MAD MEN on AMC - Season 6

"ken, you're fired! oh, you too, bob."

Bob marries Joan, and they open a B&B in Martha's Vineyard.

Maybe Bob is actually "Bob". "Bob" supposedly made his early fortune in advertising.

well I suppose losing jaguar at that particular moment theoretically cost joan like $1 million didn't it?

She's still a partner in the business, her stake isn't contingent on Jaguar being onboard. Although Don would have cost them a fair amount of billing if it hadn't been for the Chevy thing.

I'm assuming that between Don and Roger they have a controlling stake in the business? It sounded like Cooper, Joan and Pete together would still have needed to consult the others to go public. Either that or Don and Roger just don't give a shit, which is also pretty likely.

i imagine cooper's share is kind of big no?

does anyone understand what he actually does for the firm under than occasionally put out fires and dispense useful advice?

btw did they retire pryce's name or keep it on? it would be kind of bad look if they got rid of it no?

also liked how the ending of this last episode was like the literalizing of peggy's implicit worry that she would be spiritually demoted back to don's secretary. there she is again, being ordered to type up a fucking memo.

The Pryce name is still there. Don't think Cooper actually does much other than pad around the office in a vague Chairmanish capacity but his stake is probably sizeable, he was able to give Don a bollocking last year.

oh just realized the jaguar dude and his wife were herb & peaches

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtaZ48fERfc

i feel he is genuinely unpredictable (as opposed to predictably unpredictable) which is a little disconcerting

I think the degree to which he can be solicitous and considerate of others is usually tied to how much he perceives he needs them at any given time. That he is somewhat aware of this makes him both more sympathetic (he has a sense of his own neediness and emptiness, cf the soliloquy about fatherhood) and less sympathetic (he gives in to the neediness too often and excuses it too easily). But I don't think there's anything inconsistent about it. He's basically self-centered, but it's important enough for him to think of himself as a good guy that he can be generous -- with emotions, praise or attention -- when it doesn't cost him much.

sometimes it seems they want him to represent a sort of unreflective, tightly wound, uncommunicative american male. full of roiling emotions on but uninterested/unwilling/unable to communicate them or to understand himself. basically your father if you are a baby boomer.

other times they want him to be a supremely self-aware manipulator, aware of his own Inability to Love (and periodically sorrowful for that), able to size up and respond appropriately to (nearly) any situation.

i don't know if these two things are entirely irreconciliable (sp?) but it can be a confounding mix. the little soliloquy you cite seemed to come from nowhere to me.

Feel like there needs to be an episode centered around Don and Joan soon.

Feel like there needs to be a series centered around Joan soon.

also aside from serial cheating he doesn't really seem to have quirks, idiosyncrasies, pasttimes. or rather none that carry over from episode to episode (which is why it's kind of weird when he references literature of capital-C Cinema out of the blue; we don't get a sense of him really having a reading bug or filmgoing habit in general).

esp. not now that the secret of his identity is out to those closest to him. he's a singular character but in some ways he seems a void in ways that, whatever claims creators and fans might make for that as an expressive value, often just seems to be a failure of imagination.

xxpost

She's still a partner in the business, her stake isn't contingent on Jaguar being onboard. Although Don would have cost them a fair amount of billing if it hadn't been for the Chevy thing.

yes but w/o jaguar they wouldnt be able to make their public offering, therefore no $1 million

also aside from serial cheating he doesn't really seem to have quirks, idiosyncrasies, pasttimes. or rather none that carry over from episode to episode (which is why it's kind of weird when he references literature of capital-C Cinema out of the blue; we don't get a sense of him really having a reading bug or filmgoing habit in general).

in the very first episode he's reading frank o'hara and hanging out with beatniks!

yeah that's what i thought, surely jag going scuppers any deal.

it is weird that they didn't bother to tell don though.

xpost think frank o'hara is s2? or the end of s1?

oh ya. isnt he reading poetry in ep 1 at some point tho?

the point is, the man loves his poetry.

Chevy's a bigger and more prestigious account than Jaguar though, and they wouldn't be able to pitch for that business with Jaguar on board. Getting the Chevy account wouldn't kill the IPO, although the proposed merger necessary to win the business would, at least in the short term.

Obviously none of this, or even the money, was Joan's core concern.

Getting the Chevy account wouldn't kill the IPO, although the proposed merger necessary to win the business would, at least in the short term.

??

the chevy account would only be good for the IPO, we can imagine it would be at least an order of magnitude larger than the jaguar account

she wasn't mad about the chevy account, she was mad about don screwing the pooch with jaguar

Yeah that's the point I was making, she wasn't worried about missing out on a hypothetical million, she was angry because she was pressured into fucking some fat sleazy guy for an account that Don then surrendered on a whim.

(Pretty sure Don's personal dislike of the dude, and disgust at what the agency did to Joan was a big part in him resigning the account anyway, but as we know by now Joan doesn't like people presuming to fight her battles for her).

a bit weird to be raging at don for that when he was the only one who tried to stop it in the first place. the fighting her battles thing is justifiable but they did seem to bond over it last season, the fact that he actually went to bat for her.

though to be fair she probably thinks he was ok with it before he changed his mind. I don't remember their discussion about it, when he was all "you don't have to do it" and she already had. When she did it she thought he was on board. Maybe when he came to her apt she thought he was just changing his mind, or was she aware that he hadn't even been told?

i know that whole subplot has been justified as realistic by all sorts of people who experienced white-collar work in the 1960s but i still have such a hard time believing it in the context of the show.

a bit weird to be raging at don for that when he was the only one who tried to stop it in the first place. the fighting her battles thing is justifiable but they did seem to bond over it last season, the fact that he actually went to bat for her.

Yeah but by the same token, Don was pretty much the only one who came close to understanding what it took for her to do that. Which from Joan's point of view makes it even worse that he would throw the account away, without consulting anyone, apparently because his precious creative freedom was under threat.

also re don's reading yeah in each season there is a moment or two when you pointedly see him reading a book (often something reasonably arty) and you here him reciting it in voice-over. but then the other 95% of the time there's no reference to it, no sense that this is a part of his life. he doesn't chat about it, he doesn't seem to share the habit with his wife, i'm not even sure that there's a bookshelf in the set of their condo. it just seems like one of those things that they want to keep available in case matt weiner wants to make an Overt Literary Allusion or just interpolate a work of literature tout court, but isn't really integrated into the character. same with very occasional allusions to don seeing european art movies.

Yeah but by the same token, Don was pretty much the only one who came close to understanding what it took for her to do that. Which from Joan's point of view makes it even worse that he would throw the account away, without consulting anyone, apparently because his precious creative freedom was under threat.

― Matt DC, Tuesday, May 7, 2013 10:08 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

this

its the bigger betrayal in a way

for all don's protective anger about it he made it very clear that HE wasnt the kind of person to do that

Don isn't as fully realized as Tony Soprano or whatever but he's an interesting take on the "man without qualities" type of character. it's been pretty well established that, along with the books and movies, Don is somewhat of an armchair intellectual. thinking in particular of the first episode monologue on love and nylons.

i think, though, that his cheating isn't so much a part of the survival of self-made personality but the flaw in its construction. everything he does is predicated on the survival of his persona.

i agree don's love of puppies really came out of nowhere, seemed very convenient to the writer's needs tbh

i mean, have we ever _seen_ him with a puppy? i mean, really.

idg yr complaints about establishing him as a bookreader - they show him reading all the time. who's he going to discuss these books with, anyway? (apart from maybe his beatnik ex-gf?) Roger? Megan? Joan? these people don't read.

"Sally, I just read this wonderful book by Dante..."

i've also always taken those bits (the books, the movies) as also signaling Don's "otherness" to the rest of the character--in that they hint at an inner life he doesn't make accessible to anyone else in his normal life. connecting his reading of Dante to his affair seemed a nod in that direction.

reading Dante on the beach was ridiculous though – almost as ridiculous as me reading The Magic Mountain on Sanibel beach at eighteen.

idg yr complaints about establishing him as a bookreader - they show him reading all the time. who's he going to discuss these books with, anyway? (apart from maybe his beatnik ex-gf?) Roger? Megan? Joan? these people don't read.

― four Marxes plus four Obamas plus four Bin Ladens (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, May 7, 2013 11:09 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

do they really show him reading all the time though? it seems like they trot that out once or twice a season, notably in the first or last-ish episodes.

don's expression of that inner life is almost totally circumscribed by what he can express through advertising. this is a major aspect of the show, though it was more prominent in earlier seasons (carousel, for one example)

there was some Ian Fleming novel he was reading in bed awhile ago iirc. and then there was the lotus and the whatever book for the Honda account. the poetry book he mailed to Anna. Reading poetry in a bar in one of the earlier seasons. This is just off the top of my head.

xp

don's not a voracious reader, he reads selectively and intentionally

they hint at an inner life he doesn't make accessible to anyone else in his normal life. connecting his reading of Dante to his affair seemed a nod in that direction.

think this is prob otm - the inner life he hides is one in which he's more vulnerable and unhappy.

xpost he did have his diary too - that time is interesting in that he seemed a bit more sane and at least in touch with his own inner state. plus he was swimming.

books he has been seen on screen reading

Meditations in an Emergency- Frank O'hara
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword- Ruth Benedict
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold- John Le Carre
Exodus- Leon Uris
The Best of Everything- Ronna Jaffee
The Fixer- Bernard Malamud
The Inferno- Dante
Odds Against- Dick Francis

ah Le Carre, not Ian Fleming, mixing up my spy novels

intentionally or not, that fact that Don is a bit of a nullity (especially to the other characters, and that's something that's brought up a lot i think, he's "Tarzan swinging from vine to vine") is interesting since the rest of the characters are so rich. it's like he's this looming empty figure whose whims and moods they have to cope with. a capital F father, but don isn't really there to himself.

Wasn't he reading "Tropic of Cancer" at some point?

ha i used that tarzan metaphor to describe the tenuous state of my freelancing career last night w/o even realizing where it came from

Don reads Fleming, too.

M: "My father won't care if he finds out you read James Bond."
D: "You know what? It's a good book. You should read it."