Xealot posted:

gently caress, I forgot how much that line stabs you when she says it. Because yeah, it's 100% correct and speaks so succinctly to how well Faye understood Don. Also, "you'll be married in less than a year." Ugh, Faye was great, gently caress you Don.

The Klowner posted:

S1, S3, S6 chat

Faye feels like a modern woman transplanted into the 1960s. Her sensibilities are decades beyond her contemporaries, both male and female. I think that's one of the reasons she is attractive not just to Don, but to the audience. We want Don to be with her not just for what it would mean for Don's character, but also what it would mean for the show. We want the characters to move beyond their constraints, whether self-imposed or societal, and Faye's continued presence in the show might have moved things for all the characters in a positive direction.

Of course, I might just be talking out of my rear end. I'm gaga for Cara Buono

GoutPatrol posted:

S4 and S5 chat

The best parts of the season 4 rewatch, and why it is my favorite season, it because of things like this. The slow build-up of Megan is absolutely perfect to where you never would expect the marriage proposal and her becoming a central figure in the show, but it all clicks when you go back and watch. It is like she gets one more line every episode until she's not just background fodder.

Secondly, the reveal that Megan knows about Dick Whitman is perfect for the S5 opener. You are giving hope to the viewer that this time, maybe Don has finally learned his lesson and this will be different. And this is also where you get the fat Betty reveal, and it makes the contrast between the two wives of Don Draper even bigger. Makes the "are you alone?" gut punch from the S5 finale hit harder.

Prince Myshkin posted:

"You Only Live Twice" as the music cue for it is perfection.

The Klowner posted:

That song is just amazing in its own right too. I hadn't seen "You Only Live Twice" the movie before so the song was completely alien to me. The best musical cue in the show is the string pluck right between "Are you alone?" and "And love is a stranger..." Haunting, seductive, and maddening because you know that's the very moment Don decides to throw away everything he's worked towards the past two seasons

Yoshi Wins posted:

Yeah, I agree with all this, and there are a couple of things I'd like to add.

JethroMcB posted:

Back to S4 chat: It's also important to think about Faye and Megan's respective interactions with Don's kids, given his weird relation with maternal figures in his life. Faye is incredibly uncomfortable when she is forced to deal with Sally turning up unexpectedly at Don's office, speaking to her in a patronizing way the entire time and admitting to Don after the fact that she was not ready for that interaction.

Shageletic posted:

S7 spoilers Maybe Faye wasn't the right person for Don, but finding someone was never his problem. His problem was his internal cauldron of self hatred and regurgitated avoidance mechanisms. Do people think that retreat in Cali helped him with that? That bit where he hugs the other guy was so loving powerful.

The Klowner posted:

S8 spoilers Don hugs him because he gives him the idea for the coke ad op

Shimrra Jamaane posted:

I think it’s more than that.

The Klowner posted:

S8 spoilers Don hugs him because he gives him the idea for the coke ad op

live with fruit posted:

Didn't Weiner say that the ending is a Rorschach test? Either you think the Coke ad is Don's tribute to the institute and the genuine change he had there, or you think he's cynically co-opting the aesthetic because ultimately he's just an ad man?

live with fruit posted:

Didn't Weiner say that the ending is a Rorschach test? Either you think the Coke ad is Don's tribute to the institute and the genuine change he had there, or you think he's cynically co-opting the aesthetic because ultimately he's just an ad man?

Prince Myshkin posted:

It very obviously is and you're relying on people not actually having seen it to make your argument.

Truffaut's assertion an anti-war movie is impossible because the events depicted via the medium of cinema would be too thrilling does not hold true for a movie with three minutes of actual war scenes that's just frame after frame of men ignominiously dying.

I don't even think a shot is fired by an onscreen character until three random men are executed so the scumbag general can save face.

imdb posted:

This film was banned in France for its negative portrayal of the French army. Switzerland also banned the film (until 1978), accusing it of being "subversive propaganda directed at France." Belgium required that a foreword be added stating that the story represented an isolated case that did not reflect upon the "gallantry of the French soldiers."

imdb posted:

French authorities considered the film an offense to the honor of their army and prohibited its exhibition in France until 1975. In Germany it wasn't allowed to be shown for a couple of years after its release to avoid any strain in relations with France.

quote:

Siskel: There’s very little killing in your films. How come?

Truffaut: I find that violence is very ambiguous in movies. For example, some films claim to be antiwar, but I don’t think I’ve really seen an anti-war film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war.

Siskel: Even a film like Kubrick’s Paths of Glory or his Dr. Strangelove?

Truffaut: Yes, I think Kubrick likes violence very much.

quote:

[Siskel] thought about Truffaut’s words for weeks, and is finally beginning to understand and agree with the observation, that Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 film Paths of Glory isn’t so much anti-war as it is critical of the French governmental institutions that lead people into war. Siskel concludes: “War isn’t hell; it’s just the men who run them are frequently hellish.”

Shageletic posted:

It's such an interesting question. I do think Don felt something there, and Don was more open about his mistakes (while not being specific about them, lol) to his call with Peggy than he ever has.

Sash! posted:

It is important to me and my understanding that Peggy, the person that likely understands Don more than any other living person, is distressed and has the impression that something is seriously wrong with Don. She didn't realize, and Don probably didn't either, that he was on the cusp of actual change.

Sash! posted:

It is important to me and my understanding that Peggy, the person that likely understands Don more than any other living person, is distressed and has the impression that something is seriously wrong with Don. She didn't realize, and Don probably didn't either, that he was on the cusp of actual change.

Shageletic posted:

was it a cusp of change, or the cusp of suicide? Draper has always had a suicidal streak, from his tarot card reading, to his looking for emptiness, to driving a car completely loaded. maybe she was afraid he was finally going to do it? Maybe he was finally going to do it?

Yoshi Wins posted:

He says that he's calling her because he realized he never said goodbye to her. If someone called me sounding really depressed and said that, I would act on the assumption that they were suicidal.

VinylonUnderground posted:

I mean, the movie Truffaut discusses is literally "Paths of Glory" which I why I chose it.

Prince Myshkin posted:

In any case being an anti-institutional film set in a time of war when wars are the product of institutions seems to me like drawing a distinction without a difference. Kirk Douglas' colonel is our square-jawed hero, a man with a keen sense of justice, completely idealized — and he can't do poo poo. He's stymied at every turn. A liberal movie that wanted to claim there are no bad wars, just bad individuals would have included his triumph over the forces of evil.

VinylonUnderground posted:

Whoa whoa whoa! Make sure you put how WWI ends in spoiler brackets.

Escobarbarian posted:

What do you think about Come and See?

UNRULY_HOUSEGUEST posted:

You have repeatedly said moments like Don disgusting his mistress by urging her to help him bail on his entire life and family is 'sad trombone' (or 'sad dog', whatever the gently caress that is) plotting; only the moments where he has sex, gains money or lands a business deal count. I've got a feeling that any example of how Don being deeply flawed and pathetic throughout, and how that's inextricably linked with the his positive moments, is going to be written off as a sad animal or brass instrument, but gently caress it, I think I can talk about what appeals to me about Mad Men, and mostly implying what I don't care for in Breaking Bad, without totally making GBS threads over the thread. Because I do think that great TV needs to succeed at what it sets out to do, and I do think that Mad Men, for all its own flaws, succeeds.

When I watch this scene it cements the whole season long reveal of how far Don is, amongst other things, a coward. It follows the reveal of his Korean (pro?)war experience as pissing himself in fear, trying to light a smoke with quivering hands and accidentally incinerating with CO - which is fair enough reaction to getting shelled, until he uses it as an opportunity to steal the dead man's identity and leads directly to the entirely passive but very deliberate fleeing from his little brother and leaving him to parochial misery. This reframes the earlier moment of rejecting his brother as an adult from ruthlessness to cowardice, which is a good idea, because behaving ruthlessly in a show tends to read as badass rather than repellant - unless there's someone who matters on the receiving end, and not an incidental nobody or rival tyrant. Most of the time Mad Men doesn't have to worry about this, because it's sincerely invested in a network of characters who have relationships and goals and flaws of their own. We don't need to be told that Don abusing and neglecting the people in his life is bad, because we already care about characters like Betty, Peggy, Roger, and Joan in their own right and we know they're all hopelessly interdependent. Even the antagonists like Pete and Duck, who represent his key work triumphs so far, stick around, because the show is demonstrating, not telling, that Don and his work victories are only so important.

This isn't Weiner waking up with night sweats and inserting mea culpas into all his self-insertion fantasy scripts about the cool misogynist businessman from the 60s. The tension between the glamour and persuasive power of advertising and its manipulativeness and false promise just is the purpose and drama and characterisation of the show, and it works for those willing to grant sympathetic moments and accept alienating ones, which are often weaved into one. Don's an untutored hillbilly pariah who inhaled the promise of advertising and reinvented himself with the power of imagemaking; this is baked into everything he is and does. When Roger is in a hospital bed trying to form thoughts about his whole existence fading out along with his all little fleeting moments of sexual conquest, Don still sounds half dipshit hayseed and half compulsive sloganeer when he weakly wonders if Roger is talking about vitality as 'the thing that makes you get up and go'. The connection misses, Don leaves uneasy but baffled and Roger forgets his own moment of humility as soon as he's well enough to gently caress around again; by the end of the season, Don's begging for the love, permanence and stability of family, but they're both going to need years more of bottoming out and threatened irrelevance to push them to change and not try and piece their self-image back together. That arbitrarily plucked season one moment might not speak to human nature for everyone, but it does to me, and I'm guessing most of the people into the show. Don's frequently and irreducably a horrible person, but he's not evil and never a villain; as you pointed out yourself, his problem on the show is one iteration of everyone's problem.

The whole thing feels like a miscategorisation - you've insisted on a superficial read of who the main character is and you've decided that the show has set out to celebrate his villainy. This is not why Don is entangled among a set of characters with their own fully realised lives, and that's not why it's placed specifically in the slipstream of 60s history where postwar prosperity and white male supremacy as a given are going to have their first actual crisis moment, for reasons outside any of their control. If he were given Walter White level status in this show - if the entire world genuinely revolved around him and the plot momentum he generates, if opposing him was only ever a total act of hubris in which you could only be destroyed or subordinated, if his wrongdoing was played overwhelmingly as notes of slick ruthlessness and comic self-pity, if condemnation of that wrongdoing were reduced to silly too-huge moments of symbolic in-air plane collisions and whistling a jaunty tune after dissolving a child in acid before granting him comprehensive victory on his own terms - the show would be what you're describing, and it would be loving woeful.

VinylonUnderground posted:

I haven't seen it so I can't comment. But so what if it is? Let's say Come and See is an anti-war film. What does that have to do with what I've said?

I specifically choose the "you can't make an anti-war film" because it is an extremely common argument that most people are going to be familiar with and I chose the textbook example. My thesis is not "you can't make an anti-war film" nor "you can't condemn wealth and philandering in a TV show". I think that Mad Men specifically fails at condemning wealth and philandering because Weiner venerates wealth and philandering. I think this veneration shows through quite clearly in the finished product even though Weiner expressly seeks to condemn these things.

Kubricks love of violence:Paths of Glory::Weiner's love of wealth and philandering:Mad Men

Truffaut states that Kubrick likes violence very much so he glorifies violence in Paths of Glory despite his attempt to condemn it. I'm stating that Weiner loves wealth and philandering so he glorifies these things in Mad Men despite his attempt to condemn it.

That's all.

sebmojo posted:

CharlestheHammer posted:

I actually agree that Don is very much do a thing then feel bad about how sad he is. It wouldn’t be so bad if the show wasn’t so formulaic about it but mad men runs into the problem a lot of the prestige television shows where you can see how TV it is coming from a mile away.

Ultimately it’s a silly show that fans desperately want to pretend is grounded instead of a bit cartoonish. Which is fine with me but I think people wouldn’t like that to be true

UNRULY_HOUSEGUEST posted:

...that's not why it's placed specifically in the slipstream of 60s history where postwar prosperity and white male supremacy as a given are going to have their first actual crisis moment...

JethroMcB posted:

Back to S4 chat: When Bobby and Sally knock over a milkshake squabbling at lunch, Don's temper flares and Megan doesn't bat an eye; just a spill, no big deal, which seems to serve as his big catalyst for proposing that evening, having seen her in an active caring, nurturing mode. (Also, not crying over literal spilled milk is the least Betty-like response possible. Don's anger in that moment feels more like a conditioned response to meet Betty's attitude at something being "ruined.")

Xealot posted:

Just emphasizing this part. If Matt Weiner wanted to make a show about a cool, hyper-masculine badass who clowns on libs and feminists or whatever, he could've done that and set it in 2007. He could've cast Gerard Butler in some kind of Suits-esque business dramedy and made...whatever that show would be. He made a show set in the 60's because he wanted to say something about the dominant culture of that time, especially with respect to gendered power and the capacity for "successful" men to behave like Don unchallenged.

It'd be like making a show about decadent rich people, and setting it in 1928. The message probably would not be that it's cool and fun to be rich.


This was absolutely what sealed it in Don's mind, I'd think. Megan being so unlike Betty in that moment. If he externalizes the problems with his first marriage to Betty, his immature ex-wife, he doesn't have to look within. "This time, I'm making the right choice!" Which is a thought he voices out loud in S5, "if I'd met [Megan] first, I'd have known not to throw it away." And, I mean, Betty *is* an immature and often spiteful person, who behaves more like a child than an adult. But that's way down the list of reasons that marriage failed, and isn't why his marriage to Megan fails.

The "are you alone?" scene hurts me specifically because it's so heartless...he's writing Megan off the way he probably wrote off Betty, after one mildly disillusioning interaction. Megan asked him to pull some strings for an acting job, and now she's (literally) a fake princess posing on a fake set, some cloying artificial construct of romantic bliss that Don flees to go drown his sorrows. Megan's not who he thought she was. We never see what Don and Betty's marriage looked like when it was "happy," which at some point it must have been. But we see it decay with Megan in realtime, and it's a loving downer.