Mad Men 7x04 Reaction

Love this episode. Fixing your life is difficult and humiliating, and never smooth. You'll relapse and struggle, have down periods. You need a friend to help remind you why you're doing it in the first place, and Don doesn't have many of those. The few he does have are work colleagues, and that complicates things. I love Freddy's arc throughout the show. I think SC were right to let him go in season 2. Don was kind to him and he and Peggy defended Freddy's reputation. It made Freddy take sobriety seriously when everyone else saw it as a joke. I've already said he's one of my favourite non-main characters, and these late seasons contribute to that a lot.

About Marigold, I think she's trying to break the cycle of seeing her mom drink alone in the bathroom, and that's probably what she started doing too. She wasn't raised by Roger, he just provided for her until she married. At least he did that, but she wants something more loving. Leaving her son is not the best scenario, but she seems desperate. She knows that at least financially, her son will be okay. And both her parents continue to treat her like a child, even on her wedding day. She reminds me of Betty. I don't think either of them were raised by their parents to become adults. I think they were both raised to become wives. So again, not the best scenario, but the cycle has to break somehow.

I know Don deserves to go through all this to understand that he was being a toxic person in the workplace, and I don't blame the other partners for that, and this should have happened a long time ago. But for me, it's impossible not to feel bad or bothered. He helped and was the main driving force behind starting this agency you know? and for things to have escalated to this point is awful. All the terms were understandable, and I don't deny anyone's right to be hurt or angry with him but this game of ignoring his existence seems like something children would do in school giving the silent treatment, and I don't think it's right for adults to do that. Regarding Freddy, I love every line he said in this episode. He showed support but without diminishing the fact that Don is wrong. True friends do that!

There's a shot of a door at the beginning of the episode that looks exactly like the black monolith in 2001 A Space Odyssey. The purpose of the monolith is to force evolutionary/technological advancement upon humanity. I think this episode has a lot of parallels to AI. The creative lounge is being dismantled and replaced by a computer. The computer can "count stars", now AI uses language models to mimic intelligent thought. I believe Don gets upset because he realizes by advertising the computer, he'd be advertising his eventual replacement. And could also be symbolic of Don feeling "replaced" by his new situation, the fact that the company is just fine without him and he's no longer essential to operations. Pull further back and Don feels lost and left behind by the progress of the 1960s. The world is progressing at light speed and everyone's oohing and ahhing at the wonderful technological advancement of the computer, but Don sees it as a harbinger of evil. "I know your name. No, you go by many names—I know who you are. You don't need a campaign. You've got the best campaign since the dawn of time."

The textual/subtextual parallels between Lloyd saying that the IBM360 could count more stars than us, Don retorting with what man laid on his back facing the stars and thought about a number, compared with Roger and Marigold laying on their back and facing the stars, who're talking about anything but numbers 🎯

Classic thumbnails back 👌

"Do the work, Don". God I love that line. I love Freddy Rumsen. I love the way Freddy supports Don but doesn't enable him, he tells him straight-off that he's messing up and it is up to HIM to fix it. I also love the way Bert said that Don had a fundamental misunderstanding of what went wrong before. Because he's right, and Don needed that as part of his wake-up to realize that HE needs to change. It's still a question of whether or not Don actually will change, but he can't say he hasn't been told. Roger & Marigold were so CLOSE to having a connection, but like always happens between fathers and daughters on this show, Roger can't let it go. While I am likewise concerned at the way she ran away and joined a commune, you can't force her away, and this wouldn't be how you persuade her to leave of her own free will. He just ruins whatever chance they had at bridging the gap between them. When it comes to the Mets penant that Don finds, there's actually a whole bunch of symbolism to that. The Mets were an "expansion team" founded in 1962, so at this time they were not respected or highly regarded as a sports team. Lane being a fan of them was part of him being a new immigrant to the area, because long-term residents of New York City would have already been fans of the pre-existing Yankees, Dodgers, or Giants. But 1969 (when this season takes place) was actually when the team went on to win the World Series. They were the first expansion team to ever win the World Series, and their particular history was so poor that NOBODY predicted this. One of the nicknames for the team this year is even the "Miracle Mets" because it's a miracle that they did so well. So Don hanging up this penant could symbolize his own forthcoming unexpected success...or it could be there to lure people into expecting good things that are never going to actually arrive.

Episode began with Don in the mud and Roger standing tall and by the end their positions were reversed without having interacted with each other at all

I'll cast myself in the villain role again and side with Roger over his daughter (and Lola). There is, one might say, a galactic-level difference between wishing you got to see your parent more (and wishing your parent was a better role-model) and living with the knowledge that your parent willingly and permanently subtracted themselves from your life. "Marigold" is straight-up dumping her kid, here. Ethically speaking, that's lower than a daily pint of gin in a locked bathroom. I think this moment is less an admonition of Roger's parenting and more an exposé of boomer entitlement and the moral decay that is often associated with that generation. "Marigold" may be an attention-starved and damaged kid, but her justification for her actions in this scene amounts to little more than stamping her foot and shouting "You could have been better!" Roger 1, Marigold 0

That looming shot of the black elevator door is so fun. Cue Also sprach Zarathustra. Don't know if they've seen 2001, but there are some *very* fun references coming up next episode. (Caroline's panicked running from Ellery here also reminds me of Shelley Duvall in The Shining.) I remembered this episode for Don's drunken "meet the Mets" stuff, but Freddy's straight-talk the next morning really stuck out to me here. It's pretty remarkable where they've taken his character over the years, from pissing his pants in S2 to this. It makes sense that a few of these guys would bottom-out and sober up -- it's great that the show had Freddy (and Joel Murray) on the bench to deliver that moment.

Just wanted to confirm that yes, this season came out split into two parts and the break was after episode 7. I guess it was similar to Breaking Bad since both ran on the same network (AMC) around the same time. The break was a whole year if I remember correctly. I'm pretty sure I was watching Mad Men as it was coming out by then and was annoyed by the long break.

Splitting of the seasons also finally allowed Hamm to win his first Emmy for this role after a certain someone kept hogging (deservedly so!) the award

Maybe my favourite episode that I haven't seen show up in many best episodes conversations? Do the work, Don

I love this episode so much!