Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

that episode (The Gold Violin) was pretty much the most screen-time Ken ever had in the series and it was in, what, the first season...?

season 2 apparently

I think it sort of comes down to the series/MW not having as much interest in Ken precisely because Ken is a guy without any super-crushing issues.

yeah - the writer-thing was a characteristic but it didn't generate any kind of conflict. now Ken's being set up as a guy who's a bit torn between work and his desire for a personal life outside the office

Still weirding me out though that instead of descending further into Roger-like decrepitude Don may have actually kind of sort of started figuring out what makes him happy. WTF mad men, what happened to the misery and squalor

Pete crying in the elevator wasn't enough for you?

Don should've peed on him

lol

this episode was amazing btw

amazed that anyone finds anything to like in pete, other than the skill with which he is made to seem completely insufferable and horrid

"i thought we were supposed to be friends"

FUCK YOU

The best thing about Pete is that he can make you turn your feelings about him right around on a dime.

which this episode did in spades

yeah - the writer-thing was a characteristic but it didn't generate any kind of conflict. now Ken's being set up as a guy who's a bit torn between work and his desire for a personal life outside the office

― Jilly Boel and the Eltones

ken is a fairly minor character and mainly operates as a foil to pete campbell. first season they're usually together, do the same job, and both equally obnoxious. ken however shows some growth, and generally is like pete campbell but with more substance and less connivance. when it was originally revealed he was a writer its main consequence was pete's pathetic attempt to compete with him. they then are competing again as joint accounts directors, tho pete takes it a lot more seriously than ken.

ken is also loathe to use family connections, while pete owes his job to his family connections, and happily exploits his father-in-law as well.

now they've brought his writing up again, and again it shows him as different from pete. pete coming home from the whorehouse to the darkened house. ken sitting in the bright cosy room with his wife asleep by his side writing a story (about pete). i think ken's writing may come up again in the show, but i don't think it will be a major plot point.

agree in general that the whole high school girl soliloquoy was stiffer than it should have been. otoh I have literally had teenage girls ask the "doesn't it feel like time is speeding up?" question so I dunno... also seemed to call back to Don's conversation with the girls at the Rolling Stones show.

xp

Ken will probably end up having authored the book this whole show is based on.

The best thing about Pete is that he can make you turn your feelings about him right around on a dime.

see, i don't get that. he's always been exactly the same arrogant, thankless, self-aggrandizing scumbag. this episode just underlined it.

well at least he's not a racist

talking about don's conversation with the girls at the stones show. is it just me or is that going to come up again? he gave the girl his business card, she was going to go and try and get them in using it, but she never came back. the client, heinz, had said his daughter was crazy for the stones. no, as i say that that sounds too fucking stupid and coincidental for them to run with.

Don gives out lots of business cards

yeah i know i already feel dumb.

still waiting for that epileptic drifter dude from S3 to come back somehow

well at least he's not a racist

lol

For some reason it felt like there were a lot more stylized transitions in this episode.

Awesome ep, that whole fight scene was hall of fame, also everything Roger said.

Can't work out who I felt more sorry for, Ken or Laine. But yeah Jim otm about Ken as foil for Pete.

What was Ken and Peggy's pact again?

not to bring in any business without the other

Ah yeah from when they landed the hosiery manufacturer client together, ty

Awesome episode. The post-fight makeup job was horrendous tho.

mad fun

"He thinks you're a homo!"

^^^I totally missed the clues leading up to Pete delivering that line

I think it was because Lane was asking such intimate questions at their diner, and also that he didn't try to get the Jaguar guy laid.

Laine also dropped the fact that he complained about his wife to the jaguar guy

fun episode

I enjoyed it.

I was growing tired of Don's predictable nature in past seasons so I like seeing this change in him. At the same time I like seeing other characters become a bit darker. See other people wreck for a change.

"doesn't it feel like time is speeding up?"

technically as we get older it DOES actually feel like time is speeding up because our sense of time/memory is tracked to novelty and affective arousal (=strong emotions) and those things are often fewer and farther between as we get older. but i wouldn't expect a teenager of all people to notice this yet.

also it's kind of incredible trolling by weiner that the one major dyed-in-the-wool liberal on the show (pete) is also one of the most personally despicable.

pete's probably the only partner that votes democratic--don, roger, and cooper have all talked conspiratorily about how they wish nixon would come back etc. who knows re. layne.

like how sometimes we catch the tail end of a political conversation. the show has characters talking politics only sparingly, which i guess is fair because if they made people's attitudes toward e.g. LBJ a major plot point we'd all be complaining about how on-the-nose it all was.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GDEgmGnOSVk/Tdgn_4rFy0I/AAAAAAAAAB0/ZDJ1rrD6iAw/s1600/Lbj.jpg

also it's kind of incredible trolling by weiner that the one major dyed-in-the-wool liberal on the show (pete) is also one of the most personally despicable.

http://images.politico.com/global/news/090927_lbj_ap_297.jpg

As a Democrat and a Texan, I still find that I have some mixed feelings about LBJ. I have even heard older, staunch Democrats being very vocal in their dislike for him.

don't see pete's liberalism/scumbagginess as trolling. there are plenty of other presumably liberaly-leaning characters on the show. the creative types, perhaps peggy, etc. pete's just pete.

make that "liberal-leaning"

it's trolling insofar as pete is potentially a figure of audience-identitication but they go to considerable lengths to undermine that.

(i mean i imagine the core mad men audience to be urban liberals, no?)

don't see pete's liberalism/scumbagginess as trolling. there are plenty of other presumably liberaly-leaning characters on the show. the creative types, perhaps peggy, etc. pete's just pete.

― BEMORE SUPER FABBY (contenderizer), Monday, April 16, 2012 7:02 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

other than the pipe-smoking guy in the 1st season, and some minor characters, i don't think anyone's been cast consistently as a "liberal" as much as pete. peggy is obviously more "open minded" than most but i don't think he's voiced much in the way of explicit political opinions (unless we want to project her boyfriend's radical politics onto her).

SHE'S voiced...

i identify with peggy and joan more than any of the leading men on the show. and with the second-string guys like harry and ken. fact that don isn't a liberal isn't what prevents me from identifying with him.

i guess in joan's case, it's more sympathize than identify