MAD MEN on AMC - Season 6

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

Carrying that along, perhaps next season Pete will fall into a (perhaps metaphorical, perhaps not) whirlpool, or something red...soup even.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/2/24/1267029852897/Andy-Warhol-002.jpg

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.

i don't know about pushing it too far, i mean it's kind of all right there.

most heartbreaking moment was when stan revealed that there were 16 letters he sent to his cousin that would go unread. that suggests they were pretty tight. unless i heard wrong.

Well yeah, I agree tbh. And it's wonderfully thought through and written.

xp

god i hate matt zoller seitz's write ups on this show so much

he's by no means alone in this but every piece has some statement like "that post-MLK-RFK feeling that the entire world was losing its mind, or felt as if it was"

it's like all he knows about the 60s comes from that abc miniseries or some oliver stone movie

also LOL @ "entire world"

IIRC the chinese among other folks had other things to worry about in 1968

http://www.vulture.com/2013/05/mad-men-recap-season-6-drugs-speed.html FWIW (it's not)

I went back and pulled up the closed captions since the line comes so fast, but Stan says it's his aunt that sent the 16 letters.

Stan's cousin was in the premiere last year, he was at Don's party.

^I watched that scene too.

"I thought were gonna be girls here?"--his one line after Bert, Abe, and Stan talk 'Nam.

that Warhol/ Esquire piece looks great, anyone read it?

oh man, this

I think Emily Nussbaum otm about Don's past/psychology being overdetermined at this point but on the other hand, lots of things happen to a person

in another show it might not stick out, i suppose, but here it just seems like the least interesting thread among numerous others that are more unpredictable/compelling

and if it leads up to some decisive "revelation" it'll probably be even more disappointing

Is that Vulture piece claiming the end credit song was “Dream a Little Dream of Me” or referring to something else?

'dream a little dream of me' played on the radio in the whore house, the end credit song was 'words of love'.

Ah, I missed that bit.

'dream a little dream of me' played on the radio in the whore house

I thought the radio was in Sylvia Rosen's kitchen, when Don had a hallucination (I think) that he had gone home and was lurking in their hallway. but then it turned out he had been in the office all along? dunno, some parts of this were confusing. good episode though. very unsettling and kept you on edge. this show does drug stuff pretty well I think.

I was definitely confused with the timeframe. They show Don listening to the radio at Syvia's door, then show the break-in happening upstairs, and I remember saying "Don's just downstairs, he'll be in in any second". Then they cut to Don at the office looking through the archives for the oatmeal ad w/ the mole. It's possible that he did come home as intended (and as he told Megan), stopped by Sylvia's, was reinspired by the mole, then went back to the office to find the ad?

and I was touched by his talk w/ Sally at the end. I thought he was going to off his rails, use that as a reason to lash out at Megan, yell at everyone. But by the end of the episode it seemed he found somewhat of a rational plateau. He took the blame and comforted Sally, he showed he was able to move on from Sylvia (or act like it at least), he expressed being above office shenanigans. I don't know, I think there was some learning experiences and priority checks for sure.

Really liked Betty's "working late, is that what he tells you?" line, tossed off in the confusion. There hasn't been much concern on Megan's part that Don may be cheating, I wonder if that will start to creep in.

And when Don was listening to the radio at Sylvia's door...closing his eyes, man I was TERRIFIED/EXCITED that the husband was gonna pop up.

yeah I thought he had fallen asleep standing up and was gonna get caught there

expressed being above office shenanigans

I guess that's one way to look at it. from Ted's point of view (who wasn't involved in the shenanigans) Don was at the helm during this wasted weekend of no good work getting done (and didn't do any work himself, which Peggy noticed). and then he comes into Ted's office on Monday and announces that he will continue not to do any work on their most important campaign.

I almost feel like he's lost everything and his only direction now is to actually be a good father. The rest of the season and series will involve Don acting as a bored creative director while taking his kids to the zoo and movies.

^Next season, he and Sally will see Easy Rider. Don buys a Harley and fringe jacket the next day.

I was TERRIFIED/EXCITED that the husband was gonna pop up

yeah, the way this was framed was great, with him in the foreground on the right, the shot was set-up for someone (presumably the husband) to pop up from behind on the left.

betty is really a horrible person. nowadays there's a name for what she's trying to do: parental alienation.

sergio mendes was on the radio in sylvia's place

betty is really a horrible person. nowadays there's a name for what she's trying to do: parental alienation.

Betty is awful, but it's hard for me to judge her for how she behaved in this episode -- Don basically abandoned the kids and left them to be held hostage by a burglar.

Henry is the only adult in the whole sorry situation.

betty was being her usual terrible self here, but yeah this time she was actually like 80% otm with everything she said (probably megan isn't sleeping around for parts). I assume grandma ida was just making inferences based on stuff she saw in the apartment, but I was inclined to believe her too when she both knew don's name and knew betty was "a piece of work."

nah she could have deduced Don's name from any number of clues (mail lying around, bldg directory etc) everything else she said was generic/flattering

yeah, feel like suggesting to a 14YO girl that her mom is "a piece of work" is an aight con

classique ep, among the best of the series

wonder if don is gonna drunkenly beat up his doorman

also i guess i dont need but i do want a ~4min scene of don tearing apt the archives & realizing hes never had an orig idea in his life, every one is just a repressed memory

he's just gonna pitch death/suicide every time now

the throwaway bits in the first episode with the German researcher about the thanatic impulse seeming more intentional lately

this ep was horrible you're all seriously idiots

sorry