<p>I think Don found Megan being authoritative a turn on too. Remember there was a bit of s&m going on with Don, was it last season? (I don’t remember the season)</p>
<p>Megan is an actress, and in often feel she is playing roles in her life, the dinner table last night was awesome. Sit down and eat. Hah. She should not have talked bout work, don was digging the whole dominetrix thing she had going on. Can’t wait till she drags him to a swingers party in a few years </p>
<p>Don and Joan together, omgoodness, and the way she watches him at work in that meeting</p>
<p>And layne, well, so sad he just can’t go to Roger</p>
<p>Don’s powerful in the board room and can like it turned around in the bedroom.</p>
<p>Much of the season is about the shift in goals that happened in the 60’s. Megan is good at ads but she wants to act so she gives up what we can see she’s fantastic at to chase her dream. Don at one point says he grew up in the 30’s and his dream was indoor plumbing. Joan wants more than marriage to a doctor; she wants her career and she wants a better man. Roger wants to be satisfied with his life again, both in some other relationship and at work. When Megan reminds Don he liked ads before she worked there, it’s like a switch was thrown in him. We saw it earlier in the episode: he complains the XKE didn’t do it for him and Joan says that’s because he’s happy, then we see him driving hard and getting into it. He seems to have identified his unhappiness: a lack of passion for his work, a putting aside of the challenge of making it. I saw the scene with them standing in the living room as showing the distance between them being that she’s happy with her direction and he’s not, that it was about him not being on a path. I don’t see problems between them, just problems in him.</p>
<p>We know Pete is unable to be happy. He’s looking for something and he’s now realizing success at his job isn’t really it. I think he left it in the city. Is his path riding the train and dreaming of other women who won’t make him happy?</p>
<p>I can’t say much about Harry or Peggy, but the show was fairly blunt by bringing in Paul as a lost soul captured by the Hare Krishna. Finding his path. It turns out to be a ticket to LA. </p>
<p>This was the decade I grew up in. Watching the Vietnam War on TV at dinner. (We lived next to Canada so we’d see a different war, one more uncensored, more ambiguous and a lot darker. I remember a CBC program which showed a patrol arguing whether they’d be ambushed crossing an open area, the men telling their officer they wouldn’t do it.) Revolver was not just a spinning record revolver but like a gun to the head. She said, I know what it’s like to be dead. </p>
<p>The episode that ended with Tomorrow Never Knows was the first time I felt Mad Men came into the period of my life. I could no longer identify with Don the same way because my life and the lives of nearly everyone I knew was Megan’s, drawn to the personal dream. In the era before, this was how the Beats and Beatniks and those on the margins lived. We saw that in the earlier seasons. Now it became mainstream. Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream. </p>
<p>Andre and Maria Jacquemetton mentioned that Matt Weiner tells them before the season what the major arc will be. Last year it was Don marries a secretary. Jessica Par</p>
<p>What ever happened to the Hare Karishnas? They used to be in airports everywhere.</p>
<p>I think I read somewhere that the theme of this season is “every man for himself.” I’ve loved Mad Men since season one but it’s gotten even better for me recently because it’s into my living memory now. 1967 is the first year I remember being aware of what year it was and when the banker asked Lane about the projections for '67, I was like “yay!” I also love the show because when DS, also a fan, first went away to college at the beginning of season four (fall 2010), he started texting me during the show to share his thoughts. It became a tradition and he even delayed going back after spring break a day so he could watch the season premiere with me. Makes me love the show even more.</p>
<p>^^^^</p>
<p>That was how my D and I were about LOST. We would skype chat as we watched it when she was in college. </p>
<p>I feel like the theme has been how everyone is vulnerable. It doesn’t matter how successful, how beautiful, how rich you are - we are not in control and life changes.</p>
<p>^^ When I get time (probably this fall), I am watching LOST again start to finish.</p>
<p>Unbelieveable! That whole plot line with Joan blew me away! I can’t believe they even considered it! And Peggy jumping ship - wow!</p>
<p>UGH. Joan my love. The whole storyline squirked me out like no other. </p>
<p>But Peggy and Don’s finale scene. I can’t. They are my favorite relationship on this show. They’ve seen each other at their worst and are so much alike. Peggy not being apart of SCDP is going to be do distracting and sad. I bet Don will end up chasing her back by the end. Well that is what he said a while ago if she didn’t join the new company.</p>
<p>Whoa Nelly!</p>
<p>Wow, what an episode. Not sure how I feel about Joan but it was a well-crafted and daring storyline.</p>
<p>Not a cryer but this episode…wow… WOW. Don and his women.</p>
<p>Christina Hendricks and Elisabeth Moss deserve all the awards tonight. Especially Hendricks good lord.</p>
<p>Just watched and cheering Peggy’s last glance back at the empty hallway stepping into the future. You go girl! And, Joan more power to her.
Great episode.
What’s with the scene out of sequence with Don and Joan- first we think don has stopped it but that Joan had already done the deed. Well done brilliant-Meghan in front of the casting couch - powerful! Wow
Anyone else see that red thermos as phallic symbol which Peggy Had totally in her hand?</p>
<p>Great episode. Pete sinks to a new low!</p>
<p>Not like it was Pete’s idea, and everyone but Don was on board. Can’t believe I’m defending Pete! That was some episode! It was kind of touching seeing Lane succumb to the idea, but with the best intentions for Joan and her baby. And I know he has an ulterior motive to get the business, but you could tell he was thinking of her future at the same time.</p>
<p>First I thought Don’s visit to Joan’s was prior to the date. Then I realized it was after. Didn’t think she wouldn’t go though with it though.</p>
<p>I think Lane’s motive was to make sure he wasn’t forced to reveal that he had already extended the line of credit and he couldn’t make a cash offer, although he does have a fondness for Joan. I watched this one with D, S, and his fiancee and, when it was over, we all said best episode of the season. I think this episode was as powerful for Christina Hendricks as what “The Suitcase” was for Elizabeth Moss in season 4. Pete deserves whatever bad thing may befall him in the future, IMO.</p>
<p>Yes, but didn’t Lane only take about $8000? They wanted to take $50k for Joan. Couldn’t he have been able to take out another line of credit?</p>
<p>Well, all through the show, there’s been this Joan vs. Peggy thing … Joan using her sexuality to get ahead, while Peggy, the earnest good girl, follows the rules as best she can. It all came to a head in this episode with Joan taking one for the team, so to speak (although she got plenty out of it too). Meanwhile, Peggy realizes that the rules aren’t working for her, so she gets some good advice and takes her business elsewhere (I was wondering when Teddy Chaough was going to show up again!) Pete was a piece of garbage, as always, while Don showed that sense of honor that lurks just below his womanizing exterior. I think Joan’s story line was especially well-crafted. I mean, the audience knows she’s been “putting out” all along, but to put a label on it and bring it out in the open was a total game changer.</p>