becomes a running gag.

trying to reach out but really making everything about herself

yeah def. and projecting her own career path/hopes and dreams onto Dawn in a way that was unintentionally really condescending. thinking that every secretary secretly wants to be a copywriter, etc

thought it was pretty well done the way the "white people problems" media anxiety over the student nurse murders overshadowed the riots. bumping it off the cover of Life magazine and Peggy saying "but you're not a nurse" ... oh.

the Don dream kinda ruined the episode for me tbh. just lame.

by my count Roger's tally for bribing people in the office into doing things for him is up to $1410 so far this season

yeah, loved this. getting expensive for roger to get his way.

I didn't think the Don-dream thing was so bad but the whole "sick fever dream of cheating/murder" was a total Sopranos rehash

loved the Peggy and Dawn scenes, so uncomfortable. wondering if Dawn is gonna get some actual background/characterization at some point

$1410 so far this season

Isn't that about $7-8,000 in 2012 dollars?

but the whole "sick fever dream of cheating/murder" was a total Sopranos rehash

well yeah. that's why it sucked. sort of been done to death.

the "I am so irresistable, even when totally sick" thing telegraphed it a bit

nice character bit: michael's moral revulsion when others found the murders exciting didn't prevent him from exploiting that excitement in his "dark" cinderella pitch.

that was pretty well done.

the attempts to allude to the murders and make it a theme through the rest of the episode, I didn't think it really added up to anything. "she escaped by hiding under the bed" --> Sally sleeps under the couch, Don stuffs a corpse under his bed

that's the ongoing "all this stuff means something; see the connections?" show-and-don't-go madmen trademark

because I still envision a horrible future for Sally, that shot where she looks at the bottle of pills felt like it should have been underscored with a DUN-DUN-DUNNNN musical sting.

Anyone wanna give a wiki link to the murders? I don't know much about American history of nurse killers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Speck