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JethroMcB posted:The second thing is, holy poo poo, Young Pete! For all the attention Don gets, I think Pete Campbell may be one of the greatest television characters of all time, in terms of both how he's written and how Kartheiser portrays his gradual "evolution," physically and otherwise. i don't know that you ever like him, but...he has his moments. ("THE KING ORDERED IT!") Yeah, for as reprehensible as Pete is, he's also the funniest goddamn character. He does one of my favorite line readings in basically anything: "Not great, Bob! Mad Men is probably my favorite TV drama ever made, and I've had some frustrating conversations with people recently who found it too slow or plodding or to be "about nothing." It absolutely is about something, I think best summarized by Faye in S4, it all comes down to what people want vs. what's expected of them. The show is filled with characters seeking to become some aspirational self, who are then confronted by the inescapable reality of who they actually are. The central focus on advertising is the perfect metaphor for this...an industry built around lies promising a better life, designed to distract people from the obvious truth that those promises were always empty. It's interesting in retrospect that AMC's two big deal flagship shows of this period - Mad Men and Breaking Bad - so heavily explore themes of toxic masculine ambition and the isolation and destruction that brings. Obviously, the latter is way more bombastic and Shakespearean about it. But Mad Men does a really nuanced job of showing how traumatic and self-destructive it can be in small, subtle ways that accumulate over time. The best trick the show pulls off is presenting Don Draper as this stoic, confident, successful alpha male, and then showing how empty and self-loathing and lonely and vulnerable the man inside that empty suit actually is. Mad Men is goddamn excellent.
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Sep 29, 2020 20:46
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I remember rolling my eyes a bit when the first season twist comes out, that "Don Draper" is actually a false identity that Dick Whitman stole. What the show does with that ends up being really efficient, though, and I'm really glad they did it. It literalizes Don's inner conflict over his identity, and conflates his shame over his impoverished youth with his guilt over what he had to do to escape it. All the ways Don is some masculine ideal become a literal performance within the narrative, as well...it's explicitly his cynical imagination of what a successful man is supposed to look like: confident, dominant, stoic, but also selfish, guarded and unavailable. It kind of becomes a way for the show to have its cake and eat it, too. You can hate Don Draper and love Dick Whitman, rooting for his moments of vulnerability or empathy or kindness and condemning the total rear end in a top hat he's encouraged to be by the culture of Madison Ave. It's interesting how as the show progresses, his business triumphs become more and more hollow, while the things that actually feel like victories for him become interpersonal (connecting in a genuine way with Anna, showing his kids the home he grew up in, letting his own career take a back seat to Peggy's.) Edit: Fair point, everything is spoilered because it is pretty retrospective commentary about the show. Xealot fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Oct 1, 2020 |
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Sep 30, 2020 21:00
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Yoshi Wins posted:I still feel a bit bad for him when he says that line, though, because it’s just sad for any person to feel like no one likes them on a personal level. That’s why Don’s monologue in the pilot about how no one will like Pete cuts him deeply. He knows that Don has him pegged. Yeah, you feel bad for him in the moment, but then he continues choosing to be terrible and selfish. It makes sense that Don would have such an instant dislike of him, because he's the antithesis of Don: a talentless social climber who leans on his name to achieve everything. For better or worse, Don is the epitome of a "bootstraps" success story. Meanwhile, Pete was born into everything and does nothing but complain about how he deserves more. That must be so repellant to someone like Don. Pete's extreme fragility makes his relationship with Peggy make so much sense, though. Because she's the only person naive enough to actually be impressed by him. I think it's true that everyone who matters at Sterling-Cooper sees right through Pete...they tolerate him at best but nobody particularly likes him. But then there's Peggy, this rube from Brooklyn who's actually taken-in by his pretensions of status or importance. The scene where he waxes poetic about his romantic fantasy of killing a deer for his frontier wife is so cringy, and the fact it turns Peggy on is ludicrous. But it also makes the later scene - where Peggy tells him, "I had your baby, and I gave it away" - so effective. Eventually, even she comes to see him for what he actually is, which is equal parts devastating for Pete and intensely cathartic for Peggy. I guess I'm kind of a sadist when it comes to Pete Campbell, though. A lot of my favorite moments involve him having a bad time. Perhaps my favorite episode of the show in general is S5E05 "Signal 30," a flawless takedown of the paper-thin masculine insecurity that defines every single problem Pete Campbell has. It's just a rock-solid episode.
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Oct 5, 2020 03:36
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Jerusalem posted:Knowing that as good as the show gets, I can look forward to season 4 and 5 being even better is a-ok by me Season 5 is my favorite, but honestly this is one of very few shows that I think is great the whole time. There are seasons I like more, but there are none I dislike. And from my perspective, it has one of the best and most satisfying series finales I’ve ever seen. If you’re concerned it spirals out or loses the thread from earlier seasons, it doesn’t.
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Oct 5, 2020 09:07
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ulvir posted:either seniority or the amount of accounts. I think it’s revealed later on that Ken brings in more business I forget how that looked in the first season, but eventually they make an explicit point of Ken being a better account man without trying. "[Pete] makes clients feel their needs are met, but Ken makes them feel they haven't got any needs." Which I fully believe, because Ken actually has charisma and social competence. Pete works hard, but constantly brings a real "desperate traveling salesman" energy to his job. And his private life, for that matter. Ken's a total fratboy in S1, but he's one of my favorites by the end.
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Oct 6, 2020 00:40
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a new study bible! posted:PETE CAMPBELL TALK PETE CAMPBELL TALK Maybe in the end, but it's not for a lack of trying that Pete is no Don Draper...he certainly WANTS to be for most of the show. At least, he aspires to the effortless competence and alpha posturing that people associate with Don. Pete's failure to be that fuels a lot of his most reprehensible moments: when he suggests Trudy should bang her male friend to get his awful story published, when he spinelessly pressures Joan into sleeping with Herb, when he fails to charm the German au pair into bed and instead rapes her, etc. etc. When he doesn't get the things he wants through competence or charm, he turns to far uglier and more sadistic methods, which in my mind makes him FAR worse than Don. Of course, he DOES become Don in a wonderful monkey's paw sense: there's that shot late in the show where he tucks Tammy into bed with Trudy in the doorframe, a direct reference to the shot of Don from the pilot. He finally got his wish: his big boy alpha male roleplay in the city has alienated him from his wife and daughter, just like his hero Don Draper.
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Oct 7, 2020 22:05
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Gaius Marius posted:I've seen that take before and it's absolutely insane. look at where don, Peggy, or even harry's at. it's been slow and they've relapsed into prior behavior but every one of them ends up in a totally different place then the first episode I agree more with you. I absolutely think the characters change, in incremental ways that are slow day-to-day but striking if taken as a whole. I likewise think that's true of the setting: as you watch season-by-season, the changes to the broader culture accumulate fairly gradually, but comparing 1960 to the early 1970's is mind-blowing. To me, anyway. MAJOR SPOILERS for the ending: But I also think the cynicism GoutPatrol brings to it is justified. Like, is Pete actually going to value his family this time or not? Did joyless workaholic Peggy actually fill the romantic void in her life, or is this a temporary distraction? Is Roger in an honest relationship between equals, or is he going to sabotage it with another 20-year-old next month? It's purposefully open-ended in a sense, Don's ending most of all. Is that smile at the end a moment of genuine catharsis or clarity for him? Or did he literally learn nothing, leaving there with a killer Coke ad and nothing more.
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Oct 8, 2020 02:11
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Yoshi Wins posted:I look forward to posting unspoilered takes in the future, but season 1 is so opaque and mysterious that it's just not gonna happen often for this season. Yeah, it's true. Don in particular is such a cipher early on. There are so many shots of him staring meaningfully at things in total silence. I mean, there are those shots the entire show, but at least later on you have some context to intuit what the hell he's thinking about. It's a real obtuse watch at the beginning. I do think Don is in a meaningfully different place by the end, though. Those bouts of silent introspection happen because Don feels his internal struggles are his alone, that nobody could love him if they knew who he *really* was. At the start of the show, he won't share anything with anyone, refuses to show any vulnerability even to his wife or children, sends his only family away because of how scared and ashamed he is of his past. As Harry says, "nobody's overturned that rock. He could be Batman for all we know." By the end of the show, he does so much to treat that wound. Betty literally didn't know his real name, but Megan knows all about him. Sally and Bobby go to Anna's house, see the whorehouse he grew up in. He cries in front of Peggy and accepts that she still loves and respects him. Especially in the last season, there are so many big deal things that happen: he swallows his ego to help Peggy with her career. He confesses to a roomful of vets that he killed his CO, and they don't judge him for it. The scene at Esalen where that random other guy describes his refrigerator dream, and Don breaks down with empathy, is monumental: the man's point is that no matter how his life looks, he feels unloved and incapable of love. And that's a feeling Don has felt alone in having his whole life. And he didn't need to.
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Oct 10, 2020 03:07
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Solkanar512 posted:Also, that $22 then is around $193 now. I don’t know anyone in a long term, joint-finances relationship that would just spend nearly $200 on themselves on a whim without discussing it first, especially when that money was likely expected to go elsewhere. Yeah, the literal value of the $200 probably doesn't matter to either of them, but it's definitely lovely that it was a wedding gift for both of them that he repurposed into a toy for himself. I remember thinking he was genuinely wealthy in the first few episodes, but it becomes clear that this isn't true, yeah. Looking like some upper-crust high society elite is just one of the many things he aspires to be, and I love it when it fails to convince or impress people ("Peter Dyckman Campbell!" *eye rolls*) I guess this is speaking to a historical reality that played out in the US at this time...decades earlier, I'm sure his name-dropping might've gotten him somewhere in a Great Gatsby sense. But by the 60's, he's the scion of a family clearly in decline, dependent on his much wealthier wife's family and constantly one-upped by "self-made" people in his orbit who don't have any generational wealth to fall back on.
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Oct 15, 2020 03:07
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KellHound posted:Trudy's family struck me as more new money or at least newer money than Pete. When Trudy is talking to the board of the new apartment, the way she talks about Pete's family reminded me of the way someone might talk about pedigree show dog. This makes as much sense as anything. It never fully gelled with me why Trudy was so interested in Pete in the first place...even early on, she's portrayed as extremely savvy, so I can't imagine she was ever some naive debutante who was starry-eyed about a Dyckman looking her way. But I could see her having this more cynical take, looking at Pete's family as a means to an end. The Klowner posted:Mad Men's"The Hobo Code" preceded 30 Rock's "Reunion" by about a year; maybe Fey was knowingly referencing Mad Men thinking that it was a racist joke. There are genuinely a number of Mad Men references in 30 Rock, and vice-versa. At one point, Kenneth makes a joke about his real name being Dick Whitman. In a later-season Mad Men episode, a character orders an "Old Spanish" at a bar, which is a fictitious drink from an episode of 30 Rock (it's red wine, tonic water, and olives...it sound revolting.) Of course, Jon Hamm was on both shows, and went on to play the Reverend on Kimmy Schmidt, which involved at least one other Mad Men joke: (BIG ending spoiler, by the way) "The Reverend is a liar! He once claimed to make the 'Buy The World a Coke' ad!!"
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Oct 19, 2020 22:22
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Solkanar512 posted:Christ, what a miserable existence. Seriously, sounds awful. Something that comes up a lot in Peggy/Joan conflicts is the opposing ways they grapple with feminine expectation. Much like Trudy, Joan always tries to maneuver within the bounds of patriarchal rules to get things she wants - passive-aggressive manipulation, coddling male egos, etc. - and it's so goddamn exhausting. Joan gets her own picture-perfect marriage to an utter piece of poo poo for her trouble, as well, and it's so profoundly not worth it. It really sucks. S1 Peggy is so wide-eyed, but god drat do I love her character later on. The plot where Joey in the art dept keeps harassing Joan is so good on this point. Joan's plan is some 4D chess to crumble Joey's prospects from within the company. Peggy's plan is to tell him directly, "pack your poo poo. You're done." I get Joan's argument, that this makes Joan look like a secretary and makes Peggy look like a humorless bitch, but goddamn do I think Peggy was still right. Pull some poo poo like Joey pulls, and you get fired. The esteem of his male coworkers shouldn't matter at all, and it's one of the first points in the show where society felt contemporary.
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Oct 20, 2020 00:50
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I also think the show does a good job of showing, not just telling that Peggy is talented. I echo what Shageletic said: she doesn't emulate Don's style, but she has her own that projects a real and convincing emotionality. What I think she's best at, though, is deconstructing her own creative before the pitch happens. She's analytical and self-aware, and constantly asks if the idea is actually good or if the target consumer will resonate with it. It's not a genius prodigy thing, it's an intense shrewdness and perfectionism that other copywriters don't have. Ted Chaugh says as much, "I look at your book, and I see someone who writes as if every product is for them." This is best exemplified with the Burger Chef pitch. They had a whole strategy, backed with research, everything was ready to go...but it didn't feel right. And she tortured herself until she sorted out why. Don couldn't fix it, because his intuition wasn't the one setting off an alarm. The pitch was great in the end because Peggy cut through to the core of what the messaging was supposed to be. Because she's excellent at her job.
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Oct 21, 2020 01:54
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Yoshi Wins posted:[Don] is totally closed off to his own wife. But somehow he finds it possible to show vulnerability while pursuing a woman sexually. I view this phenomenon in related but slightly different terms. Don being closed off to his wife is really Don being closed off to the scrutiny of the public world. Don carries immense shame about his origins, and a fundamental part of that is the idea that society would reject "the real him" if they knew the truth. He doesn't want his wife to know about it, either, because she's part of that society. She's there to support the ideal self Don is pretending to be, to play the role of a successful man's carefree, untroubled, unchallenging, well provided-for wife. The women Don wants to marry mostly serve that fiction for him, first Betty as a 50's housewife and later Meghan* as some kind of glamorous urban trophy. Don's mistresses, by contrast, don't need to be any of those things. They can be messy, and complex, and honest because the transgressive nature of adultery keeps it all hidden. But also the *kind* of woman he pursues for these affairs is different. They're not Jane Siegel, who Roger cheats with...they're women like Rachel or Bobbie or Suzanne or Sylvia, women with their own lives, often their own careers, who've made choices and have outspoken opinions. They tend to challenge him, aren't carefree, have their own problems. In short, Don's affairs tend to be with women who invite emotion and vulnerability and honesty. So, of course they elicit the same out of him, and one of the tragedies of Don's character is that these things *should* be the building blocks for solid, healthy actual relationships...but he reserves them for affairs that are doomed to fail. This is most upsetting with Faye Miller, another complicated career woman whom he treats like a mistress, even though they're both single adults. It feels like an affair because of the professional boundary between them, but decidedly isn't one and could have become a healthy, communicative relationship between equals. But Don Draper doesn't want that. Faye is the kind of woman Don fucks, the kind he connects with in his usual intense and clandestine way, but not the kind he marries. *Of course, Meghan especially ISN'T that. She's way smarter and more confrontational than she initially seems, and I really like her S5 onward. But in S4, she's very much the easy, uncomplicated choice for Don.
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Oct 27, 2020 00:48
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JethroMcB posted:Peggy might be able to come up with a good line on occasion, but she's just a novelty. To the boys' club, she's a secretary they can treat as an in-house focus group when needed, and saddle with account work they don't want to handle. This, absolutely. I don't think any of them are particularly "threatened" by her at this stage in her career because she's mostly filling a niche. She's good for Belle Jolie, or some other "women's account." She handles grunt work they don't want to do, etc. But when it comes down to it, the male creatives are going to be taken more seriously by each other and by management. Don is a rare exception, and even then only sometimes. The point where Peggy becomes threatening is the point where she has real seniority or power. Which happens: eventually she has hiring and firing power, and uses it. She gets senior positions with staff under her, and male subordinates who struggle to accept that. In that sense, I honestly think Peggy's most difficult challenge doesn't even happen during this show's run: her plot ends with her showing up at McCann in the early 70's, octopus porn in-hand and ready to make waves. The 70's is when "women's lib" really takes off as a focus of social change, and that's probably where she'd meet the most intense opposition from the Boy's Club. I really love Freddy, on this topic. He's a really great character, because although he's definitely a dinosaur with antiquated ideas about a lot of poo poo, he's also a genuinely perceptive and open-minded person. I imagine he wouldn't call himself "a feminist," but he kind of is one: he saw Peggy's talent for what it was, and did what he could to highlight and nurture it. And when he comes back, he gives her the most respectful advice of anyone: "you could do what everyone else does, find a new job, and take it. Show Don you're not just some secretary who's dying to help out."
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Oct 31, 2020 00:27
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Yeah, Mad Men isn't Lost. Although you can spoil later developments, it isn't a show built around those kinds of plot mechanics. Like, I remember seeing episode descriptions for it that just say, "Don has a serious conversation with Betty." There's no episode where Roger and Bert get Red Wedding'ed in a Lucky Strike meeting. Negan doesn't murder Pete Campbell with a baseball bat in the season finale. I can think of maybe 3 or 4 "spoilers" for this show, and they're honestly things you could predict that don't make it any less interesting to watch.
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Nov 4, 2020 21:21
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MightyJoe36 posted:Back when it originally aired on AMC, pretty much every "On the next Mad Men" preview was like this. I loved the previews. After a while, I think the editors were just having fun, and purposefully made them as absurd and meaningless as possible. "*Pete makes a weird face" Peggy: Get out! Bert: I don't see the point of all this... *door slams* Next time, on AMC's Mad Men!" I don't find January Jones to be that impressive in anything else I've seen her in, but she's insanely pitch-perfect for Betty. If an interview I read is to be believed, that's by-design. She originally auditioned for Peggy, and apparently Matt Weiner liked her so much, he invented Betty Draper for her.
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Nov 6, 2020 03:13
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The Klowner posted:Come to think of it, the Obama years were pretty incredible for television. I can't think of one tv show since Trump that comes close to breaking bad or mad men or true detective s1 I think about this kind of thing a lot. How the political reality dictates the kind of art that's being produced. The Bush era saw a lot of popular media about terrorism and government overreach, al-Qaeda and the PATRIOT Act and what-not (24, Battlestar Galactica, the Bourne movies, etc.) And the Trump years make me think of Handmaid's Tale or Man in the High Castle, or shows like Watchmen, Lovecraft Country, The Plot Against America, shows engaging really intensely with fascism or racism or rightwing domination. Meanwhile, the Obama years make me think of less systemic themes, more personal stories of corruption or redemption or self-actualization, which I'd consider Mad Men or Breaking Bad to be. For what it's worth, I also liken those specific shows to works of the late-Clinton years like American Beauty or Fight Club or American Psycho, which are also about ennui or toxic white masculinity. It's just interesting how creatives pick up on and reflect the changing zeitgeist, because they often feel prescient in the ways they did that...Mad Men and Breaking Bad started before Obama was elected. Man in the High Castle started before Trump won.
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Dec 12, 2020 03:24
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Sash! posted:Using one of the examples, the Bourne Identity was a 1980 book. The script was written in 1999. The movie filmed in late 2000. It was supposed to be a September 2001 release. It isn't really an artifact of the Bush era or the post 9/11 world because it is literally the product of a different era. And Man in the High Castle was written in the early 60's, adapted and filmed in 2014, and aired its first episode a full 6 months before Trump announced his candidacy. My point wasn't to suggest that different administrations were lines in the sand separating what kind of art was made, but more that broad forces in society filter their way into art in ways that look coincidental or fortuitous, but are not. There was enough proto-fascist poo poo happening circa 2015 for a Nazi alt-history show to make sense (the Tea Party and Birtherism and what-not), but boy did it make *a lot more* sense when it actually started airing. Bourne Identity is a similar thought. Its themes ended up being incredibly relevant to the post-9/11 context, but maybe the neo-Reaganite energy that led to Bush-Cheney in the first place was already on enough people's radar to make these 80's spy novels appealing. This at a time when existing spy thrillers looked more like the Brosnan Bond movies. All I mean to say is: I do think it's fair to correlate broad trends in art to concrete social phenomena like who the President is. The same forces that decide who wins elections, decide what commercial art gets made and who wants to engage with it. I don't know that Mad Men, a show about sad rich people experiencing ennui, would've been as successful in 2002, even though Matt Weiner had the idea at that time. Even in 2007, Weiner failed to convince HBO to trust him with it. Years later, under Obama, it wasn't even the only show in that space on American television: Halt and Catch Fire, Downton Abbey, and even garbage network hangers-on like Pan Am or The Playboy Club happened. Maybe that's coincidental, and maybe it's not. (And yeah, I'm speaking from an America-centric perspective, but Downton excluded, these are American shows made by American creatives, at least primarily for American audiences. I think that's fair.)
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Dec 14, 2020 11:57
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Peggy's definitely ahead of her time in a lot of ways. It's often frustrating to watch, because her concept cuts to something pretty insightful that extremely successful ad campaigns have done IRL (decades after the 60's), but sexism's gonna sexism and nobody cares. I remember especially feeling that way in S4, when she comes up with an ultimately-rejected concept for Pond's. "The ritual of putting it on is an 'excuse' to indulge, and to look at yourself in the mirror without feeling vain or self-critical." In 2020, companies like Dove and Gillette do this exact thing all the time, selling their product to women as self-care or body-positive. But obviously, in the mid-60's that's going to get drowned out. "Pond's will keep all you aging spinsters from looking old as poo poo, so you'll finally earn a husband!"
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Dec 15, 2020 23:26
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Yoshi Wins posted:If it's more reliable to motivate people with fear, you're risking making less money (PERISH THE THOUGHT) if you don't scare the hell out of them. My job makes me very primed to like Mad Men, because I work for a production company that has a commercial division. And the tension between trying to make something compelling or new or high-minded vs. making some pandering, safe, ultimately toxic bullshit remains exactly how this show depicts it. I recall a specific scenario where my company was pitching a pharma ad for an ED pill. The strategy they went with was more the former, trying to make something affirming for their target (middle aged men who feel undesirable and insecure in their relationships because [dick problems].) It was all about how these men have accumulated wisdom and confidence, how their value isn't some waning youthful vitality but their ability to really see their partners, how their partners want *them* and not some idiot stud because they're more than their dick. Client rejected it. The ad they actually made: a super porn-y POV shot of some hot MILF giving bedroom eyes. "She's ready to gently caress, are you?" Xealot fucked around with this message at 01:51 on Dec 16, 2020 |
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Dec 16, 2020 01:47
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I've heard historians call the postwar period of 1950-1970 "the American Victorian period," or "the American Belle Époque." Which makes a kind of sense to me, based on Mad Men. It's a period marked by a very specific kind of decadent superficiality, by intense consumption and wealth signaling, and a blind optimism for the future. It was America at the height of its national hubris, so fully convinced of its own socioeconomic and cultural power that it thought the trend would continue forever. Don Draper is kind of a perfect encapsulation of that thought. He's this dressed-up fiction that's completely broken inside, but he thinks if he keeps moving forward and keeps succeeding and keeps throwing alcohol and money and sex into the hole inside him, he'll plug it up before it collapses. There's a very Dorian Grey aspect to him, which a S6 exchange speaks to, "You didn't get your arm back when you died?" "Dying doesn't make you whole. You should see what you'd look like." So, I definitely see the argument that Don is America. He's so successful in all these surface, material ways that he feels he can totally avoid confronting any of the dark poo poo underneath, indefinitely.
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Jan 6, 2021 00:42
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GoutPatrol posted:I think jaguar was. I don't know if it is a situation where they are paying to be on the show, it was more like "if they want to use us, we'll put our commercials there wink wink" [S5 spoilers] Their presence on the show winds up to such a dark joke, too. “They’re lemons! They never start!” Poor Lane. I recall Jaguar’s social media team commenting about it, though. “At least he didn’t do it in the Jag,” or something along those lines.
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Jan 6, 2021 09:45
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Shageletic posted:(Don and Sal stuff) (Don and Sal stuff) Don is absolutely homophobic on a personal level, but I think his attitude about Sal is...weirdly complicated. I might even call it 'progressive,' at least relative to the context, because it's almost tolerant: Don is no stranger to living a secret double-life that society would malign, and perhaps he sees and understands this tension in Sal. Hence why his complaint on the plane isn't actually that Sal is gay, it's that he seems indiscreet about it. "Limit your exposure. Be better about hiding it." Contrast with someone like Pete or Harry, who have no qualms with openly calling gay people degenerates or perverts, and who seem perfectly happy to discard them the second they're outed. The fallout with Lee Garner, Jr. speaks to what I mean, I think. "You people" is Don being a homophobe, but the core of it is, "did you really have to poo poo where you eat?!" The idea that Sal didn't initiate it, that Lee Garner is a predator with men, too, is unfathomable to Don's biases regarding gay men. But his complaint is still that Sal was so incautious...he'd have been perfectly happy working with a gay man as long as he kept that poo poo under wraps, essentially a DADT policy a good 30 years before the 90's. Xealot fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Jan 14, 2021 |
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Jan 14, 2021 00:42
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Yeah, I just want to provide some vague context over the endless black boxes, because otherwise the thread looks like a redacted CIA document. I could say (Don and Paul Kinsey Chat) or (Pete and Hollis Chat) and it doesn't really spoil anything. "These characters have an interaction." Or don't and are merely being compared. I don't think those are spoilers.
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Jan 14, 2021 03:50
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Mover posted:Sal’s actor certainly made the right decision by never coming back—it’s almost comical how horrifically every later season cameo hosed up their lives. Kinsey? Boom! Joined a cult. Midge? Strong, independent female counterculture artist, well, time to spin the wheel of misery aaaaand: heroin addicted prostitute. Roger’s daughter? Hmm gonna go back to the “cult” well I think. You're missing some other hard-hitters. Duck? Straight-up alcoholic. Stephanie? Pregnant and homeless, then abandoned her child. Rachel Menken? Dead from leukemia. It seems like nobody's life actually gets better as the story enters the 1970's, in any midcentury period fiction.
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Jan 16, 2021 00:53
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VinylonUnderground posted:It's all very W's America. I see where you’re coming from, but I definitely had an opposite read. I viewed Don’s public persona, the rugged alpha male he tries to be, as a trap that’s ultimately his primary obstacle. Don is celebrated by his peers for being some cool cowboy alpha, but the arc of the show reveals layer-by-layer how hollow that is. I viewed it as more of a condemnation of the stoic masculine ideal you’re describing. It’s the main reason he feels alone and unhappy.
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Jan 31, 2021 00:44
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Shageletic posted:Vinylon has a point. Weiner's love of privilege is something that jars with his depiction of its infantilizing and negative effects. I think its interesting, but it can also lead to tepid valorizing if it isnt carefully calibrated. I was so psyched for The Romanoffs and goddamn what a let-down that was. Though I think the Russian orphanage episode is legit great; it has a lot of things to say about privilege, and valorizing it isn't one of them.
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Feb 2, 2021 23:20
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Goofballs posted:I feel a little bad for Kinsey, he's a fraud and for show only not a racist. But he's not nearly as malevolent and cruel as other characters but I guess their virtue is the virtue of an rear end in a top hat, unafraid of being selfish or cruel. Kinsey is lukewarm--neither hot nor cold--I am about to spit you out of my mouth. I guess I feel a certain amount of sympathy for people who aren't good at anything. I want them to have a living too. That's the thing, he *could* make a living off of his talent as a copywriter. He's just mediocre. Just because he's no Don Draper or Peggy Olson doesn't mean there's no place for him...there are a lot of agencies, and the majority of working copywriters are going to be merely average. The problem is that he thinks he IS a Don Draper, that he's one great idea away from proving his genius to everybody. It reminds me of a quote from S5 that Marie says about Megan: "she has the artistic temperament, but she is not an artist." Where Paul winds up in "Christmas Waltz" feels like a logical progression of where he was in the S3 finale: not among the chosen, he tumbles down through lesser and lesser agencies until falling out the bottom. I doubt it was because Paul was that much shittier than his coworkers, or plainly talentless. I doubt he was that much worse at copywriting than Freddy or Mathis or other workman-type hired hands. He probably just refused to play the game, behaved as if he deserved special validation for mediocre work, and then shut down when he didn't get it. Joining the Krishnas is perfect, because of course this sad-sack failure with delusions of specialness would fall for a cult selling enlightenment. That said, I don't actually think "The Negron Complex" sounds much worse than many actual Star Trek TOS episodes. Like, they probably wouldn't make an episode that transparently about antebellum slavery, but ham-fisted social metaphors presented really artlessly are a hallmark of that series. Paul is no Ben Hargrove, but original Star Trek was some real pulpy poo poo despite its very kind reputation.
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Feb 9, 2021 09:40
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sebmojo posted:I think BB is incredible, but the clockwork world plotting makes it a bit more contrived, and i can see mad men as more enduring because it's more interested in character. In Breaking Bad the characters are all to some degree subservient to the plot, which I wouldn't say for mad men. This is how I feel about it. They're both insanely good shows, but I wouldn't compare them beyond more abstract themes like "frustrated masculinity" or "apologism for antiheroic men" or whatever. Breaking Bad is Shakespeare, about Ambition and Hubris and flawed characters bringing about their own downfall. Mad Men is like...I don't know, a modern "novel of manners," or The Great Gatsby. It's interested in such different things, it feels like comparing Star Wars and Interstellar..."I mean, they're both about space, right?" I don't particularly mind that Bryan Cranston kept winning Emmys because he was actually that good on Breaking Bad. Jon Hamm probably should've won before 2015 (for S4E7 "The Suitcase"), but then I remember that in 2013, Jeff Daniels beat BOTH of them for his role on The Newsroom. And gently caress that.
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Feb 19, 2021 23:07
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Breaking Bad definitely feels more "complete" because there's such a coherent structure to the story, a rise and fall for this one man. The bombastic or violent repercussions of Walt's choices work really well as chapter endings, so season finales are strong, and massive shifts in the status quo can happen suddenly and still feel very motivated. It's just the kind of story that lends itself to a sort of "built like a Swiss watch" reputation. I'd argue it's harder for Mad Men because its goals are so much less concrete and its setting is so restrained. It's hard to pin down exactly what it's "about," because it's about authenticity, or ennui, or desire, or identity, or self-acceptance. It has all these little existential bits that play out in subtle ways, and very little that happens is going to be extreme or shocking because how often does mundane middle-class existence look that way?
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Feb 20, 2021 02:36
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ANOTHER SCORCHER posted:I just finished a rewatch inspired by this thread and Don's entire second marriage is pretty clearly presented as the actions of a pathetic man trying to improve on his last marriage while being fundamentally unable to overcome his personality flaws. For the first time in his life he ends up in the beginning of a somewhat-healthy relationship with a woman (Faye) before throwing it away to marry his secretary because she is: a) nice to his kids and b) happens to be in California when he's vulnerable so he is able to tell her about himself. After an entire season of acting like a baby because she won't be the kind of woman he wants her to be, Season 4 ends by implying that he cheats on her because she expressed some minimal independence. It is clearly not an enviable way to be, despite the glamorousness of Don's life. [Don S4+ stuff] I also viewed Don's choice here as a reveal of his normal pattern: Don wants to be with women because they're complex and challenging, but wants to *marry* them because they're not. Betty and Megan don't seem similar, but are in that they're idealized and uncomplicated trophies for Don. Betty was a blonde college girl from a good family, a literal model from a wealthy background, and pretty much THE ideal domestic housewife in the 50's. A decade later, and Megan is her own 60's ideal as a carefree, liberated, modern girl who's exotic in a stylish way but still humble, demure, and wonderful with children. Both women embody a feminine ideal that looks good and sounds good to anyone looking, "perfect" wives who make Don look as blissful and successful as would a Cadillac. Or perhaps a Jaguar. Of course, neither Betty nor Megan are actually those things, but Don can't see that when he marries them. Someone like Faye, however, had the audacity to wear her complexity on her sleeve. That's what attracted Don to her but also probably what made her un-marriageable in his eyes. It's why I find Don so pathetic: Faye would absolutely have been a healthier choice. She's a cynical, intelligent career woman closer to Don's age and life experience, who demands honesty and directness. He could've had an honest relationship between equals. A wife he respects rather than tolerates. But the part of him who craves real emotional connection (Dick Whitman) lost out to the part that's desperate to prove to society he isn't trash (Don Draper.) Naturally, where that leads him is isolation, loneliness, and divorce. And, of course, an increasingly depressing spiral of doomed, desperate affairs that - by seasons 6/7 - aren't sexy at all.
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Feb 23, 2021 03:08
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Yoshi Wins posted:...Faye displays more of the qualities that would be great in a long-term partner. But as Faye tells him, he "only likes the beginning of things." And the beginning was just so much more exciting with Megan than it was with Faye. [More S4+ chat] 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. You're right about Megan, of course, but I never thought about that in S4...she seemed so much more one-dimensional, by design. In S5, all the things you're saying about her adept social skills are undeniable, but you're right that the signs are there in S4, as well. That said, I read the S5 scene after the Heinz pitch as Don being surprised by how competent she is, "you're good at all of it!" Her craft and intelligence weren't traits Don expected when he married her. But your point about Megan idolizing him while Faye idolized no one is a way better way of saying what I wanted to. Because I don't think Don sought out trophy wives on purpose. I think his perception of his inner self is dogshit, that he believes "the real him" is abject trash. So, his choice to marry women who bolster the fiction of Don Draper is way more about self-deception than any kind of cynical self-promotion. Megan sees him as the brilliant creative he pretends to be at work. Faye saw him (accurately) as a panicked mess who stole some dead guy's identity and is lying every day. So, it wasn't just that Faye had "problems," was bad with children or disagreeable or had baggage. She was also too aware of Don's baggage, even if she loved him despite it. Though Megan does know about Dick Whitman in S5, which was surprising. Incremental change and all that. Too bad he can't be honest with her about losing his loving job...she wouldn't even have cared, but obviously Don cared deeply.
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Feb 24, 2021 00:06
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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... 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. 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.") 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.
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Feb 25, 2021 03:05
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At the firm, sure. Maybe. Pete is surprisingly genuine-seeming about it vs. how terrible he is in other ways. But I’d argue Paul does actually care about anti-black racism, even if he’s extremely performative about it. I think Ginsberg has some genuine social justice beliefs wrapped up in his...increasingly delusional worldview. I imagine he’d have a way more extreme reaction to Roger’s act if it’d happened in the SCDP era and he was there...which he clearly wouldn’t be.
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Mar 1, 2021 03:07
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Shageletic posted:you know i always thought the drug guy in this clip Rewatching that clip, it's also insane how close that guy's mannerisms are to Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman. (Who was famously based on Tom Cruise, for anyone who hadn't heard that.) A real feedback loop, this whole thing.
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Mar 3, 2021 00:52
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VinylonUnderground posted:Point 3 led to a lot of posts because while Weiner clearly states "Don's life is hollow" a bunch of times, I feel his love of the patriarchy, wealth, and being a sex creep makes those statements hollow and are overshadowed by him saying, "Look at how loving awesome this is!" "Don't believe your lying eyes, Don is sad!" is a weak critique of conservativism of the mid-to-late aughts and frankly isn't that strong a condemnation of masculinity in the '60s. We all understand that this is how you feel about the show, it's just not supported by the actual text. The writers are obviously aware of how Don's life LOOKS glamorous. That's one of the primary tensions, that Don LOOKS successful and happy, and is celebrated by people who only see the superficial trappings of his lifestyle. Tearing that down is the entire project of the series, why it ran for 7 seasons. Don is a man who has everything, whose inner rot slowly sabotages ALL OF IT because the wealth and power do nothing for his soul. His picture-perfect marriage decays into alienation and divorce at his own hand. His second one does, too. He demolishes his personal relationships with alcoholism and abuse. He alienates his daughter forever when his terrible choices spill out in front of her. And he implodes his golden career because eventually all his unprocessed trauma comes pouring out in a client meeting. You refer to it as a "sad trombone," like it's some purely superficial apology for Don's success, but there are very clear consequences for him doing and being the things he is. This powerful alpha who's so enviably charismatic winds up totally alone, a thrice-divorced loser in a fancy penthouse apartment with nothing in it, or hung over and exhausted on a random couch in San Pedro, or possibly suicidal at Esalen after the last even symbolic vestige of "family" abandons him there. His life isn't actually that great. And it's absurd that you can't seem to see beyond his material successes to see how or why that is. The most efficient example I can draw of the show's "thesis," if it has one, is the scene where Pete says goodbye to Tammy before moving to California. It's a direct echo of the shot that closes the pilot, of Don tucking his kids in as Betty watches from the door frame. But the context that the viewer now has renders the moment immensely sad. Pete has wanted to "be Don Draper" since the first episode, and now he is. He's a powerful and respected businessman who's alienated his wife, with a child who won't know him, now totally alone with his riches. *Sad trombone noise*
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Mar 6, 2021 01:13
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Yeah, Don decidedly CAN'T regain all he's lost. He saves his job at McCann, makes a good ad. But he probably can't repair his marriage with Megan, probably doesn't regain the respect and adoration of Sally. Henry is more a father to Bobby and Gene than he'll ever be. Stephanie may have cut him off forever. And even if he does salvage a relationship with any of these people, the damage he's done isn't going to be forgotten. It's forever. But more to the point, although Don can "easily regain" what he lost in some material sense - he's still rich, can find a new wife, make a new family, form a new company - all of those things will wind up exactly as they did the first and second time unless he genuinely confronts his goddamn problems. If you choose to interpret the ending as, "Don learned nothing and goes back to McCann to do the exact same poo poo again," it doesn't mean that he got off scot-free or that his inner turmoil meant nothing. It means that the turmoil is always. He will keep living in this drunk rear end in a top hat samsara over and over again because he refuses to break the cycle. The show doesn't have to end with Don dying alone or becoming destitute for the consequences of his actions to feel real.
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Mar 6, 2021 12:15
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The Klowner posted:Jesus christ I can't take it anymore. Why do you do this?? Just put [spoilers]everything[/spoilers] in [spoilers]spoilers[/spoilers]! Yeah, sorry, that's fair. That is annoying. Beamed posted:...another 2 pages of Vinylon screaming about how this show isn't about characters, it's about Weiner loving rich people or some poo poo. It also sucks because I've felt the way he describes about OTHER shows, but decidedly NOT Mad Men, which I think does an extremely good job of depicting wealth and career success as hollow. It's part of why I like it so much, because while almost all the characters have immense privilege and wouldn't be in real danger of losing it, the interpersonal consequences of their lovely behavior still feel real and impactful. (The show I do think utterly fails at critiquing the extreme wealth of its setting is Downton Abbey. It puts out a real love and affection for British nobility and a genuine sense of loss that they're no longer important in modern Britain. Even the Irish socialist who drives their car comes to defend them against class critique because these rich idlers are so charming and are the heart and soul of the community they own like a fiefdom. Go off, Julian Fellowes.)
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Mar 7, 2021 02:44
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JethroMcB posted:Truly a hell of a performance from Sarah Drew depicting Kitty's dawning realization about why Sal hasn't been "tending" to her. She's always good when she shows up, but here she has to do almost all the heavy lifting with just her expressions. Seriously. I didn't think a facial expression could precisely nail the emotion of, "you're realizing in this moment that your husband of many years is stone-cold gay." She has to look supportive, and force a smile as he explains the Patio pitch, while holding back tears of shock and grief at her obviously doomed marriage, and she can't say a word. Just some wizard-level acting from her in that moment.
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Mar 8, 2021 09:33
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Yoshi Wins posted:I think Katherine's reaction is so extreme that it's reasonable to call it pathological. She's not just upset or demanding. She's clearly trying to inflict as much emotional pain as she can on Peggy in a retaliatory attack. I never considered the notion that she has a literal personality disorder, but she is intensely cruel to a degree I can't reconcile. The later scene where Peggy invites her over to announce she's moving in with Abe is cartoonishly mean. "That Jew's gonna use you for practice," "your dead dad would be as disappointed as I am," "you don't deserve the cake I brought," "get a cat and die alone!" I guess I accepted the notion that someone that self-righteously religious might be that crass and rude to her careerist daughter, but yeah, it's pretty inhumanly so. I guess you're supposed to assume the baby and adoption totally incinerated their relationship, but gently caress Katherine.
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Mar 8, 2021 21:11
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