Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

with "666" in the background behind the blinds

wanted a longer one w text, but that's all the internet seemed willing to provide

spooky xp

weird - what is that doing there?

*meant I LIKED Megan a whole lot more....not so much now.

tumblr comes through:

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4d6o8eoQW1rrq2fxo1_500.gif

and another good one i found on my tumblr journey:

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4hatxZUsk1rntmico1_500.gif

lol at the lamp gif, i'd forgotten about that

he played that very well, the lag between perception and comprehension

omg subtitled gif even greater than I hoped

hare krishnas was hilar

Weiner, Gilligan, and Milch talk about TV: http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201206/roundtable-discussion-matthew-weiner-vince-gilligan-david-milch?currentPage=1

i hope that's a convincing interview!

hare krishnas was sort of dumb, but not out of character for this show to do something for the lols. it doesn't take itself very seriously at all, least of all this season. it is 100% soap opera now.

lol what was it before

back to the soap opera thing zzzzzzzzzz

it's always been a soap opera. just with clothes and furniture that you covet.

^^^

Gukbe otm

i think the better word is "melodrama"

weird - what is that doing there?

It's a famous building. DC Comics was there for a long tiem.

that's what I was wondering, whether they were in the same building as DC comics!

a) the building would have to be several blocks long and turn a corner if so

b) DC didn't move there 'til the 80s

loved this episode! Christina Hendricks is a GREAT actress! Love her and Don!

Harry was ALMOST likeable. But not quite.

Ya know, Harry probably got some weird VD from that Krishna chick.

Also omg: he's fixing to be a dad AGAIN.

I kind of loved that Harry actually got into the chanting, that made me happy - like hooray there's hope for him somewhere in his meek existence, lol

from that GQ piece, so good that I had to share somewhere:

GQ: Given all the time in the world, would you choose to work this way on your shows, or would you prefer to write everything yourself?

David Milch: That's a good one. All the time in the world? The "B" answer is, I'd write it all myself. Which is to say that in my vanity and egoism, I would think that that would be the way to proceed. And I know deep down that the better answer is: Even having all the time in the world, it's better to collaborate with your brothers and sisters. It's ultimately the richest experience. But there's a kind of intolerant economy that happens: "Just let me do the fucking thing myself."

this series *started* as soap opera. seriously ppl.

i think people are operating with different definitions of "soap opera" and thus are talking past one another. what's your definition?

I don't think the guy from the Sopranos was trying to make the next Passions.

we've already been through this several times.

Yeah it always has been soap but definitely had more ongoing serial arch in past seasons. This season could go on forever, so sparse is the plot.

Arc* not arch

I don't remember us actually discussing in this in depth even if I know people have said the show is a soap opera a lot.

Maybe it was previous seasons. It's a *thing*.

this season is def the least soap-opera-y it's been, which I'm not sure I like. But like, say in the first season, all that suburban housewife/cheating husband/peggy pregnant stuff, TOTALLY soap opera

hell the overall arc is STOLEN IDENTITY

classic soap opera

The general disagreements tend to be what is "soap opera" and what is just "plot".

soap opera: intriguing story arcs over many episodes iirc?

so basically every serial drama then

yeah, but then The Wire, Deadwood, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Buffy, et al would be soap operas.

There's a pejorative connotation to the term that I don't think everyone is meaning, but it can sometimes be interpreted that way. Soap Operas are really any show with continuing threads, except the shows are never meant to end. It's become known (see the Passions reference above) as a string of Outlandish Plot Devices to keep people watching (and because of the amount of episodes that are produced, lack of constant innovation).

So Peggy being pregnant in the first season, for me, isn't soap opera. It would be if she were dating Pete and then Don barged in and said "that baby is MINE!".

I'm not at all talking about Soap Operas disparagingly, for the record. I've only ever meant it as a genre, and honestly I always enjoyed that given the time period that it DID have that soap-opera quality to the storylines, it felt kind of meta in a weird way.

maybe people are more invested in the show and want it to be a Drama, doesn't really bother me either way. But I've always viewed it as a soap-opera.

Peggy gets pregnant to an ambitious up-and-comer and has a secret abortion and the only person who knows about it is Don Draper, super-executive.

there doesn't have to be barging through doors and j'accuse! standoffs for that to be soap-opera.

Remarkably little happens in terms of overall plot in any given episode of Mad Men, which is why it strikes me as funny that people are quick to shout "Soap Opera". The show has the identity theft hanging over it, or at least it did for a few seasons, but really it was about personal reinvention in America, which is basically the same idea as in The Great Gatsby, and that's surely not a soap opera.

If you take a step back and say "Joan was raped by her fiancee and then he went off to war and while he was off to war her ex-lover and boss had sex and then she got pregnant but she's pretending its her now-ex-husband's baby", then yes, it seems pretty soap opera-y. But it's never presented in that fantastical, DUN-DUN-DUUUUNNNN way.

I have watched an embarrassing amount of actual soap operas. The way Mad Men is shot, written, acted, researched, costumed, etc. etc. is very different.

And Romeo falls in love with a rival family member, whose cousin kills his best friend, and then he kills that cousin, and then he goes on the run only to come back when he thinks his love has killed herself so he kills himself not realising that she didn't ACTUALLY kill herself.

A huge number of stories in any medium, when summed up to their bare essentials, can be seen as soap opera.

I know you're not meaning it in a pejorative Veg, btw.

Well, like I said, it always felt soap opera to me. And I do very much like soap operas and enjoyed them an awful lot at an earlier point in my life (Young and the Restless, Days, Bold)
My feeling was with Mad Men they just snuck the soap opera in the back door with all that meaningful staring out windows and cool clothes and furniture porn