Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

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

i KNOW that... i'm just saying that it would have been easy to make this urbanite liberal character the focus of audience identification, and they very self-consiously made him a total leper

never mind

As a Democrat and a Texan, I still find that I have some mixed feelings about LBJ.

Most of us liberals do! It'll never get resolved.

yeah, no, it's cool. figure that michael ginsberg will likely be a liberal.

Weird to divvy up the characters based on who they'd vote for! I feel, somehow, that Weiner is planting references to Rep/Dem affiliation deliberately as red herrings.

Kinsey was probably the biggest liberal on the show. And the biggest douche.

no way was he the _biggest_ douche.

I felt like a bunch of characters had good paths through the episode. Don goes from skeptical to the virtual hero of the party to that shit-eating grin hookup in the car and later the classic, "I grew up in a place like this, but we called it a whorehouse."

contenderizer OTM, this pete thing is key in making the show less and less believable. don's the only one who has anything to fear from him iirc but i can't swallow the other characters reactions to him. he would either have had a stern talking to or (more realistically) just be made a pariah rather than, uh, be challenged to a round of fisticuffs. this episode was so silly.

Parts of the episode (not least the fight) struck me as comically over the top. And was anyone else annoyed by Lane kissing Joan? For me, the whole appeal of their relationship was that they understood and empathized with one another, and their mutual respect kept things platonic. That kiss came outta nowhere, and just seemed like an insanely pointless distraction.

loved this episode... the scifi stuff... the many emasculations of pete campbell... the fight... such a great ep.

Parts of the episode (not least the fight) struck me as comically over the top. And was anyone else annoyed by Lane kissing Joan? For me, the whole appeal of their relationship was that they understood and empathized with one another, and their mutual respect kept things platonic. That kiss came outta nowhere, and just seemed like an insanely pointless distraction.

― Dancing with Mr. T (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, April 16, 2012 9:45 PM (48 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i love that this show treats stuff like "mutual platonic respect" like the tv bullshit it is

The kiss was great because we basically needed to be reminded that lane is sort of a putz (and lane needed to be reminded too). Also Joan's response was perfect.

And was anyone else annoyed by Lane kissing Joan? For me, the whole appeal of their relationship was that they understood and empathized with one another, and their mutual respect kept things platonic. That kiss came outta nowhere, and just seemed like an insanely pointless distraction.

no, i liked it. lane's a weak man, though not a bad one, and he was both high on himself (trouncing stinky pete) and feeling threatened (broke, insulted, feeling useless, accused of being "a homo"), basically at loose ends. plus joan handled it magnificently. "Everyone in this office has wanted to do that ... to Pete Campbell." [ellipsis mine]

er, as s.clover said

Also the setup of her getting up, only to open the door and come back.

^ yeah yeah, that's mostly what i meant. just thought the line was funny too.

I definitely agree about Joan's response...maybe I'm not ready to accept Lane as a putz, though. But it seemed forced (from a storytelling point of view), and hastily tacked-on at the last minute.

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

i noticed this. typically the transitions don't really register w/me but a few were glaring in this episode. a couple instances where they tried to sync up actions such as a cut from one character opening a door to another doing the same, and an odd cross-fade of pete's head lining up in successive scenes.

John Slattery's second directing credit i think; the first had the notoriously on-the-nose final shot of three ladies in the elevator

there were some nice touches in his previous episode, i thought, and some less-nice ones. i think the man has talent.

Every time there's an actor-directed episode I can't help it, I picture their character doing the directing.

Surprised there's no talk of "the pact" between Peggy and Ken. There never seemed to be a lot of interaction between those two before and I don't think it feels that believable. Though I think it points to how Peggy is over any sense of loyalty she had towards Don since he begged her to join the new firm.

I sort of like how the show doesn't try to act like we see every meaningful moment or interaction in the characters' lives. Half the characters aren't even in any given episode, so of course stuff like the pact is going to be a little surprising when it comes up. Doesn't make it unbelievable.

Lane kissing Joan seemed more of a little boy wanting his mom to kiss him after a bad day or something. Maybe not to Lane.

"Now with that Charles Whitmore..."
"Whitman," said Dick Whitman.

i worry that no TV show could possibly bear the amount of analysis this one gets. not that i'm not part of the problem. but often it's dispiriting when the show lobs these fairly obvious clues to us, and then all these bloggers etc. go running with them.

there's this tacit sense that they seek approval and acknowledgment for having got the clues and not fumbled them. but after a minute it all begins to seem so programmatic, like all these blog posts and stuff are just a function of the text rather than inspired and original criticism.

when i go to the usual "day after" write-ups i feel like my intelligence is being insulted by folks spending paragraphs upon paragraphs telling me how to interpret things that were (sometimes painfully) obvious when i first saw them. especially since this sort of criticism doesn't have the benefit of the long view--sitting it out until the season (or series) is over, looking at how the whole thing fits together (or doesn't).

the discussion here is generally much less groanworthy. i suppose i prefer little pithy observations about the acting, furniture, whatever to these unending "think pieces."

i suppose i prefer little pithy observations about the acting, furniture, whatever to these unending "think pieces."

21st century style. i agree though. to the seething mass of zings pithy observations that is ILX!

but it's not limited to Mad Men though. People also do recaps of everything from Gossip Girl to How I Met Your Mother with pretty much exactly the same amount of detail and "analysis".

I do love Tom and Lorenzo's recaps through fashion, because they notice things about Mad Men's costuming that pretty much no other TV blogger does.

Last week's was particularly good: http://www.tomandlorenzo.com/2012/04/mad-style-mystery-date.html

damn. bookmarked that site, which i'd never seen before. best analysis of mad men's fashion and style i've seen yet. otm re joan & liz!

loved this episode... the scifi stuff... the many emasculations of pete campbell... the fight... such a great ep.

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Tuesday, 17 April 2012 02:34 (3 hours ago) Permalink

otm...funniest episode in a long time

yeah tom & lorenzo are good... when they stick to clothing/design.

i know lots of other shows get this treatment. this just happens to be the show i watch enough to read the blogs, etc. not that i think i will anymore.

i have to stop reading the comment sections of show recaps. "am i the ONLY ONE who noticed _____?" and like five other people have made the same observation already.

don't know how you read those sections in the first place. i like a smart recap though.

then again, I did lodge a complaint with the AV Club that their review stated that "Britain won the World Cup".

The episode kind of encouraged that mistake

Union jack generally preferred over the st george's cross as the symbol of england until the last quarter of a century.

i have to stop reading the comment sections of show recaps. "am i the ONLY ONE who noticed _____?" and like five other people have made the same observation already

Recap comments are just as bad as any news article comments, except instead of unhinged right wing foaming at the mouth you get smug self satisfaction.

stop reading the blogs, "recaps" are a plague imho

like i can see what david simon was getting at (weird, i just realized i had a dream about him last night where he fixed a hoodie of mine) when he went off on bloggers last week