Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

s1ocki and harry sitting in a tree, watching T E E V E E

Harry Gets Herpes: new Mad Men spinoff coming this fall!

lol

i like harry. he's a confused dork, but seems basically harmless underneath all the boobery. not a good man, not a bad man, just sort of there. holding down the middle.

pete i loathe, but agree that kartheiser does a good job enriching his loathability.

idg why yall hate on harry hes not a rapist like pete yeesh. in the mad men universe, hes a minor lecher

harry is probably the most typical dude on the show

i dont really care for him one way or another but the way yall pile on him like he's so UNTALENTED and HORRIBLE, u have to admit, is 100% about the way he looks

what did he do? HE STARTED THE TV DEPARTMENT. that's probably a pretty big part of an ad agency's business.

no it doesn't have anything to do with the way he looks and everything to do with his actions

note my stanning for other overweight schlub Paul the Beatnik upthread

that's probably a pretty big part of an ad agency's business.

again you're basing this on... nothing. all the talk about who brings in the most business for the company points pretty squarely to Pete (esp post-Lucky Strike)

im basing this on logic and reality, why do you think they brought the schlub over from the old agency and not your beloved beatnik

why do you think Pete was made a partner, whereas Harry was just told to "come to work over the weekend"

the idea that Harry's crucial or creative or has any redeeming qualities is just not supported by the show. sorry.

he was just forced out of his office fyi

forced?? Really??

pretty much. it's all about keeping pete happy, since he has ALL the accounts.

pete's job is to bring in new clients and to manage existing ones. that kind of thing will always seem sexy and pete's obviously pretty good at it (for reasons that aren't ever made clear: clients don't seem to like him, and he's never shown any great insight, intelligence or understanding of the business).

harry probably does some marketing to broadcasters (?), but we've never seen much of his day-to-day work. we presume he makes TV ads? honestly, i don't think we can say much about the kind of work harry does, what kind of revenue it brings in, or whether he's any good at it. the show simply doesn't care about him. he's a cartoonish shlub designed to set off the more attractive and important characters.

as i see it, pete is a classic striver: extremely ambitious, tirelessly dedicated to his work, sharp & bold enough to get what he wants.

we saw that joan could do his job 10x better than him w/o breaking a sweat but that applies to alot of characters

his job = harry; pete's probably the most insightful person (maybe peg) at scdp, though this maybe purely an aspect of his relative youth (though considering harry's about the same age maybe not). sterling cooper's always been depicted as at least a step behind - the first season had draper being skeptical of ddb.

he's never shown any great insight, intelligence or understanding of the business

what about when he exploited his personal loss to attempt to get the airline...? or screwing over his father-in-law to get bigger accounts? Or telling Ted Chaugh to go fuck himself? Or milking the jai-alai moron? Pete is plenty insightful/intelligent.

Harry can be a schmuck, but there's a haplessness about him that I find sympathetic.

forced?? Really??

did you even watch the premiere episode?! Roger said "move out and give your office to Pete" and Harry was like "uh okay please don't fire me"

what about when he exploited his personal loss to attempt to get the airline...? or screwing over his father-in-law to get bigger accounts? Or telling Ted Chaugh to go fuck himself? Or milking the jai-alai moron? Pete is plenty insightful/intelligent.

i see him as sharp and wily: clever enough to recognize the openings and weaknesses around him, unscrupulous enough to exploit them. this doesn't make him brilliant, but it does make him a very successful jr. shark.

he's basically the template of the corporate asshole. arrogant, entitled, pushy as hell, sharp enough to get what he wants, largely untroubled by compassion or decency.

also first season (first episode?) makes clear that what sterling cooper sells really is airtime/print space/etc. the actual ads are the flourish to their middle manning. harry, i believe, basically acts as a liaison between clients and the networks and protects clients interests by making sure their ads aren't awkwardly placed or that they aren't caught off guard by controversial programming. unless he's writing peyton place fanfic on the side there is no creative aspect to his job. the big floorshine ad that don won an award for was a tv ad. if harry was great at his job he might be spotting opportunities for synergy or conceiving product placement (i think tv is finally past the point of 'chesterfield cigarettes proudly presents the flintstones' or whatever by this time right?). instead he relays concerns from clients to networks, he covers his ass, he gets a hard-on when he meets elizabeth mcgovern, etc.

for reasons that aren't ever made clear: clients don't seem to like him, and he's never shown any great insight, intelligence or understanding of the business).

this is otm and a major hurdle in the verisimilitude of the show, imo. no client would ever like this guy = i don't believe it.

agree that his business is largely the business of being an asshole. he is good at it.

xp

what clients didn't like Pete? Jojo loved him.

i don't remember Jojo.

jai-alai

yeah don vaguely tried to scuttle that out of some vague sense of human decency right? which is why don isn't in sales.

let's also not forget, Harry is the one who got Sal fired.

just because they write that a character would love pete doesn't mean i would believe it.

saying you don't believe it is different than saying the show doesn't depict it. I don't think Pete is really shown as not working well with clients.

No, Pete's mostly elbowing coworkers to make sure they make a good impression on his clients, at least that was always my impression. They don't love him like they love Don, but I think Pete knows that and kind of leverages himself against his more impressive/formidable coworkers to keep his clients, if that makes sense.

fair enough. i've never really seen it and believed it.

just because they write that a character would love pete doesn't mean i would believe it.

yeah, exactly. pete's an awkward, creepy charisma vacuum, and that makes his success in sales extremely difficult to understand/accept. dunno whether this is a fault in the show's conception/writing, kartheiser's performance or both.

example of pete's not doing well with clients: his meeting with the mohawk gang. they clearly preferred sterling, and not just due to familiarity and age. pete himself asknowledged that roger is "good with clients", implying that he knows he isn't. he has absolutely no clue about how to put others at ease. he's completely awkward and off-putting in every social situation, especially when he's trying to be gracious.

pete's the ultimate "guy no one likes but who succeeds anyway". problem is that though those guys do exist, they aren't generally in sales.

or if they are, they're a lot more superficially charming than pete

like dwight schrute?

dwight wouldn't make a good salesperson, either. but the office is an absurd comedy, so the implausibility doesn't matter.

have you ever met a person in sales that actually made you want to buy something?

no, but i've spent a lot of time working with salespeople, and i have a pretty good idea what kind of people do well in that biz. #1 skill is being able to schmooze happily w people who have money to spend, whoever they might be.

you're thinking of strippers

lol, strippers are salespeople, and salespeople love strippers, so...

Pete's articulate and in awe of the creative side of his agency; he's direct, works hard and has all the proper WASP manners and goes to the right country clubs.

Roger's an entertaining drunk who inherited his one big client, then lost him. He's flippant and spoiled and comes across as largely uninterested in business.

I don't know anything about advertising IRL but I think these respective traits and their relation to building or losing business are more or less consistent in the show's world.

It's hard to imagine a client humiliating Pete the way Lucky Strike Jr. did Roger at the Christmas party. Roger's lack of formality or distance seems more of a liability than an asset.

That Ken is more like Pete than Roger seems appropriate as well.

Roger said "move out and give your office to Pete" and Harry was like "uh okay please don't fire me"

no Harry was like "bullshit man, I am TV" and Roger was like "ah fuckit how much spare cash do I have in my pocket? oh $1000 how about that" and Harry was too dazzled to either stand his ground or intuit the status endrun that Roger was pulling