MAD MEN on AMC - Season 6

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.

flashbacks don't bother me, I assume they're leading up to something - a little mini story-arc within the larger narrative

some better get me a gif of tapdancing ken cosgrove or this is all for naught

sally & the intruder lady genuinely stressful. i was half wondering if don really HAD given her they in his wacked out amphetamine haze

they? *the key* I meant

http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/cosgrove-dance.gif

as soon as I thought "c'mon Sally is too smart for this", Sally called the cops

xp

sally rules

broken heart line was also lol

awesome that pills and dieting are so completely effective, i should totally try that. also amps

I'm pretty sure amphetamine "diet pills" were available otc at the time so yeah, they probably would have worked. I guess betty's a speed freak too?

iirc betty asked for speed diet pills many seasons ago & her doctor turned her down?

oh wait that was an abortion nm

loved the banter between Sally and Betty over the skirt

betty vocally reinforcing don's unspoken view of megan

Betty wanted diet pills last seasn, but the dc turned her down because he thought her weight issues were due to tyroid problems, possibly even cancer. They later showed her going to Weight Watchers.

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

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist),

Not intensely, but sleep deprivation sure does.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimulant_psychosis

didn't seem like anyone was hallucinating, strictly speaking

just don

re grandma ida -- for a show that has been criticized widely for its handling of race, i was a little smdh about them making their next black character A CRIMINAL.

more of a walk-on role than a "next black character" but yeah that occurred to me too

was half-expecting a "white people are CRAZY" speech from Dawn at some point tbh

were you now

i laughed at "are we negroes?" though.

yeah that was funny

it was definitely not a good look

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.

― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, May 20, 2013 11:19 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you mean the 1940s?

pop-freudianism was at its height during 1940s and 1950s.

though truth be told various brands of reductive pop-psychology have been with us since 1920s at least and they're not going away

stimulant psychosis is totally real come on people

also i don't think they are being that meta. i do think we are to take the flashbacks as somehow revealing. i don't think we're supposed to question them.

it'd be funny if later they were all revealed as false flashbacks (a la hitchcock's stage fright) and don's "origin story" was actually growing up in suburban connecticut in a nuclear family with a lot of funny sisters.

xpost

haha, that would be amazing.

all of his flashbacks are an elaborate ad campaign for soup

or oatmeal

are we ever going to see that girl who dated jewboy again... or was the whole point of that subplot "here is ginsburg's unlikely chance at happiness and it was fucked over by MLK being assassinated"?

which is hilarious btw in a very grim way

i thought ginsberg's dad setting him up with that girl was sweet... he wants his son to be happy, even though pragmatically it is in his interest for him to stay single, and keep living with him and helping out.

yeah it was sweet, and i like the idea of him dating this woman getting a graduate degree in education!

but i don't think it's to be...

On top of people having issues with Don this season, everyone seems to think this episode was weird. I dunno. Firstly, they're kinda holding Don still and seeing what moves around him. Which, I guess I can see why people are mistaking that for the end of Don, or whatever, but it's the way you look at a piece on a chessboard and for me this is the best season they've done.

Let's take the women from last night, specifically the whore in the flashback and the mistress in the present. Don's sick (ain't he just though?) and the whore gets to play a nurturing role before reverting back and taking his virginity. Likewise, the housewife in previous episodes got to play a sexually desired role before likewise reverting back to her devoted wife thing. The office drug use is just more of this theme of experimentation and after 72 hours they'll revert back.

The big irony is that Don is already playing a role and this both prevents him from further experimentation and doesn't allow him to stop playing the role at any stage.

The show is on a bit of a roll, like I said upthread, the sexual revolution coming to Don was the first decent joke they've done in awhile.

I am wondering if the Dante plant is tied to Don's many trips down the elevator, if his downness is represented by his descent w/ the Jewish doctor, if his sins are correlated with trips down the shaft

tee hee

Best episode of the season.

It had everything the previous episodes lacked: pace, wacky, fun, sitting on the edge of your seat, ~meaningful~ scenes (maybe not for the long run, but gosh were they good one-episode-meaningful scenes). At times I thought it was a bit too much, to have it all in one episode, but no complaints here.

We know the flashback thing by now, and especially Don's neck for suddenly freezing, meaningful glance, being taken back to the past. But it was so masterfully executed, how could you not be charmed by the class of this episode?

I will hold out any further judgement as this episode made me feel drugged up myself. But what a splendid episode it was. The first of the season I will be watching again tomorrow.

This review from Slate might be pushing the Vietnam analogy a bit too far, but it's a pretty fucking great analogy in my book.

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/browbeat/2012/10/29/130520_BB_Vietnam_Mad_Men_Deer_Hunter.jpg.CROP.rectangle3-large.jpg

Update, May 20, 2:45 p.m.: Vulture points to yet another apparent allusion to Vietnam made by Stan’s William Tell scene. When Ed Gifford says that Stan is “gonna look like St. Sebastian,” he conjures up this iconic Esquire cover featuring Muhammad Ali, posed like St. Sebastian, martyred by arrows. The cover appeared only weeks before the events of this episode, in April 1968, for a story about Ali’s arrest for evading the draft.

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/browbeat/2012/10/29/Muhammad_Ali_Esquire_cover.jpg.CROP.article568-large.jpg

damn, deep cuts, mad men writers.

pun not intended, but sure, why not