Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

and then there's Don/Dick's childhood.

it's clear he got treated like shit, I don't recall any physical abuse tho.

Duck vs. Don Draper was a fun fight

and Don is quite clearly not a fighter - drunk Duck whooped his ass.

xp

do u remember when don got blown up in korea

p sure that's an intimate acquaintance with violence!

yeah but w getting blown up tho

not punching a dude

;)

N. Korea punched him in the face iirc

but yeah I propose that avoiding getting hit by artillery and knocking a man on the ground with your fists are entirely different skills

I dunno if anybody else agrees but I was getting the impression they were doing some heavy foreshadowing with Pete heading toward some kind of breakdown: the Whitman references, being asked to bring his gun to the house (reminding us that he has it for the second or maybe third time this season), being belittled and humilated repeatedly ... I have a habit of reading too much into TV shows, but this seemed like the writers are setting up 'this guy will snap violently'. He seems incapable of enjoying what he does have, and is desperate for some kind of approval and acceptance which he sees others having but not him.

Is there anybody specific Cosgrove is meant to be? Or just as 'author who started out in advertising' a la Pynchon/DeLillo/Heller?

it's clear he got treated like shit, I don't recall any physical abuse tho

he's mentioning that his father used to beat the crap out of him.

pretty confident the writers aren't trying to draw any specific parallels with any of the characters (otoh I had no idea Pynchon, DeLillo, and Heller all started in advertising). I did wonder if his nom de plume was ever actually used but it doesn't look like it.

The Whitman/gun/frustrated Pete stuff def felt like foreshadowing to me but who knows.

he's mentioning that his father used to beat the crap out of him.

ah right - that came up in reference to Sally, or something, I think? forgot about that.

could be foreshadowing something for two seasons from now tbh

pynchon didn't work in advertising. he was a technical writer for boeing.

think u mean yoyodyne

lol

can we stop misspelling Lane's name now plz

yeah, seeing a lot of "laine" and even some "layne"

like i said upthread, they'd hinted at it (Lane wanny smoochy Joan) before - but what i think put him over the top was the adrenaline rush of getting into a fight (and winning).

― Porto for Pyros (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall)

That and Joan tenderly brushing the hair from his face. Totally believable. I have platonic female friends who I occasionally have the urge to kiss.

A very funny episode. I would be all up for MM becoming a knockabout comedy with a deathmatch between two of the cast at the climax of each episode. They could do a spin-off Tekken-style Mad Men beat em up.

Also, in the previous ep I was kind of hoping that Don's fever dream would turn out to be real, and the rest of the season would revolve around him covering up a murder.

me too (re: don's dream)

yes me too.

WOW. incredible episode!

"england won the world cup!"
"cup of what?"

i love how lane just cannot maneuver around jaguar guy's conversation. "i was in the war, it was awful." "i'm so sorry.." "no, those were the best years of my life, really." i think the jaguar guy was just fucking with them.

is it just me or have they just not established well why megan would have fallen for don? i mean i get in principle--he's handsome, brashly confident, sexy, successful--but i guess the actors don't have convincing chemistry?

dark permanence thing really made me laugh

why does everybody need to be convinced so hard? is it because it is television? people don't act convincingly in real life.

people act erratically and without apparent motive all the time imo.

why does everybody need to be convinced so hard?

? have you not heard of the notion of two actors having chemistry?

i dunno if it's the episodes themselves or just my particular view of it right now, but i feel like we're seeing some of the limitations of jon hamm the actor, or at least the conception of the don draper character by hamm and weiner et al. hamm almost has his speech patterns, gestures, tone of voice, etc. down too well.

kartheiser is really the standout in this show -- it's not really a believable character in terms of verisimilitude of gesture, voice, etc. but it's a really interesting and absorbing creation just the same. especially true in this last episode.

I guess I was reacting also to the "not convinced by Lane kissing Joan" and whatnot. Like if ever there was anything that portrayed people just doing stuff and stuff happening to them I think it's mad men. Episodes have themes, characters have arcs, but for the entire series, characters have done things for reasons we (at least I) can't fathom. I think it's neat.

I guess I've heard of actors having chemistry but I guess now that I think about it it's never something I've tried to observe critically or w/e. I think about the writing on this show a lot more than the acting.

Now you've made me try to think of when I last actually NOTICED chemistry between romantic leads, and I think it was that Adjustment Bureau film with Slattery in it, between Matt Damon and Emily Blunt.

i think chemistry is something we're more likely to consciously perceive in absence than in presence. when the story, behavior and dialogue seem to suggest that to characters are "passionate" about one another, but the performances don't convey this adequately, we notice the discontinuity. i don't notice any great chemistry between pare and hamm, but nor am i troubled by its absence. they do okay together, imo.

[kartheiser's pete is] not really a believable character in terms of verisimilitude of gesture, voice, etc. but it's a really interesting and absorbing creation just the same.

otm. was saying something similar upthread. i never believe that pete is an actual human being or that he would excel in his corporate role, but he's a lot of fun to watch (and hate).

re: chemistry - it's important to remember that Don's ideal partner was set up as the psychologist woman and they would have been perfect and it felt like a huge letdown on Don's part to suddenly decide that he wanted to marry Megan. Like he was regressing to this simple, and totally hot, secretary. All credit to Pare this season for making Megan seem more than just a trophy who got promoted at work due to marrying the boss.

on top of that you have Don acting totally monogamous and - shockingly- pretty together, which i think we all assume is just a ruse.

I think that even with Megan being a modern girl in 1966 she probably wouldn't feel in too much of a position to be rejecting the proposal of this guy she likes a lot even if he's maybe not her absolute DREAM GUY? And on Don's side, he's in the classic position of being in a relationship with someone because they're Good For You, and she evidently is in many ways, but that makes it a p fragile partnership from his side of things.

English people in Mad Men always make me cringe a bit, Lane excepted. Did we really use to talk like that in the 60s?

i dunno all cues in the script point to megan and don being very attracted to one another -- they can't keep their hands off each other etc. and frankly that doesn't come off convincingly in the performances. probably for reasons that are complex and can't be helped. i think some of you folks are overanalyzing it.

it's important to remember that Don's ideal partner was set up as the psychologist woman and they would have been perfect and it felt like a huge letdown on Don's part to suddenly decide that he wanted to marry Megan. Like he was regressing to this simple, and totally hot, secretary.

I always assumed that the reason Don didn't end up with Faye is in large part because Faye was so terrible with children, which is pretty important for him, since he has no idea what to do with them).

"i never believe that pete is an actual human being or that he would excel in his corporate role, but he's a lot of fun to watch (and hate)."

This is so weird, because does Pete seem like a very slightly exaggerated version of people I have met and whom I have seen excel despite being largely despised by everyone around/under them.

Megan seems to make an awful lot of social faux-paus. Dropping that Don was divorced at the Heinz meeting, loudly exclaiming Cynthia's name at the dinner party, embarassing Don at his surprise party...

hands up if you couldn't remember kenneth's wife name either

(it's not usually my habit to read recaps/re-watch eps of long-form dramas so i don't really remember tiny details of this show the way y'all have tho)

They should've asked Pete, who should've confessed he didn't know either. I should definitely be a Mad Men script consultant.

xpost

I actually not sure she'd even been named in the show up until that point.

^^^ yeah I don't think she'd even been on-screen...? maybe at the last Xmas party?

they should've asked TRUDY

she's been on screen a number of times, ken was out to dinner with her and her parents, at don's party. pretty sure ken mentioned her name in the office.

Cynthia Cosgrove (Larisa Oleynik) (née Baxter) is Ken Cosgrove's wife, the daughter of Ed (Ray Wise), who is the CEO of Corning. Cynthia is a New York society girl, who appears to have moved in the same Manhattan social circles as the presumably older Trudy Campbell. In season four, Cosgrove refuses to use Ed's connections to get new clients for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, claiming that he doesn't want to be like Pete Campbell. He calls Cynthia "his life" and unlike Pete Campbell, does not want to use her or his future father-in-law to get business. In the fifth season premiere, her character is listed during the credits as Cynthia Cosgrove, implying that they were married between the fourth and fifth seasons.