Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

that was in response to sarahell

you're an idiot

― Mr. Que, Tuesday, May 15, 2012 12:00 PM (32 minutes ago)

this sort of thing really isn't necessary

Betty = Disintegration
Megan = Violator

liking characters is overrated

otm

I think she is more real than Megan. Megan is like a Barbie doll living in a glamorous penthouse,

*tera otm!

"more real," what

Betty: has a failed marriage and has mixed feelings about her ex; has body image issues and struggles with her weight; cares about her kids but isn't the perfect mother

Megan: manic pixie dream girl with a sugar daddy

that's pretty stupid

yeah how is Megan manic?

I guess you have to be mundane to be real?

yeah how is Megan manic?

are we watching the same show?

evidently not

unless 'manic' means something else? what mania is she exhibiting

did you all miss the Howard Johnson's episode?

Aside from her abrupt decision to resume acting, everything she's done seems pretty reasoned and deliberate.

answering a question with a question? really?

none of that HJ stuff seemed manic at all. DD was being a dick, so she took off.

Seems a bit ridiculous to say Megan is just a spoiled Manic Pixie Dream Barbie when a lot of this season has been about people seeing her as a spoiled Manic Pixie Dream Barbie and her dealing with that.

xp - the way she got super weepy about leaving a job she disliked? the dance number at his surprise birthday party? the ice cream eating?

I'm not saying she is DSM-IV "manic" - but she does have this "too precious for this world" quality.

Megan has basically been depicted as being inhumanly perfect, a trait I find creepy and disturbing

xp

w/sarahell on this, clinical definitions of "manic" aside

the way she got super weepy about leaving a job she disliked?

this seems totally normal.

the dance number at his surprise birthday party?

she loves don and wanted to surprise him. sure it was misguided, but that's not manic by any definition

the ice cream eating?

it's pronounced sherbert.

and i think she was exasperated with him, it had been building the whole episode

^^wrt the ice cream

The way some people perceive Megan makes me think I'm watching a totally different show. She's one of the only people in the world of Mad Men who seems to have her shit together.

what if we eliminated the word "manic" and just left it at "pixie dream girl"?

Though I do think the weepiness was excessive and the total cluelessness in re the party made me think something was wrong with her.

these characters are the exact same level of real, which is not

in the 'howard johnson's episode' where, as written, the character decided to be confrontational toward the pattern of character don's habitual level of manipulativeness and need for approval of choices he's already made. and then got severely punished for it because he got fed up and walked away. well, drove away.

the approval of everything betty has been shown to do recently and disapproval of megan is... iiinteresting

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/tv_club/features/2012/mad_men_season_5/week_8/mad_men_recap_megan_and_sally_are_friends_indeed_.html

I'm kinda digging Freddy Mercury now that I've gotten used to her

i am suspicious of Megan; she provokes anxiety in me as a viewer. That anxiety is lessened when the cracks show, because it makes her seem like a person. And I'm sure a lot of that anxiety and suspicion is because she is female, and she is regularly positioned as this ideal character, whereas you don't get that with any of the men.

its interesting to note that in episode about people being selfish bastards, Megan was (once again) shown behaving in a manner contrary to pretty much everyone else

the total cluelessness in re the party made me think something was wrong with her.

i attribute this to the age gap more than anything else

what do we know about megan so far? is that she has pretty screwed up parents, more naive and more trusting than most of the characters on the show (kind of a low bar there), probably brighter than betty and with a better sense of self-retraint, probably the only character we've seen yet (save of course peggy and maybe lane) who tries to act with a sense of what's right.

she got some kind of dream to come true -- marrying the big shot in the city -- but has to deal with what life with all his baggage is like. that's half the point of her character, surely

after so many different flavors of cynicism, selfishness and bitterness, i think the show is having fun with a true innocent and how far that can go. really seems to bug some people tho!

How long did we have to wait to discover what Peggy's flaws are?

once I clapped eyes on her huge choppers I stopped being intimidated by her

it does make me a little suspicious - like the show's writers are waiting and ratcheting up the sympathetic angle prior to letting the other shoe drop

xp

Peggy was flawed, or at least conflicted, right from the beginning

banging Pete against her better judgment etc

i think megan and betty both seem real. with megan, the writers have tended to emphasize the positive aspects of the character, and with betty the negative, but neither seems unrealistic or unlikely to actually exist.

i agree that there's something off about the show's failure to equip megan with her own burden of mistakes, grudges and flaws. it's like betty has to be made twice as evil as anyone else just to permit megan's relative decency to exist in the mad men universe. she is presented as something of a dream girl, though not exactly of the "manic pixie" variety.

Peggy's flaws are that she slept with Pete and that she's conflicted?

flawed in the sense that she was a person that made mistakes. she did not always do the right thing/react appropriately etc

well there was that one jogging teacher, but she was both innocent and clueless. megan has ben given some foresight and intelligence. really the most 'manic' thing she's done to date is marry don

xp - i don't think betty has seemed particularly evil this season at all! she seems to be much kinder and considerate of her kids; she seems to actually enjoy things in life (ok, so it's food that made her fat, but still!) she does not seem remotely beyond the pale as far as interactions with her asshole ex that repeatedly cheated and lied.

this is kind of a key difference between Megan and Peggy - while both are sympathetic, Peggy has made mistakes. we've seen her be awkward, petty, vindictive, self-absorbed, etc.

flawed in the sense that she was a person that made mistakes.

Megan makes mistakes. She says the wrong things sometimes. She married a guy she barely knew.

i still wanna know why Megan was constantly borrowing lunch money from Ginsberg and never paid him back. probably just part of her flaky pixie-ness and nothing sinister.

Peggy's flaws are that she slept with Pete and that she's conflicted?

she's grudgeful, sometimes mean, sometimes oblivious (her interaction w the new secretary), quick to anger, a bad actress (apparently), a pete-toucher, a frumpy dresser, a bit of a stick in the mud, a movie theater pervert, etc...

she seems to be much kinder and considerate of her kids

......................

yeah, i'm not getting that at all. the most humanizing thing they've given betty this season are a fat suit and a dieting regimen.