Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

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

WHO it was

implication is that Don thinks it was Duck tho, not Pete

I need to rewatch older seasons. I've forgotten a lot.

the point about her carrying it through the office wasn't that they'd have to fire the woman, but that they'd be called out on their racism if they didn't pretend that the ad was for real.

wrt Don/Peggy, I don't think it really humanized Peggy to him overall. Maybe in the moment, somewhat, but I'd wager that Don just saw it more as confirmation of her being yet another flawed human in the parade of flawed humans that cross his path every day.

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

yeah, the don = sociopath thing can definitely be overstated, that's why i liked vegegrrl's "low level" modifier. he has feelings, but i just don't think they run particularly deep, and they're subject to revision or abandonment at a moment's notice if they get in the way.

I just think he sees everything as transient and fleeting and unimportant, that people are too tied to childish feelings or overinflated ideas of importance...he might get caught up in things every now and again, and play at being a normal person, but he's only ever acting, and he can never really fully connect. the remove helps him move on, but it's also WHY he moves on. all the time.

I thought Megan was sooooooooooo gorgeous until yeah....I started to see the Freddy Mercury thing. But there is also a Muppet that looked that way, can't remember which one.

I gave up thinking she's a time bomb, especially after waiting for the teacher to blow up seasons back.I thought for sure the teacher would really pull something but she just walked away. So not getting my hopes up too much for Freddy Mercury. Hope I will be surprised though.

I didn't see that as a rape scene at all. I thought it was total role playing with Megan knowing exactly what she was doing and Don getting turned on and catching on.

Pete is my new favorite character.

like i figure don could easily kill a man, a women and perhaps even a child if he felt he had to, and i can't imagine he'd loose too much sleep over it in the long run. i can't really see him putting himself in a situation where such a thing would seem necessary, though, either physically or mentally. he's smarter than that.

i can see him packing up and running off to start a new life if things got weird, becoming the sort of absent father who sends money/calls only once or twice a year.

the biggest counterargument would be his long-term support of and seeming affection for the real mrs. don draper. maybe that was partly an insurance thing though, i dunno.

thought Megan was sooooooooooo gorgeous until yeah....I started to see the Freddy Mercury thing.
― *tera, Tuesday, March 27, 2012 10:11 PM (33 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah otm

Megan reminds me of Gloria on The Sopranos.

zooby zooby zoo is a total earworm.

x-post couldn't see don killing someone, he's too repressed to ever get that angry or conspicuous.

I didn't see that as a rape scene at all.

i didn't mean rape, btw. in saying "rape-sex", i just meant sex that plays with force and refusal. she pretended to resist him, and he physically overpowered her resistance.

x-post couldn't see don killing someone, he's too repressed to ever get that angry or conspicuous.

that was my point. he'd never allow it to come to that, but if for whatever reason it did, it wouldn't ruffle him overmuch, except in the pragmatic "how do i deal with this problem?" sense.

just say dom/sub or something. "rape sex" isn't a kind of sex.

i dunno, i think he'd be horrified. he is not a violent person to me. i think he is fundamentally a good person, but struggling under the weight of some severe identity problems and mental problems, which the show has only scratched the surface of. i think it's why he's such a believable character, tons of people are like this and prob way moreso in that era, but it will be a major challenge if they ever try to unpick him more. i mean, even the viewers can't be too sure of what lies beneath with don.

just say dom/sub or something. "rape sex" isn't a kind of sex.

ookey, fair enuf. do think a fair number of folks like to play at exactly that sort of thing, though this wasn't an example.

i feel this push and pull as to whether or not to try to understand "fifth season don draper" in terms of what "first season don draper," etc. experienced and did. you could argue that one of the nice things about television is that characters have these long histories that could be brought to bear (in the show itself or in viewers' imaginations) in terms of understanding their actions in recent episodes. and certainly mad men makes use of that. (though i'm not always sure how often we are actually being consciously cued to recall a particular interaction from several seasons ago vs. we choose as an audience to recall that interaction in the process of trying to understand/anticipate the current episode/season.)

but at the same time both creators and audiences don't generally have long, very accurate memories and it's equally true that the don draper character we watch in this season is not, and doesn't have to be, the same don draper as we watched in earlier seasons. his character has changed not just because of some implied or explicitly stated process of internal development, but because the interests of the writers, the contours of the drama, and in some sense the demands/needs of the audience have demanded that change. in other words the shifts in don draper's character--the seeming inconsistencies--don't have to "code" as realistic because TV drama is not a fundamentally realistic form. we don't engage with it exactly or even nearly as we would with a person IRL, even if there are inevitable, useful, and innneresting ways that the two types of engagement overlap.

all this to say that there are two, not necessarily incompatible options:

A) the apparent shift in the way don relates to the world that transpires over the course of (and between) seasons can be explained "realistically," as the kind of drift and complexity that "normal" humans can be said to undergo/have in the context of this ever changing world in which we live in.

B) the shift cannot really be explained realistically, but we go with it (or not) b/c we enjoy (or don't) the way the drama in its present form engages us.

i think that the artistic prestige that's conferred upon people like matt weiner makes it somewhat necessary for them to explain things in terms of (A) (since "artistic quality" is traditionally cast in terms of formal coherence/consistency and indeed consistency of authorial vision). and much of the audience is likely to go along with that. but i think it's just as likely that (B) is what's happening. it's interesting how more "low-brow" shows will actually make these shifts more baldly ("yeah, we got rid of that character because audiences hated her"/"we decided to make john more likable this season") because they are under less (internal and external) pressure to provide high-minded justifications for their artistic choices.

anyhow.

many xposts to *tera: I have a vague hope that Megan is the new hot-chick with the crazy eyes, who eventually burns down Sterling Cooper or runs down Betty Draper in a car or something.

I doubt it. She's too mild and it's not like her emotional fluctuations last episode were any big woop given what a PIA Don Draper is on a day to day basis, but still. I can dream.

i dunno, i think he'd be horrified. he is not a violent person to me

I remember him being pretty unpleasantly physical to Bobbie Barrett that time in the restaurant. Like, he didn't just put his hand where it didn't belong, he hurt her. I could see him doing major damage to someone if he had to.

and only Don Draper would have an awesome party in an amazing apartment and be all hate parties lemme eat worms I hate u

Maybe now when I tell ppl i hate birthdays they will just think i'm sexy.

i think he is fundamentally a good person, but struggling under the weight of some severe identity problems and mental problems, which the show has only scratched the surface of.

agree that he's not violent by nature, but this doesn't mean that he lacks the capacity. i do think that don's fundamental identity is very much in question, though. he's shown signs of decency and concern for his fellow man, but also of a kind of creepily adaptable moral vacancy. agree, too, that this isn't terribly unusual, that if don really is a "low level sociopath", then an awful lot of people share the affliction.

it's interesting how more "low-brow" shows will actually make these shifts more baldly ("yeah, we got rid of that character because audiences hated her"/"we decided to make john more likable this season") because they are under less (internal and external) pressure to provide high-minded justifications for their artistic choices.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, March 27, 2012 3:26 PM (4 minutes ago)

for ex, the distinct nicening of steve carell's michael scott after the first season of the american version of the office. no explanation needed or given.