Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

…and Don never came to a meeting again

I just hope there's no Inception/Sopranos-like agonizing about what happens after the end of the finale of this episode.

welp there goes my 'this is still don's gas dream' suggestion.

Don never left California in season 2, everything since then has just been a coke-fueled reverie

by the way I've never rewatched that, was the person who was hanging out with the woman he was sleeping with her dad or what?

heh someone on tumblr pointed out that pete's sister-in-law (presumably trudy's sister) is named judy.

when i was defending the episode earlier i had kinda forgotten about pete's "here's my entire season's character arc in monologue form", that plus dead adam making "hang" puns was nagl, writing-wise.

i feel like the pete plotline could've been saved if beth had been played by a different actress who could better convey the intensity of manic-depression.

Really liked the way they came back to the photo in Lane's wallet from the premiere. Something basically innocent that became damning outside of context.

Nancy Sinatra's Bond theme: A+

It seemed like they were over-stuffed w/classic closing shots (Don leaving the set, the partners in the new office, Roger's ass) before landing on one that was less-so, but both more in character and boring.

plus dead adam making "hang" puns was nagl, writing-wise.

could have tqken this if he'd just raised his eyebrows, not gone "geeeet it?!?!?!"

I feel like Weiner should have stuck to Don thinking he saw Adam in that office, the dentist scene was overkill.

Glen Bishop is basically Bobby Hill after puberty

heh someone on tumblr pointed out that pete's sister-in-law (presumably trudy's sister) is named judy.

sadly i think this is pete's brother's wife who appeared once ages ago. could still make for some good dinner table farce next season, though.

Yeah I think Trudy is an only child (feels like she should be one anyway.)

"I'm the president of the Howdy Doody Circus Army!"

don't get why people are hating on the last shot - serial philanderer Don has been on his best behavior all season, the shot + the Bond theme were great "that chapter is OVER" signposts

mad men season 6: return to whore island

Next season Don Draper will be played by George Lazenby.

Really liked the way they came back to the photo in Lane's wallet from the premiere. Something basically innocent that became damning outside of context.

wanted to second this, brought the whole bit from the first episode into sharp relief.

also lol'd at Trudy's "not ANOTHER car accident"

so many great lines.

"This is what happens when you have an artistic temperament but you are not an artist." Megan's mother is so cold and awesome.

and lol at how Weiner feels the need to flag Pete's Democrat credentials ever so often: "You just hate him because he voted for Goldwater." Has any other character been identified by their politics on the show as much as Pete?

ugh yeah Megan's mom is assuming monstrous proportions

Cooper's politics have been referenced a number of times - re: civil rights, Nixon etc.

it is sort of weird that Pete is a Democrat, seems more likely that a scion of blue-blooded east coast waspishness would be a Rockefeller Republican...

kinda disappointed that we didn't see Abe after the episode where he and Peggy had their shacking-up party; he's p. dreamy in a yiddy kind of way

pete's fam is broke and he hated them all anyway

having him be a bleeding heart is just a fun thing to put next to him being a psycho

one thing that seemed a bit off to me in this episode was Ginsburg - he was really foaming at the mouth in that Topaz scene, struck me as a bit over the top.

xposts right Cooper the Randian.

Yeah I was wondering where Abe was too, especially now with Peggy making bank as copy chief.

that one ginsburg line made me lol though - about Don not letting a day go by without calling him an idiot.

Don seems more troubled by the spirits of the dead than the average person doesn't he?

he was really foaming at the mouth in that Topaz scene, struck me as a bit over the top

Ginsburg is very near the edge at all times.

Don seems more troubled by the spirits of the dead than the average person doesn't he?

tbf he's left behind a lot of corpses

his mom, his dad, his brother, Don Draper, Anna Draper, Ms. Blankenship, Lane

The girl he strangled and hid under the bed in what was already a dream.

...and although we just haven't seen her lately, I assume Midge has probably OD'd by now. xp

walking off set show was too sirk for me

yeah my wife didn't really like that scene, felt it was too canned and perfect. that's kinda how I felt about the lining-up-at-the-new-office-window shot tbh, kinda cool but it looked like they were all lining up in perfect place for next season's poster.

i can see the poster:
"Next season on Madmen...
<window shot here>
find out who Don kills next.
<logo>"

My architect friend commented on Joan's marking on the carpet "the stairs will go here."

Uh, think again.

right. the slide is going there. *smacks head*

wtf was roger doing at the end? yoga or something?

He's tripping on acid.

NAKED

TRIPPIN BALLS

Where's he gonna put his note?

when people say that shot of don leaving the set was like "sirk," what do they mean?

roger has it all worked out.

also i hate these end-of-episode montages with the patterned gliding camera movements. they are this grand, bombastic gesture of closure, "see how this all ties together," that is kind of belied by the actual content. (in other words, it's all very "magnolia.")

i guess the idea is to take stock of various characters and where they are, so you can sit back a nod, anticipating how these various plots will pick up or resolve a year from now, when the 6th season begins. but the gesture is kind of insulting, as it always is, since the audience can figure that stuff out anyway. i don't need an additional reminder in the form of a last-minute montage. it wouldn't bother me as much if this is the level the show typically operated on, but it's not. the show--with some frequent and regrettable exceptions--is generally one of the shows on TV that trusts its audience to assemble things themselves, at least more than is common for television.

the actual ending--the hard cut to black as don decides how to respond to the flirtatious girl at the bar--was pretty great, i thought. it's also a kind of dramatic gesture, but one that actually seems to mobilize the audience's engagement with the show in a more interesting and active way. it asks us to assess don's behavior in season 5 in light of what we've seen before, and decide if he has undergone a permanent transformation or if he is merely in a "phase," soon to revert to his womanizing ways. i like the way it demands that we take stock of the significance of the last season in light of the show in general. it's a smart way to end a season, and it has the genuine sense of --not full closure, obviously, but a kind of contingent closure (perfect for an ongoing series). as opposed to the psuedo-closure, the empty stylistics of the montage sequence.

peggy seeing the fucking dogs was pretty hilarious though.

that whole post is absolutely on the money. i've never been able to put my finger on why those gliding/stock-taking scenes are so insulting, but you nailed it in one.

i didn't like the gliding camera either, but thought the montage itself was nice as a series of shots of isolation.

i think the "sirk" comments are kinda weird myself, but i imagine they are objection to some perceived heavy-handed visual symbolism. (i thought the shot in question was tremendous though--it was clear and evocative and made a lot of emotional sense to me.)

yeah I pretty much agree with that amateurist post, altho I'm a little more forgiving of the montage approach if the shots contained within are worth it (eg, features comical dog fucking)

those song-plus-montage things are consistently the worst thing about the series. wasn't there one in season 2 that was set to some contemporary rock tune? that might be the show's nadir for me.