Mad Men 6x04 Reaction
Comments (43)
You may not like Harry (who does) but he’s running a valuable department for the company mostly on his own and it is a fact that Joan got partnership with her body (no fault of her own)…. So thats exactly why they didn’t fire Harry for his outburst, cuz despite not liking him, they know his value. Got to loom beyond how you feel about a character
*look
Just wanted to point out something. I work in advertising and Don's campaign is considered one of the all time great campaign lines. It was so good that Heinz actually used this campaign post the release of the episode. Fantastic fantastic line. Don's campaign was better than Peggy's.
1968 was a year of living dangerously for people everywhere in the world, and it was all on TV. (Well placed ad there, Harry) We saw the world (literally for the first time) on the telly. Don's children (the grandparents of most people today) are soaking it up like little sponges. In this atmosphere only a few characters in the show observe the rules in more than name only.
it's basically like now 2026 so characters' apathy is even worse contextually; no real algos, or echo chambers realizing this has drastically reduced my ability to look past the characters' apathy to the world around them. to have bare minimum empathy towards them
it's mad men season 6, so i don't expect commentary on race. tbh atp, attempts risk feeling tacked on like this episode's "after school special" Dawn scenes however, pls more 'artsy' type scenes with the characters that have 6 seasons of depth. there's a certain cool "Lost in Translation" feel to Joan's scene in the club, or wherever. that was so good
Yes! That's what that scene reminds me of. Lost in Translation vibes
Companies don't hand out an employee's yearly salary as a BONUS (about $250K today) to useless employees. You don't have to like Harry to recognize his value to SCDP. In fact, the tension between his shittiness and his value is what makes the character interesting. Nobody likes Harry. If he were useless, they would have gotten rid of him years ago. Joan is good at running the place but she is not an ad person anymore than the office managers at the law firms I worked at were lawyers.
Harry is not useless, but I doubt he's particularly valuable. We see he's worth a bonus, not a partnership to SCDP. And, I wouldn't be surprised if he's still underpaid at 22K. In my view, they keep him because he's a bargain, malleable, and adequate at his job. In that order. He's not special and not useless. Additionally, your comparison is not appropriate. Harry's role doesn't have a rigorous barrier to entry. It's presented as an emerging role that he's learned on the job. Remember, he hired someone with no experience to help him in the early stages. Not to mention, he hired them after Joan had shown competency and interest in the role. I 100% believe Joan would've been better as head of the TV department. It'd be in line with what Don and Peggy's success in advertising reveals: the entry barriers to these 'prestigious' ad roles have less to do with skill, and more to do with class and gender gatekeeping practices. All this leads to another thought: 'prestige' jobs must gatekeep to maintain their status/high-salary. It's why "AI" is devastating the tech market imo
I might faint when they drop andor
Rira bhe fvyrapr vf n fcbvyre yby.
As much as I love Joan, that discussion at one point was a lot of dancing around calling her what she actually is towards the secretaries which is a bully. The word for someone who picks on people beneath them to make themselves feel better is a bully. You can just say it.
Joan runs a tight ship, she doesn't take it lightly. Stealing company time at any job is a fireable offense. If you give her no reason to jump on you, she won't. That isn't even close to being a bully. The way she reacts might seem harsh, but she is fair.
Not caught up on Mad Men, but here I am refreshing for Andor…
Im nervous like Im about to be there on the ghorman plaza
Let's start an argument. Top 10 episodes of MM so far. 1. Shut the Door. Have a Seat. 2. The Suitcase 3. Meditations in an Emergency 4. Nixon v. Kennedy 5. Signal 30 6. The Other Woman 7. The Wheel 8. Seven Twenty Three 9. Far Away Places 10. The Gypsy and the Hobo
Harry is carrying the entire firm with his media buys. Pete is carrying by signing new accounts with his charm. And Harry knows how important he is. "You are to do whatever I think is best" and in the few scenes we see her: he seems to have great professional relationship with his secretary Scarlett "Harry has great ideas"
I love the competing for ketchup plotline and all the secrecy and subterfuge in this episode. Plus the karmic justice that nobody gets what they want and just end up letting each other down. 'Pass the Heinz' is one of my favourite in-show ads. The image of the fries without ketchup and the overlay is great. Like Jackie/Marilyn in season 2, some of the better ideas never get used. Although someone else mentioned it but Heinz did actually use it IRL. Harry's a dick but some of what he says is true. Joan has fired a few secretaries for minor infractions. I'd be annoyed if I had to find a new one with no say in the matter. Joe Namath was a genuine superstar at the time so it should be a big deal. Harry often gets shunted around and ignored e.g. Pete taking his office last season. Joan is obviously very important to the firm, and should've been rewarded for that without being pushed to sleep with a client. She's also frustrated by how much of her work gets overlooked. But I can understand why Harry would be irritated looking at it from the outside, even if he went about it terribly. Make your own case rather than try to slander someone else, especially when they're above you in the pecking order. He managed it in season 2 when he made the case for the television department.
Yeah it's debatable how minor they are. They seem minor to me, relatively speaking. I agree on Lane's secretary, although I think they were both harsh there as it was the flower store who mixed the order up (I think...) Jane was clearly personal though. I don't remember her caring about anyone else going in Cooper's office, just Jane. I do sympathise with Joan and am not trying to undermine her. I was providing context for why Harry might be skeptical when he is the one who has to deal with the consequences. There is cause to fire Scarlett, but it also could've been avoided, and I don't think the desire to take initiative makes it necessary. If Pete or Roger had said 'just fire her' I would have thought they were wrong too.
What I love about Mad Men is you can be like fuck Harry but also…. he ain't lying about what he said.
One could argue he is the only reason the firm makes money. Like Kinsey says in S1E2, the majority of the money comes from media buys.
How can you still struggle to understand what Harry does? He's the head of media, in charge of all their tv and radio work
Beats me. I've been derisively referred to as a "Harry stan" for maintaining that while Harry may be unlikeable he is good as his job. It's beyond strange that people here seem completely unable to appreciate his very real value to the company because they don't like him. Apparently folks including our reactors seem to believe that he does nothing, when he's constantly been the most forward-looking man at the company. That he invented his job, incredibly gets perceived as a negative. Absolute insanity. They just handed him his YEARLY SALARY as a bonus, about $250K in today's money. Do people think companies do things like that for useless employees?
Oh, regarding whether or not Peggy and Ken are still friends, I think maybe not. And not because anything HAPPENED. I think rather it's that they were never as close friends as either of them pretended they were, and the illusion shattered just before Peggy left SCDP. They talked repeatedly about making a pact to not go anywhere without the other, and I don't think either of them were "lying", but I don't think either of them really thought that through or considered what it meant. It was a polite, meaningless promise you make that you never expect to have to follow-through on. Like promising to split a lottery jackpot with your co-worker when you buy a ticket on your lunch break. You don't expect to win, so you're not really splitting anything. But if you actually did win $100 million, suddenly you'll remember that you were only joking, and isn't really immature and selfish for your co-worker to try and hold you to that when everybody can tell it was a joke? I think the exact moment the illusion broke is when Ken went to console Peggy after Don threw the money in her face in "The Other Woman". He promised that he would get her to Paris even though Don didn't want to send her, and if he couldn't do it then they would both leave like they promised. Peggy looks at him with utter contempt (Which I don't think he deserved, but she was angry & hurt so I don't blame her for it in that moment) and tells him to save the fiction for his stories. They were NEVER going to leave together. It was always just a shared joke, and at that moment when she was really hurting she didn't want to play Pretend, and so she just threw out the entire game. And Ken just nodded, turned around, and left. He's not even heartbroken, because he also was never super invested in this little fantasy. It was just one way they passed the time when they were miserable at work. They're probably still generally fond of each as pleasant former co-workers -- Ken definitely likes her more than he likes Pete or Roger or even Don -- but that's where it stops. They're not still hanging out or staying in touch. Just like Peggy & Joan, or Peggy & Ginsberg, or Peggy & Dawn. It was just a work relationship, even if they both acted like it was more.
"A dishonest man". If there's ever a one-sentence summary of Don's character, there it is. It's so fascinating that as contemptible as Harry is as a general person, he's not exactly wrong in how much value he brings to the company. TV has become a significant portion of their revenue, and it is apparently getting bigger and bigger. This TV special he thought up in this episode isn't a game-changer all by itself, but it's a nice cash profit off a SINGLE thing, and he did it almost single handedly. Does that mean he deserves a partnership more than Joan? Almost certainly not. Does that mean he deserves serious consideration to be judged on his own merits? Yes, it does. At the end, Joan is punishing Dawn by giving her more work with no more pay, but Dawn recognized that being given more responsibility -- even if there's no pay NOW -- means that A) She's not going to be fired or otherwise punished, and B) Joan will be keeping an eye on her for future promotion/raises/recognition that she won't for other secretaries. Dawn is smart enough to see that bigger picture, even if Joan just means it as a punishment right now. Ted Chaough said that Heinz bought the ad that a third company pitched (That's when they "bought it in the room"). It was a bigger company who won, so Ted was commiserating about how Heinz brought in three companies, and let the two small ones make their pitch, then went with the big company without even bothering to wait or 'think it over'. Dow Chemicals was one of the main suppliers for napalm and Agent Orange to the US military in the Vietnam War, and for a while was the ONLY supplier for napalm when the other manufacturers refused to keep producing it after public backlash. So it was one of the major Faces of the conflict, and couldn't even hide behind "Everybody else does it, too". Hence why they're facing public criticism that they're trying to distract from with gaudy TV events to say "We're not monsters, look at how AMERICAN we are with Broadway and football!" It's the same point that Peggy made (And Don made previously): Change the conversation. Get Dow's name out as "Family Friendly" instead of "Arms Manufacturing".
When I think of Don, one word describes him. Alone. When Anna told him, "the only thing keeping you from being happy, is the belief that you are alone." That captured him perfectly. Rachel Menken, (Don's real wife if the universe was not indifferent) knew him on Day 1, ......."I know what it feels like to be disconnected. I wonder if you feel that too." All the gutter depravity that Don skewers himself in, is just incidental. It's all to make him feel that he somehow belongs somewhere, anywhere, that isn't in side his head. (I 'killed' my own mother. I am a worthless whore-child. I killed Don Draper, and stole his name. I. AM. NOTHING.) "Would you, love you?" "I'm surprised that you ever loved me." (The most honest single thing Don ever uttered in his life.) Scared little boy, who has no one to hold him, and make the bad things go away. The dishonesty is a symptom. His solitude is the disease that rides merrily on.
When Don said, "I have to think about it." All I thought was, Don is becoming a caricature. Banal, to the point of irrelevance. There's a reason why MM won the best drama Emmy its 4 years, and didn't win after that.
It's perfectly fine if you don't like this season, but you don't have to leave four comments about it on the reaction for each episode.
My problem with Velma from Scooby Doo is that I don’t find her interesting of a character. She is one of my frustrations about these later seasons. The rest of the episode is gold.
As far as Don's affairs go, she's probably the most thematic-idea-instead-of-real-character since... Suzanne in S2? And the "right under his wife's nose" of it all is basically the same idea. I do like the Catholic guilt twist these past few episodes.
Ohh Don jealous about his wife. Sooooooo tiring. Wasn't Red in the Face a S1 episode?? I'm gagging. I ride and die (mostly die) with Don.
It's worse now by dimensions. In S1 a man was actively flirting with his wife, in front of his face. Now, he wants to blow up over an acting scene. Im supposed to sit there and applaud and say, wow this guy just gets worse FOR NO APPARENT REASON. Bravo. How do people not get tumors watching this?
"Meredith, why don't you step out?" lmao It's totally insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but that scene at the club is one of my favourites in the whole season. The lights, the Serge Gainsbourg song, Christina Hendricks's smile. Sometimes it's OK to just put cool shit on screen.
Whatever you think of Harry, that scene in the conference room steals the episode
It's a really cool trick how you think Harry is storming into the conference room to embarrass himself (which he does, to be clear) but then he starts getting angry, and cruel, and also... kind of right? Like, fuck you dude, first of all. But also yeah, when you put it that way, maybe you do deserve a partnership? Anyway Bert & Roger's refusal to even entertain the idea, despite his convincing arguments, reminds me of Don's line (to Pete) way back in the pilot: "Keep it up, and even if you do get my job, you'll never run this place. You'll die in that corner office. A mid-level executive with a little bit of hair who women go home with out of pity. You want to know why? Because no one will like you." Though I have to say, Rich Sommer has a hell of a head of hair this season. Look at those sideburns.
A little trivia from this ep: Ted orders an 'Old Spanish' in the bar after the Ketchup pitch which was a made-up drink from the sitcom 30 Rock. This was written in as a friendly response to 30 Rock writers who would routinely take lore from Mad Men and include it in gags/stories on 30 Rock.
@EricViola Remember the last episode of 30 Rock (which aired years before Mad Men ended) and Liz Lemon was imploring Jack Donaghy to not end himself: "Don't you want to know how Mad Men ends??? Don goes to work for PEGGGGYYYYYYY!!!!
Loved Lola's slightly delayed reaction to Harry's outburst. :))
Pete jumpscare
This is a classic Don hypocrite whiplash episode. Fun fact, at the bar Ted orders an Old Spanish, which of course isn't a real drink. It's a reference to a 30 Rock episode where a guest character is tricked into thinking that a mix of Spanish red wine, tonic, and 3 olives is a real drink.
harry telling joan to f off is actually a great scene
Doing a positive(?) Harry story out of nowhere is the real jumpscare here.
Right on time for dinner