Mad Men on AMC • Fifth Season Thread

Don's brought himself low plenty of times. And has also shown himself to be generous, even charitable, on multiple occasions.

also, to some extent sympathy for the poor and whores and the rejected and the outcast kind of comes very naturally to him - he sees himself in them - and that is explicitly NON-Randian

your summary of what about don is randian has never happened on the show

no, i'm speculating idly about the eventual course of things. either he'll triumph over the lesser men around him, or else he'll stumble. at this point, it's all speculative. i agree, fwiw, that he's far from the perfect randian hero.

and sure, if you strip off enough of the specifics that make a "randian hero" specifically randian, then he just becomes a plain old ordinary hero - which is certainly the more sensible description of don at this point

"Dick Whitman (and N.Korea) are responsible for the death of the real Don Draper."

How was Dick Whitman responsible for the real Don Draper's death? He didn't drop a bomb on the guy.

Splitting hairs here (this was all Weiner's fault anyway), but iirc, Dick was being reprimanded by the real Don when they were attacked. Prior to that, the real Don had been working on something else at a (as it happened) safer place in camp. He was only in fatal danger because he was having to deal w/Dick.

By that same token though, you could argue that if the real Don wasn't with Dick, and only Dick had been killed, the real Don would have been seriously damaged in an albeit different way.

he's barely a hero. this has been maybe his most "heroic" season in the sense that he hasn't been a complete shitbag and has tried to be nice/helpful to some people.

Don doesn't do everything on his own here either tho... not sure where the last few campaigns would be without Ginsberg/Peggy/Pete.

wow xposts

xp - yeah, definitely. i'd thought of don as the show's villain prior to this season.

Anti-hero rather than villain really. If the show's had a more-or-less consistent villain, and I'm not sure it does, then it's Pete, but even Pete's character cuts against that on occasion. Admittedly not very much this year.

Actually reading summaries you appear to be right. No recollection of him blowing the real Don up, but it's been a while...

not sure where the last few campaigns would be without Ginsberg/Peggy/Pete.

As someone pointed out way upthread, it's been a long time since Don had a real idea. His worth to SCDP now is his ability to sell the ideas created by Ginsberg and Peggy.

basically having to rely on a team in such a way is pretty anti-randian, no?

life is anti-randian

How was Dick Whitman responsible for the real Don Draper's death? He didn't drop a bomb on the guy.

Didn't they both survive the bombardment, and then Dick lit a cigarette that caused an explosion that killed the Real Don Draper? Or did I just imagine that?

you imagined that

i think you're thinking of a cartoon.

haha okay I'm being a literalist.

As someone pointed out way upthread, it's been a long time since Don had a real idea. His worth to SCDP now is his ability to sell the ideas created by Ginsberg and Peggy.

don came up with the devil concept that he sold to treat manufacturer instead of ginsberg's (clearly hawaiian punch-inspired) snowball in the face pitch.

and that throat-ripping general purpose pitch to dow was all don (for better or worse)

the Dow thing wasn't really an idea...

i think it was. he pitched a concept: you're not happy. you can't be happy with less than everything. we're hungry enough to know that and to fight for it on your behalf.

what kind of tagline is that

"You're Not Happy"

Dow Chemical

I just remembered that Don's brother also hanged himself after Don tried to wash his hands of him.

there were a lot of careful resonances w/ this built into the episode. no doubt layne's suicide recalled his young brother's suicide to don, which makes some beautiful sense of the final scene where he lets glenn (a temporary little-brother figure) drive his car.

Dow Chemical: Give Americans ALL the Napalm

that's the kind of shit that not many TV shows would think to pull off BTW. i think most shows would go for a slow-mo flashback. more sophisticated shows might have a brief flash frame or something.

xpost

"You're Not Happy"

Dow Chemical

don wasn't pitching dow a proposed campaign. he was pitching SCDP in opposition to the presumed taken-for-granted indifference of dow's current ad agency. if it works in the show's fictional universe, then it was a good line. if not, then not.

another note: this show has been absolutely merciless to Jaguar. I'm sure they feel "no such thing as bad press" about the exposure but lol the starter/suicide gag was just brutal... not only was the car used as a symbol of his oppressive frustration, but it couldn't even deliver the promise of death's release due to its built-in inadequacy

I understand what Don was doing, it was not an ad campaign for Dow. It was nominally an ad for SCDP, I suppose.

xp

kind of wish glenn had shut up in the elevator though, that was a bit, how do you say?... on the nose.

All the on the noseness this season coming from teenagers saying sage things to grown men for no apparent reason

Glen is 14. Subtlety is not his strength yet.

magic pixie dream glen

um manic

I just remembered that Don's brother also hanged himself after Don tried to wash his hands of him.

Sepinwall pointed out the similarities of Don's physical reaction:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/images.hitfix.com/assets/1400/mad-men-don-hanging.jpg

pretty weird that on sky in the uk they had a jaguar ad on the first break.

ha, glen comes across to me as just a normal maybe slightly dumb socially awkward outcast teenager, any sagacity in anything he said would be purely incidental.

Glen seems normal now. The "creepy" tag is just a holdover from when he was charming Betty back in Ossining.

Give it a week, let's see if he's creepin on Megan..

Does anyone really think the selling point of Don Draper was ever "he has the best ideas"?

he's randy-an

well he was, dunno if he really is now

he still bones on the reg, just with one person in a fit of rage

Wouldn't the Randian thing be, Don's the job creator, Peggy, et al, are just feeding off the juices of his awesome job creation opportunities (ie. Dow).

Didn't they both survive the bombardment, and then Dick lit a cigarette that caused an explosion that killed the Real Don Draper? Or did I just imagine that?

(...)

i think you're thinking of a cartoon.

Hah, I've never made the connection before but the whole storyline kind of owes a debt to

http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS6GTp0GT5w6gBJS-aN5eQieXeD95ZpaR89qTKiMAhckNBaBfWJ

o ya. series finale starring dick whitman AS armin tamzarian.

this randian discussion is really a red herring.

RED

shit, blew my cover.

glen is weiner's son, right? he is good and effective in the part but I can't tell if his stilted line reading is meant to be part of the character or just, you know, really bad acting.