algebra testes posted:

When I watched it my 20s I remember following a long for a season, I was compelled but didn't get it. It probably wasn't until part way through I started loving it, specifically the Hobo Code.

Xealot posted:

awesmoe posted:

I totally agree in one sense, but...there's really interesting discussions to be had based on these episodes, contrasting characters' early portrayal against the later versions of their characters, themes as they show up for the first time, etc etc. All of that stuff gets jumpstarted by jerusalem's writeups, and it would be a real shame to have nowhere to discuss it. I don't really know what a good solution is (except jerusalem not reading the thread )

Shageletic posted:

what what what?!??! where did you get this.

Shageletic posted:

if there's a joke i don't get it, so i guess i deserve that?

Escobarbarian posted:

hahahahaha

Gaius Marius posted:

Don didn't even get hired, he just walked in and said he was.

Gaius Marius posted:

There's still some things we need to be sure to spoil like when the [spoilers]chip n dip[/spoilers] comes back into play in the season six finale. I was blown away. It's when I knew weiner was a master of his craft.

Yoshi Wins posted:

"My people are Nordic" is definitely one of the all-time Betty lines. It's about as funny as Pete's "Direct marketing. I thought of that. Turned out it already existed, but I arrived at independently."

Of course, it's not as funny as "Not great, Bob!" but what is?

"THE KING ORDERED IT!"

Overall, I don't think this is one of the stronger episodes, but it has one of the most famous Don moments, when he sexually assaults Bobbie at Lutece. Disturbingly, many people found this scene to be "cool", an example of how alpha and masculine Don is. The show did its best to clarify that Don is a miserable person, but bad behavior will always look glamorous to a certain segment of the audience, and in the early days of Mad Men, there were a nauseating number of articles in men's magazines and the like advising their readers how to be more like Don Draper.

I think the show did a fairly good job handling the moral responsibility of depicting a character who is superficially cool, but is also a hosed up person who does terrible things. Most of the troglodytes who thought that Don was an example to be emulated lost interest long before the show finished. It eventually became clear that the show was not confirming their worldview after all. But I do have some misgivings about this scene, where a "cool" man gets what he wants by sexually assaulting a woman and then threatening her. What do you all think? Do you think I'm overthinking it?

quote:

This just amuses her further though, as we've already seen she's as used to getting her own way as her husband is, and she grabs his crotch, gives it an appreciative squeeze and points out it sure doesn't feel like he doesn't want it.

Shageletic posted:

That's a pretty good distillery but yeah starting out drinking bourbon is gonna make anyone take a step back, personally I find good scotch like this boy here this is how you do them to be as smooth as juice, but tastes differ ofc e: lol what the gently caress is happening with links

BrotherJayne posted:

He's very smart for such a chronic underthinker. Or maybe he's an overthinker, but fucks up the hip shots. Pete is just such a smarmy gently caress grimy little pimp

BrotherJayne posted:

Poem sucked.

I'd rather contemplate my navel

Edit: or some Blake or Poe or Frost. Gimme dat imagery, I need the pretty head pictures

BrotherJayne posted:

Counterpoint: Don is more human than you or I

VinylonUnderground posted:

It's hard to find old interviews but it shouldn't be surprising that Weiner was very public about how he felt people weren't "getting" what he was trying to say with Don Draper and how he is a tragic character as opposed to captain awesome. But Weiner glamorizes his subject to the point that it's hard not to walk away with sympathy towards the captain awesome interpretation. Weiner clearly likes womanizing very much. He also likes wealth very much. Mad Men is opposed to the conservative values Don represents in the same way Paths of Glory is antiwar.

quote:

Mad Men's Creator: Don Draper Represents American Society
A conversation with Matthew Weiner about anti-heroes, why everybody loves Joan, and the real-life drama that inspires the hit AMC show

VinylonUnderground posted:

You might want to spoiler an interview that talks about things several seasons in advance of this thread.

VinylonUnderground posted:

While I think the criticisms I'm presenting do apply to the series as a whole, I'm not spoilering things because I'm keeping my commentary contemporary with the thread itself. For example the jetsetters are a good foreshadowing of the doldrums of some of the later seasons and those do a fair job deglamorizing Don's lifestyle. Being a pathetic loser who pays women to slap him and then having the one friend he has left top himself is very much not glamorous.

We know Weiner likes being a grimy little pimp and his love of all the "bad" things about Don shines through in the product. I don't think the show is effective (and certainly not up to the point in the narrative where this thread is) at actually condemning these things. Instead it revels in them and then does a quick sad trombone scene to clumsily communicate that these things it presents as good are, in fact, bad.

pentyne posted:

Little things like Betty doing that after a lifetime of being the good domestic housewife, giving up all semblance of a life beyond rearing and childcare, and showing not telling in acting terms takes some serious level of talent.

Betty Draper and Skylar White were easily some of the best characters on their respective shows, arguably better then the male leads at times.

I don't know good Jones or Gunn are as actresses but they both absolutely nailed the roles they were given for some of the best written/most critically regarded shows on at the time and faced an endless torrent of poo poo online for being "bitches".

ANOTHER SCORCHER posted:

Saving this for later.

sure okay posted:

Two things I think about a lot from this season are

1. The scene where Paul is told Don's going to California in his stead and he reacts, "He can't do that!" The group's reaction is merely to laugh and no one even bothers to correct him. Of course he can. Like, these abstract qualities of "clout" and "authority" made manifest so swiftly and so sharply they humiliate a man to his core. Don obviously never meant that, but that didn't matter at all. I couldn't imagine getting so thoroughly owned by my boss in front of my peers, and to know (or even suspect) that it wasn't personal. At the very least I'd want such a slight to be personal.

2. Roger is so casual about Don's impromptu vacation that I honestly thought I had skipped an episode. I knew going in that this was a show that was, in part, about a guy who gets away with goddamn near everything primarily because of how he carries himself but wow. I think about how if he showed the slightest hint of guilt, or gave any sort of verbal mea culpa to Roger that whole outcome would've gone very differently. But his inscrutable, unapologetic poker face takes him so freaking far in life it is breathtaking.

pentyne posted:

Even better was the look from the others when Paul is almost breathless as he recounts his "negros and I got along" story.

They were extremely privileged white men in 1960 and even they could see how full of poo poo he was talking about black people like some mysterious discovery of his.

Jerusalem posted:

JARED HARRIS IS IN THIS loving SHOW!?!?!

VinylonUnderground posted:

As an aside, that reminded me of one of the greatest stories ever of a person playing themselves in just the most predictable way.

Escobarbarian posted:

Someone really needs to teach CD the “reasonable” part