Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

"You're Not Happy"

Dow Chemical

don wasn't pitching dow a proposed campaign. he was pitching SCDP in opposition to the presumed taken-for-granted indifference of dow's current ad agency. if it works in the show's fictional universe, then it was a good line. if not, then not.

another note: this show has been absolutely merciless to Jaguar. I'm sure they feel "no such thing as bad press" about the exposure but lol the starter/suicide gag was just brutal... not only was the car used as a symbol of his oppressive frustration, but it couldn't even deliver the promise of death's release due to its built-in inadequacy

I understand what Don was doing, it was not an ad campaign for Dow. It was nominally an ad for SCDP, I suppose.

xp

kind of wish glenn had shut up in the elevator though, that was a bit, how do you say?... on the nose.

All the on the noseness this season coming from teenagers saying sage things to grown men for no apparent reason

Glen is 14. Subtlety is not his strength yet.

magic pixie dream glen

um manic

I just remembered that Don's brother also hanged himself after Don tried to wash his hands of him.

Sepinwall pointed out the similarities of Don's physical reaction:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/images.hitfix.com/assets/1400/mad-men-don-hanging.jpg

pretty weird that on sky in the uk they had a jaguar ad on the first break.

ha, glen comes across to me as just a normal maybe slightly dumb socially awkward outcast teenager, any sagacity in anything he said would be purely incidental.

Glen seems normal now. The "creepy" tag is just a holdover from when he was charming Betty back in Ossining.

Give it a week, let's see if he's creepin on Megan..

Does anyone really think the selling point of Don Draper was ever "he has the best ideas"?

he's randy-an

well he was, dunno if he really is now

he still bones on the reg, just with one person in a fit of rage

Wouldn't the Randian thing be, Don's the job creator, Peggy, et al, are just feeding off the juices of his awesome job creation opportunities (ie. Dow).

Didn't they both survive the bombardment, and then Dick lit a cigarette that caused an explosion that killed the Real Don Draper? Or did I just imagine that?

(...)

i think you're thinking of a cartoon.

Hah, I've never made the connection before but the whole storyline kind of owes a debt to

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS6GTp0GT5w6gBJS-aN5eQieXeD95ZpaR89qTKiMAhckNBaBfWJ

o ya. series finale starring dick whitman AS armin tamzarian.

this randian discussion is really a red herring.

RED

shit, blew my cover.

glen is weiner's son, right? he is good and effective in the part but I can't tell if his stilted line reading is meant to be part of the character or just, you know, really bad acting.

also lol moustache

wonder if that's makeup or if MW told his child he had to cultivate a puberty 'stache for a month

haa oh god

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/don-draper-libertarianisms-favorite-ad-man/2012/06/06/gJQAplXoIV_blog.html

right wing think tankers play dress up

The free-marketeers at the dinner saw themselves as the natural compatriots of Don Draper—the “debonair, hard-driving, sometimes ruthless” ad man, in the words of Loren Smith, the federal judge who MC-ed the program in a “Guys and Dolls”-style fedora and gray pinstriped suit. But it’s not clear whether Draper himself would have agreed.

they've kind of missed the point i think

The advertisements of Draper’s 1960s “were offering the good life, products that allowed us to be healthier, wealthier,”

you know, like Lucky Strike cigarettes and napalm

tbf the shittiness of the jaguar did prolong lane's life for a short period.

(i re-watched this episode, the first time around i was feeling a vague nausea throughout cuz i thought lane was for it, this time it was even worse cuz i KNEW he was. also jared harris was brilliant.)

Harris needs an Emmy for this one, or Signal 30:

No way, that Emmy is Giancarlo Esposito's.

oscillating between twenty different emotions trying to find the one that will WORK in the firing scene was amazing.

that piece goole posted to is off the charts O_o

kind of on a reagan-likes-springsteen wavelength isn't it

it just reeks of entitlement... like people are beholden to buying products NO MATTER WHAT.

tbf the shittiness of the jaguar did prolong lane's life for a short period.

A college professor of mine had a 1968 XKE, and told me about how he once defiantly stormed out of a faculty meeting only for his Jag to hilariously not start. As soon as Lane connected the hose I thought, yep, not gonna start.

Plus, didn't Roger have some line about how they never start in the previous episode?

that's been the whole pitch! like a beautiful woman (and just as unreliable).

haha, yeah. "It comes with a toolkit the size of a typewriter!"

don teaching glen to drive - in addition to being adorable, obv - reminded me of when we first met glen, at sally's bday party. he showed up with a newly widowed helen bishop, who then got hit on by some neighborhood guy creepily offering his services as an occasional faux-father figure for glen.

sally's woman troubles -> her needing a mother figure, ie betty, sort of parallels glen getting picked on in boarding school and feeling existential anguish -> but it's all okay when don teaches him to drive and has some good father-son time.

Plus, didn't Roger have some line about how they never start in the previous episode?

that was Cooper. "They're lemons! They never start."

I never knew about old Jaguars and the reputation for not starting until I watched an episode of Top Gear a few months ago where they paid tribute to the original XKE.

didn't someone straight-up call it a "shitty car" in this last episode?

High-Five to Amy Sherman-Palladino

Considering race in the show ("'Roots' for White People"):

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/culture/2012/06/6007279/very-white-poetry-mad-men

meh

my biggest take-away from that article is that every NY film blogger hangs out together.

go 'round to Uhlich's for Mad Men, then hit up the Grassroots Tavern afterwards

doesn't work geographically