Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

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

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

Pete has def. been shown to have insight and business sense at times, there was a whole episode based around his wanting to advertise to black people when no one else in the company could imagine that that would be a lucrative market

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.

― RCMP, Thursday, April 5, 2012 7:14 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm. you guys are crazy. pete doesnt bro down with clients but there's also just you know ... being professional ... knowing what the client wants to hear ... making sure they get what they want ... there are lots of ways to be good at that job that dont necessarily involve making bad jokes & boozing w/ them a la roger

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"

this is not what happened. Harry thought he was getting fired.

"we can have the conversation you thought we were having"

exactly. as soon as Roger realized Harry was confessing to a fireable offense Roger told him he could either take his pocket cash (which is a totally insulting way to buy off somebody!) and lose his office, or Roger could get him fired.

iow, Harry is worth roughly $1,100 to SCDP

Roger was never going to fire him for that, they would have bro-d down about it if Harry was capable of broing down, he was just telling him to stop looking a gift horse in the mouth

nb Megan looks like a gift horse, in the mouth

yeah, okay, granted. i went to far in saying that he's never shown insight etc. modify to: the show has only rarely taken the time to point out pete's real value (goes double for harry). for the most part, they just have pete magically attract clients, something that doesn't seem well supported by his basic character.

roger's big value is that he is culturally "of business". he's at ease around wealth & executive power. he speaks its language. it's clear that his glory days are past him, though, and at this point he's deluding himself into thinking that his ability to entertain drunk clients makes him indispensable.

that all went back to dmr on pete's advertising savvy

there are two type of account people, really. there's the ones that schmooze and play nicey-nicey with clients. they can get a lot of places going that route. then there's the account people who try to anticipate the client's needs and be smarter than the client. it's a bit rougher, because sometimes it means your clients might not actually like you.

however, the first type of guy is more easily fired--because guys who are fun and want to schmooze are a dime a dozen. the account people who bring about results are the ones who grow business.

it was a big revelation when advertising companies realized there's more money in buying media than there is in selling ads. Harry's job is pretty important, but he's replaceable.

The client's don't have to love Pete, but he pays attention to them and tells them what they want to hear and calls them back, so he's good at that job.

otoh, pete's a rapist & harry's just a lech

so,

Pete (and to an extent, Roger) is in the weird position of being a salesperson in a marketing company selling marketing to the sales departments (or company heads) of other companies.

I think Pete is OK at sales, but he's never shown that he's got a skill for the creative side of the business.

Harry is in the position where he's straddling the two -- he's not selling SCDP's products, he just came up with better ways to use media (television!) but he's still not the creator of marketing materials on tv -- he delegates most of the actual legwork. So he's weak to clients because he's not in sales, and he's weak in the office because he's not a producer of material -- he's just finding tv opportunities for existing clients to be sold commercials.

So in other words, Harry is doomed to middle management

oh god Harry is perfect middle-management material

no discernible skills; olympic-level blame-shifter; at an early point in his career was creative enough to do something that justified him getting an office and will rest on that laurel for the rest of his natural born life.

he doesn't want to move up, he just wants to be left alone. he's made it to the middle and that's where he'll stay.

I work with so many of these it's ridiculous.

he doesn't want to move up, he just wants to be left alone.

lol that's me!

actually I think I just described myself too, lol

i think you described every half-decent person who works in an office

we are Harry

I aspire to the ability to talk with coworkers, break down my responsibilities into clearly-defined tasks, and then complete a reasonable number of these tasks each day, or at least each week.

I'll let you know if this ever happens.

not only does the harry office thing have nothing to do with his status (like someone said, he had to be PAID off, with a bit of humourous fake blackmail), dont they have to like beg him to join the new firm when they leave the old one?

do you even watch this show?

haha

Nah, they just had to keep reassuring him it would all be okay b/c he's such a narrow-visioned whiner. And because he didn't want to be left locked in a closet in the old office.

not only does the harry office thing have nothing to do with his status

Roger picked him because a) Roger didn't want to give up his own office and b) he knew no one else would defend Harry, because he's useless and nobody likes him

(like someone said, he had to be PAID off, with a bit of humourous fake blackmail)

he did not have to be paid off, Roger made it clear Harry could either a) accept Roger's pocket change in lieu of his office or b) suffer the wrath of Don and get fired.

dont they have to like beg him to join the new firm when they leave the old one?

they didn't even tell him they were starting a new company! he was told to show up on Saturday, not knowing what was going on. The other partners had to make promises to Pete and Peggy to get them on board, with Harry they didn't even bother, they just bossed him around.

I'm starting to think s1ocki drifts off to sleep when this show starts and then dreams about being Harry and how much everyone respects him and how big and important he is

^ irl lol, sorry s1ocki

The next morning, we see Pete in the elevator. Off-screen, Harry calls for him to hold it. Once inside, he asks Pete if they called him in too. Pete says that they did. Pete then admits to Harry that he’s “a little scared”. Harry, oblivious to what Pete’s talking about, asks him to clarify. Pete, realizing that Harry doesn’t know, says nothing. A couple minutes pass, and the two walk through the doors of Sterling Cooper to see Bert, Roger and Lane huddled over a table. Harry, confused, asks what’s going on. Bert says that PPL has been sold to McCann, that they’re starting a new agency, and that they’d like him to join the new company as “Head of Media”. Harry looks stunned, and asks if they’re kidding. “Yes. Yes we are”, Roger quips. Bert then says that they need an answer from Harry now. Harry says that he should really call his wife. Bert says that the matter is secret and time-sensitive, and that if he turns down their offer to “become a mid-level cog at McCann” that they’ll have to lock him in the store room until morning. Harry seems frozen with indecision. To break the silence, Lane hands Pete a folder and ask if he knows where the related paperwork is. Pete says that he has no idea, so he hands the folder to Harry.

^^^power broker in action

fwiw harry provides me a great deal of enjoyment ("i thought you were ordering for yr whole family") and he's still almost definitely the most decent american man at the firm (o wait - cosgrove). it's just crazy considering how much i liked harry in season one and how much i hated pete and how much i've completely reversed my feelings there even though pete isn't that much better a person now and harry isn't really that much worse.

he did not have to be paid off, Roger made it clear Harry could either a) accept Roger's pocket change in lieu of his office or b) suffer the wrath of Don and get fired.

not defending harry as a savvy power player, but iirc, roger only worked out that pete had been trying to confess to a fireable offense after he'd made the cash offer. once he twigged to this, he was able to leverage harry with it, but he'd started out hoping to just straight-up pay harry off.

god so tempted to watch that season 3 finale again, giddy just reading about it

right. of course, if Roger had known Harry had committed a fireable offense PRIOR to the meeting, Roger just would have threatened him with that outright and not paid him anything.

xp

roger's a bully and harry's a pushover, pete getting that office was never in doubt

harry is no tyrus

troo

roger's a bully and harry's a pushover, pete getting that office was never in doubt

well, Pete wanted Roger's office. Roger just looked around for the easiest target/least valuable company asset.

yeah it's a sign of how much that power dynamic has shifted that roger felt the need to proactively find a solution to the problem.