Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

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

“I'd say that there are things about the '60s [“Mad Men” creator] Matthew Weiner's interested in, and that none of them involve race; he's much smarter and more attuned to gender dynamics,” he wrote in an email. “But then he's like OH SHIT WHAT ABOUT RACE RELATIONS. Results: a token secretary character, as Kevin mentioned, There's a scene where she spends the night at Peggy's apartment and Peggy looks down and her purse is on the coffee table and she's obviously thinking, ‘Should I snatch this and take it to my bedroom or can I trust her and leave it here?’ She does the latter, so good for Peggy, but this is a moment demonstrating, once again, that she's one of the show's most forward-thinking characters.

this completely misunderstands the situation. its the fact that she hesitated at all that makes her 'backwards', not the fact that she doesn't take the most-offensive possible action that makes her 'forward-thinking'

i guess its up for debate how much hes effective in doing this, but race is supposed to be something that is never thought about by its main characters, that its supposed to be treating them as 'white' in their very disregard/disinterest in the problems of people of color

Still, if this is the best the show can do, it'd be better just to admit they don't care.

i guess we can argue abt whether or not its doing this effectively, but i read its intentions to be much more along the lines of a whit stillman movies where it's observing privileged whiteness AS privileged whiteness, which would mean rendering people of color invisible (of course peggy never befriends dawn beyond one rather awkward attempt) because thats exactly what its cast WOULD do

so, i guess i kind of wish if he was to critique it he'd acknowledge that this was at some level a part of its goal & explain why he thinks it doesn't live up to that, but maybe he doesn't think thats its goal? idk

i had similar critiques early on w/r/t what they say about sal, where there was a contemporary condescension as if we're past this now, but i think the show rapidly transformed out of that once surreal stuff started happening, but maybe i just got caught up in the drama of it

“That's my biggest complaint about ‘Mad Men,’ that at worst it seems to be looking back from an enlightened time rather than yet another messy, unclassifiable moment in human history.”

i think this is true, and continues to be true

article doesn't mention Carla at all lol

or Kinsey's g/f

“Mad Men,” which so far has given a few lines to a black maid, a black girlfriend and, in the latest season, a black secretary,

It does, but I think it undervalues the role of Carla.

“That's my biggest complaint about ‘Mad Men,’ that at worst it seems to be looking back from an enlightened time rather than yet another messy, unclassifiable moment in human history.”

i think this is true, and continues to be true

― sarahell, Sunday, June 10, 2012 4:29 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i felt this way at first like i said but i think its more a 'different time' than nec. a better one ... the effect for me (and maybe this is unfair b/c thats what im bringing to it, but) is more to start taking a look at how things actually operated or evolved, to locate a kind of realer understanding of the dynamics of 60s relationships than we've ever been presented which could as easily make us take a step back in our own time -- i mean i think it certainly forces ppl to think a bit about what similar assumptions are going on now

make us take a step back in our own time -- i mean i think it certainly forces ppl to think a bit about what similar assumptions are going on now

that's a good, positive way of looking at it, and i just wonder if that's true for most viewers.

i wonder about that sort of thing a lot (esp w/ writing about rap) b/c people will bring different things to it. i guess this is like a distrust of the idea that there's some kind of inherently 'good' show where an obvious social good is being applied ... how many ppl who watch the wire got the idea that its about the drug war being evil (and that's a more strident program, quite obviously)

i do think there's something in the creation of this show that MAKES me think about power dynamics but i mean, 'what do the masses think' at some level feels a bit condescending. who really is watching this show at teh end of the day. arent they in it more for the costumes any way. i mean i think its obvious a huge % of people don't even really get it cf that libertarian mad men party

there's some kind of inherently 'good' show where an obvious social good is being applied

the only thing i can think of in that regard is Dr. Who, but that's a very different show.

but i mean, 'what do the masses think' at some level feels a bit condescending

sure, i mean, i won't front, partly why i watch it is because the women wear some awesome dresses and Jon Hamm is v easy on the eyes.

not sure if i'm altogether satisfied with this as a finale

oh my god that shot of Don walking off the set holy shit holy shit holy shit

that one shot is so so so so good

Yeah, that shot was great. The rest? I think it was the only truly dud episode of the season.

I also really liked the shots of the partners in the new office space, walking in at the start of the scene and then staring out at the window at the end.

Pete Campbell is basically the worst.

it wasnt a dud but it was mad men at its bleakest/most miserable

a well-deserved stomach punch after the s4 finale

didn't feel bleak or miserable so much as just sort of at sea.

but yeah -- it was a great shot. marred, i think, by then cutting to don walking directly into a bar and flirting. there's this nice, striking, easy to read image, and then everything just sort of dissolves again, on a symbolic level.

That was my takeaway as well. Nothing pivotal at all about any of it. Even the closing scene. Everyone who watches the show knows Don was eventually going to find himself in such a situation again. Just that no one knew when.

that was grim. were they trying to give the impression that megan was going to take a whole bottle of pills?

and a lovely shot at the end but i suppose they had to show us where he went next - it felt a little too cinematic otherwise

I did like that one line Lane's wife had, though...something about how they should've known better than to fill that man with ambition.

yah it was too cinematic

that shot of peggy seeing two dogs fucking haha whaaaaaat

and Roger naked at the window trip pin

the closing montage was a bit much

the shot of Don walking off the set was great

I do love it that we had a nudity warning at the beginning and with all the affairs and goings on what we get is roger's ass.

we had a hint of alexis bledel sideboob, to be fair.

initial flood of responses elsewhere seem to be "how boring, what a letdown" etc, but idk, after last week's hugeness i was expecting a more normal-seeming episode. so stoked we got to see peggy again, and that she was included in the ending montage like the other leads.

Boring is what this show does best after all!

ECT is still in use today for really stubborn cases of depression, by the way.

Nobody really knows why it works.

walking off set show was too sirk for me
as was most of this that didn't set well

loved the fight between megan and her mother tho. that line about artistic temperament but not the talent was excellent.

I liked the cinematic walk-off the set. It signalled differentiation.

Realized that Megan didn't break Don's heart when she left advertising, she did it when she used him to get the commercial.

Yeah, that just occurred to me as well.

I'd have been much happier with Don walking off the set being the closing shot.

Oh, and him watching Megan's screentest w/ forbidden smoke in the projector light was just as gorgeous.