Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

this is kind of small potatoes, but i wish they had trusted the audience to get the point re. pete sending roger to staten island without underlining it -- i like when this show dares to handle things much more elliptically than is standard in TV.

The implication was that they solved the "how can we hire a black person without money" problem by taking advantage of the heedless receptionist's errors and firing her.

I'm not saying that to be snarky, either. I think a lot of the show's momentum comes from the anticipation of how the characters will react to and interact with the changing times.

that's true, but the first couple seasons were built around these ticking-bomb plot devices: don's secret, peggy's secret, the suggestion that don's life and marriage were collapsing. it seemed as though an examination of an era were being tied to a narrative that was moving in a definite direction, like television's revolutionary road or something. the longer it's gone on, the the less there's any clear sense of overarching narrative structure. not saying that the more prosaic "here's what happened next" stuff that's replaced it is uninteresting or unsatisfying, and it's probably more true to life, but i do find myself a little frustrated by the lack of attention paid to some of the story threads that first attracted me. plus want more betty.

this is kind of small potatoes, but i wish they had trusted the audience to get the point re. pete sending roger to staten island without underlining it -- i like when this show dares to handle things much more elliptically than is standard in TV.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, March 27, 2012 4:41 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya i liked that you didnt actually see him at staten island but maybe it would have been better to not see him wake up at all and just have his little line about "pranks" or whatever to acknowledge that it had happened

i couldn't get a bead on how we are supposed to understand megan. was the presence of her arty/homosexual friends meant to underline the generational divide between her and her husband? that struck me as a bit over the top, her coquettish song-and-dance routine included.

yeah, i think the whole party scene and the subsequent rape-sex were meant to underline the fact that megan and don have almost nothing in common with one another, aside from mutual physical attraction.

I am actually content with less Betty in the show, now. The new problem of Don losing focus on his career could be more catastrophic than anything, really. His ability to pull things together has been pretty much key to his persona. I spent half the episode wondering if he'd just turned into a younger Roger Sterling.

and over the top or not, "zou bisou bisou" was so flippin great

lol misread it as 'mutant physical attraction' which also actually kinda otm

Don's arc is totally mirroring Sterling, this seems pretty blatant

Roger's the only father figure he has etc

announcing an open receptionist position

No - they explicitly said "we can't have one of them sitting out front" and Lane said the job opening was for a secretary.

I don't buy the idea that Don and Megan have little in common. Megan's friends are definitely more of the late 60s era, but what about Don's dalliances with the beat crowd? There are also some parallels with Betty and the whole model/actress thing. If anything, they're both born manipulators of people, too. Megan being cold and then manipulative when she mis-stepped isn't that far out of step with early-period Don Draper.

don's arc is mirroring sterling's, and pete's is starting to mirror don's. the circle of liiife.

So will Sterling lose his testicles so he can mirror Cooper?

Cooper never married!

Is Sterling becoming the new Bert Cooper? Cooper was the one who used to have the large office with art affectations and less client interaction. He's aging into the seniority but without the respect.

lol at testicles

er, I didn't read Don and Megan banging on the carpet as rapey at all. Rough, yeah. But big difference between that and Joan and her husband.

I wasn't going to address that at all since a fictional portrayal is kind of in the eye of the beholder, but that did not really code as rapey to me. Definitely a game to put Don in his place and challenge his aggression.

yeah it was a dom thing

Remember too that Don used to have hookers beat him during sex.

dom drapentino

not really outside the realm of normal

okey, fine, rough sex

but what about Don's dalliances with the beat crowd?

i don't think he really had anything in common w them, either. he was just intrigued, looking for something new to take his mind off stuff. read peggy as don 2 more than pete.

My personal feeling on Don Draper, and I maybe 100% alone in this is he's some kind of low-level sociopath or something. He doesn't really engage/care about anyone really at all, and his interactions are more in the manner of someone studying insects. Like he mimics emotion but I'm not sure that he really has them all that deeply, most of the time anyway. Kinda like a 60's Patrick Bateman without a bird's eye view of his inner fantasy life.

I dunno. That might be just me and my overactive imagination.

no, that's exactly how i see him. but i think he sort of "has things in common" with people to the extent that they respect him, don't poke their noses in shit, and behave in a manner that he thinks of as appropriate. plus be hot and sleep with him. betty seems to have fulfilled all this for quite some time, until she didn't anymore. megan doesn't seem like an ideal replacement.

dunno how anyone could get the impression Don didn't have feelings for Anna. who was not hot, and didn't sleep with him.

when DID megan find out about the whole Dick Whittman thing?

between season 4 and 5

no fair

I demand Season 4.5

no between season shenanigans

He is not a sociopath to the level of Patrick Bateman, by any stretch. He's definitely pretty emotionally dead, though.

I also disagree on Anna being not hot, too... maybe not "a dish" but she was a very good looking woman.

(But also older than Don, and probably a mother figure that he lacked so much in his life)

Anna was p hot. She was the crazy Church wife in True Blood!

wait nm

I also disagree on Anna being not hot, too... maybe not "a dish" but she was a very good looking woman.

also handicapped, which I'm pretty sure Don did not find attractive

i dunno - dude's pretty kink!

compared to the other slinky, usually Jewish women Don had the hots for, Anna wasn't really in that league. I dunno, seems like they went out of their way to demonstrate that Don/Anna's relationship was not sexual in nature, which is all I was getting at. He was not interested in her as either arm candy, wife, or sexual conquest.

really he loved her because she was the only person who could make him feel like he wasn't a liar/fraud/asshole

The department store lady is still my favorite. Rachel?

Yep, Rachel Menken. Or Mencken perhaps idk

Whenever Don has a platonic relationship with a woman it throws everyone off because it goes against type.

there's just Peggy and Anna...?

hard to say if he genuinely engages with/relates to Peggy or just appreciates her as his lapdog/babysitter

Joan. xp

hard for me to believe that Don has no human regard for Peggy after s4e6

I remember S4E06 being the one where they spent the whole ep together and that it was really, really nice, though all the details have escaped me. Did Don ever piece together that she'd had a baby between S1 & S2?

uh Don went to visit her after her pregnancy, he totally knew about the baby.

right, forgot Joan.

xp

that's the episode. and yes, he visited her in the hospital, there's a flashback sometime in s2. "It will shock you how much this never happened." In s4e06 they obliquely refer to the baby incident. "My mother thinks you're responsible." "Do you know how it was?" "Of course." xp