Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

thought Henry's mother's knife underscored the "I AM SCARRING YOU, BETTY DRAPER" a bit too heavily but man those scenes were creepy/lol

seconal, passed out under the couch omg

er SALLY Draper

Giving Sally a downer a week after recommending Betty start taking uppers!

peggy's purse faux pas was the capper on a kind of overall misfire on her part -- trying to reach out but really making everything about herself. I love glimpses into unguarded peggy's mind, but dawn was clearly hesitant to trust her and peggy was kind of bulldozing over her the whole conversation. which is unflattering to peggy but a totally worthwhile thing to highlight imo, the different levels of privilege occurring within SCDP itself.

Like we know we can trust Peggy, but her boozy "don't worry about it" attitude when Dawn asks her not to tell Don...it wasn't convincing at all.

by my count Roger's tally for bribing people in the office into doing things for him is up to $1410 so far this season

Yeah, kinda hoping this becomes a running gag.

trying to reach out but really making everything about herself

yeah def. and projecting her own career path/hopes and dreams onto Dawn in a way that was unintentionally really condescending. thinking that every secretary secretly wants to be a copywriter, etc

thought it was pretty well done the way the "white people problems" media anxiety over the student nurse murders overshadowed the riots. bumping it off the cover of Life magazine and Peggy saying "but you're not a nurse" ... oh.

the Don dream kinda ruined the episode for me tbh. just lame.

by my count Roger's tally for bribing people in the office into doing things for him is up to $1410 so far this season

yeah, loved this. getting expensive for roger to get his way.

I didn't think the Don-dream thing was so bad but the whole "sick fever dream of cheating/murder" was a total Sopranos rehash

loved the Peggy and Dawn scenes, so uncomfortable. wondering if Dawn is gonna get some actual background/characterization at some point

$1410 so far this season

Isn't that about $7-8,000 in 2012 dollars?

but the whole "sick fever dream of cheating/murder" was a total Sopranos rehash

well yeah. that's why it sucked. sort of been done to death.

the "I am so irresistable, even when totally sick" thing telegraphed it a bit

nice character bit: michael's moral revulsion when others found the murders exciting didn't prevent him from exploiting that excitement in his "dark" cinderella pitch.

that was pretty well done.

the attempts to allude to the murders and make it a theme through the rest of the episode, I didn't think it really added up to anything. "she escaped by hiding under the bed" --> Sally sleeps under the couch, Don stuffs a corpse under his bed

that's the ongoing "all this stuff means something; see the connections?" show-and-don't-go madmen trademark

because I still envision a horrible future for Sally, that shot where she looks at the bottle of pills felt like it should have been underscored with a DUN-DUN-DUNNNN musical sting.

Anyone wanna give a wiki link to the murders? I don't know much about American history of nurse killers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Speck

Here's the lurid version that Henry's mother would be a fan of:

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/speck/index_1.html

was familiar with but had largely forgotten about Speck.

o_0 at the prison video ref'd in the wiki tho

I remember seeing the part of that video aired by some Bill Kurtis program in the 90s.

btw what did Dawn's note say...? All I could make out was "thanks for your generosity" or something

"sorry for putting you out", I think?

would just like to say the bit where Peggy got up on the couch and folded her legs under her, with hands in her lap, ready to confess = A+

i did NOT know about speck, what a fucked up story.
also wtf wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_rapists

American rapists
Stay away from meeee

aaaanyway we all know about this already right

by my count Roger's tally for bribing people in the office into doing things for him is up to $1410 so far this season

More than that! $50 to the secretary in the debut, $1100 to Harry same ep, and $410 to Peggy last night

Just wanted to point out that the show must have a product placement deal w/Bugles, as Mother Francis was eating them while watching tv just like FatBetty.

there's always been tons of product placement on this show

ha i though the bugles was a nice link between Betty and Mother Francis (as was "your mother is obsese.")

Bugles: Fat People Like 'Em!tm

anyone else feel robbed of at least a season's worth of potboilery baby daddy drama by joan's dumping the motherfucker already?

you misspelled "saved from"

anyone else think that the show's treatment of betty is sort of shabby/creepy and indicative of certain issues on the part of its creator(s)?

xp lol, i guess so

and yes, i agree with you

I think you could definitely make a case that this show has "mommy" issues... in contrast to Don (who's shown more or less being a dad who at least loves his children), pretty much all the mothers on the show have been portrayed in a pretty negative light.

Betty
Peggy's mother
Henry's mother
Joan's mother (altho in the last couple episodes she doesn't come off so badly...?)

Mona Sterling seemed to have her shit together, I guess

Campbell's ice-cold mother too

how are the daddies in general, besides absent? the only ones coming to mind are pete's dead one and lane's violent one.

Betty's dad was pretty cool.

Don's drunk, violent one

Trudy's dad seems manipulative but not entirely evil. at least responsible and caring towards his daughter.

The women on the show are just pretty faces or they are Joan, Betty, Peggy, Sally and now Mother Francis This is why I was hoping Megan has some major character development. Hate that Betty's just sort of stagnated with a lame weight issue so far. Would have appreciated more Sally time instead of the Don dream.

The women on the show are just pretty faces or they are Joan, Betty, Peggy, Sally and now Mother Francis

mmm no. Trudy, Megan. Wouldn't exactly call the LIFE mag woman a "pretty face" lol

oh you ref'd Megan - sorry. Trudy isn't major but I do think she's past the "pretty face" accusation