Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

This episode just drove it home (hit you over the head with it). Megan turning around in the audition, money thrown at Peggy, Don thinking he can keep her there for the right price, and the explicit discussion of pimping out Joan. Everyone is compromised, with Joan as sacrificial lamb.

otm, "money thrown at Peggy, Don thinking he can keep her there for the right price" a damn good catch.

"Isn't Peggy now "lead copy" or something high up like that at the new place?"

Copy Chief is what it says on the napkin, so yes.

have to presume the guy from jaguar will start showing up at the office next season demanding more from joan

Even if just personally for Joan, will be p. disappointed if this doesn't have long-term ramifications of some kind.

like I can see why they dropped it as much as possible, but I always felt Peggy's baby was under-represented in terms of its plausible consequences.

You have to figure the Jaguar guy (who was on the search committee, not the actual point person?) might not get very far with Joan ever again - she's got her contract, and I doubt she signed anything that was contingent on *always* keeping the clients happy.

i'd be surprised if he's ever in the show again

True!

Hopefully Joan will get Pete fired.

Best episode since 'Carousel'.

like I can see why they dropped it as much as possible, but I always felt Peggy's baby was under-represented in terms of its plausible consequences.

How so?

Babby would be between 6 and 7 now, so it's not like he/she is going to come looking for Peggy.

btw, I feel like we just got this show back and after two more weeks it's gone again for up to (or more than) a year! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

firing pete would actually be a bad business move, and joan knows that

lane is expendable at this point

someone should really put together a fake opening montage for a late-60s era situation comedy called peggy, complete with bouncy theme song called "i'm on my way" or something.

That's a great idea.

opening credits montage, i mean.

she could take freddy rumsen, abe drexler the jewish radical journalist, her kvetching mother, the lesbian photojournalist, etc. with her! hilarity ensues!

she should also hire away stan rizzo from SCDP.

i'm kinda psyched for this imaginary show. if weiner did that IRL it would be kind of next-level.

btw i'm willing to bet that by next (!) season it'll be sterling cooper draper campbell.

I suppose Pete is the only person doing anything about new business. Bummer.

Sal ducking his head in for a few saucy Alan Suesian quips every few minutes.

i know this was a bit up thread, but can someone tell me what the hell " trucking the lobsters" means?!

it's a sexual reference.

how so

hard to put a finger on. just feels as though her having a young child out there only rarely factors into her psyche, which doesn't ring true with how I've heard the adoption experience described, even in the 1960s world of never-speak-of-it-again etc. Doesn't quite chime right.

maybe ted chaoughghg adopted it

which doesn't ring true with how I've heard the adoption experience described

I don't think there's a universal definition of how women react to having their children adopted.

man just remembered Don having to fire Sal, and suggesting that he should've accepted LGJr's proposition. ~resonances~

I don't think there's a universal definition of how women react to having their children adopted.

I definitely don't mean to say that. Like I say, it's hard to express. The handling of it just feels to me more like "that bit of the plot is over now, thanks vm" than any sort of intended expression of an integrated character.

it almost seemed like the shot of the necklace being put on Joan (and her dress) a Vertigo reference. but i cant remember if the necklace in Vertigo was green (seems right though).

omg, Joan is Madeline!

catching up here...

re: Lane's financial problems goole is otm way upthread that he should've been smarter and just figured out some way to borrow the money from Don or one of the other partners who doesn't hate him (ie, not Pete). But he has his stuffy British pride to preserve, I suppose, and he's supposed to be the financial whiz.

re: prostitution/cars - am I the only one finding some rather extreme irony/cognitive dissonance between the implications of the show this season (making ads for cars = having arrived/being a whore) and the um actual car ads being made by the actors and run during the show...? META

re: Peggy spinoff show = THAT GIRL!

re: Ginsburg. So great this episode. Love this guy. His whole angle was about Don (Megan "comes and goes whenever she wants" = Ginsburg realizing that Don can't own her the way he wants to = the tagline). Which is exactly the kind of psychologically transparent pitch that is Don's bread and butter.

and he's supposed to be the financial whiz

right but where would a green eyeshade dude be w/o complaining about a grasping tax authority? i really just don't buy this problem. every music fan knows british taxes were sky high in the 60s, why wouldn't lane be a 'tax exile' like everybody else? maybe cos his kids are still in school there (that was a plot point, right?)

re: Ginsburg. So great this episode. Love this guy. His whole angle was about Don (Megan "comes and goes whenever she wants" = Ginsburg realizing that Don can't own her the way he wants to = the tagline).

the show is giving many signs that ginsburg (and relations with don) is going to have many of the same characteristics as early peggy-don, but it will be interesting to see what's different -- ginsburg's leftism and the chip on his shoulder most obviously

Ginsburg is a leftist?

no he's an alien

re: Peggy spinoff show = THAT GIRL!

yeah, basically. but more office-centric.

i mean to qualify that, it's vague, but i mean his basic contempt for all of their clients

I think another difference is that he feels like he could take Don's job someday

yeah he seems resentful of wealth/ostentation, suspicious of power... kinda ambiguous politically but attitudes that are more commonly associated with the left I guess

Remember too that Roger (eventually) warned Peggy after she hired Ginsberg that his own last big hire was Pete.

I don't recall Pete and Roger ever getting along, I wonder how that happened

Roger and Don went to his apartment at the end of season 3.

Although even that's not true since strictly speaking Roger hired Ken after that, but whatever.

Just realized Don throwing money at Peggy twice in this ep - once literally - neither times she takes it.

Roger and Don went to his apartment at the end of season 3.

I meant how was Pete initially hired at Sterling Cooper. In S1 he's already a junior account man iirc

just catching up here but dudes how great and perfect was that kinsey thing, i expected rejoicing in this thread, cant believe yall had to ruin the fun

I totally rejoiced! who didn't rejoice?

whoever said upthread that the "nobody likes me" speech really tied together a great character arc for him was OTM

there was a lot of grumbling about it it seems