Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

fun episode, joan was the best thing about it. liking all the references to space and sci-fi this season, though i doubt they'll add up to anything.

Loved it, good ep. Joan is the best!

i cant even watch that joan .gif. i get the purpose of that scene & her character's reason for that behavior but it's srsly, deeply horrible

dying at the Kinsey stuff, just great. Redeemed Harry a bit, imho

yeah that poor secretary should sue for emotional abuse. jeez.

xpost

also loved the layers of irony in Lane forging Don's signature

?

seriously though if your job is to manage who comes in or out of the office and you just let anyone in, then that sort of means you're totally failing at your job.

forging the signature of a man who's signature itself is a fake/forgery

yeah she could have asked "and this is concerning..."

but the guy just would have lied anyway.

forging the signature of a man who's signature itself is a fake/forgery

― Roger Barfing (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, May 21, 2012 11:04 AM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's a layer of irony, not layers of irony

unless lane pryce has also faked his identity. season-finale revelation!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W415wRfDUXY

ams: are you unaware that there are receptionists that actually manage to screen visitors? i mean, this actually happens.

ams: are you unaware that there are receptionists that actually manage to screen visitors? i mean, this actually happens.

― s.clover, Monday, May 21, 2012 11:07 AM (53 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why are you being so condescending? oh wait, it's you. care to provide your flaky thoughts on the french cultural theorist du jour?

anyway, yes, i'm aware. it sounds like she just did a poor job of it, but those guys are experts at getting past secretaries. if she asked him his business, he'd probably say something that sounded perfectly legit.

ok, but did he have an appointment? i mean people can't just show up and say "hi" and not have appointments and then you don't buzz and ask somebody if they want to see this person or not and if they say "no" then you get that person escorted off the floor.

i mean yes, people will eventually get served, but not necessarily in the middle of the business day.

and in any case "but a more competent person might have failed also" is not an excuse for utter incompetence.

if i crash my car and i'm drunk and have no driver's license and also i was driving with my feet, i can't just plead "other people crash cars too!"

i don't really care very much about this.

you can fail @ your job w/o being assaulted iirc

So ARE they setting us up for Don and Joan having a thing? Or was this episode as far as they'll take it?

Also, I feel like given the arc of the show, SCDP winning Jaguar is a remote contingency.

I can't see it. would be stupid to have a Roger-Joan-Don love triangle imho.

otoh things obviously not going so well with Megan so Don's bound to fuck that up and screw someone else at some point

slamming airplanes on desks is the new shouting at people from cars.

So ARE they setting us up for Don and Joan having a thing? Or was this episode as far as they'll take it?

If Don cheats again, it won't be with Joan. They're sort of each other's "totem" (in Inception terms).

If Don cheats, Megan will totally lose her shit.

in Inception terms

please to not use this phrase again

lol

Harry actually being a stand-up guy. The wonders of this episode never cease.

Call me old fashioned but I don't really think that fucking the woman your friend is obviously completely in love with and then offering him a load of money to go to the other side of the country and pursue a pipedream of a career that he is obviously completely terrible at is much of a stand-up guy thing to do. Regardless as to how fucked up his situation was.

The Kinsey thing was alternately hilarious and deeply sad but I was overjoyed to see that character get a proper ending.

yeah I don't think Harry did anything remotely commendable, but he was less of an amorphous blob in this episode. Offering Kinsey the money to go to LA was at least showing some initiative/creative problem solving

Kinsey's "no one likes me" monologue was really moving, I thought. really nailed the pathos of someone completely adrift

The season overall has been the most anthology-like the series has been I think. Seems like this episode set us up for a bit of a Jaguar-focused arc through to the end of the season.

culminating in Pete having a car crash, presumably

lol at that girlfriend's "he can really close". Giving Kinsey a bit of confidence and the opportunity for a fresh start without his life being sucked out by the girlfriend and the Hare Kirshnas was about the best thing he could have done.

also lol at "you've already traded that." or whatever he said. Great delivery.

I didn't get why she didn't threaten to blackmail him

or I guess just blackmail him, no need for threats lol

perhaps Kinsey will refine his script

Shakey did the research I thought I was going to have to do :) I vaguely remembered this episode and wondered if it ad a similar storyline.

one of my favorite OST episodes, not least because of the ridiculously heavy-handed metaphor, which even so is less clunky than Kinsey's "Negron Complex" concept

I think it's only happened a couple other times, but when Don and Joan are together just being Don and Joan it's one of the best parts of the series.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, May 21, 2012 5:28 AM (18 hours ago)

Oh yes, so nice that the two massively attractive TV characters can just talk, with barely a smidgen of will they/won't they (barely. And they won't).

it occurs to me that christina hendricks is a good actress.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf

This occurred to me in the first season.

So many hearty laughs from the return of Kinsey - he's a Hari Krishna! He's written a spec episode for fucking Star Trek!

I'm still a bit narky about the absolute ludicrousness of all English accents that pop up in this show.

hendricks has taken a turn for the much better on the acting front this season

she's always been good. she's probably the best actor on the show with anything do do.

there are other good actors, like robert morse/bert cooper, but we don't see much of them.

btw i couldn't make out the note on joan's flowers.

They were from Don - "Your mother trained you well" or some such.

signed, Ali khan

Yeah, at the bar she said something like "My mother trained me to be irresistible" or something like that.

pretty great episode! everything about harry and kinsey was hilarious and sad.

kind of dreading any financial shenanigans plot bullshit going forward tho

why so? seems pretty well motivated given what we know of lane's situation and character.