Mad Men 5x06 Reaction
Comments (39)
Lola and Mileena to me sometimes assess Don through too much of a cynical lense. Yes, Don is inherently selfish. Yes, he is very self centered but I dont think that Don was doing what he did with Megan because he wants to be controlling. He simply doesn’t know how to be a good, considerate husband. The way I interpreted this is that, Don is trying hard to not have his marriage with Megan end up like his marriage with Betty, so in trying to do so, he’s going to the opposite extreme. He didn’t involve Betty in his work, but now Megan is too involved and intertwined with his work to the point that its a conflict. He never spent time with Betty but now he’s damn near over bearing with Megan to where he’s pulling her from work to spend time with her essentially undermining her and putting her in a bad spot. He wants to involve her and show her what he likes thinking he’s bringing her in but he is really domineering and isn’t realizing it. And when she rejects that (cuz despite her age Megan advocates for herself-another thing I disagree with the girls about), he takes it as a personal insult to him and his attempts to show her love. So def self centered still but because he thinks hes being a good husband.
I would love a West Wing rewatch series. Even if it's just a couple of the favorites like Celestial Navigation or Two Cathedrals.
I cannot even describe how excited I was when you (my favorite reactors) referenced Slaughterhouse Five (my favorite book) in this reaction, y'all are amazing.
Don holding on to Megan at the end like Andy when he found his Woody and Buzz Lightyear thought he lost his favorite toy
Any word on whether yall are gonna check out Pluribus? I would think yall would be like “fuck a poll, we are watching Kim!” Lol First season was some high quality stuff!
visual storytelling in that is stunning
I believe it's "bottle" episode, not "bottled"
Roger's disappearing cigarette is so accurate. I remember being on shrooms and watching in awe as my cigarettes rapidly burned from tip to filter right before my eyes lol. As funny as the scenes are, I think Roger is exactly the kind of person who would benefit from taking LSD. I loved seeing Roger & Jane being completely open and honest with each other, with no judgement or defensiveness. If only every breakup could go that smoothly!
You raged so much when Don cheated on his girlfriend, but when Peggy does it you barely comment on it?
They don't have much faith that Abe & Peggy's relationship will last. Faye (assuming that's who you're talking about) is a beloved character and was really good for Don. He was also dating her during his supposed self-improvement arc so it was particularly disappointing to see him go back to his old ways and cheat on her.
The way L&M described the 3 stories as an allegory to Don's past, future, and future is something I never thought of, and super insightful. Chef's kiss.
We're at the precipice of an enormous crossroad.
This is around the time during the rewatch I start levitating. Nothing better.
I love the scene with Ginsberg and Peggy, heavy stuff!
Don Asshole Meter for this Episode: 8. Even when he's trying to be nice, he's still clueless about what anybody (Megan here) wants. And this is supposedly 'happy' Don. I want the real Don. Morose, agonizing, drunk. This Don is super boring, and maybe Bert smacked him back to misery. I need it.
Episode is an homage to Truffaut, and the New Wave of the 60's. Who'd have thought Jane from Jane street was capable of deep thoughts? Roger and her on the floor is the best scene of the season, and one of the 10 best scenes in the entire series. Peggy turning into Don is too on the nose. Weakest part of this superb episode.
You can collect all your comments into one comment, you don't need to leave 3 or 4 comments.
Don to Megan: "Why aren't you having a good time? I specifically requested it."
Best comment on here. LMFAO
Don literally did not do anything wrong with Megan. She totally threw a fit for no reason and it proves she doesnt care about Don. Could be maybe her disdain for the women who kept coming up to him? But theres some weird thing with her. Like shes looking for excuse to start with him. She's also immature and moody. Don genuinely seemed to want to have a fun time with her and wanted to share his good mood with her.
Haha what
Adore the storytelling on this one. Probably my fav episode of the series
I loled at Lola lamenting that they don't film anything bright enough to see the dark scenes anymore. I hate that so much. I'm currently watching Andor on Disney+ and it's a fucking nightmare for any dark scenes - of which there are many, even with the brightness dialed all the way up. It's awful. But I've never experienced this with Mad Men, which came out well before this heinous trend. I understand that streaming compression contributes to it but I've never had that issue with shows of that time and before. In contrast, as hobbyist photographer, I can assure you that the issue with recent shows isn't just the digital compression - it's the actual cinematography. The lighting is just horrendous. I legit don't get why they make these choices these days. It needn't be like this. Even a recent show like The Expanse, which is largely filmed inside or outside spaceships, isn't this way. If they can managed to make everything visible, everyone should.
The explanation is simple and interesting: editing/lighting massively shifted from caring about being viewable at daytime on shitty TVs with commercial breaks, to being finished on cinema-grade stuff. More "cinematic" cinematography, lighting, editing etc = it being edited on the same cinema type editing setups and monitors by the same cinema type editors. Its similar to how many shows have awful audio mixing these days, cuz they're mixed for perfect beautiful 5.1 surround sound setup and studio quality audio monitors, but we play them at home on shitty speakers and headphones. Then the edits are streamed over dynamic bandwidth streamer apps with incredibly lossy progression which just chews through black pixels. when you see that horrible artifacting in dark scenes (like clouds of different color black), that's the compression chewing up the dark pixels to make it slightly cheaper (and less lag/buffering) to serve the content for Disney and Netflix. And of course many folks are watching on poorly calibrated devices (laptops and phones e.g) in suboptimal viewing situations - which is totally fine and normal, its just like..... lets make cinema-grade television, compress it to fuck via streaming and play it on a tiny laptop screen. They could design for this but they don't cuz people who work on big budget prestige TV wanna make "cinematic television" and have great setups, basically.
I agree that this episode very much looks like three chapters of the same story. The beginning (Peggy), middle (Don), and end (Roger). Ginsberg is definitely "crazy" in how he interacts with others and his general personality, but I think we're supposed to take his background at face value. That he was born in a concentration camp, and was adopted by his father after the war since both of his biological parents died in the camp. His claim to be Martian is a defense mechanism to distance himself from this truth, since it's so existentially horrifying, and who WOULDN'T want to tell themself that it's a lie and they're really from somewhere else? Howard Johnson's was a restaurant chain that grew into a wide range of hotels as well (Often with restaurants and hotels side-by-side). It would be hard to overstate just how MASSIVE the chain was in the USA. According to Wikipedia, it was the largest restaurant chain in the country in the '60s and '70s. That's why Don is so insistent on getting Megan to "enjoy" it, since she's not from the USA and doesn't have that childhood connection. The restaurants started to dwindle in the '80s, and the restaurant chain collapsed in the '00s. There were a few individual franchises that limped on for a while, but the very last one closed in 2022. Now only the hotel chain is still in business, and owned by Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. Minor detail here, but Jane revealing that her family speaks Yiddish is the final confirmation that she's Jewish, which had been very lightly hinted earlier in the series. By extension, that means her cousin Danny Siegel is also Jewish, which casts that scene of Harry calling him a Jew because he was "cheap" into a whole new light. As a further extension, Jane's background is ironic, since Roger had previously made a disparaging remark about Greg Harris's background since he believed he 'used to be' Jewish (i.e. his family assimilated to 'pass'). Greg may have been a righteous piece of garbage who deserved to be kicked on his own merits, but Roger was just being antisemitic, and now he does the same thing he mocked Joan for.
Peggy's words to the client never would have worked coming out of Don. The issue in that scene isn't that she is a woman. It is that Don would have been equally forceful without being as abrasive (e.g., that "come to Jesus" moment in an earlier season). (And please don't come at me with "you only think it's abrasive because she is a woman." Go watch that scene again.) Yes, I agree that even if she'd said Don-equivalent stuff (or even Don's words verbatim), it probably wouldn't have worked because she is a woman. But that is emphatically not what happened here. She didn't say Don stuff. Or even "Don stuff said Peggy's own way." The motivation and functions of their outbursts came from completely different places. When Don does his thing, he comes from place of confidence. Peggy's outburst obviously came out of frustration and desperation. She had already lost the client and was not longer trying to persuade, but was basically venting. What Peggy did here is more akin to when Don kicked the prudish bikini people out of the office in season 4. He was done. And so was she.
while the point stands that peggy cannot do some things don can due to gender attitudes, i think the scene is clearly meant to demonstrate creative unraveling due to dons absence or 'love leave.' bc of this peggy is overwhelmed and frustrated with the extra work load, which leads to her unhinged presentation
Great ep, while Bert is right about the "love leave" thing, I think the whole Don doesn't work, sleeps on the couch, leaves the office, goes to the movies, etc, is much more about knowledge work and the creative process than any sort of laziness.
Yeah I think it's recency bias. Being a creative director is a lot of just evaluating other people's work + the fact he's in his honeymoon period with Megan definitely makes it looks like he's a slacker. But to say "he's never worked" is too strong.
Top 5 episode of the show so far for me. I've got 1x12, 4x7, 4x8, 4x9, and 5x6.
On Mad Men, its Shut the Door. Have a Seat., and The Suitcase, and then there is everything else.
The song Don is humming in the car near the end of the episode is "I Want to Hold Your Hand" by the Beatles
"Bert does something?" yeah he doesn't descend from his lofty heights that often but every once in a while he's gotta smack Don on the nose with a newspaper when Don gets too full of shit After all, who's REALLY signing this contract anyway? 🙂😐 This IS my business! etc
Don aside, Bert has had some devastating truth bombs for others throughout the show: Pete, Joan, Roger off the top of my head.
Love this episode, the joy Lola feels everytime she see's Roger on screen is great.
Ok I need to know this "should have been a 4-seasons" show that dragged out to 7 seasons! More broadly though, 7 seasons used to be the aspirational goal of any TV show, and perhaps still is (in the streaming era, I can't tell). But personally I find that it's the rare show that deserves to last that long. IMO most TV series would have done well to bow out after 4 or 5 seasons. Most start showing signs of creative rut by then and end up limping to a finish if they don't get abruptly cancelled. So kudos to brilliant shows like The Wire, Breaking Bad, BSG, Black Sails, or Succession, who knew to exit before they got long in the tooth. Obviously that doesn't mean every show that lasted past that declined in quality. For example, I think Buffy, LOST, Mad Men, and yes, even GOT, were worth every season. Finally, about Mad Men, every season is great including season 7, but I also feel like it ended when it needed to end.
The show is The 100. Even if you haven't seen it, watching LM's reactions to the final few episodes is pretty entertaining if you're curious what it looks like to see them watch something that they actively hate.
Roger continues to be GOATed
One of my favorite episodes!! I adore it