Mad Men 7x05 Reaction

“I have a stomachache all the time” Ah, memories

Megan, we love you, but seriously you have to stop trying to feed people your terrible spaghetti

I'm absolutely thinking that Ginsberg really was born in a concentration camp. Why would he make that up and then say he doesn't believe it? Anyways, I would have liked to see more of him, but I guess this works well as the end of his story.

I can't believe the silly Scout's Honor plotline and Ginsberg's complete mental break is the same episode. Weird week for Stan.

I think with Henry, its not the first time he's had an outburst saying the things he said the way he said them but rather the first time we see it, perhaps he's had these moments with Betty before just not to this magnitude because in this time frame, an interaction like this (tempered or not) is extremely common place and as Lola said about Betty still being in the 50s, Henry very much is as well.

everyone else: "Wow this isn't a good look for Henry" me: "Yell at me daddy"

I refer to this as an "ugly" episode. Not a "bad" episode -- not by a long shot -- but "ugly". Because it's everybody at their worst and suffering and making the world a little bit worse around them. Megan forcing Stephanie out of her home and bribing her to leave faster was perhaps the cruelest thing she had done up until then in the entire series. But then "seducing" Don into a three-way with her friend...that was ugly as well. I can't help but notice that Don never says the word "yes" or gives any encouragement. Eventually he GIVES IN, which is not the same thing as consent. NOBODY wanted or enjoyed that. Ginsberg has been spiraling for a long time now, but it's so easy to overlook it because he's a "crazy character". Only now does his behaviour break through the screen and make everybody around him realize that it's not "cooky funny high-strung", it's a serious illness that he's been grappling with and nobody else even realized it. I do have respect for Stan for riding down with him in the elevator. That's something I honestly didn't expect from ANYBODY at SC&P. Henry's explosion is disappointing, but not surprising. Up until now Betty has always behaved as the "proper" politicians wife, so we've never seen Henry put in the position of dealing with her outside of that mold. Now that she made a single misstep, we see a whole new side of Henry in response. It's also sad that Sally did a better job comforting and supporting Bobbby than Betty has ever done. Which is a very low bar to cross, and shouldn't be her responsibility since she is also a child, but when she saw he needed a moment of comfort she gave it to him. Even Lou Avery is just unpleasant and miserable. He's apparently working on a cartoon passion project, but he's so insecure and resentful that he lashes out at everybody around him. He flexes his authority in petty, demeaning ways just to make himself feel better.

The recent discussion of Oscar movies and the discussion of mental health in this era in this episode reminds me to recommend the excellent movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to whomever hasn't seen it. Set in a mental hospital in the 1960's, it won Oscars for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Picture.

Feel terrible for Megan in this episode. She is so desperate to hold Don's attention when he is so clearly checked out at this point. She's now OK throwing women at him with the hopes that he'll stay, be present, want to be there while at the same time finding out from Stephanie that there are parts of him that she'll never really be a part of.

After watching Don's flashback in 6x8, Megan's insistence on having sex with Don along with someone (in her attempts to re-spark their relationship) who Don from the get-go has been reasonably distant with (prioritizing Stephanie accommodation) is to a degree skin-crawling + the way Megan comes on to him on the bed, grabbing his crotch is reminiscent of Bobby in S2 doing the same

Some people consider Dons scene with Megan and her friend to be a case of rape, and at the time the episode aired there was a newspaper article about it, which was quite interesting to read. If anyone is interested in reading it, here it is titled "Don Draper is a rape survivor." https://medium.com/@SarahEvonne/don-draper-is-a-rape-survivor-c238657d2bea Mad Men often portrays scenes of sexual abuse in a non-violent way, and perhaps this is why the general audience doesn't notice (like Pete with the girl). I confess I've never really understood Don's scene, but there is indeed a certain denial on his part and no mention of consent, so there's a basis for believing it. Ginsbergs storyline is very sad but also very real. The number of people with mental health issues who were simply silenced or forgotten in the 60s is frightening.

They're turning the frogs gay!

Fascinating how the computer stuff feels fresh in light of the current AI boom. Not that the looming spectre of technology hasn't always been an easy boogeyman for creatives, but it's especially interesting watching Ginsberg's computer-induced psychosis here considering our moment in 2026. I guess they could have told a similar story at any point in the 1960s, but it's fun that we've gotten all the way from the Joan's photocopier being an absolute fascination to everyone at Sterling Cooper to this "technology will kill us all" storyline at the end of the decade. Love the 2001 lip-reading homage. (Hilarious how Don took that cringeworthy Hail Mary threesome as inspiration(?) to barge into another meeting with a ill-considered attempt to salvage his job.)

No I think Ginsberg was 100% telling the truth re being born in a concentration camp during the Holocaust. The "Martian" monologue was just a poetic coping mechanism of expressing how alien and traumatic a feeling it must be know that's where you came from. Though he was always neurotic, he was being truthful then.

Michael Ginsberg took #FreeTheNipple too literally.

Bad: Henry could've just told Betty his new take on the war beforehand and she would've supported him 100%, instead he scolds her. Good: It may have helped unlock feminist Betty.

The bigger tragedy about Ginsberg is that in the near future Reagan would completely gut the American mental health care institutions and services. A lot of the patients were quite literally thrown out to be homeless or were “trans-institutionalized” into prison, where it’s not hard to imagine they were subjected to all kinds of abuse. Of course, this is not to say that mental institutions in the 60s or earlier were all that great either. But it’s so typical of our government to just cut funding with no follow-through plan and complete disregard the lives destroyed in the process of saving a few bucks for your oligarch friends.

it's funny, when I watched the show I was completely blindsided by the Ginsberg storyline and felt like it was incredibly sudden, but watching it again through these reactions I realised how consistent it was. I still wish they did a bit more with him but it's a full story. Him telling Peggy how he must be an alien because the story he's been told about being born in a concentration camp and brought up in an orphanage can't be true is one of the most heartbreaking moments of the whole show, even before this episode :(

Love Betty's character and what her storyline adds to the show. That being said if she came into any political power she'd be worse than the Emperor from Star Wars. Mad Men would turn into an even bleaker version of A Handmaid's Tale.

Don lost interest in Megan when Megan lost interest in advertising, but Megan never lost interest in Don. Megan is resentful because she can't move on, Don moved on a long time ago. He's a ghost in their later interactions.

I'm not stupid. I speak Italian!

“What episode is this one again?” *sees thumbnail “Oh Jesus..”

I imagine some of the imagery and homages in this episode are lost on the viewer if they haven’t seen 2001: A Space Odyssey