MAD MEN -- Season SIX Official Thread

Normally, that's true - but he was definitely not his usual self in a few instances!

 

I was really confused with the timing/editing of the whole doorman thing. One second he's dying on the floor, the next he's welcoming the Drapers again. How much time took place in between? It was as if some of the episode was missing, you'd think with a 2 hour premiere that they wouldn't have to do that.

Overall I thought the episode was just ok, I too am digging the cultural transitions. I wasn't alive at that time and my father was in the Navy at Guantanamo for those years so he didn't really remember all the turmoil. I've read a few books about the time and obviously seen a ton of movies, but I'm looking forward to how much the war and the counter-culture movement are portrayed. I hope we get to see a decent bit, but not more than was realistic for the time.

 

It was an okay episode. The changes in fashion and hair seemed perhaps a little abrupt, in my opinion, considering it's only been maybe nine months since season five ended.

 

I hope they keep it to a minimum, really. There's already been more than enough movies and TV shows done depicting the era from the perspective of baby boomers, we don't need to see all that for 5423750847230847th time, in my opinion. I think the show has handled it all pretty well so far, and have faith that they will continue to do so.

 

Yeah, that was pretty sloppy.

 

I assume the editing choices were done for a reason, but to me they also felt abrupt, and sloppy in a few cases. The part with the doorman, as mentioned, is one. The non-explanation of the girl that went to NY is another. I assume it was just a high school friend of Sally's, but we were just plunked down into the middle of the situation without learning anything about her beyond what was shown.

I don't need to have my hand held at all times while viewing, but I also don't want to have to fill in blanks with assumption, which is what seemed to be happening a lot last night. I often wonder if they're trying too hard to be clever, or if I'm just supposed to work harder to "get it."

Overall, the episode was OK, but I missed Joan, and I'm not digging the new "creative" core group at the agency. I did like seeing Peggy's situation, and enjoyed all of Roger's scenes - Roger is what keeps me coming back.

I loved the whole KOSS headphone campaign. That was fun to watch.

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention the absurdly obvious sequence regarding the death of the shoe shine dude. As soon as Roger's secretary mentioned it, my wife said, "Oh, sure. NOW he's going to go break down and cry." That was a ham-fisted cliche' big time. Of course, it was a GOOD ham-fisted cliche' scene because it was Roger.

 

Roger made the show last night. Talking with the shrink, his mother dying. Great character.

For the rest it was ok. Betty's fat suit was fake. You can see her skinny legs and arms.

 

Yeah I was kinda lost on who the violin girl was, too, but I just assumed she was a cousin or just a friend of Sally's and went with it.

 

I forgot about that..I didn't get the Blu-Ray for season five untill last week and haven't had a chance to watch all the episodes again..thanks

 

I don't know whether a comedian actually made that joke about GIs cutting off Viet Cong ears on the Tonight Show or not, but, in the context of the show, it came across as a ham-fisted way to bludgeon the viewer with Now We Are Going To Make An Important Reference To The OnGoing Period Event of Vietnam, much as Don's conversation with the GI in Hawaii also did. Betty's trip to HippieVille to teach the hippies how to make goulash was even more ludicrous, perhaps even more cringe-worthy than Don's visit to Smack Addict Midge's crash pad a few season's ago: sometimes it seems like Weiner is just determined to check off each current event box in the laziest way possible: I agree with whoever noted above that the transformation of Stan, Ginsberg, and Abe into full on bearded hippies seemed a little abrupt given the short time lapse from last season: would Stan literally even had had time to grow that beard between Spring '67 and Christmas '67? The sartorial and facial hair transformations of Harry and Pete were less extreme but more plausible.

 

I was wondering about that too. I figured it might be some sort of illustrative fantasy bit, like when Don killed that stalker-ish woman last season, but evidently it was not and why it was handled in such a choppy way I cannot say.

 

Speaking of Stan's beard, I have a really hard time believing that the bosses at a firm like SCDP in 1967 would let that kind of facial hair fly, especially for someone who meets with clients.

 

I also have a hard time believing that, even though Roger and Don have been living the three-martini lunch lifestyle for decades, Don and Joan would just tolerate the creative staff openly toking up at work. After work? No problem. But in the middle of the office in the middle of the day? I don't think so.

 

Agreed. These things are really just nit picks. It's still a great show.

 

Wow, nit picky bunch - tough room! Haha! Well, I thought it was a great episode - loved the Roger story line. Also, how about Peggy - at work! Yes, we are seeing Peggy at work! More advertising story lines! Love it!

 

I didn't have a problem with the editing around the doorman's heart-attack at all- loved it. The point was to give you some of the sense of Don's discomfort with suddenly being forced to think about the man standing in front of him after recovering from that.

It ties in later with him demanding an explanation from him later about what he saw. Don cannot abide the fact the this guy almost died and is just going about his business like it's no big deal, because of course he is now obsessed with death- or, more specifically, disappearance- as he undergoes his own existential crisis.

Maybe my favorite non-Don scene is Roger's daughter, giving daddy what he deserves by manipulating him, Game-of-Thrones style.

The only thing I wasn't quite understanding was Peggy trying to call some priest? I think it's referencing something that I forgot happened. This is why I normally prefer watching shows on DVD instead of trying to have to remember things in between LOOOOONG breaks.

 

Agree that the Roger and Peggy story lines were the best part of the premiere, although the twist at the end where Don is sleeping with his neighbor's wife threw me for a loop and made Don's latest mid-life crisis a lot more interesting to me. After last season's finale, I was pretty sure that the new season would begin with Don and Megan separated or divorced because Don couldn't handle Megan pursuing her career as an actress, so, even though Don and Megan weren't 100% happy in Hawaii or once they got home from vacation, they were still together, and I assumed that they had managed to work things out and keep their marriage together and working pretty well, so it was real punch to the gut to see what could have been a tired re-hash of earlier plot lines (i.e., Don is a cheater) at the very end of the two hours.

 

I think the point of that was that her boss was at some sort of spiritual retreat, and she had to talk to the priest to pass along the information to her boss that the Super Bowl spot was in crisis. But the priest didn't want to disturb her boss, because the whole point of a retreat is not taking calls from work. That's what I thought was going on, anyway. But it wasn't very clear.

 

They saw the doorman as they entered the building, then there was a flashback to the night he had his heart attack, and then they returned to the present. It was not very elegantly done.

 

When she mentioned that her mother was dead, I wondered if she might be the daughter of the dying friend Betty met at the doctor last year, when she thought she had cancer. But that didn't seem to be the case. And yet, she didn't really seem to be a friend of Sally's either.

 

Even though Don is cheating on his wife again, the context is different. With Betty, it was more devilish, more joyful, like he thinks he's just a guy with large appetites, and was able to self-justify it by resenting his wife.

With Megan, they are going out of their way to show us that she is doing nothing "wrong," as even Don might perceive it. He is resentful of her for, what, some modicum of career success? It's not like she's "neglecting her duties as a wife" because of it or anything, or letting fame go to her head.

Don knows, this time, that HE is the problem. Even if he can't quite put it into words, the cheating is a symptom of problem within himself. He is upset about it, he is purposefully self-destructive now.

But of course we know nothing about the woman he's having the affair yet, so let's see how that dynamic plays out.

Casting note: Don's new lover is Linda Cartellini (sp?), star of Freaks & Geeks.

 

All this talk about the doorman and the editing, etc. I'm finding it a little bit funny with the title of the episode(s) being called 'The Doorway' and the episodes actually have a doorman character.

 

I saw a review last night that pointed out that this season premiere was an inversion of the first season premiere: in the first episode of the first season, we see Don gallivanting all over Manhattan like a horny bachelor, and then, at the very end, we are surprised to see him greeted at his door by his wife Betty. In the first episode of this season, we are faked into thinking that Don has finally managed to settle down into something resembling a stable marriage with Megan and then the rug is pulled out from under us when we see him cheating with the neighbor's wife.

 

Interesting article from the UK Guardian about how the career Don practices has vanished during the run of this show. I was curious enough about last night's premiere that I did what I almost never do with TV anymore - namely, watch the show live on its TV broadcast instead of watching it the next day on iTunes - and the constant interruption of the show by commercials does seem like a relic from the Stone Age.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/08/mad-men-missing-ads-season-six

 

I was hoping they'd be done with Fat Betty this season. It's hard to get invested in her when January's face looks like it's made of plastic. At least the character seems to be losing the weight.