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Just finished the finale. This was my sixth attempt to watch this show over the years, the first five times I just couldn't understand what it was about Mad Men that everyone loved, what I think made me get it was when I realised that the best way to watch it is as a study of thoroughly flawed, largely traumatised individuals and why they do the things that they do. Like, I remember back when it aired and a lot of the discourse around and coverage of the show was around how awesome Don Draper is, how glamourous SCDP is, how nice the costumes are etc. Watching it today, I found it very compelling that the show makes no bones about the fact that, ie, Roger Sterling is a loving sadsack who is terrified of growing old, Don Draper has so many issues it's hard to know where to start, Pete Campbell can never get out of his own way because he's a spoiled brat, etc. I also wasn't prepared for how consistently funny the show is! So many moments had me heaving, off the top of my head: Lane and Pete's fisticuffs, Pete confronting Bob about his mother being thrown off a boat, that guy who had a question but was at the back of the crowd and too short to be seen
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Sep 1, 2023 13:49
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I also loved the finale, if only because it's extremely funny for me to think that they set it up to end with Don successfully destroying every single personal and professional relationship in his life - up to his own children telling him that they don't want him back to help his family through Betty being diagnosed with terminal cancer - and thus having to reinvent himself once more, only to very heavily imply that the sum total of all of his experiences will be him creating arguably the most famous and influential advertisement in history.
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Sep 1, 2023 15:41
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Sash! posted:I don't remember the exact line, but Roger tells Don that the international business isn't banging stewardesses at the Dorchester like he thinks. It is flying round-trip to London in the same day. One of my favourite things about seasons 6 and 7 is the increasing amount of characters calling out Don for being full of poo poo. What did Pete call him, "Tarzan, swinging from vine to vine"? From what I mentioned earlier, I even started recognising individual scenes from the discourse around him. The drunk pitch being one example; as shot, acted and edited the scene is tense as gently caress, like this man is just drunk off his rear end and high off his own farts, nobody knows what he's going to say and they're too scared/awkward to stop him, and he only succeeds by unwittingly ripping off the least talented creative in the building. At the time, I remember reading it in "most awesome things Don's ever done" lists. His "I don't think about you at all" line to Ginsberg which is obviously a colossal lie as Ginsberg has gotten thoroughly under his skin was thought of as an unironic win for him, too Adrianics fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Sep 1, 2023 |
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Sep 1, 2023 20:22
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Blood Nightmaster posted:My absolute favorite "Don Draper being an alpha/the coolest dude in the room (due to a serious lack of context)" scene is still that bit where he's out of his mind on amphetamines and tries to give the creatives an inspirational pep talk that goes nowhere and Peggy immediately dismisses for the nonsense that it is Oh my GOD that episode is loving amazing, it's straight into my all-time list. Don yelling about the timbre of his voice and that he doesn't know whether he should be dominant or submissive 
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Sep 2, 2023 00:19
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One of my favourite through lines throughout the series is Don steadfastly refusing to change or adapt his personal appearance as the times change (god it makes me chuckle thinking of him walking around the office in the 1970s in season 7), so with that in mind I would unironically love besuited Don staring bemusedly at a pitch for a TikTok campaign
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Sep 3, 2023 09:42
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Don genuinely loving his children, even though his self-sabotage means he frequently neglects them, is one of my favourite aspects of the show. In fact for my money one of the saddest moments across the series is the season one finale when he finally realises just how much he loves his family, but it's far too late and they've left him behind. Something else about watching the show more recently, having climbed the corporate ladder myself, is the amount of times I found myself thinking "oh my god, that's so true!" The amount of Dons, Petes, Bettys, Harrys, Lanes, Joans and Rogers I've known in my career. Roger reminds me of my mentor at my former job, who had a midlife crisis and completely lost his mind. Adrianics fucked around with this message at 11:56 on Sep 3, 2023 |
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Sep 3, 2023 11:54
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Don blacking out from that bender and being far more upset that he told a random woman his real name than at missing his time with his kids was pretty drat bleak as well
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Sep 3, 2023 17:45
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ram dass in hell posted:yeah she's one of the best actors on the show. way beyond just good for a child actor. Matt Weiner's son, who plays Glenn and is loving awful, is very much the yang to her ying.
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Oct 18, 2023 14:38
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MrMojok posted:They took Mad Men away from me. I had subscribed to AMC+ through Amazon, because I wanted to watch interview with the vampire again, and then I saw Mad Men was on there too. Amazon Prime UK has every episode if you can VPN
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Nov 5, 2023 21:11
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Throughout my watch of the series, it never stopped being wild to me how they all had liquor cabinets in their offices and would punctuate every character walking in by pouring two glasses of liquor
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Nov 20, 2023 14:53
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Getting to experience Don's full arc gave me a new appreciation for the absolutely amazing "the bubble" 30 Rock storyline Jon Hamm guest starred in. In fiction and IRL, it's incredible what you can get away with if you're charismatic and conventionally handsome.
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Nov 23, 2023 09:54
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Bob is an amazing character because he's like a Fire Walk With Me version of Don, all the secrets and most of the charisma but absolutely loving terrible at lying and hilariously transparent. Don is a caricature of how far you can get with conventional good looks and charisma, Bob is a caricature of how far you can get through sheer dogged determination even if you're clearly up to something and full of poo poo.
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Nov 27, 2023 17:02
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Lady Radia posted:I like to think the ending was Don actually achieving some sort of growth. Finding someone perfectly describe what he was going through just feels.. impactful, I guess. See the reason I loved the ending is that I thought the opposite. He's on the cusp of learning something, like he's so goddamned close, then at the last second he has a kickass idea for an advertising campaign, and not just any advertising campaign, THE advertising campaign
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Nov 27, 2023 20:14
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Sash! posted:I've always had this weirdly sympathetic look at Pete that he was how he was because he thought that's what he was supposed to be doing, not because that's who he actually was. Like he was being the sort of guy that he thought he was supposed to be because that's how other people in his position were and that's how his dad was and so on. But, in the end, he figures this out and, quite literally, leaves that world behind. This was my read on Pete, too. There's that great episode where he, Don and Roger go on an epic bender even by their standards and when Pete goes off with a sex worker Don's like "buddy, why are you doing this? I do this because I'm deeply traumatised and irreversibly broken as a human being, Roger does this because he's terrified of the fact that he's getting older, don't you genuinely love your wife and daughter?" and Pete looks rattled. He also seems to run his mouth a lot less after Lane beats him up.
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Nov 30, 2023 12:34
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Aces High posted:I wonder what my interpretation of the show would be like if I had watched it from first release. I was in the middle of high school when Mad Men started and wasn't as much of a cynical person then. I honestly think that after 2016 (and certain events during the pandemic, such as the trucker convoy crap here in Canada) my tolerance for a lot of the bad behaviour shown in Mad Men is way lower than it would've been back in 2007/08. It's a mix of "wow, can't believe how loving awful people were back then" with a "wow, it's been 50+ years and a lot of this poo poo still happens" and it's not that it keeps me from connecting with the show, it's more that I don't have as much of a good time with the show. This is similar to me. I think I needed a decade or so of life experience in order to truly enjoy this show, like take away the 1960s stuff and NYC and advertising and, like I've said before, I've known a version of every single character in the offices I've worked in, so the dynamics, character decisions etc make perfect sense to me and it amazes me how little has actually changed over the years.
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Nov 30, 2023 21:02
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Aces High posted:On a different note, I decided to start watching The Handmaid's Tale, because of Elizabeth Moss, and I have to wonder if there's something I can watch her in where she can just, I dunno, be happy. The Invisible Man is a loving awesome movie, Moss' character goes through the ringer early on but roars back fighting by the end!
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Jan 11, 2024 10:41
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kalel posted:great movie but doesn't really fall under the umbrella of Oh I know, but I think the closest one can get to seeing her be "happy" is her getting revenge at the end
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Jan 11, 2024 15:36
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