MAD MEN on AMC - Season 6

What did I just watch?

I liked the sense of everything sort of breaking open and apart. I have thought before that that's what the late '60s must have felt like, and not just for the longhairs.

the sound production in this episode is great. all echoey with typewriters and drones and telephones.

this was a good episode. i don't know how "realistic" it is for an adverising agency to hire a doctor to administer speed to employees, but it worked well as a plot device... for most of this episode, don looked like a walking heart attack and i was legitimately worried for him. everything about this episode worked to reinforce the viewers' sense of a general "loss of control" and i think that was neat and, as tipsy said, resonant with how i have always imagined the late 60s

i also liked how the speed didn't help their productivity at all. they basically wasted the weekend and produced only incoherent gibberish

They spelled Chevy wrong!

http://i.imgur.com/giOntby.gif

there had to have been something besides speed in that right?

B-vitamins

okay, THIS is that one great episode that I was waiting for.
not that this is any brilliant deduction, but I get the sense that for the last three seasons mad men has like three, maybe four good episodes a year and everything else is just about positioning the characters.
anyway, yeah. this is why i still watch this show, because it sometimes elevates.

amphetamine + b12 shots were definitely a thing. if anything it seemed a little behind the times. wouldn't all of those guys have been given amphetamines in the military?

that was totally fucking unhinged

speed doesn't make you hallucinate does it? maybe in crazy high doses?

(i have never taken speed obviously, i'd probably just have a heart attack right away)

Man, I was so on edge this whole episode

What exactly is the camera trick they do to make everything look v jittery and choppy? V high shutter speed/nonexistent motion blur?

i think amphetamines + heroin (speedballs) were the big semi-official korea drug? at least that's what the lore is. i don't know about amphetamine & b12, it seems very much like a 60s thing but quick googling only brings up a bunch of adhd stuff.

the throwaway jokes about roger's heart were great

i really dug gleason as a character after only 2 scenes, rip

Man, I was so on edge this whole episode

yeah, it made me a little paranoid. esp. the stuff with the home invasion.

that was hella brazen btw. "come here, give me some sugar!"

are we sure that grandma ida wasn't roger in blackface

The opening scene gave me a scare - I was having LA Noir flashbacks.

FWIW I have a relative who worked in advertising in the 60s/70s and she has always griped about the heavy amphetamine use since it made people burn out after a year or two / could only come up with half-formed ideas that they thought were brilliant. She has used the word "gibberish" in the past; happy to finally see it in MM!

A couple doctors made B-12&speed their whole practice. The Beatles even have a song about one of them - Dr. Robert.

tense, unsettling episode, feel like the season has really picked up the past few weeks

dunno what I want from "Mad Men" anymore but I'm not getting it. Again the show proves it's sharpest when sticking to bullshitting around the office (Peggy and her crew) while being gory about it (the dart in the arm) or just goofy (Ken's tap routine). I'm bored with the continued attempts to "deepen" Draper with portent-filled flashbacks – who gives a damn?

would a shot like that really last 48 hours? that seemed ridiculous to me. otherwise, good ep

glad we didn't hear "Dr. Robert" play on Sally's hi-fi.

I'm bored with the continued attempts to "deepen" Draper with portent-filled flashbacks – who gives a damn?

At this point I don't really care what happened to him in the past, I'm so tired of the flashbacks.

I don't think they were meant to "deepen" him necessarily; I saw them as a ham-fisted means of shoehorning his relationship issues (with his significant others, and with his kids) into a certain context.

Also, the flashbacks finally solved the long-running mystery of the origin of Don's mole fetish.

http://www.nysun.com/out-and-about/dr-feelgood/20251/

He did business at all hours: When Alan Jay Lerner was working around the clock on a musical, he might see Miracle Max five times daily, sometimes as late as 11 p.m. Truman Capote found Jacobson's shots caused "instant euphoria. You feel like Superman. You're flying. Ideas come at the speed of light. You go 72 hours straight without so much as a coffee break."

hahahaha "Truman Captoe" hahahaha

this was a great episode, felt very off-balance the whole way through. for a split second when she appeared I was afraid that Ida was actually old/fat Carla.

we appear to have somehow seen the end of fat betty thank god; the prosthesis is almost off
awesome that pills and dieting are so completely effective, i should totally try that. also amps

I saw them as a ham-fisted means of shoehorning his relationship issues (with his significant others, and with his kids) into a certain context.

Oh sure. But this is so glib, you know? It's fitting that the writers use the most reductive kind of psychology to explain characters maturing in an era when the most reductive kind of psychology was most fashionable.

there must be an anigif of all the frontal elevator shots in this series right

Don's last moment with what's her name on the elevator was ice-cold.

I like how he didn't let her out first.

I also liked how this episode underscored how Don has essentially lost his gift creatively - in previous all-nighter stressfests he's always pulled something out from deep within himself, and this time he couldn't do it, his realization (that he's trapped in a whorehouse of his own making) was of no use.

Would have liked to have seen Bob's reaction to the guys getting B12.

"Hey fellas, slow down! You don't need that stuff! I've got two cups of coffee right here, and believe you me, there's more on the way!"

Coffee > speed

Just Say BOB

waiting for them to go full Twin Peaks tie-in with BOB tbh

i have been completely rapt watching this season (and lurking on this thread), but STILL i was unprepared for the depth/darkness/quality of last night.

1. ken dancing lynchian
2. don recognizing the secretary from where? and all attention is drawn to it, and we have no idea. i love the comment tipsy mothra made about things unraveling for the characters as an effective late-60s thing
3. xacto in the arm!
4. home invasion!
5. i really hope don dies, and the final season is some kind of dark bizarre magical realism shit
6. maybe not that last one

xp haha yeah BOB

don recognizing the secretary from where? and all attention is drawn to it, and we have no idea.

She had a lot of the same features as the prostitute, she just wasn't made up like her or had the bleached blond hair. That was the only thing I could think of.

yeah, thats what i figured too -- im glad it wasnt made TOO clear to us, though. and i kind of hope we dont hear anything more about it.

I was really expecting someone to die this episode

the sixties

this is a pretty good piece: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/05/out-loud-emily-nussbaum-mad-men.html

Cutler inviting Peggy to join him watch Rizzo bang Gleason's hippie waif daughter.

At this point I don't really care what happened to him in the past, I'm so tired of the flashbacks.

― ...also i'm awesome (Nicole), Monday, May 20, 2013 7:49 AM

This. I'm sorry, person who plays young Don, but please never come back.