Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

i just started watching on netflix. can you get cancer from watching people smoke all the time? i wish it focussed more on advertising and less on sex and smoking. not sure it's worth watching episode 3. women will be treated poorly, men will smoke inside and race relations will be tense. please tell me those themes aren't the main themes for the rest of the show.

no, there's also the terrible parenting theme!

oh yeah, episode 2 some little girl is playing in a plastic bag. there's too many good shows to devote 50 more hours to this.

okay!

You're shaking my foundations brotherlovesdub

I am pretty sure that I have never known anyone who watched, say, all of season 1 of Mad Men and then lost interest. People either find it deeply unpleasant based on the first couple episodes, or they are fans.

they do tone down the lol 60s stuff after a while

except for like the times when they just pander to it, gloriously

brotherlovesdub: Virtually every mad men thread ever is peppered with new watchers coming in and (justifiably) complaining about the lol60s shit. That stuff goes away, though, so stick it out until the end of the season and see how you feel. It's a great drama. You won't be disappointed. There really aren't many shows better than this at the moment.

I've completely forgotten what happened in those four seasons

ad agency, marital infidelity, father hits his grown son with a cane iirc

Yeah, i meant what gubke said

lol I totally forgot about the cane

gets way better after the first few episodes. then season 2 drags a bit. then it gets all time great TV for seasons 3 and 4 imo.

Just watched episode three. Think I'll keep going. I just want the women to triumph over the men and for Draper to get killed/humiliated/die of cancer. I guess he's the star so that won't happen. He's scum though. Guess I should check out the other Mad Men threads.

I am pretty sure that I have never known anyone who watched, say, all of season 1 of Mad Men and then lost interest. People either find it deeply unpleasant based on the first couple episodes, or they are fans.

I watched the first 3 seasons and 2-3 episodes of the 4th season and then lost interest

haha yeah was just going to post that i checked out somewhere around the middle of season 3

idk why im reading this either but yknow

yeah I mean I don't hateee mad men...I like the *idea*, I like the lol60s shit...but it's just toooooo slowwwww and repetitive for me and I realized I was pretty much forcing myself to sit through every new episode.

anyway I have no interest in trolling this thread.

Season three is the worst one IMO. Loved season four.

But to any newbies: When I started watching I thought it was merely interesting until about halfway through the first season, then I realised I love it. Persevere, watch it in order, it's a slow burner.

i find myself thinking of that NYRB crit of it whenever i think of this recently, maybe because it charged the show with being soap opera-ish & i have reduced don draper to being a moody, glowering, tall dark handsome soap opera figure

i like this show but i kind of dont miss it

good riddance to agreeable television drama

Man, Sally is going to look like she's 20 when it comes on again.

Well, they've already had her masturbating, so she is growing up. S5 is shooting now, right?

yep.

Since season 4 was 1964-65, I would think season 5 should be around 1967-68...?

i would've thought they'd try to go a little slower than that, but that's not based on/might be contrary to whatever's been customary until now. like i woulda thought 66/67. it depends how long the guy envisions it living on for i guess?

I missed one episode last season, the one where don and peggy get drunk together. My gf summed it up for me at the time so I was able to watch the rest of the eps during the season, and when I watched it for the first time a few days ago, it was alright, like I could see that the only reason I really watched all the eps was momentum

I met weiner once at the beverly hills hotel, kinda surreal because I was lost and out on the pool deck area when it happened

Season three is the worst one IMO. Loved season four.

wth

xp feel free to post that in the posts w/o context thread

this show is pretty great when you can watch 2-3 eps at a time and pretty excruciating on a week to week basis. like, the story arc to season 4 is pretty good (if maddening and depressing) but also pretty annoying when its coming in drips and drabs.

I missed one episode last season, the one where don and peggy get drunk together. My gf summed it up for me at the time so I was able to watch the rest of the eps during the season, and when I watched it for the first time a few days ago, it was alright, like I could see that the only reason I really watched all the eps was momentum

I know what you mean about momentum, but I also think "The Suitcase" was the best episode of the season!

^ yeah, all-time ep right there

it was a really good episode compared to other eps, and I liked it somewhat, and thought there were brilliant parts with brilliant bits of acting, but a lot of the episode, perhaps more than others, I don't know at this point because I haven't seen the show in a while, was don yelling at peggy for work related reasons, and when I was watching it, I guess, because I was removed from the mad men world, I couldn't help but think that I was glad I wasn't exposed to its world as much

i saw a little girl out to dinner with her family at a mexican restaurant last week that was a dead-ringer for sally. it was so uncanny i almost said something to the parents but i told myself to forget it and finish my nachos.

"hey uh I dunno if you know this but your daughter looks a lot like a child star that some nerds on the internet really can't wait to see grow up into a teenager!"

yeah nachos was probably the better move

FYI I recommend that everyone into this show watch the movie version of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" with Robert Morse

LOL

hahahahaha

hahaha burn

FYI I recommend that everyone into this show watch the movie version of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" with Robert Morse

Yeah, the parallels are pretty funny. Morse is great in The Loved One too. Mad Men also reminds me of The Sweet Smell of Success.

predictions on the degree to which dialogue this season will be "on the nose"?

I loved it when Mad Men referenced The Apartment (season and episode escapes me). In season four Roger is on the phone speaking to a Louise about a Larry...the Tate's no doubt, finally acknowledging the comparison's to Bewitched.

Sorry about that pesky apostrophe.....blush.

The Apartment ref was in the first season, near the end I think. Joan was chewing Roger out about using women and told him he should see the movie and change his tune.

...and to complete the circle, David White played both Mr. Tate on "Bewitched" and Mr. Eichelberger in The Apartment.

But to any newbies: When I started watching I thought it was merely interesting until about halfway through the first season, then I realised I love it. Persevere, watch it in order, it's a slow burner.

Yeah, this is pretty much my experience too. Basically I was watching it to bask in the glory of Joan and gradually got into the surrounding plotlines.

R u one of those ppl who sits around watching AMC dramas all nite, tweeting abt how AMAZEBALLS they are?

Walked by a Banana Republic tonight. The big poster in the window asked me if I am a Betty.

fat betty was amazing. i think the scene where she goes to sneak a little whipped cream from the fridge, aerosols it into her mouth, gets disgusted with herself and spits it out in the sink is maybe the best scene in the entire series

best scene of the series tbh vv

http://oi34.tinypic.com/11w6ck2.jpg

otm

Fat Betty was solid, I thought. Better than hiding the pregnancy by holding bags and pots of flowers or what have you.

^^it also allowed them into an early Weight Watcher's meeting.

Bob Benson - Cuban refugee?

Wrong thread. Damn.

Accidentally posted some stuff about the first few episodes on the Season 4 thread...Finished last night. The last three episodes were very dark--convincingly so. (Peggy quitting, Joan's partnership, Lane.) Arguments between Don and Megan aren't as interesting as arguments between Don and Betty. Kinsey's return was less than what I'd hoped for. Sally and Greg continue to be compelling. There was a scene that I thought might have been the worst yet: Don's meeting with Dow chemical, where he tries to rah-rah them into wanting 100%. (I would think any client would have laughed him out of the room, yet even Leland Palmer seemed impressed.) Loved Peggy's little smile at the elevator as "You Really Got Me" started up at the end of the one episode--resurrected the song for me. The Lovin' Spoonful were great too; didn't know "Butchie's Tune" at all, had to look it up.

"Tomorrow Never Knows" was, of course, spectacular. I really regret not following the show when that first aired. (Hearing about it was possibly the first thing that made me decide I had to watch the show eventually.) I'd looked briefly at a YouTube clip already, but the sound was low, and I didn't know any of the context. "When did music suddenly become so important?"--that set everything up. I think Don meant the question purely in an advertising context, but the Beatles answered it in a much deeper way.

And Roger. If I could have chosen anybody to drop acid, he would have been my first choice by far. The way he asked Megan's mom "Would you take LSD with me?", he was like a little kid on Christmas morning. And the final shot of him naked at the window was brilliant.

Kinsey's return was less than what I'd hoped for.

aw c'mon this episode was incredible. the star trek script! Harry unable to resist the sexual wiles of hippie chick!

I don't know, I just didn't care for him in that guise. I liked the woman, and I thought Harry's gesture of sending him off to California with $500 was one of his better moments.

Kinsey being a Hare Krishna is one of the best jokes the series has ever done.

Buried in one of the episodes was one of my favorite lines yet (Roger, of course): "Joan wanted to have baby...I figured, why do that to anybody?"

(Jane, I meant, not Joan.)

Harry's gesture of sending him off to California with $500 was one of his better moments

I generally hate Harry, such a schmuck, but agree about this bit

harry's an interested character, like you can see him morph over the seasons from this somewhat put-upon nice guy to this careerist slickster who at his core remains a nice guy, but he's covering it up with this strained douchebaggery, like this effort at being a don or a roger but only copying their worst surface qualities that he's learned from their nights out or something, but never developing as he's aged their genuinely decent qualities. and i like how his success is happening in the background and everyone is missing the boat he seems to have caught. he's basically the type of guy who runs listicle sites in the 21st century.

he's not a nice guy

well he started off as one but the thing is that core of a nice guy is shrinking rapidly with every season and now he's becoming more and more this empty douchebag, but in the first season or two he was a "nice guy" but in the way we talk about those creepy indie rock nice guys who end up being assholes. seems to me he wasn't exactly a natural asshole, he has decided to become one.

creepy indie rock nice guys who end up being assholes

haha yeah this sounds about right

Shakey's rabidly anti-Harry stance still bemuses and delights me

it's true, I want to see him run over by a bus full of hippies or something

just recalling that Wire-style montage at the end of Season 5; that was great. actually i wonder if it's fair to say The Wire 'invented' that particular style of montage at the end of seasons of TV, sorta feels like they did.

"Butchie's Tune" is an old favorite that I didn't realize anyone else cared about, it put that episode over the top for me, totally devastating.

I go back and forth on Harry. He's been rotten at times, other times an okay guy just trying to do his job.

I was playing "Butchie's Tune" in class, found the whole scene posted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IUyhEr8dFk

Glen really deserves a spin-off show. Once an episode at a key moment, he'll turn to the camera, smile, and deliver his beloved "See? It all turns to crap" catchphrase.

ugh I hate that recap montage style - surely other cop shows did that before the Wire?

"Butchie's Tune" previous fit of exposure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8ArHxmELYg

Antonioni had some English session guys do these two Spoonful covers.

Didn't Sopranos do a similar style of montage at the beginning/end of a coupla seasons?

def

this thread is really funny

like I was just scanning it because I've been rewatching s5 and there are a lot of genuine lolz

my posting style 6 years ago is kinda setting my teeth on edge

I saw a post from 15 years ago saying I loved potlucks. I fucking hate potlucks.

so, is it me or does this show skip almost the entirety of 1967?

Season 5 ends a few months after Christmas 1966 - Lane forges the check around Xmas and then a couple episodes later he's dead. The last episode seems to take place in maybe spring of '67?

And then when season 6 starts I think we're already in 1968?

Yeah. IIRC, they completely skip over the Summer of Love. Cagey.

The way the finale drew Don into real-life events, they could have started that in 1967: Don goes back to see Anna's niece, she drags him to Monterey, clip of Janis Joplin singing "Ball and Chain," and instead of a stunned Mama Cass, you instead cut to a stunned Don Draper.

...and then he hooks up with her.

Lol

Won't try to open this whole thread to see if there's a similar post, but beautiful images near the end of "Tea Leaves" where the kids chase fireflies on the front lawn.

https://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/fireflies1.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Iw0euc4qDk