Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

Well, for one thing, you couldn't show side boob or dude ass in an American film til '66-'67, so they delivered that this time.

so earlier seasons lose points for anachronistic side boob?

Critics called those seasons "European".

right but the naked roger + dogs fucking just kind of revealed how corny the montage trope is. i'd rather they just have ended the plotlines on those shots without the accompanying music or gliding-lateral-tracks-DO YOU SEE?!

the dogs fucking would have lost something for me without "You Only Live Twice" soundtracking it

there was an early ep that used a decemberists song, i think it was playing over a montage of all the ladies taking off their bras

yeah part of the letdown of that montage is finding out that the writers of mad men have pretty corny indie fuxor tastes in contemporary music.

I have totally blocked that out. let's never mention it again.

I have this strange memory of one of the ladies taking off her bra and showing full anachronistic boob in the office party scene. I think Harry was involved. Probably the Decemberists too. A low point all round.

Hating closing montages is very anti-Wire!

agh that kind of shit drove me nuts in the Wire

Hating closing montages is very anti-Wire!

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Monday, June 11, 2012 6:27 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it depends on how they're done i guess. i've never seen the wire.

*bites tongue*

I would say don't watch it if you don't enjoy constantly being hit over the head with obviousness

They do that a lot on CSI (all three flavors) as well.

IIRC, the one time we saw a female nipple on the show was way back in S1 when Hildy (Pete's o.g. secretary) slept w/Harry. Xposts

Joyce also showed Peggy/us some nude photos.

I liked the closing shot a lot, too. It also fits with all the "look at all these obvious things you may have missed" recapping going on in this ep, to drive home the "hey, hasn't Don been good recently ~think abt it~" point that's been mentioned a few times upthread.

Wondered at the significance of Adam appearing. iirc his death started Don's re-evaluation of himself, and looking back a lot of this season was Don coming to conclusions -- about his talent, what he wants from/for the firm, himself as a boss, what lines he'll cross, what he wants in family life, etc. Final shot suggests he's also reaching one about his personal life.

Worked for me as a setup for a new tone next season, anyway.

also the writers thinking oh shit we've only mentioned dick whitman once this season better remind folks.

I don't agree that the cut to black was exquisite, and I think a lot of the montage was lazy television, but the part about everyone experimenting all season with enlightenment and then blowing it off as folly is spot on.

“This episode suggests a new direction forward, all right, but it’s one that says the rot has taken hold and might be spreading, that all is emptiness and pointless struggle, and everything you really want will always be held just in front of you, a carrot to keep you marching in a straight line. In short, it’s a direction that loops right back around to where we’ve always been, which is why the episode’s “cliffhanger,” if it can be called that, involves Peggy realizing that she still doesn’t have the job she’d dreamed of and Don being asked by a woman at a bar if he’s alone. (The cut to black here is actually fairly exquisite. We know what he’s going to say, and we don’t need to see it. It’s a moment of poetry in an episode that veered wildly between mystique and rampant highlighting.) It’s a boldly cynical new direction, particularly after a season that flirted with the characters experiencing something beyond themselves. Or, as Roger said of his enlightenment last week, “it wore off.”
— “The Phantom” | Mad Men | TV Club | TV | The A.V. Club

"it wore off" was a fabulous line. def reminded me of the best of sopranos-style storytelling in spirit

“This episode suggests a new direction forward, all right, but it’s one that says the rot has taken hold and might be spreading, that all is emptiness and pointless struggle, and everything you really want will always be held just in front of you, a carrot to keep you marching in a straight line.

i really hate these monday rehashes that start by explaining the "themes" of the previous night's episode. barf.

i h8 it when people evaluate and discuss art too

i thought this p much ruled

very sad tho, this whole season has been v bleak. i think i said that about previous seasons, which are sort of running together in my mind now that i think.

"sirk" = heavy handed, histrionic, beautifully shot, weirdly out of time, plays on light and darkness, i can go on here

so peggy invents the virginia slim, that's p cool

was the dogs screwing a "you've come a long way, baby" moment?

I thought it was more like "Richmond's not exactly Paris, is it ... nope, it's not"

in paris the dogs fuck in missionary

(get it)

loved this episode. u guys will nitpick anything to death even closing montages with dog sex & roger sterling tripping balls naked.

fwiw don doesnt actually flirt at the end they flirt w/ him, altho obv i think its the pt where we realize hes done w megan

Didn't realize how postery it was at the time, but yeah:

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5fzreMgDG1qas9bho1_500.gif

I really enjoyed this episode as a season finale.

I'm done with Megan.

Don walking away from megan "working" was maybe the most beautiful shot of Mad Men yet. I was unsure of this episode but the ending really gave me hope for the next season. The biggest disappointment was Pete, what exactly does he have to be so forlorn about with Trudy and a baby at home, even if he wasn't at SCDP he wouldn't be starving or in need of work. With Pete I betrayed more than any other character.

Isn't Pete meant to be suffering from depression? Plus like as much as he is a nasty piece of work, just because Trudy is nice doesn't mean he should be happy.

<i>"...it asks us to assess don's behavior in season 5 in light of what we've seen before, and decide if he has undergone a permanent transformation or if he is merely in a "phase," soon to revert to his womanizing ways."</i>

I don't think Don was in a phase, I think he actually fell in love with Megan because of who he thought she was. Megan managed to lose his respect. I don't think he will cheat on her or cheat on her for long and will just jump to divorce.

The biggest disappointment was Pete, what exactly does he have to be so forlorn about with Trudy and a baby at home

he gives a (really good, if a little on the nose [DRINK!]) speech about this to post-shock Rory.

So Pete's problem is he doesn't want to live in the country and his wife does? Because other than that, I can't really sympathise with Pete's grievances. I had the hope that Pete was becoming the stand-up guy of the show, beautiful wife, new born child, new partnership, taking the reins at work, etc. Instead we get a sob story about how this "problem" was there from the beginning?? What problem exactly?

Guys being happy isnt like a math equation "oh wife and kids = happy"

that's kind of the crux of the show. a lot of the least happy people on the show are the ones who are trying to live out the ideal that they were raised to strive for only to find it puzzlingly unsatisfying. the gag is they work at an ad agency where they manufacture these ideals.

maybe they'll change the company name to Sterling Cooper Draper Pete, could keep all the SCDP signage.

They'll adjust the "P"'s into "H"'s with the aid of a hammer and/or white-out.

What I took away from it was that this season we've seen all the leads try and be what other people want them to be:

Pete as a family man in the suburbs
Roger as a younger man and monogamous
Joan as policewoman as a stay-at-home mother
Peggy paying her dues
Ginsberg getting a 'proper' job
Ken giving up writing
Kinsey as a Krsna
Harry as a rebel
Don as a loving husband and father
Lane as a provider
The company as a small one

And they've all failed at it. This season was their "living twice". Now they have to go back to their previous lives.

No hugs and no learning.

Ken Cosgrove otm re Pete: "He imagined Beethoven, deaf and soul-sick, his heart broken, scribbling furiously while death stood in the doorway, clipping his nails," Ken writes. "Still, Coe thought, it might have been living in the country that was making him cry. It was killing him with its silence and loneliness, making everything ordinary too beautiful to bear.”

So Pete's problem is he doesn't want to live in the country and his wife does?

no, it was that he wanted a city pad to have sex with other women, the idea was given to him on the train by alex's husband even before he met her iirc.

Kind of an underwhelming end to an otherwise amazing season I think. The Pete storyline wasn't really strong enough to be left til the final episode to resolve and the mental illness angle felt kinda tacked on. Although watching Pete get punched in the face is always a joy.

I feel that what Don actually thinks about and wants from Megan is as slippery a concept now as it was at the start of the season, although that's deliberate I think.

Peggy is the only character who Don's come into contact with who is unequivocally better off for having met him, right?

I thought it was great. It had to be a good deal more understated than the previous two episodes.

Will there be as big a gap as last time before 6?

xp Anna was.

I really like whoever connected "You Only Live Twice" to the entire season, these characters trying to live out a second life that is ultimately as un-fulfilling as the first lives. Don maybe at a slight advantage cos he was already on his second life, and has been for a while.

Pete's storyline is that he's been fantasizing about this romantic life of adultery in the city and it turned out to be everything he didn't want, to comedic effect. His romance doesn't just 'forget about him' in an emotional sense, but in an entirely literal way. Trudy mentioning, yeah let's move to the city, is a great ironic slap in the face that this show does so well this season. Be careful what you wish for, because it may come true, and if you've piled all your hopes and dreams into it, you are only setting yourself up for disappointment.

People always want more, they always want what they can't have, it doesn't matter if they have 50% of everything, they need that 100%! Don's Dow speech is more or less an objective analysis of everyone's tumultuous season.

Megan, I pretty much always thought, was going to give in to being an ad model. It fits with the cynical view of this season. Why did she sell out her dream of art? Was taking her friend's job and asking Don a last minute switch into the manipulative power plays their relationship seems more and more based on? It's funny, as optimistic and wide-eyed as her post-SCDP career is, it almost feels like she had more integrity as a Mad Woman than an actress. The biggest example i can think of is her not wanting to take all the credit when Peggy said "This is as good as it gets" vs. pretty much stealing her friend's acting gig from out under her.