Mad Men 6x01 Reaction
Comments (33)
My favorite season!!! (For now) Granted, my opinion on this changes quite frequently 😭
I personally think season 6 is terrible the whole way through until the very end. It's definitely rated lower than a lot of other seasons but the fan base still dies by it. Extremely overrated in my opinion
People are criticizing the writing in this episode (or part-episode), but I have to say that Peggy's phone conversation with the pastor is a minor gem of comic dialogue (or half-dialogue).
Very insightful commentary. Therapists in those days were mostly all Freudians: As two psychiatrists get off an elevator, one turns to the other and says, "Have a nice day." The other says to himself, "I wonder what he meant by that?"
I have to be honest I never understood the betty /henry scene. Also I’m glad we have fully transitioned to every Roger scene being a banger.
Peggy started this show a Catholic virgin, and now she’s dating Frank Zappa, what an arc
Betty is an absolute maniac with a twisted sense of humor that she finally feels comfortable enough to unbox. She's saying stuff an "edgy teenager" would say in the 2000s because she's progressed from child to edgy teen. It's surprising to see a few people in the comments confused that the woman who among other things, cut off her hair and gave it to a child, slapped his mom in the supermarket, shot at a bunch of birds with a gun, fired her daughter like a missile into her ex-husband's marriage, fired carla etc would make these shocking jokes. She's always been like this, she was just trapped performing as a 1950s housewife box with no outlet. She's finally reached a point of comfort in her marriage with Henry where she can fully be herself... or lets be real, "more of herself" (she's still performing) in a way she never would have been with Don. The content of what she says is pretty fucked up but she was always thinking like this, she just never said it out loud. The arc makes perfect sense when you zoom out and it's supposed to make you feel like "oh, that's not... you can't say that... but the fact you're even saying it is interesting". In short: everything makes sense if you stop reading Betty as a demure housecat and instead read her as an absolute weirdo feral cat who is finally let out of the house.
I had always assumed Betty's jokes were supposed to be deliberately over the top to chastise Henry for being inappropriate. But because he wasn't it didn't really make sense to me. Based on the other comments saying it's supposed to be lighthearted it feels misjudged. I'm not against offensive humour but a rape joke about a fifteen year old girl living in your own house is a bit insane. Even Tony Soprano would be saying 'OH!' to that one.
no shade, no tea. this ep felt like mad men (snl/sitcom version) - don not speaking gimmick - "I can't believe Victor won't acknowledge you" - "I met her halfway by getting married." - don officiating - Hawaiian elvis | "Ono, I'm not eating that." - "my mom's dead" - "Ma, you know how I fix those tickets?" - "I like the case. It looks like a coffin." - "Oh, the missus couldn't wait to get me out of the house." - "You're the maid. It's more than ours does." - betty's joke lines - "I don't like vegetarian food. Reminds me of Lent." - "We're at DEFCON 3. We're about to go to DEFCON 4." - "I don't know. I can't do any math right now." - don and dr. rosen -- "I guess I don't say Merry Christmas to you." - roger's every scene - "I'm a widower, Peggy. - guy literally doing stand-up - bob benson -- "I smell creativity. I love it down here" - overly telegraphed 'time passed' attire/hair changes - peggy on the phone with the pastor - etc all tied up with a 'who /is/ don draper?!' maybe i need to see part 2 to get it, but this season already off. seeming like my BEC* but i did really want to like it *BEC: the speaker's dislike of the target is so intense that they could cause the speaker offense by merely eating crackers
Idk how yall write so much lmao Clearly it's not for the community, and the gals would need to hire 5 people to read all that hehe. Maybe look up "parasocial relationships"...
I looked up Matthew Weiner’s explanation of that Betty “joke” and i think it demonstrates how absurd the whole thing was. He seems to think what she was saying was playfully perverse and not deeply demented. The writers wanted to demonstrate that her and henry have a healthy relationship… i guess vividly describing about how they could “r” word (a child) that was sleeping down the hall was the only way to do that. Matthew Weiner: “Betty is—as we have always perceived—a perverse person with a sense of humor, and Henry is a straight arrow. As creepy as what she’s saying is, you’re getting someone who is playfully perverse. She’s not a bland, distracted human being. She is teasing him in a way that shows the force of her personality. I’m aware of the fact that that will make some people uncomfortable, but I also felt it was Betty Draper being playful. She is being herself with him. I also love it because it just felt very much like a slight scratch beneath the surface of what we always assume is the most bland and TV-ized relationship. But these are people who are in a relationship for a long time, and that is Betty Draper. It was, believe it or not, in my own way, a symbol of the health of their relationship and her confidence in it, honestly.”
yes. writing was off. what did you think of the ep in general? to me, the whole atmosphere felt off. like it'd been off the air for years and got a revival
Unlike the season 5 double-premiere, which I actually think has a clear dividing line between the episodes, this two-parter REALLY needed to be watched together. The purpose of so many scenes is left unclear until you've seen episode 2.
I was lowkey hoping you guys would watch these first two episodes together, especially since Mad Men hasn't really done two parters that frequently.
Something I take away from Burt Peterson's late-night call to Peggy is that, even though he's very weird about it and gives her no info, he calls HER. He doesn't call Ted or another partner to go over this, he brings Peggy into the conversation first. She's got the respect and authority at this agency that Don has at SCDP, where she's the first person brought into a disaster to fix the situation. Yes, the ear thing was a true event. The specific comedian-making-a-joke-on-The-Tonight-Show didn't happen -- Matthew Weiner gave an interview saying he made that up -- but all of the discussed details (Including a published courtmartial) are correct. The war crimes in Vietnam were (partially) known at the time. Not always the full extent, but the populace had heard about the atrocities which were committed. Some people refused to believe them and dismissed it all as 'commie propaganda', but the news was definitely OUT THERE. A minor takeaway I have with Roger is that he does pour two glasses of alcohol when Caroline comes crying into his office. He thinks it's bad news for HER, not him, and he offers this minor support. I can't imagine the Roger of the early show doing that. It's a very minor thing, but his LSD experimentation and therapy has at least gotten him that far.
Not to diminish Peggy's contributions (she is literally Copy Chief there, reporting right to Ted) but he would have called Ted if he could, and he urges her several times to get ahold of Ted ASAP. She doesn't have Don's status - nobody would tell Don to call another creative.
That joke officially made Betty the Uncle Jun of Mad Men.
I think that is unfair to uncle jun. There was no joke there, just a deeply, deeply disturbing and way to vivid description of assaulting a child. For the life of me, i cant imagine what the writers were thinking.
Is this when we met Bob Benson? I wanted to forget him with lightning speed.
Noooo I love Bob!!
I think that the infamous Betty joke is just the writers insisting on reminding us that "hey we are in the 60s, it was ok to do grape jokes and talking inappropriately about minors". Yes, we get it.
I can't imagine that joke being okay in any decade tbh.
"Betty is—as we have always perceived—a perverse person with a sense of humor, and Henry is a straight arrow. As creepy as what she’s saying is, you’re getting someone who is playfully perverse. She’s not a bland, distracted human being. She is teasing him in a way that shows the force of her personality. I’m aware of the fact that that will make some people uncomfortable, but I also felt it was Betty Draper being playful. She is being herself with him. But these are people who are in a relationship for a long time, and that is Betty Draper. It was, believe it or not, in my own way, a symbol of the health of their relationship and her confidence in it, honestly." --Matthew Weiner
she's honestly so funny and enjoyable to watch lol, what an insanely out of pocket thing to say. Never has Betty felt more like a 21 year old who got tricked into a long, disparate, desperate marriage and is only finally embracing how weird she is lol.
Don doesn't say a single word to Megan during the Hawaii scenes :( And he's reading a book about being in hell...
"Why would there be a warning for smoking?" "Shes smoking?! And we're okay with this?!"
😅
yes it turns out the two-part episode has two parts
it’s not about cliffhangers; it’s about one contained story, theme & focus being told across two episodes. watching them separately can make it all feel disjointed, awkward, and unfinished, as you found out
What Milena said is right though: Mad Men has basically never ended on a cliff-hanger. It's not that sort of show (neither was Succession for example, which almost never had a Plot span two episodes).
Took 6 seasons for Roger to finally go to therapy. Yay for little miracles
Little Carmine moonlighting as a doorman? Whatever happened there?
Very allegorical.