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Mad Men on AMC (1 Viewer)

I actually don't like Megan all that much, but Don going to her set and making her cry right before he went to cheat on her really pissed me off.

 
Bert and Roger sitting on the couches is always awesome and so was Peggie using Don's material.

I like the bitter hungry Harry.

 
Carmela Soprano I liked. Not placing Margaret.

Also, I like Betty a lot more now that I've seen her replacement.

 
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Don and Peggy present two diametrically opposed pitches to Timmy from Heinz. Don's is built around what you can't see, with the promise that the readers' imagination will be more powerful than anything he and Stan can show them. Peggy goes literal, giving Timmy the ketchup bottle he missed in Don's ad, big and bold as life. It leaves nothing to the imagination, but catches the eye nonetheless.Yet even though Peggy seems to be winning the day and even steals Don's old line about changing the conversation, which an eavesdropping Don appreciates even as he realizes that he's losing Heinz ultimately doesn't choose either pitch. Throughout "To Have and To Hold," characters make faulty assumptions based on their imagination, while the people who know better understand how lousy the actual situation is. And in the end, it doesn't matter if you imagine reality or look straight at it, because you're going to wind up unhappy."To Have and To Hold" presents tales featuring four of Don's secretaries, past and present, none of them especially pleased with where life finds them in the spring of 1968. Let's start with Dawn, if only because it's her first standalone storyline and, therefore, the first time "Mad Men" has taken even a cursory look at the racial strife of the era from an insider's perspective. Dawn's marriage-bound friend Nikki has her impression of what Dawn's work life must be like, but Dawn explains just how isolated she feels, with no sense of office politics, even as she's aware that "everybody's scared there." After Scarlett nearly gets her fired, Dawn resolves to model herself more after Joan, assuming she'll be okay alienating everyone else so long as she has the respect of the agency's only female partner. But Joan, knowing what she went through to get to this point, responds to the idea in a "careful what you wish for" tone.It's a big Joan episode, after she had little more than cameos in the season's first three hours. Through both a visit from her old friend Kate and an argument at work with Harry, she's reminded not only of what she had to do to reach this position, but of all the mistaken assumptions everyone makes about her. Harry clearly knows about Joan's night with Herb from Jaguar, and has built up an entire world in his head where it's the only reason Joan belongs in that room, when we all know exactly how important Joan has been to both the old agency and the new one. Harry even imagines that Joan has gone straight to the other partners to tattle on him, when of course she would never bother them with so trivial and annoying a matter as this. What's interesting about that conflict is that while Harry is from our perspective being a cruel sexist pig, from his own where the television department's been a huge part of the agency's success, but he somehow didn't get a partnership when it started because he wasn't smart enough to ask for one he has a legitimate beef. And when he brings up what Joan did in the dark, it casts a very clear shadow over the faces of the male partners, who would prefer not to be reminded of what Joan was asked to do. (For the sake of their own images of self, it's better for them to focus on the many valuable professional skills Joan brings to the agency, rather than her night with Herb.)Kate, meanwhile, comes to New York envious of the glamorous life she thinks Joan has, and ropes her into an exotic night that lands them in the very un-Joan setting of the East Village. (As we saw last year when she went for drinks with Don, Joan's very much of the previous generation.) As they nurse hangovers in Joan's bed the morning after, Joan tries to set her friend straight on what her work life is really like, but Kate points out that it ultimately doesn't matter: "I don't care how they make you feel. It's right in front of you for the taking."Peggy doesn't show up until very late in the episode so late, in fact, that I had written this off as one where they balanced the budget by leaving Elisabeth Moss and Kevin Rahm out of it but she makes her time count with the great Heinz pitch. But because she doesn't win the account, she's burned several bridges (a bit with Don, but a lot with Stan, who flips her the bird on his way out of the bar) for nothing, just as Don and Pete burned SCDP's relationship with vinegars, sauces and beans for a shot at ketchup. (Don's been down this road before, though at least the old agency knew it would be losing Mohawk whether or not they landed American Airlines.) Each had dreams of ketchup bottles dancing in their heads (though only Peggy put the actual bottle on her ad the way Timmy wanted), and wound up worse off than they were before their respective secret missions began.The episode takes its title from Megan's (fictional) soap opera, while depicting the very real one Megan is an unwitting part of. Don seethes at the image of her kissing another man, even if it's just acting, and implies she's a whore and when **** Whitman calls you a whore (as he once did, even more overtly, to Betty in the season 3 finale), your marriage is pretty much over before heading straight to Sylvia's apartment, where he even puts a penny in her hand before they fall onto bed to kiss just like "Corinne" did with "Rafe."We already know that Don imagined a version of Megan that was much less complicated than the reality, just as she did with him. Now they're just going through the motions, each pretending at different times to be happy to be around each other swingers Mel and Arlene appear to have a much healthier relationship, even if they have to bring outside parties in to keep things lively while Don's passion is much more engaged by Sylvia.Yet even in that affair, there's what Don imagines is happening and may actually be happening. As they prepare to have sex, he's distracted by the cross she wears around her neck. He suggests, only half-joking, that she uses it to pray for his return when he's not around, but she tells him bluntly that she prays "For you to find peace." Remember, this is the woman who didn't flinch when he told her that he wanted to stop doing this, but instead replied with empathy, "I know." Though Sylvia is as turned on by Don as he is by her, she also has no illusions whatsoever about what's happening here. She doesn't have to create an image in her head about what they're doing, because she can see it clearly. And she knows that like all the crying, scared people Dawn sees as she tries to make sense of life at a white ad agency they're just sad.Some other thoughts:* I'm so pleased that Peggy and Ted are working together, not only because it allows Peggy to grow as a character, but because it allows for great moments like the stand-off between the rival creative teams outside the hotel suite. We saw some similar beats when Ted first showed up in season 4, but they didn't have nearly the weight, because Ted was just a fly buzzing in Don's ear and didn't have someone we knew and liked standing right beside him.* It's easy to joke that Ted McGinley (who played Mel) has just killed "Mad Men," except that 1)He's joined several shows that lasted for years after he showed up, and 2)He's actually done some very good work in smaller dramatic parts, like his stint on "Sports Night."* Other guest stars of note: Marley Shelton as Kate, Joanna Going (who starred in a revival of "Dark Shadows" the soap Megan didn't get cast on in the early '90s) as Arlene and Mark Derwin as Pierre Cossette, who actually produced a primetime musical special built around Joe Namath in 1968.* Roger's amusement at Harry is a never-ending source of entertainment for the rest of us, no? The later scene in Cooper's office, meanwhile, offered us an interesting bit of backstory, as Harry says that Bert used to be Harry. Obviously, there wasn't a television department before the original Sterling Cooper was founded, but is he suggesting that Bert was once a lowly media department employee the way Harry was in season 1?* More and more talk of Vietnam, both during the meeting with Ken's father-in-law and then at the swingers dinner with Mel and Arlene. And of course the chasm between the counter-culture and the traditional culture remains huge, whether it's Joan trying to fit in at The Electric Circus or Don being weirded out by the swingers (though the much more forward-looking Megan was, as well). Among the reasons he's so drawn to Sylvia is that she's close in age and temperament to him; he doesn't have to struggle to understand her the way he so often does with Megan.* Inflation calculator at work: if Harry makes $22,000 a year in 1968, he makes a little over $143,000 in 2013 dollars.* Pete Campbell, still trying to be Don Draper, and still not understanding how huge the gap between them is: he offers Don the use of his shag pad, and Don contemptuously replies that he already lives in the city. Pete has nothing to offer, or teach, Don in this area.* Still, Don has respect for Pete overall, which is a lot more than you can say about his feelings for Bob Benson. It's hilarious how little interest Don has in anything this young haircut has to do or say.
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Mcginley also was the host of Capital Beat on The West Wing in a similarly small role that the show managed to survive. Is he just referring to Happy Days?

 
Leeroy Jenkins said:
dparker713 said:
Leeroy Jenkins said:
Do did Ted not get the full deal or something? What did he mean?Here's to hoping Harry gets fired and Joan takes over tv.
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Joan was better at Harry's job than he was last time she tried.
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That's what made me think of it really. Harry's always been a bit of an ###. He seems to be doing better now though, but more pompous.
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He's always been mostly a punch line. Certainly last night with Bert's "that's the most impressive thing he's done here" and Roger's response about firing him before he cashes the check. Those two in Bert's office is always great.

 
GordonGekko said:
dparker713 said:
Leeroy Jenkins said:
Do did Ted not get the full deal or something? What did he mean?Here's to hoping Harry gets fired and Joan takes over tv.
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Joan was better at Harry's job than he was last time she tried.
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Joan is not better at Harry's job, Joan was better as Harry's assistant. The problem with Joan is she resents that she's seen as just a big pair of #### but she consistently uses that as leverage, every chance she gets. Her role as office manager, is really just Roger Sterling's way of keeping her around all those years to sleep with whenever he wanted. Harry went after the TV department. He was much like Kinsey, Campbell and Cosgrove in the beginning, but without Campbell and Cosgrove's family connections and name value. He could have ended up very much like Kinsey, except he carved out his own niche. He also helped Kinsey, which is more than anyone else did for him, which shows Harry, at times, has a conscience. Joan however is just mean and vindictive. We don't see her as mean and vindictive because the show only has her relate to her peers or superiors at work. How she treated Peggy was atrocious. And how she treated Kinsey's black girlfriend and her doctor fiance were also atrocious. The difference between Harry and Joan is at a new place, Joan would have to start over, right at the bottom. Her power lies in her tenure and from being Sterling's mistress. Harry at a new place would not have to start over. The key reason they are being pushed as storylines is there is nothing left. Weiner has utterly exhausted all of the other characters from a story standpoint. ( Burt and Ken Cosgrove are non starters, Cosgrove is an avatar character for Weiner, which is why he's the only one seemingly sane and well adjusted, Burt only holds his regal status in small doses) Peggy and Betty have been written into the ground. There is only so much camera time Jessica Pare can get before it's just plainly clear that she's sucking off Weiner for that much screen time. It's so obvious that now the episodes within the episodes are joking about her having to sleep her way to the top. Without a clear liberal feminist bent on the show, Mad Men risks losing female viewership. Why else would a couple of secretaries get so much screen time. When a show has been written into a wall, when you've burned out your characters, the only thing left to do is to parody/satire your own show. Very few shows survive at this point, Nip/Tuck did a pretty good job poking fun at itself the last season. At this point, why doesn't Weiner just cover the Holocaust the last season or so? The introduction of the black secretary is lazy. It's a way to stay edgy without having to give quality writing, just some occasional fan service with an agenda that is virtually critic proof but award friendly. David Chase did the same thing, why even bother, with his open contempt for Sopranos fans, why give the effort, just plug in a gay storyline that critics have to say is brilliant ( Do you ever want to work in Hollywood again? Then you better clap and clap hard at anything pro-gay, pro Jewish or pro feminist. ) Kurt Sutter is right, it's just no one in the media can agree, Weiner is just cashing checks at this point.
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I have no idea at all what you're trying to say here.
 
Premier said:
GordonGekko said:
dparker713 said:
Leeroy Jenkins said:
Do did Ted not get the full deal or something? What did he mean?Here's to hoping Harry gets fired and Joan takes over tv.
Click to expand...
Joan was better at Harry's job than he was last time she tried.
Click to expand...
Joan is not better at Harry's job, Joan was better as Harry's assistant. The problem with Joan is she resents that she's seen as just a big pair of #### but she consistently uses that as leverage, every chance she gets. Her role as office manager, is really just Roger Sterling's way of keeping her around all those years to sleep with whenever he wanted. Harry went after the TV department. He was much like Kinsey, Campbell and Cosgrove in the beginning, but without Campbell and Cosgrove's family connections and name value. He could have ended up very much like Kinsey, except he carved out his own niche. He also helped Kinsey, which is more than anyone else did for him, which shows Harry, at times, has a conscience. Joan however is just mean and vindictive. We don't see her as mean and vindictive because the show only has her relate to her peers or superiors at work. How she treated Peggy was atrocious. And how she treated Kinsey's black girlfriend and her doctor fiance were also atrocious. The difference between Harry and Joan is at a new place, Joan would have to start over, right at the bottom. Her power lies in her tenure and from being Sterling's mistress. Harry at a new place would not have to start over. The key reason they are being pushed as storylines is there is nothing left. Weiner has utterly exhausted all of the other characters from a story standpoint. ( Burt and Ken Cosgrove are non starters, Cosgrove is an avatar character for Weiner, which is why he's the only one seemingly sane and well adjusted, Burt only holds his regal status in small doses) Peggy and Betty have been written into the ground. There is only so much camera time Jessica Pare can get before it's just plainly clear that she's sucking off Weiner for that much screen time. It's so obvious that now the episodes within the episodes are joking about her having to sleep her way to the top. Without a clear liberal feminist bent on the show, Mad Men risks losing female viewership. Why else would a couple of secretaries get so much screen time. When a show has been written into a wall, when you've burned out your characters, the only thing left to do is to parody/satire your own show. Very few shows survive at this point, Nip/Tuck did a pretty good job poking fun at itself the last season. At this point, why doesn't Weiner just cover the Holocaust the last season or so? The introduction of the black secretary is lazy. It's a way to stay edgy without having to give quality writing, just some occasional fan service with an agenda that is virtually critic proof but award friendly. David Chase did the same thing, why even bother, with his open contempt for Sopranos fans, why give the effort, just plug in a gay storyline that critics have to say is brilliant ( Do you ever want to work in Hollywood again? Then you better clap and clap hard at anything pro-gay, pro Jewish or pro feminist. ) Kurt Sutter is right, it's just no one in the media can agree, Weiner is just cashing checks at this point.
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I have no idea at all what you're trying to say here.
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At least he used 5,000 fewer words than usual.

 
Abraham said:
Raider Nation said:
Is there a show that's more difficult to get someone up to speed on??? I told a buddy of mine to watch tonight. He had never seen it before. I texted "the blonde is the ex-wife of that guy on the beach" but he got bored and tapped out after 20 minutes. :lol: Lord help anyone trying to explain the Don Draper/**** Whitman dynamic on the fly.
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I started watching in season 3 and didn't catch up til after season 4. So I watched 2 seasons without knowledge of **** Whitman at all and I loved it. But I like things that are painfully dull, so I surely see how it would suck for most people.
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You are a weirdo.

 
If only Allison Brie was given Jessica Pare role, what a difference this show would be.

Harry really had an amazing episode tonight, he killed in every scene he was in.

Going forward, we need more Roger!

 
Ken Levine:

WARNING: This is one of those Ken is an old crank who has to rant posts.When Im creating a show my first rule is that Ive got to love my characters. They may be flawed they should be flawed but ultimately I love them and care about them. And hopefully, I can convey that to the audience and theyll love them too.Again, the characters dont have to be particularly loveable. Sweet and earnest and always-doing-the-right-thing is also boring. The best characters are complex. They may have internal battles between good and evil. They may be scoundrels but deliciously so. Or they cant get out of their own way. Or lifes dealt them a bad hand. Or Hitler was their nanny growing up. I dunno there are endless possibilities.And often times the more layers the better.But lately Ive observed a disturbing trend. (Now the rant begins) Series creators are making their characters so hateful that I stop caring.GIRLS is a good example. Season one those girls were quirky and self-centered but sort of fun. And they liked each other. By season two I wanted to slap all of them. And they wanted to slap each other. The end result is ratings for year two have plummeted.And this season Im starting to feel that way about MAD MEN. As readers of this blog know I am a huge MAD MEN fan. The first few years were phenomenal television. I loved it so much I almost took up smoking.But then things started to shift. Betty, who season one was my favorite character, became such a hideous ##### I now expect her to wear a coat made of Dalmatians. Still, almost everybody else had some redeeming qualities (although Im still looking for Petes). Peggy was adorable, Roger provided comic relief, Joan advanced in a mans world using both her brains and bra, and then there was Don Draper.He was a man of mystery, trying to overcome a dark past, flailing, always feeling out of sync, endlessly searching for who he is and what will make him happy. And it helps that a great actor (Jon Hamm) plays him. He could be infuriating but he was always fascinating.So for years we felt for Don, even looked the other way when he did dishonorable things like cheat on his wife with every woman other than Bella Abzug. The hope was always that hed figure it out, finally be comfortable in his own skin, and that all of his good qualities would rise to the surface and hed become a better father, husband, employer, and stop wearing hats already in 1968. And if he slipped up a little, well hes only human and weve come to expect that. Betty is trying to throw Hansel & Gretel in an oven, shes a lost cause. But there was still hope for Don.Until this season. Now he has a loving wife, a wildly successful career, and he has become televisions biggest #####. Its not enough hes cheating on Megan, but hes doing it with another woman in his building and hes all buddy-buddy with her husband. They socialize together. He invites the guy to the office. What a #######! Meanwhile, he tries to destroy his wifes dreams simply because they inconvenience him. He never talks to his children, even on Christmas. And hes a cold distant boss to all his employees while still demanding total loyalty from them.Why should I care anymore about this miserable soul? Because he gets to his front door, slumps down to the ground, and feels sad? At one time there were glimmers of humanity, moments when he would exhibit surprising kindness. But not anymore. Not this season. Even Jon Stewart noted it on THE DAILY SHOW last night.And the other characters are not much better. Dear plucky Peggy has turned into a cold-hearted #####. Shes becoming Don. And along the way shes betraying trusted friends to advance her own career. She's gone from saddle shoes to jack boots.Joan has slept with an oaf who looks like Shrek to become a partner. Roger has no relationship with his daughter and is basically drinking himself into oblivion. Pete never learns. He only has affairs with women who are nuts. This must be his test to see if hes attracted to them: He asks a woman to cook him dinner. If he comes home and a rabbit is boiling he jumps her bones.As brilliant as MAD MEN creator Matthew Weiner is (and Matts a friend who I acknowledge is a better writer than Ill ever be), I worry that hes stopped loving his characters. And I fear his loyal audience is starting to feel disillusioned. Im not saying make Peggy the way she was, or have Don play catch with whatever actor is playing his son Bobby these days everyone can evolve, everyone can change (or not change if thats your prerogative), but we want to care. This year that's becoming a real chore. Please renew your vows. Love your characters again so we can. Or let Megan shoot Don. Something to get us back!
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