Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

Speaking of that, didn't Timothy Leary already look a little bit more "counterculture" by 1966?

― Johnny Fever,

So that was actually supposed to be Leary?

Someone either called him Leary or my closed captioning (I had the dishwasher running.. too noisy) ID'd him as such.

Roger said at one point "Well, Dr. Leary, I for one find your product boring" but I thought he was speaking in the abstract, not literally addressing the prof

Roger namechecks Leary as "Thanks Mr. Leary but I find your product to be lacking" but I really think he was just being urbane and facetious. That was DEFINITELY not Leary they were tripping with.

i'm xposting like crazy today

A note:

(By the by, the host was not supposed to be LSD pioneer Dr. Timothy Leary, despite Roger's joke; his character's name is credited as Sandy Orcutt, which is an anagram for "Candy Tutors," whatever that means.)

Oh okay that makes more sense. xp

Handjob Peggy (comes with everything you see here) was less to me about her feeling bad and more to me about her wanting to be desired and in control of the situation.

otm, i saw it as her wanting to show dominance SOMEHOW, since it had been denied her during the pitch meeting.

Oops! I was cleaning & watching so I didn't get Roger's Leary joke :(

otm, i saw it as her wanting to show dominance

yeah this is how I read it. lion imagery kinda the giveaway here.

i lolled at blunted Peggy's born free trip

nobody's mentioned this yet but Ginberg's Holocaust-orphan story was o_0

monologue rather

Yeah wasn't sure what to take from that

Yeah, it was. In a normal week, that probably would've been the standout moment, but this week I'd forgotten about it already.

Also why do people no longer give handjobs to strangers in movie theaters?

nobody's mentioned this yet but Ginberg's Holocaust-orphan story was o_0

I was wondering how historically accurate this was -- I was under the impression that babies born in the camps were mostly killed at birth.

A few probably got through for various reasons.

the impact of ginsberg's story was deadened a bit because I was half-convinced peggy was dreaming during it. she was high and doing crazy shit, she fell asleep and woke up to don's enigmatic phone call, ginsberg talks about being a martian in a scene shot entirely in reflection...I was too incredulous to believe it was really happening until the nonlinear structure of the episode became apparent.

yeah and the way the monologue shifted from jokey sarcasm to earnest confessional was almost imperceptible, really well done

A few probably got through for various reasons.

think this is probably true - or a late arriving prisoner was pregnant and didn't deliver til after the camps were liberated or something...? I can think of a few scenarios where this would have happened. but I guess it remains to be seen how true this backstory is.

here's an example

http://www.aish.com/ho/p/48952026.html

On Dec. 21 Bein felt labour pains. She climbed to the top bunk in her barrack, and there, aided by two other inmates, gave birth in secret to a baby girl. The infant was tiny, weighing only one kilogram; she was too weak to cry but strong enough to drink the meagre offering from her mother's breast, and somehow survived the next few weeks in hiding.

The only other infant survivor, according to Auschwitz museum records, was a Hungarian boy, Gyorgy Faludi, born the day of liberation with the help of a Russian doctor. Soviet Red Army troops liberated the camp on Jan. 27, 1945. Baby and mother were among the survivors, and they were an unusual sight -- indeed, almost unique.

Ginsberg didn't specify which camp he was born at did he...?

not at all, just providing another story

WOW. Fucking AWESOME episode.

Also, bravo on the LSD scenes. I hate hate hate when shows do drug scenes, they are always full of bad show-offy lousy visual effects and this was just so perfect, like that bit with the cigarette.

you knew someone was gonna take acid at some point (Peggy? Sally?) and there were a million things that could have gone wrong with it but they REALLY delivered with Roger

sound editing was bonkers - the cross-mixing of Pet Sounds with Mel Torme (I think it was?), the baseball stuff, the split-conversations

yeah I think it was a good choice to convey the trip mostly w/ sound instead of visuals

megan was great in the scene w. the orange sherbet

ginsburg may have been lying as well, who knows.

AV Club also seems confused on the Leary tip, but I really don't understand how anyone can not think it's just a joke. Like if you were at Kentucky Fried Chicken and you were all "This chicken leaves something to be desired, Col. Sanders" it doesn't mean you are having lunch with Col. Sanders. Jeez.

that dude didn't look anything like Leary. And this is what, summer of '66? Leary was already pretty big by that point - being targeted by the feds, conducting televised debates etc. I don't think he was doing NY dinner parties.

AV Club also seems confused on the Leary tip, but I really don't understand how anyone can not think it's just a joke. Like if you were at Kentucky Fried Chicken and you were all "This chicken leaves something to be desired, Col. Sanders" it doesn't mean you are having lunch with Col. Sanders. Jeez.

It always surprised me how people will take a sarcastic comment in a fictional work as literal, but they would never take it that way if someone said it in real life.

well real life provides more context, no?

but yeah you'd have to be a bit tone deaf to miss roger's joke.

loved Roger's note btw

PLEASE HELP ME

loved the cigarette - i have literally had that happen in, er... similar circumstances.

i can't remember what happened with the cigarette

He smoked the whole thing down with his first drag.

to the sound of an accordion squeeze

heh. i'm sure a gif will be along any minute now.

Yeah that was otm and awesome.

I'm mainly glad it was suddenly all fish-eye lenses and extreme close-ups and trailing effects. It still is a bit stylized but it's all maintained in the Mad Men world and I love the fun Roger seems to be having with it.

it was wasn't

there was a lot in the episode that was really stylized. the Don & Megan driving scenes (and especially the later scene of Don driving alone) had this saturated cartoony look on the scenery going by.

kind of "fake looking" but in a really specific sixties-movie way

yeah, when megan rolled down the window, i thought, "why bother? your car isn't moving."

my wife said she was hoping Megan was going to fall out of the car o_0

that's odd. why she hate a megan?

I find her to be a frustrating character tbh

I kinda hate her too tbh