MAD MEN on AMC - Season 6

Loved Don's downmarket pitch.

pete's a slimeball, it's true. glad trudy is getting herself out of that marriage.

daaaaamn Joan zinging Herb tho

otm

very very very soap opera-y this week; watched it with someone who had never seen the show before but works in theater (go figure). her first reaction was "i thought the acting on this show was supposed to be good"

Good acting is never an accusation one could make about Mad Men in general. From time to time, a particular character will turn in a riveting performance (often that character is Joan), but it's always been stiff.

kinda agree with that, but i'd say often that character is peggy

Peggy too, yes. Roger as well, though I think most of that is just John Slattery being John Slattery.

i always thought january jones brought a unique pathos to the character of betty.

we all have to readjust every season to the show being soapy, melodramatic, "on the nose", etc

Maybe, yeah. I'd like to have better reasons to force that stuff down than "theres likely gonna be a good ep near midseason"

I keep thinking "Oh, [that detail] will probably mean something later on in the season" even though that's almost never the case. This show has so many dangling, never revisited, threads that it's almost comical.

Pete just can't win at infidelity. Even Harry is pwning his ass.

HARRY I SAID!

pete's terrible sexing preamble. god.

food?
drinks?
music?
...
are you...*waggles eyebrows*...hot enough?

i have no idea how he gets play ever.

It's the business cards, and the free "Hair" tickets.

Plus I think him having an apartment in NYC makes him seem very glamorous to the ladies in the suburbs.

a sideburn for each domicile

Pete Campbell's bachelor pad reminded me of Greg Brady's attic room

Don bringin the lolz in the jaguar meeting too

I was really confused by those flashbacks. so he was born in a brothel — mother died in childbirth — dropped off at his father's house — father dies, and he's raised by father's wife and her new husband... then what? where does this scene of tween don in the other brothel come from?

or rather tween dick

he's ref'd his uncle mack before. after his dad dies at the farm, him and his mom move in w/mack at the brothel

not, stepmom I guess

for some reason I remember uncle mack being a preacher or something. did they show them living in a brothel before?

not that I recall. altho yeah I do think Mack has appeared before? can't remember.

Last season he mentioned to the madame of the place they took the first Jaguar guy to that he "grew up in a place like this."

don't like poochie bob benson

I don't think you're meant to, though.

right, but he strikes me as lazy writing, and I want to think that MW is a better show runner than that but MM is a soap opera, and with full creative control comes the opporotunity for sloppy storytelling

I was really confused by those flashbacks. so he was born in a brothel — mother died in childbirth — dropped off at his father's house — father dies, and he's raised by father's wife and her new husband... then what? where does this scene of tween don in the other brothel come from?

― wk, Monday, April 15, 2013 9:11 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dick Whitman was born to a prostitute (not his father's wife) on a dirt farm somewhere, mother died in chidlbirth, raised to adolescence by drunk, violent poppa Whitman and his god-fearing wife on the farm. Mrs. Whitman gets with child (Adam), poppa Whitman is kicked to death by a horse, the awkward family moves in with uncle Mac in the brothel. Uncle Mac is married to the pleasant looking woman we meet him with. He screws his dead brother's (?) wife, Mrs. Whitman, as Dick watches through a hole.

He contains multitudes.

Dick Whitman was born to a prostitute (not his father's wife) on a dirt farm somewhere, mother died in chidlbirth, raised to adolescence by drunk, violent poppa Whitman and his god-fearing wife on the farm. Mrs. Whitman gets with child (Adam), poppa Whitman is kicked to death by a horse, the awkward family moves in with uncle Mac in the brothel. Uncle Mac is married to the pleasant looking woman we meet him with. He screws his dead brother's (?) wife, Mrs. Whitman, as Dick watches through a hole.

I think MW finds way to make Whitman's backstory more sordid and convoluted as time goes on. The moving in to a brothel seems like it was tacked on later on.

maybe he's trying to explain away his philandering

I don't usually complain about "on-the-nose"-ness, I usually like it, but the old "grew up w/ whores and now I give my mistress cash" is a bit pat, no?

That was a real eyeroll inducing moment for me.

yep

yeah feel like that scene of Don giving her money after sex would have worked better without the brothel flashbacks

definitely

being haunted by ghosts is Don's whole thing though, we gotta see what's on his mind

series finale: Don has a conversation with Anna in a featureless limbo between worlds, she tells him to believe in himself

that's like traditional TV making where you have to assume that everyone is just tuning in and watching the show for the first time and "quality nu-cable" tv should be above that kind of thing.

Now that they've used both "Just a Gigolo" and Tobacco Road", I'm half-hoping that "Yankee Rose" pops up over the credits soon.

David Lee Draper

I needed a DLR fix after this episode. Just a Gigolo video > this episode.

Come to think of it, Just a Gigolo video > everything else.

I'm starting to wish more shows would take longer hiatuses between seasons - I think that was the key to season five's success.

Don Draper, flying through the air on a wire, in assless chaps.

LETS MAKE THIS HAPPEN

loved Peggy's attempt at morale boosting btw

is that pete's actual hairline