Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

can you elaborate? perhaps to 450 pages?

http://images.contentreserve.com/ImageType-100/0128-1/%7BA3410374-80FD-457C-888C-568D598C88A7%7DImg100.jpg

you're all crazy. Pete has the natural unease and daily panic of a man who has invested all his energy into pretending he's in control. It's all in his eyes and reactions, he's SO good. And not that I'm biased but Kartheiser was practically a kid when he was in Angel and he nailed the hell out of that too.

I dislike Betty Draper's character which means it's well written enough for me to have a reaction, and I can't stand irl January Jones so it all becomes a convergence of dislike when she's on screen.
She is v pretty, she wears nice sundresses, and she sometimes looks nice when she actually smiles. That is as far as I will go :)

i think jones is kind of crappy actress.

she always seems to play the obvious emotion, and there's rarely a suggestion of conflicted feelings emanating from her body language or countenance. it's all produced by the context.

karthesier may not create a "naturalistic" character (though pete as a construct is plenty plausible) but he is impossibly entertaining and interesting and that's what counts IMO

Footnotes of Mad Men is back in action again: http://madmenunbuttoned.com/

karthesier may not create a "naturalistic" character (though pete as a construct is plenty plausible) but he is impossibly entertaining and interesting and that's what counts IMO

yeah, that i agree with. i don't always enjoy pete's presence as much as you and VG seem to, but kartheiser certainly gives him more layers than jones does betty draper.

Yeah, there's something disheveled or unstable about Pete. But he seems to be doing good, and he's a hard worker. Feels like every time something good happens to him I have to feel happy for him cos things may crumble to pieces at any time.

^^This. On the same tip, loved the whole wtf?-ness of this incident:

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1hljuavC31qzoaqio1_500.gif

http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1hljuavC31qzoaqio1_500.gif

I was hoping he'd have a big swollen nose/bandage for the rest of the episode at least, or some kleenex shoved up his nose.

ya - i'll *start* liking him in a weird way, but then he'll run off and molest an au pair and i'm right back to loathing him more than ever before.

^ the more you watch that, the worse it gets

actually, it's pretty bad to begin with, but it still gets progressively worse despite

That trip and hit nose thing is very Dick Van Dyke gone wrong....

Pete's giraffe secretary!!! I kept asking T. what's wrong with that girl, why don't I like looking at her??

omg

she is pretty

whatever weird crap they pull or do not pull with megan, working with and living with same person is a time bomb. especially when other people are between you in the chain of command. you could already see strong hints of this.

pete's secretary may be an alien, but i have no problem with her plans for the human race

goole: This is true...

I'm not sure I'd diagnose Don as a low-level sociopath. I certainly wouldn't call him emotionless. Being a 'whorechild' and growing up in the circumstances he did, he'll always feel like a fraud to some degree. I'm not sure if it's as much about "being found out" as much as it is revealing who he is, even if he doesn't quite know that. The early seasons really played up that "American Dream" business in that here's a guy who came from nothing and then he saw an opportunity and just took it, but the consequences for him, psychologically, have never really gone away. He has an innate ability to tap into something that people respond to, and he knows how to work a room and play 'the game', but all that bullshit artifice strains him. His character through the whole series has been this push-pull between what he believes is expected and 'should' be (that very particular American dream-lifestyle) and how he feels he is. He gets unnecessarily shitty when he feels somebody is out-of-line with the lifestyle as he thinks it should be, even if he doesn't quite belief it. He's built up a lot of defences, which is why it was really awkward and horrible to see him fall off the deep end with the drinking last season, or see him walking into work hand-in-hand with his new wife in this episode. It was especially horrible when he was confronted with having work people in his home, something that Megan didn't understand at all.

I also think he has a deep understanding and love for Peggy, and he's probably shitty to her in a boss-way because either a.) he thinks its good for her or b.) he hates that he lets his guard down with someone and overcompensates.

I'm really interested to see how the Megan relationship will work. At the end of last season, I wasn't the only going "oh god Don" when he chose the young, beautiful secretary over the (slightly) more age-appropriate marketing psychologist who seemed to have a really good understanding of him as a person (but she also clashed with his ideals of what a mother should be, thereby bumping up against his view on what 'family' life should be). He seems to be trying though, and being honest with her about Dick Whitman and all that could lead to some interesting places. He's making an effort to be more open, but is also not entirely comfortable with it. I think she could be good for him in a way. She's very naive though. Pare is great at it though. She gets that balance of naive youth and self-assured right. So far, at least. We'll see where the character goes.

I have more to say on Pete, but maybe later. I will just say that I thought Kartheiser was terrible on Angel, and not very good in the woeful Crime and Punishment in Suburbia, but he's very good here.

it's funny how don is really the villain in this show, but all the blame for his villainy is heaped, both by the writers and the fans, on those around him, especially betty. it's good to be (or look like) the king.

no between season shenanigans

Dunno, sort of think between-season shenanigans are kinda of essential now they've made Sally a main character and they need the plot to advance at more or less the same pace as the actress is ageing. Otherwise you get the problem they had with Walt in Lost. And it stretches credibility that Don would keep the Dick Whitman thing quiet after doing that ruined his first marriage. Really most of this double-header was about showing us what's happened to the characters and how they've changed in the intervening year or so.

I think Megan is meant to be a lot more intelligent and self-assured than people give her credit for, and she's just seen as the airhead secretary that married the boss. There's a moment early on in S4 when we've barely seen Megan, and people are talking about Peggy's new writer friends and Megan just goes "she's kind of pretentious", when casually calling people out on their pretensions is something that just never happens in Mad Men.

I love with Pete, how he's the conscientious worker who's really good and probably keeping the company afloat AND he's a liberal and at the same time he's clearly an arsehole and a slimeball.

The best Pete moment is when his father in law calls him an asshole after being screwed over by him, and Pete just grins, gives a shrug and carries on making cocktails.

I've liked Pete for ages, yes he's a dick, but he tries so hard to be better at life. Think him and trudy's dance at roger's wedding was all time classic. They do have the best marriage in the show too, fwiw in this show.

isnt it more pete trying so hard to be better at work moreso than life though - likewise his supposed liberalism is one part greater generational awareness than his peers and nine parts his figuring our which are the newer and better marketing demographics the company needs to be aiming at. unless i'm forgetting something everything "good" about pete is still filtered through the prism of his professional vanity and desire for oneupmanship rather than any real empathy

also his and trudy's marriage is pitiful!

Poor Pete is always trying to live up to somebody. Usually somebody rich and waspy.

The only reason Pete and Trudy have the best marriage in the show is because Pete hasn't been caught out about the two or three other women he's fucked.

And y'know that thing with the secret lovechild conceived a few days before his wedding.

and, not to keep harping in this, the au pair.

in a way i sort of don't think it's even about pete's big awful mistakes, it's the thousand little awkwardnesses between him and her in every scene and the almost cowardly sense of duty that stops him ever doing a don and walking away. the fact that their wan sham of a marriage is so very nearly kind of normal, and that pete could conceivably be seen as a "family man", makes it all the more tragic

I feel like the writers/directors have made a Betty character that plays to the actress's flaws -- as a character, she's fairly reserved, works hard at being proper, has this family drama (her family, not her family with Don) that leaves her emotionally drained. I'm not saying for sure that January Jones has a limited range, but she does best when she's playing this character who lives in a very limited range. The greatest moments of the Betty character haven't been ones where she's conveyed an emotion through words and body language, but ones where she's done an action that seems out of character. The shooting a gun thing, the interactions with Glen, hooking up with some dude in a bar, or manipulating the whole situation with her fellow equestrians.

I think Pete actually likes his wife and isn't bold enough or useful enough at this point in his life to have any other type of relationship! The only times he's been out on the prowl or acted like he's rising in station he's been mostly swatted down. I mean, the Peggy thing happened because they were both so low on the ladder and he was able to fake some level of confidence that he should be able to do such things and she wasn't wiser, yet.

He's been repeatedly trying to make power plays and for the most part, they haven't done much more than natural growth in his career would have done, anyway. People work and get better at their jobs and go up the company hierarchy if they have skill. Pete thinks that by throwing what he thinks are big breaks on the table that he's going to get to jump rungs.

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1i1wevx071r1bvoxo1_r1_500.gif

Peggy otm

In an interesting reversal of life meets art I am fighting being given my own office.

because....

Because:

I want to know what the team I manage is getting up to, they spend so much time on the floor If I'm not in with them I'd never see them

35 years of OB research says individual offices are bad for network forming and communications

I don't actually like working on my own

This isn't the 60s so I couldn't have a cocktail cabinet and our sexual harassment policy probably prohibits any goings on.

Even if I had an office I couldn't have a window as our new plant has been cleverly designed so there has to be crawl spaces for the fire rises against the walls. An openable window is my only dream as far as office space goes.

i had a nightmare last night that i came into my office and it had been subdivided for four people

No desire for an ant farm or bonsai tree? (xp)

At the current location I dug a pond and stream system and have planters full of tomatoes and melons. I plan to do similar at the new place.

I did think about executive toys though:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/315RDJsXI%2BL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
http://wd4eui.com/Pictures/steam_engine.jpg
http://s2.hubimg.com/u/542481_f260.jpg

More ILX time if your monitor away from the hallway.

Not to derail too much but in our old floorplan our boss had the office at the end of our cubicle row, his door was always open so it was almost like a default 'cul de sac' cubicle, we could go in anytime and talk, he could hear/see us from where he sat, and it was really a good setup. Not always great for him getting work done, but our group always worked collaboratively and he encouraged it so it didn't seem to bother him.

Then they changed the layout, and now he's in an office away from our cubicle row, behind a wall of cubicles so we can't see/hear him and we may not see him for days unless we have to go into his office with a question or if he comes by to ask us something.

it's just kinda sucky.

I hate cubicle farms, have a hard time believing they actually are good for "network forming and communications" or whatever

I imagine their benefits are outweighed by the morale-crushing ant-farm impersonality

speaking of offices... did anyone else notice the decor in Harry's office?
i loved it - complete opposite of 60's-trendy, like Rogers's office for example.

I am also anti-cubicle farms. I'm all for open plan. The highly functional manufacturing organisations I benchmark all have open plan, well lit engineering offices. Break-out rooms for meetings/quiet work sure but very open environment.

Harry's office was great but I can't help thinking his mother did his decorating.

i know everyone hates him here because he's unattractive - but dude knows how to classy-up an office!

xpost