Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

lol

Harry actually being a stand-up guy. The wonders of this episode never cease.

Call me old fashioned but I don't really think that fucking the woman your friend is obviously completely in love with and then offering him a load of money to go to the other side of the country and pursue a pipedream of a career that he is obviously completely terrible at is much of a stand-up guy thing to do. Regardless as to how fucked up his situation was.

The Kinsey thing was alternately hilarious and deeply sad but I was overjoyed to see that character get a proper ending.

yeah I don't think Harry did anything remotely commendable, but he was less of an amorphous blob in this episode. Offering Kinsey the money to go to LA was at least showing some initiative/creative problem solving

Kinsey's "no one likes me" monologue was really moving, I thought. really nailed the pathos of someone completely adrift

The season overall has been the most anthology-like the series has been I think. Seems like this episode set us up for a bit of a Jaguar-focused arc through to the end of the season.

culminating in Pete having a car crash, presumably

lol at that girlfriend's "he can really close". Giving Kinsey a bit of confidence and the opportunity for a fresh start without his life being sucked out by the girlfriend and the Hare Kirshnas was about the best thing he could have done.

also lol at "you've already traded that." or whatever he said. Great delivery.

I didn't get why she didn't threaten to blackmail him

or I guess just blackmail him, no need for threats lol

perhaps Kinsey will refine his script

Shakey did the research I thought I was going to have to do :) I vaguely remembered this episode and wondered if it ad a similar storyline.

one of my favorite OST episodes, not least because of the ridiculously heavy-handed metaphor, which even so is less clunky than Kinsey's "Negron Complex" concept

I think it's only happened a couple other times, but when Don and Joan are together just being Don and Joan it's one of the best parts of the series.

― Johnny Fever, Monday, May 21, 2012 5:28 AM (18 hours ago)

Oh yes, so nice that the two massively attractive TV characters can just talk, with barely a smidgen of will they/won't they (barely. And they won't).

it occurs to me that christina hendricks is a good actress.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf

This occurred to me in the first season.

So many hearty laughs from the return of Kinsey - he's a Hari Krishna! He's written a spec episode for fucking Star Trek!

I'm still a bit narky about the absolute ludicrousness of all English accents that pop up in this show.

hendricks has taken a turn for the much better on the acting front this season

she's always been good. she's probably the best actor on the show with anything do do.

there are other good actors, like robert morse/bert cooper, but we don't see much of them.

btw i couldn't make out the note on joan's flowers.

They were from Don - "Your mother trained you well" or some such.

signed, Ali khan

Yeah, at the bar she said something like "My mother trained me to be irresistible" or something like that.

pretty great episode! everything about harry and kinsey was hilarious and sad.

kind of dreading any financial shenanigans plot bullshit going forward tho

why so? seems pretty well motivated given what we know of lane's situation and character.

So ARE they setting us up for Don and Joan having a thing? Or was this episode as far as they'll take it?

― America's Mobile, Monday, May 21, 2012 11:37 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i didnt get the impression they were implying this at all. the dialogue was more about don having a fight of self-determination v. fate iirc, & ends w him driving a car really really fast

i rewound that convo she & he had to rewatch to try to better understand their diff perspectives on the cheating spouse

Is staying with the Hare Krishnas necessarily any better than heading off to LA and facing almost certain failure at being a scriptwriter? Dude seemed in a pretty vulnerable state and that's hardly going to help from what I can see. Peggy was probably OTM earlier in the episode.

LA in the mid-late 60s -- so many more fun cults he could join!

Is staying with the Hare Krishnas necessarily any better than heading off to LA and facing almost certain failure at being a scriptwriter?

yeah i can easily see kinsey panhandling on the streets of hollywood in a few years (or months). when his "screenwriting" ambitions turn up nothing, does he seem grounded enough to like get a job as a waiter or something?

he'll probably end up hanging out with charles manson and dennis wilson.

peggy was great!

That could be her in three years, so the smugness about Kinsey's downfall was nagl I thought.

I just realized - he was the best Krishna recruiter ever because of his advertizing background!

What was it Peggy said? "If it doesn't come easy for him, then he shouldn't bother"? I thought that said a lot about her own attitude about work and her career.

well the implication was if a script that bad didn't come easy then maybe he should try something else

i saw hare krishnas at the airport today for the first time in years! pretty cool.

aside from the really charming joan and don love-in i found p. much everything else in this episode unconvincing. esp the hare krishna thing.

what does that mean 'unconvincing'

what it always means!

the jaguar salesman was convincing

then why you smell of british sterling?

why are you being so condescending? oh wait, it's you. care to provide your flaky thoughts on the french cultural theorist du jour?

i love the world of intrigue this line effortlessly invokes

talk about condensing.

um, condescending

i'm just a pulpist

jed-I agree...

i find that unconvincing

The Hare Krishna storyline seemed a bit sloppy. Liked seeing Kinsey but...meh. I could see how he would be the type to go exploring cults and how subcultures appeal to that character but the show seems to try and incorporate too much pop culture at once this season. Or was I just annoyed with this episode.

given that the mid-60s was when pop culture REALLY went into overdrive, this seems entirely appropriate

They could've just found Kinsey in some storefront "cool" xtian church, but then we wouldn't have had the pleasure of his Krishna haircut.

the theater and post-play argument between Don & Megan was awesome

I guess my main question coming out of the episode was whether Don is throwing himself back into his work for good reasons (he really has been slacking, needs to focus) or bad reasons (Megan is too hard for him to deal with so he's gonna live at the office for six weeks). The fact that Megan was pushing him to try harder at work makes it a complicated question.

i think the joan dinner reminded him that there's more to live for than megan