MAD MEN on AMC - Season 6

i think something else is gonna happen with bob guys

YOU HEARD IT FROM ME FIRST

after the "crazy old black lady breaks into don's house to steal his watch/pretend she's sally's grandma" throwaway C-plot (i would bet you a dollar weiner has a newspaper clipping stashed that he can point to and say NO IT REALLY HAPPENED), I'm thoroughly convinced they'll try any and every cockamamie thing on this show, so i won't be surprised at whatever bob is, including bert's son trying to root out secret homosexuals among the staff, because his real secret identity is awkwardly introduced third act device to keep the viewer hoping something meaningful's gonna happen

I think Bob is a scientologist

Forks otm. I'm still glad Bob is there though; the show needed fresh blood.

Bert can't have kids his balls are gone

(Btw i am a writer on mad men. "Fresh blood" may/may not be a clue...)

maybe bob is from ork

I actually think the whole thing with Mitchell was kind of great in the way it tangled together several plot elements and contradictory motivations

why is don going out of his way to help this kid? is it really a humanitarian impulse? b/c he knows the horrors of war? because he feels horrible guilt toward dr. rosen? probably a little of all those things. but to me it felt an awful lot like when you have a crush on someday and you'll kind of embarrass yourself and bend over backwards to help them out. i'm not convinced that don actually _knew_ that he was doing this in order to get back to schtupping mrs. rosen but as soon as she "opened the door" that motivation just came right to the surface and his face shifted to the same smug look he had when he was playing power games with her in the hotel room. it's like getting mitchell out of service in vietnam was the ultimate play in whatever game they were playing. but that doesn't completely negate that there had been other motivations for the act. and then to tie it all into sally, who is now a (sort of) willing participant in her dad's elaborate conspiracy-that-seems-like-a-marriage.... my guess is that this won't stick, and don's marriage--not to mention his relationship with his kids--will blow up in the next two episodes. i mean establishing a "bond" b/t father and daughter (she becomes conspirator to his affairs only b/c by telling anyone else she'd destroy his marriage etc.) would be a kind of deeply cynical, almost bunuelian note, but it's also a little pat and out of character for sally, who has spent much of her childhood benefitting from pitting one parent against the other.

if i were teaching screenwriting and talk about how to properly set up an outrageous coincidence (sally walking in on dad/mrs. rosen) in a way that doesn't feel too overly manipulative, I'd show them this episode.

i actually did think bob was a scientologist at one point. didn't they reference scientology many episodes ago?

pete and bob scene was v.odd

why is don going out of his way to help this kid? is it really a humanitarian impulse? b/c he knows the horrors of war? because he feels horrible guilt toward dr. rosen? probably a little of all those things.

this. really well done imho

i dunno, because he's in love with miz rosen seemed kinda straightforward as a motivation to me. it worked out!

Maybe, but he wasn't even expecting her to pick up when he called their apartment.

i think he also feels bad about fucking dude's wife. but hey, he gets to fuck dude's wife! win win!

for someone don is "in love" with, mrs rosen has been allotted precious few distinguishing characteristics other than the fright wig

yeah I don't think Don consciously thought "this will get me back into Sylvia's panties!" but as soon as the opportunity presented itself he was like, oh yes, of course.

i think he wanted to be seen as a hero -- wanted people to feel gratitude toward him, partly because at work many people are finding him unhelpful

i mean, that's part of it. the guilt he feels toward dr. rosen, and the desire he has for mrs. rosen to like him again (i don't think he explicitly thought he wanted to have sex with her again) were also part of it.

mrs rosen has been allotted precious few distinguishing characteristics other than the fright wig

+ little gold cross around her neck

I'm not sure which is more annoying: reading insane theories into every shirt and color on the show, or taking a bunch of time to untangle the most glaringly obvious story elements.

the latter

both

if you think reading about the show is redundant b/c you've figured it out immediately and feel no need to "untangle" it, why on earth are you reading this thread?

and if you think the level of discussion is too dull for your sharp minds, why not post something more intelligent and see how it goes?

these are rhetorical questions of course

also FWIW balls you are the only poster who is consistently glib and hateful enough to make ILX seem loathsome enough for me to want to leave for a few days/weeks/months. you should make yourself a medal for that.

if only i had cancer right?

if only

btw you're really getting a lot of mileage out of that, i admire your outrage efficiency

sorry, I'm sure I've been guilty of it in mad men threads before too. I just agree with forks that it was all pretty straightforward. but I agree with you that don's love of mrs. rosen, his friendship with mr. rosen and his feelings about war and his own desertion all came together nicely and pretty effortlessly in this plotline. when sally was at the back door I thought "oh great she's going to walk in on them. but no they wouldn't" but then when it actually happened it somehow worked and didn't seem forced or overly soapy to me.

xps

klebold in tweed

?

anyway, i love what they have done with sally's character. she seems way more mature and level-headed at this point than i would have expected. watching her is excruciating to me because you can tell that she is beginning to gain a clear understanding of just how unavailable/unhelpful her parents have been, so like she is coming to terms with her own loneliness.

hi wk yeah i didn't mean to imply that anything i wrote about the episode was brilliant or that i was sussing out some incredibly complex stuff that other folks didn't pick up on. i was just rehearsing the issues surrounding the mitchell subplot and admiring how they brought together a number of plot strands that had been hanging around all season. seemed like a worthwhile-enough exercise for me.

xpost

yeah, sorry

http://www.truthaboutscientology.com/stats/by-name/b/bob-benson.html

pretty sure the virtue of these threads is that it's cool with everyone if we think out loud, so to speak, rather than have totally original analyses to offer. the off kilter strangeness of this show puts me on the back foot enough that unpacking it this way is really fun.

re: Bob the homo mole I do kind of expect them to go somewhere a little different with him since he's their fourth gay character, that he's gay in and of itself is not particularly remarkable. I don't subscribe to any of the conspiracy theories really but if all there is to Bob is "he's GAY!" it's going to seem a bit silly.

yeah i just want to restate something b/c i think it gets to how this show, while it may not be as different as it thinks from the soap opera plots it likes to make fun of, is remarkably ingenious in its plotting. i admire the craft:

if i were teaching screenwriting and talking about how to properly set up an outrageous coincidence (sally walking in on dad/mrs. rosen) in a way that doesn't feel too overly manipulative, I'd show them this episode.

i mean the motifs of don's affair w/ mrs rosen, the girls having crushes on mitchell, sally's frenemy, don's triumph in keeping mitchell out of vietnam, the back-door assignations, the doorman, sally being forgetful and losing her keys, don stealing away from work midday to schtup mrs rosen, etc. -- some of them introduced long ago, other ones carefully planted earlier in the same episode-- all kind of converge on this one moment, rendering it kind of deliciously predictable rather than out-of-nowhere manipulative. that's good writing IMO.

it definitely had a puzzle-falling-into-place feel

xpost

bob's expression as he leaves pete's office seems telling... of what, i don't know. but his smile very gradually turns into a kind of an almost-relieved "well, that didn't work" grin.

pete didn't seem as aggrieved as, say, don might have been after bob's obvious overture.... maybe that speaks to his being taken totally off guard. or his general state of mind (depressed). or his not really being mad at bob. or maybe he's a little gay. or none of those things. my partner suggested it was b/c pete is "liberal" but "tolerance of homosexuality" is not really a mainstream "liberal" issue until decades later. homophobia was pretty equal opportunity in the 1960s.

has everyone forgotten that they had an openly homosexual employee in the office for at least a couple years

even the "you shouldn't get dressed in the lobby" thing b/t the two doormen is kinda anticipatory in a pure rhyming sense (don getting dressed hastily in the elevator, running into the lobby with his belt still untied IIRC)

bob's expression as he leaves pete's office seems telling... of what, i don't know. but his smile very gradually turns into a kind of an almost-relieved "well, that didn't work" grin.

I don't know! I agree with Seitz: he looked so triumphant that he could afford to not look cocky.

has everyone forgotten that they had an openly homosexual employee in the office for at least a couple years

when was Saul openly homosexual?

other than Don, only Cosgrove got any kind of hint.

*Sal obviously

yeah and ken is basically the nicest guy in the office so there's little chance he would have said anything

The german guy was gay and glad S2/3.

The joke with the Cosgrove-Sal romance was how the sci-fi writer couldn't conceive of anything so alien as another man coming on to him.

The german guy was gay and glad S2/3.

^^^ and it was openly discussed/referenced in the office