I knew Pete was about to get owned when his housewife hookup started saying all those stalkery things about the phone call signals and parking in the driveway. Haha, get taken for a ride, Pete.
She looks old as fuck if you compare her to the rest of the freaks and geeks cast.
What he said and the way it was interspliced with the bedroom scene was genius. That scene was the most pimp shit I’ve seen on TV in a long ass time. You see, they acknowledged they fucked up the show by taming Don so quickly (I wasnt too big on Season 5 for the most part). They should have never had him re-marry. A big reason that Mad Men was good was just Don being a fucking G when it comes to the ladies and his wife being a huge bitch so you didn’t really feel too bad about it. They tried to make Don a loving husband last season but screwed up the other characters by making every other dude on the show a cheater to compensate for Don turning good. They realized this mistake and he went back to his old ways but now all the characters are cheaters so it kind of lessens the impact and you also feel bad for Megan.
The thing with Mad Men that puts me off though is that it doesnt seem to be heading toward any end game. The only thing I could think of would be Don being exposed but the show has become such a staple of television that theyre going to try and keep it going.
Um It’s kind of universally agreed that Season 5 was brilliant…
Season 5, as a whole, if probably the best season of Mad Men. Ironically, also the first it did not win best drama.
I don’t think the show has hit the reset button at all. For example, Don cheating in an abysmal marriage and Don cheating in an ostensibly much happier marriage are two very different things. They reveal different things about the character. It’s like Breaking Bad. We cheer for Walt when he goes off the rails in season 1. When he’s doing the same stuff in season 5–different scale, but same stuff–the context is completely different and we see him in a very different way.
Unless I’m mistaken, season 6 is intended to be the last season of Mad Men, so there will not be an issue with the series being drawn out as long as possible. This is one of the few shows in TV history where there’s probably a bigger monetary incentive to end it in a story-appropriate fashion than to keep it going until it peters out. Mad Men isn’t a huge ratings draw, but it’s an important part of the sophisticated image that AMC has sought to cultivate for itself. They don’t want to be a network that shamelessly milks its properties.
As for worries about the endgame… come on now. There has never been a season of Mad Men that has obviously indicated its long-term destination this early on. Why would it happen now?
Maybe some folks here are watching the wrong show. Mad Men features what Paul Schrader would refer to as an occupational metaphor–people whose jobs are somehow intertwined with the problems they have. It is utterly appropriate that people in the advertising business would be constantly chasing things they don’t have. As soon as they have what they want, their minds immediately move onto something else they don’t have. It’s about pathological dissatisfaction. Always has been. That it’s happening to privileged white men is doubly appropriate, because the problem is revealed to be in their wiring rather than their circumstances.
Season 7 is actually the last season.
Show ain’t bad, it’s just the same ol shit. I enjoyed seeing adorable Jeet Kune Do student get all beat up.
I am sure the quality will pick up soon.
Walt’s evolution into Heisenberg was much more subtle and a lot more “relatable” in a certain sense. With Mad Men, Don just seems like a pathetic character, because I am unable to relate to his plight of possessing a 7-figure income, a “happy” marriage with a reasonable woman, and still wallowing in his own self-deception and morbid sadness. The writers’ attempt to rationalize his behavior somewhat with his past isn’t strong enough to pull you into his mind state, young Dick Whitman just feels like disjointed character in another time period. (bad casting probably gets credit for that as well.)
This isn’t saying that the show has gone down in writing quality, it’s just that they’ve saturated the “Woe is me” angle (esp. with Pete) to the point where you really don’t care about any of the central characters. The tertiary characters who actually seem “normal” are designed to be the victims and nothing more, so you end up with mostly screentime of mirthless millionaires searching for something… whatever the fuck that may be.
Now it’s more about just watching everyone going through the motions rather than each character having some unique value to the overall world present to us each week. Mad Men initially felt like a Rennaisance painting in terms of storytelling and character building, now it just seems like a nice impressionist piece- still rich in color and overall gestalt, but unfocused.
Agreed. =/ It’s mostly because she decided to work away all that nice babyfat that made her such a minx.
All she needs is a few burgers and she’ll be good.
Man, I had such a crush on Lindsey Weir. >_<
^So glad I my eye caught this thread again. White Shadow I totally agree. If the show decided to just focus on Peggy I wouldn’t mind losing the rest of the original partners. It just seems like a big fat nothing. Since season 7 is the last one I feel like 6 and 7 will be more closely related to close out the series.
i have nothing to contribute other than megan looked so fine in her bikini :lovin:
Walt’s spiral into evilness has been very well done, Don has just been a cry baby pussy since like the first season.
Remember when he tried to be like “LETS GO TO PARIS, I AM GAY” to the Jewish lady and she was like “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I can’t help but thinking abotu that over and over lately.
It’s just like in the soprano’s when Tony just all of a sudden hated Hesh for no reason. Step your writing game up Wiener if you want all the credit.
I find “relatability” to be a red herring most of the time in discussions of characterization. I can’t relate to a genius-level chemist with cancer, but I can understand a man who, by circumstance and his own bad decisions, has led a stultifying life that has filled him with so much frustration that he can no longer manage it. I can’t relate to a privileged upper-class white man in the 1960s with a “happy” marriage, but I can understand someone who simply doesn’t have it in him to be happy with what he has, who by nature is compelled to keep looking on the other side of the fence. It’s clear that many viewers don’t approve of Don’s mindset and think that it makes him weak. I agree with this. It’s a very true-to-life sort of weakness. Also true-to-life is that people tend not to change very fast or very much until life forces them to.
I do love Breaking Bad, but there is a lot of artifice in Walt’s “subtle” transformation (in less than one year!) that is better left unexamined.
The great thing about Mad Men is that even if it’s a relatively standard type of episode–for example, an episode that mainly just sets up threads that won’t be developed until later, such as season 6 so far–there still exists a rich enough tapestry to elevate it above other shows. Don’s gamesmanship in badly delivering a terrible plan that he never supported in the first place is a great little mini-episode in itself. Peggy being pressured to use insider info to lure Heinz might not be as dramatic as the decision to cook crystal meth and kill people, but in the context of Mad Men, it’s a big deal. Trudy getting fed up with Pete is wonderful and kind of heartbreaking at the same time, because this is still the early 1960s (really an extension of the late 1950s) and a great girl like Trudy will inevitably be tainted in the eyes of her peers. It won’t escape people’s notice that Pete is no longer around and people will talk. Roger’s grief erupting not at his mother’s funeral, but over a shine box is an authentic slice of human behavior. He’s not grieving like characters in fiction are supposed to grieve. He’s just grieving like a person. And Joan… doing a better job of shutting down the Jaguar asshole than she probably had any right to be able to do. These are things that make Mad Men a good show, a show that is more than just a bunch of self-absorbed rich people whining about their non-problems.
I don’t think the flashback scene in the most recent episode was really necessary to explain why Don is the way he is, but one thing somebody pointed out is that during that scene, the baby his mother was pregnant with was Adam. An interesting touch that I didn’t notice at the time, and, in my opinion, lends a little more weight to the inclusion of the scene. Otherwise it just seems like a too-on-the-nose companion scene to the moment when Don gives Sylvia money shortly after boning her. Subtle point: giving money after sex doesn’t seem to have much of an operative difference from paying money for sex.
If I can be permitted the naivete of trying to predict this show, one thing we’ve seen here is the beginning of the downfall of Peggy. Not that it’ll be the same kind of downfall that Don’s headed for, but her triumph of making it in a man’s career path by virtue of her own willpower is going to result in more and more morally questionable decisions. If she goes with this Heinz plan–and she will–it will be one of surely many times that we’ll see her put workplace prestige and financial success above loyalty to her friends. Her accomplishment, well worth celebrating, is going to seem pretty sour as it becomes more apparent that she wants the same stuff in life that people like Don and Pete want.
It is always pretty funny how Walt’s life basically exploded in less than a year.
We don’t not like Mad Men, it’s just the first three episodes have been pretty meh. It’s like they are cheating to cheat now. What reason does Don have to cheat? His wife wanted to be an actor? YOUR WHOLE LIFE IS A LIE AND YOU ARE THROWING IT ALL AWAY BECAUSE SHE WANTED SOMETHING JUST LIKE YOU.
Then Pete is just cheating to cheat (HORRIBLY), I hope Ken murders his wife and cheats ON her corpse.
Relatability has to be put into the context that one doesn’t have to really be in the same scenario or even time period to acknowledge the humanity of their decisions. I can’t relate to Walt’s action to cook meth, but I can certainly understand his need to preserve a future for his family. I can relate to his need to protect the people he loves, even though I can’t relate to his overall decisions that has spiraled him into hell.
I concur to an extent, but a lot can happen in a year. lol
Like I said, Roger’s smile included with Don’s brilliant pseudo-spiel made this week’s episode for me. Mad Men’s writing is still excellent, it just doesn’t have much heart anymore. The characters seem more like buoys bobbing in a sea of their own misery, so even when they have brief sparks wittiness or non-implosive depth it’s not enough to fully salvage them.
I got it too, and I actually laughed when Don doled out the cash, I’m surprised she didn’t feel cheapened by the offer.
Honestly, I was wondering when mention of her kid is going to randomly pop up. If anything Peggy and Pete are in the position have some dialogue now that they’re close to being on the same depressing level.
Just re watched the episode and really enjoyed the juxtaposition of Don and Pete’s forays in cheating.
Young Ugly Don was bad, but everything else was pretty good. Pete has great taste in women. Don and Pete both shitting where they eat like dumbasses but Don succeeding while it all blew up in Pete’s face was fun.
So yeah, first episode just dragged, this one was way better. Don is still a huge pussy.
I actually liked the premiere more than the last episode, but I think any opinion about them is provisional until we can look back on them with a better sense of context.
It would be an easy analysis to say that Don wants out of his marriage on some level and that he’s trying to get it to blow up in his face, but I’m not sure about that. It’s not that he wants out of his marriage, but his cheating is pathological. He gravitates toward the very thing that will prevent him from being happy… or at least from achieving something he believes will make him happy. Hence shitting where he eats.
Maybe I’m selling Pete short (maybe because he’s a piece of shit and doesn’t deserve more), but I don’t see the same motivation for him. He just got cocky.
Yeah, he just flew too close to the sun. There were nice differences between what they were doing even though it was so similar. Pete was just being a dumb ass.
Don is fucked up and hates himself because he knows he will never be happy even though he has everything. That is basically what he realised at the end of Season 5. “I have it all, but I am completely alone. I will never be happy”
He is like a shitty behavior shark. He needs to be a dick to survive in his advertising life.
The premier was not bad, it just dragged. The betty story could have been cut completely.
Pete’s a sociopath with an inferiority complex. Honestly, if you look at the Hare Psychopathy test he scores in virtually every category. Heck, the only “good” thing he did in recent memory, canceling the government contract to cover Don’s ass was still out of respect for hierarchy and knowledge that him ratting out alpha male Don nearly got him fired previously. He blames everything and everyone else for his problems and shows no true remorse for his actions. I hope he kills himself this season.
Maybe someone will punch him hard enough to give him a brain embolism.
Alison Brie verbally punched him in the face, which was almost as satisfying as the real deal.
God, I hate Pete. Fuck that stupid son of a bitch in his stupid fucking fuckity fuck.
BUT HE IS THE BEST WORKER. HE IS THE REASON THEY HAVE A SECOND FLOOR. C’mon GUYS!