Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

The biggest disappointment was Pete, what exactly does he have to be so forlorn about with Trudy and a baby at home

he gives a (really good, if a little on the nose [DRINK!]) speech about this to post-shock Rory.

So Pete's problem is he doesn't want to live in the country and his wife does? Because other than that, I can't really sympathise with Pete's grievances. I had the hope that Pete was becoming the stand-up guy of the show, beautiful wife, new born child, new partnership, taking the reins at work, etc. Instead we get a sob story about how this "problem" was there from the beginning?? What problem exactly?

Guys being happy isnt like a math equation "oh wife and kids = happy"

that's kind of the crux of the show. a lot of the least happy people on the show are the ones who are trying to live out the ideal that they were raised to strive for only to find it puzzlingly unsatisfying. the gag is they work at an ad agency where they manufacture these ideals.

maybe they'll change the company name to Sterling Cooper Draper Pete, could keep all the SCDP signage.

They'll adjust the "P"'s into "H"'s with the aid of a hammer and/or white-out.

What I took away from it was that this season we've seen all the leads try and be what other people want them to be:

Pete as a family man in the suburbs
Roger as a younger man and monogamous
Joan as policewoman as a stay-at-home mother
Peggy paying her dues
Ginsberg getting a 'proper' job
Ken giving up writing
Kinsey as a Krsna
Harry as a rebel
Don as a loving husband and father
Lane as a provider
The company as a small one

And they've all failed at it. This season was their "living twice". Now they have to go back to their previous lives.

No hugs and no learning.

Ken Cosgrove otm re Pete: "He imagined Beethoven, deaf and soul-sick, his heart broken, scribbling furiously while death stood in the doorway, clipping his nails," Ken writes. "Still, Coe thought, it might have been living in the country that was making him cry. It was killing him with its silence and loneliness, making everything ordinary too beautiful to bear.”

So Pete's problem is he doesn't want to live in the country and his wife does?

no, it was that he wanted a city pad to have sex with other women, the idea was given to him on the train by alex's husband even before he met her iirc.

Kind of an underwhelming end to an otherwise amazing season I think. The Pete storyline wasn't really strong enough to be left til the final episode to resolve and the mental illness angle felt kinda tacked on. Although watching Pete get punched in the face is always a joy.

I feel that what Don actually thinks about and wants from Megan is as slippery a concept now as it was at the start of the season, although that's deliberate I think.

Peggy is the only character who Don's come into contact with who is unequivocally better off for having met him, right?

I thought it was great. It had to be a good deal more understated than the previous two episodes.

Will there be as big a gap as last time before 6?

xp Anna was.

I really like whoever connected "You Only Live Twice" to the entire season, these characters trying to live out a second life that is ultimately as un-fulfilling as the first lives. Don maybe at a slight advantage cos he was already on his second life, and has been for a while.

Pete's storyline is that he's been fantasizing about this romantic life of adultery in the city and it turned out to be everything he didn't want, to comedic effect. His romance doesn't just 'forget about him' in an emotional sense, but in an entirely literal way. Trudy mentioning, yeah let's move to the city, is a great ironic slap in the face that this show does so well this season. Be careful what you wish for, because it may come true, and if you've piled all your hopes and dreams into it, you are only setting yourself up for disappointment.

People always want more, they always want what they can't have, it doesn't matter if they have 50% of everything, they need that 100%! Don's Dow speech is more or less an objective analysis of everyone's tumultuous season.

Megan, I pretty much always thought, was going to give in to being an ad model. It fits with the cynical view of this season. Why did she sell out her dream of art? Was taking her friend's job and asking Don a last minute switch into the manipulative power plays their relationship seems more and more based on? It's funny, as optimistic and wide-eyed as her post-SCDP career is, it almost feels like she had more integrity as a Mad Woman than an actress. The biggest example i can think of is her not wanting to take all the credit when Peggy said "This is as good as it gets" vs. pretty much stealing her friend's acting gig from out under her.

Seemed pretty out of character to me, her stealing the gig, but w/e.

What do you think was going on in Don's mind when he watched Megan's reel? (I was thinking "I hope this is her swan song and she's gone next season, I like her but she screws w the show's dynamic")

I didn't think her stealing the gig was odd, but I did find the idea that she'd want the gig at all a little odd. But her behavior overall this season seems pretty confused which I guess is kind of the point.

I think she started out wanting to make it on her own but at the end was desperate and basically wanted any acting gig she could get just to prove to herself that she wasn't completely wasting her time

Isn't Pete meant to be suffering from depression? Plus like as much as he is a nasty piece of work, just because Trudy is nice doesn't mean he should be happy.

Also, I think Pete is the kind of person Megan's mother was talking about when she was talking about people who have an artistic temperment with no talent to go along with it. From the first season Pete has been shown to be someone who would like to be creative (see his failed writing career) -- that's one of the reasons he has always had this fixation on Don.

What do you think was going on in Don's mind when he watched Megan's reel?

I think he was trying to figure out whether Megan's mother was right about Megan having the artist's temperament without the artist's talent.

and I think he gave Megan the acting gig because he saw that Megan's mother was right

That's what I thought too! But the reel was so short it didn't really telegraph any definitive shittiness

I like the idea of "You Only Live Twice" emphasis on ONLY. Philandering Don Draper is the second "life". Happily married one makes a third.

I don't know, I thought the reel was actually good, and that Don realized so. It's probably important to the interpretation of the scene that he's smoking, which a doctor told him not to do.

I laughed really hard at the mayo sequence

I don't know, I thought the reel was actually good, and that Don realized so. It's probably important to the interpretation of the scene that he's smoking, which a doctor told him not to do.
--Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau)

I couldn't tell how much time had passed since the dentist... He had no swelling or bruising so it could have been days or weeks.

Also I think it's pretty clear Megan is not untalented and her mom is a basically a rotten person.

Yeah, Megan's turned out spectacularly well considering her parents.

not so sure don is walking away from megan, either in the so-called sirk shot or otherwise. i think there's a pretty explicit parallel b/w her illusions of success as an actor and betty's illusion of success as a model. i kinda think don is all paternalisticky to megan b/c he doesn't want her to become the bitter, don-hating, husk that betty became as her career collapsed.

Trudy mentioning, yeah let's move to the city,

Trudy's not moving

are people taking it for granted that Don tells those girls he's single after the final cut

no

I really don't understand why anyone would think that.

Well, the question wasn't "Are you single?" -- it was "Are you alone?"

EXISTENTIAL.

accept the mystery

it was just this aside posted upthread that bothered me:

The cut to black here is actually fairly exquisite. We know what he’s going to say, and we don’t need to see it.

cuz uh imho, we DON'T know, that's what's so great/compelling about it!

what other color are they going to cut to

cut to fucking damask and play some kinks

cut to paisley

cut to hexagons

cut to paisley

retroactively upset this didn't happen

What do you think was going on in Don's mind when he watched Megan's reel?

I don't know, I thought the reel was actually good, and that Don realized so.

That was what I thought too, Don is watching her and smiling but my wife felt there was a point where you could see a sad look cross her face and Don notices it and stops smiling. And at that point decides he has to do this for her.

I didn't catch that myself (and haven't re-watched) but it seems plausible.

yeah that's similar to how I read it - Don being sentimental, for the most part

well, he's giving her a fair shot – he's investing time (albeit minutely) in her aspirations. irrespective of an emotional component, he' s taking her seriously.

i don't know what to make of that scene. she's quite a beauty tho. her reel was great!

my impression was more melancholy, it looked like don knew something was basically wrong

At one point, he testified, Sandusky chased him in a car while he was on foot, demanding that the boy spend more time with him.

lol wrong thread

don would know that's basically wrong

I missed that scene

Favorite scene in the whole series.

there was a point where you could see a sad look cross her face and Don notices it and stops smiling

I picked up on that, but didn't realize at the time exactly why Don had stopped smiling.

megan had success at advertising, was then celebrated by coworkers, but didn't care for it. then megan's dad tells her that her idea of success, or what she is/should be striving for, is all wrong. and then finally megan hangs out with a bunch of struggling actresses, and then herself becomes so desperate to succeed that she settles on a path that seems to defeat the original point of striking back out into acting in the first place.

basically, megan's never known what she wants. but at least earlier in the season her intentions seemed noble.