<p>I think there is a big change happening in the way we view television…we are watching online…we are binge watching and we will watch MM however they dish it up. We will go online and watch what we want, when we want and I for one like the possibilities that Itunes, Netflix, Amazon Prime etc. give me. There are going to be so many more good programs/series that waiting a year for the next series will be just fine. For myself…Homeland, The Newsroom, House of Cards, Downton Abbey, Mad Men, Suits and The Godo Wife give me plenty to keep me occupied.</p>
<p>We decided to re-up with Netflix because our kids said Orange is the New Black is really good. It is. And my wife would bring home movies from Redbox that would sit for 2 days so Netflix is cheaper.</p>
<p>A little story. I hooked up my computer to the TV. I could have turned on the blu-ray player but the computer is easier to control. After the show was over, I decided to explore whether our LG tv, which has apps, could connect to Netflix directly. I tried a dozen times to find the app and it took a dozen because the controls are a mess. No luck. I looked online and at Netflix and each said I should see an activation code. I finally pressed every button one by one on the remote and Home worked. The very first thing that showed was a page with Netflix, Vudu, CinemaNow, etc. None of these showed when I went into LG’s app world or list of apps, etc. Only visible this one way. The good news is I now have that set up and have 10 free movies for activating Vudu too.</p>
<p>Bumping this up in anticipation of tonight’s premier! I am irrationally excited! Don Draper and cast! And to see the magic Janie Bryant has cooked up in costumes. </p>
<p>IRL, I don’t know anyone who watches it other than my D and her bf and can’t believe no one else is. </p>
<p>Lergnom, looking forward to your analysis. </p>
<p>The beginning is only explained at the end. Which is the exact same thing they did last year when we see Don reading The Inferno only to find he got the book from his married lover.</p>
<p>I guess my takeaways are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>That pitch at the beginning is, in retrospect, obviously Don’s work. But we don’t know that and we don’t know what Don is doing and we don’t know why Don isn’t in CA and we don’t know why he says he has to go to work when his beautiful airplane companion propositions him. But then we see him shining his shoes in his living room watching Nixon’s inauguration and Freddy walks in. </p></li>
<li><p>I noticed a bleep load of pairings: like Peggy treats Freddy like he’s a dunce and then is treated like a dunce by Lou, who is one. She tells Freddy she didn’t expect that from him and Lou says to her, “I don’t care what you think.” The demonstration of Lou’s idiocy is wonderful: his racist, dumb joke about to Dawn and the creative staff “Gladys Knight and the Pips”. </p></li>
<li><p>And everyone is late, which follows the concept of time introduced by the Accutron pitch and the idea “time for a conversation”, which when you think about it is a way of adding meaning to the normal selling stuff of “swiss made, etc.” It isn’t just a watch but an opportunity to talk, which is the real status they’re selling.</p></li>
<li><p>Don’s plane is late. And I loved the idea of Megan in a Mini and wearing a mini, which brings the pairing into the literal scene. And before that Ken is always late, always hassled. Time again. Little bits like the agent Alan Silver saying they’d “hold off on fixing” Megan’s teeth. There are more. </p></li>
<li><p>Awkward sexual and non-sexual situations. Roger wakes up naked in a room full of naked younger people. And he later gets into bed with 2 but just lies there. Joan’s awkwardness with the guy from the shoe company - and his reference to time he can get home to tuck in his kids. The awkwardness in the first instance coming from her being a woman and his absurd mention of how she must have had trouble keeping that seat open for him. It’s a sexual non-sexual moment or the opposite. Don and Megan don’t have sex the first night and then she’s openly awkward with him “nervous about everything”. Awkwardness about huge console TV Don buys. Awkwardness about her choice of living in the hills - which was cheaper then and more artistic, less a wife choice. Peggy meets Ted awkwardly and even Stan notes it’s more than coffee. Sexual non-sexual. Pete hugs Don in Canter’s Deli, an LA thing to do in a NY deli in LA. Out of place, out of character. Joan takes Prof. Podolski’s asking for something as sexual when he meant information about advertising fee structures. Another sexualized non-sexuality or the opposite. Pete says his realtor Bonnie Whiteside “turns it on” for everyone as he puts his arm around her. Non-sexual sexual? </p></li>
<li><p>I loved when Don reads the bit from Shangri-La about a “little chicken farm”. That’s where he grew up. It wasn’t Shangri-La though maybe it was in some sense. When they wake up naked, she asks “how much time do we have?” And later when asked on the plane how long he’s been married, he says, “Not long enough.”</p></li>
<li><p>More pairing: it’s not just that Peggy deals with the kid Julio about the toilet but it has to come back twice more. I mention this because that is actually an old rule of TV writing, specifically for comedy. Watch a Chuck Lorre show. A joke comes up, repeats in a variation and then in another. Old style writing. And there’s always the time reference: you have to fix it now! It’s too late to drive home. And so on. </p></li>
<li><p>I was thrown by Roger’s scene with his daughter. Margaret forgives him for the exact list of his life: her mother, his stinginess toward her, his lack of involvement with his grandson, his drug/alcohol use. And we never learn why. This is a guy who wakes up in a room full of naked people … and he doesn’t get it. So he goes to sleep in a bed with 2 other people in yet another sexual non-sexual moment. That’s part of another pairing: Roger in that bed, Don in an airplane seat with that woman’s head on his shoulders, more intimacy in that non-sexual sexual moment.</p></li>
<li><p>The scene on the plane is of course the main focus of interest because Don reveals himself. “She knows I’m a terrible husband.” “I really thought I could do it this time.” “I keep wondering have I broken the vessel.” I’m not sure about the wording in that last but it makes sense because she told him about dumping her alcoholic husband’s ashes on Tom Sawyer Island at Disneyland. </p></li>
<li><p>And then they hit us with a hammer: Peggy says everyone here is “just a bunch of hacks”, which is true because Don’s work is being rejected, though we don’t learn that until the next scene. She keeps wanting to do better work, which is really interesting because it’s a shift from wanting to please Don to wanting to do the best work for its own sake. We learn that Don is “making quite a name for” Freddy, that they’re doing work for JWT and that Don has been gone 2 months and is being paid. We then get a joke when Ken tosses Joan her earring and misses by 10 feet because he has an eye patch. Pure physical nonsense. </p></li>
<li><p>And the end: Peggy on her knees crying in despair and loneliness as the organ part of Vanilla Fudge’s version of You Keep Me Hangin’ On (by Holland-Dozier-Holland for The Supremes) and we cut to Don asleep with the TV on and a bottle in front of him, also lonely, also lost and then putting himself out on the terrace in the cold, going cold turkey perhaps. It’s also a reference to the beginning of last season when he was in the paradise of Hawaii but in the Inferno of cheating … now he’s in the cold of being alone, which I take to be a form of purgatory because, as he said last year, you don’t know when it’s warm if you’re in heaven or hell. I note the “preview” snippet had him marking the liquor line on a bottle. I wonder if that refers to his drinking, which would match up well with Freddy quitting the sauce in seasons back. (BTW, I couldn’t remember it was Vanilla Fudge for a while because the vocal by Mark Stein sounds so much like Three Dog Night.)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I don’t have clue where this goes. My take on the overall direction of the show is that Matt Weiner loves his kids, loves his family, and that he sees the changes wrought by the 60’s as essential to making a world in which women can be more completely fulfilled people and men can express their true selves. We’ve gone from a world of surfaces and pretending, from Don so deeply closeted he can’t accept his brother, to Don revealing himself to his children at the end of last season and revealing his failings as a husband to a stranger on a plane. I see that as a good thing. I’m sure Matt does because he would not be able to live and work in the old world of Sterling Cooper. These are positives. As a note, contrast the other scene when a character was brought to his knees: Lane Pryce when his father hit him with a cane because Lane was dating a black girl. Lane was destroyed, killed, by his weird allegiance to that old world … and now Peggy is on her knees crying because she’s unhappy with her life and with what’s going on at work. The shift is again from external to internal. </p>
<p>In the negative, I don’t see what happens at the ad agency … the Chevy is the Vega, which flopped. The work Lou likes is idiotic hackery. If the idea is that Don (or Peggy) takes that agency back, I don’t know why … because I don’t think Matt Weiner likes the general ad world and he knows that ad agencies never fulfilled any form of the 60’s dreams. Maybe Don’s future isn’t there. And I think for story telling purposes a lot of people don’t have happy endings. </p>
<p>But overall, I think Matt identifies more with the kids. His own kid played Glen of course but I think he really wants them to somehow be all right. In terms of age, they’re almost at the age of older siblings.</p>
<p>Ironically, Don and Peggy appear to be in a similar place. Work has always been their saving grace, the knowledge that at least they’re good at their jobs. Now, that’s been taken away from Don by the partners and Peggy by Lou’s being “immune to her charms” aka probable sexism. Heck, Don’s still doing his job vicariously through Freddy even though he doesn’t need the money. As for Lou, I don’t think he’ll last very long, and I don’t think we’ve seen the last of Duck. </p>
<p>Thanks for your post, Lergnom! You’ve given me some new thing to think about last night’s show and the coming season. I wasn’t sure that I’d be that interested in this season, as it’s been so long, but by the end of the episode I was hooked again. Wonderful writing and acting. I can’t wait to find out where this is going.</p>
<p>I tend to think it ends positively overall because Don is grappling with his inner self and I think the creative urge is to reward that because this is what we believe is right. I think those lines spoke on the plane show a level of self-awareness we haven’t seen much of from him. </p>
<p>I’m somewhat confused by Pete. He says he signed up some 4 outlet chain, which is peanuts for a Madison Ave agency. Is he deluded? Is he better than he was? </p>
<p>lergnom, enjoyed your analysis, I’m a newer fan to mad men, and didn’t appreciate the multiple layers. Thanks.
As I watched the show I focused a bit more on the " conversation" aspect of the acutron pitch and slogan.
Culminating with don’s “conversation” on the plane,new
Especially the comment about the woman’s husband " dying of thirst" - such a strange phrase.</p>
<p>Here is an excellent review, too.
<a href=“Unpacking Last Night's Mad Men: Time Zones And Timepieces - Gothamist”>http://gothamist.com/2014/04/14/mad_men_recap.php</a></p>
<p>What a bleak episode. </p>
<p>Sweet, mellow Ken from Vermont - geez, that’s what happens when you take Pete Campbell’s old job.</p>
<p>Don - still lying to everyone, though he’s becoming more truthful with himself. </p>
<p>I’m getting tired of the continuing Sharon Tate=Megan winks from M. Weiner. We get it. </p>
<p>Roger - what the?? Ditto for his daughter.</p>
<p>Series started on Peggy’s first day. Will it end on her last?</p>
<p>We watched this episode again tonight. Picked up a few things: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Don hasn’t told Megan about work. She thinks he’s working at SC&P, says “don’t work too late”. This means he’s keeping up a pretense so she could go to LA, which means he’s sacrificing for her, which means the song “I’m a Man” has more depth because he’s being a man by letting a woman pursue her dreams.</p></li>
<li><p>I didn’t notice Don can’t close the balcony door, which matches with Peggy’s toilet problem. But think about it: Peggy has crap backing up on her, overflowing in her life. It’s a fairly blunt metaphor. The balcony door is more difficult: it won’t close and it lets the NYC cold in, which symbolizes where he is professionally and contrasts with LA, but he goes through it and sits outside in the cold. I contrast that with the scene in an earlier season when Megan brings him Revolver and tells him to put on the last track of the first side, which is Tomorrow Never Knows. Don listens for a short bit and then picks up his drink and walks away into the bedroom. Now he actually went out and sat in the cold. It isn’t a dream like when he was stoned at the party in LA and sees dead PFC Dinkins. He’s in the cold in more ways than one so he goes and sits in it. I thought that somehow this is good. It reminds me of the Don who confessed at the Hershey meeting that he was raised in a whorehouse and the only sweetness he experienced was when one of the girls would buy him a Hershey Bar after he robbed their johns. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>WTH? Since when is Peggy short with her secretary? She was one herself and she knows better! I know both her personal and professional lives are going to hell in a handbasket but still. And Ted is moping - please get those two back together. And what’s with Don skipping out on paying for a meal? He’s still getting “alimony” from SC&P, it’s not like he doesn’t have money. But Sally’s “I love you” made up for it all. Don desperately needed to hear that and he’ll probably be able to live on that for months. He’s seeing that honesty is paying off for him. </p>
<p>I may post a longer description later but it’s the marathon today and I live on the route.</p>
<p>Episode was marked by childish behavior, nearly all by men but mostly about people in power not getting what they want and people without power not getting what they want. Lou’s absurd bleep head statement that “this has nothing to do with me” when Dawn complains she wasn’t there to intercept Sally Draper because she was out buying Lou’s wife the present he forgot to get. Pete complaining about having to follow protocol and speak to GM about signing the S.Cal Chevy dealers. Roger hanging up on him and acting miffed the whole episode. And of course Peggy acting like an idiot throughout. </p>
<p>And the casual mistreatments by people in authority, from Peggy abusing Shirley to Lou to the entire partners’ meeting, to the way Joan is treated (except by Jim Cutler), and so on. It’s also about people trying to get a bit of freedom or change or escape from authority. The kids at Miss Porter’s planning on skipping the cemetery to go shopping. Pete blowing up and telling Ted to think of him as being in NY. </p>
<p>And bits of rewards: Joan and Dawn getting out from under a thumb, with Joan going into Accounts and Dawn now apparently into Joan’s thankless role. I loved the way Dawn and Shirley called each other by the wrong name because, you know, they all look alike. Jim Cutler’s line about Joan’s job: calls for “a lack of concern for being unliked”, which really nails that she’s not only working 2 jobs but that one requires being unliked while the other is the total opposite. </p>
<p>I don’t think any of those ideas was fully developed: it was more like groundwork for the future. As in Bonnie’s terrific speech about sales that aligns her with Pete and teaches him a lesson: after her story about how “an act of God” shows they’re “really against you” she says, “Our fortunes are in other people’s hands and we have to take them.” If that’s not foreshadowing …</p>
<p>The heart of the episode was of course Don repairing his relationship with Sally. And the growing sense in Don that SC&P is not his future. They set that up well: he wakes up at 7:30AM, falls back to sleep until 12:34 and then gets dressed to look right for Dawn to come by and update him … it’s a false front. So he goes to lunch with Wells Rich and runs into McCann Erickson and is “dating” for a job. The symbolism there is rich: Wells Rich Greene was founded by Mary Wells and was a creative shop of the era.</p>
<p>The neat thing is that when Dawn tells Don that Sally was in the office he doesn’t lie but instead finds a way to sit down with her, to talk to her. He wants to know why “you let me lie to you like that” and she says she didn’t want to come there, “what if I run into that woman in the elevator?” and that leads to honest talk where he first says “I didn’t behave well” and then says “I told the truth about myself. I was ashamed.” He confirms it was the actual truth that she knows - we then have to take at face value that he’s actually told her the story of his life. He says “he wanted to be here to fix it?” and admits he doesn’t know how to do that. It’s them talking as father and daughter.</p>
<p>I saw the dine and dash as something they share. It’s a common thing in books and movies to have characters share a moment, often something small, to show a bond. Like Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom peeing together. He leaves a tip, a small gesture that says, “don’t hurt the waitress”, but the act as a whole is that of a dad who is trying to reconnect with his child by being both sincere and goofy, by talking to her as an adult with a brain and enlisting her in a silly prank. </p>
<p>I realized after the episode that I care less and less about SC&P in NY. I think that’s intentional: Don’s story isn’t at SC&P and he’s referred to as “our collective ex-wife who still receives alimony.” Maybe SC&P craters and Don rides in on a white horse but I doubt it. Joan isn’t stuck in her non-office, 2 job role now. Peggy is alienating everyone at work while floundering in anger over the creative idiocy of Lou’s hackery - which leaves her with nothing in her life at all. </p>
<p>Meanwhile in LA, we see Ted always doing paperwork, which to me is a signal that something has to change, that you can’t have a character with his nose buried in work all the time without something going off the rails. And Pete just plain pissed off and only now maybe learning to accept that life sometimes hands you lemons. </p>
<p>I don’t have Lergnom’s gift for the in depth analysis, but I will say one of the things I found repeatedly bothering me was the length of Shirley’s dress (or should I say tunic?). I remember well the mini-dress, but can’t imagine that would fly in a professional environment.</p>
<p>Around that era (when I was in high school) I worked at a large after-school day care program at our recreation center. I do remember a few women coming directly from work to pick up their kids in dresses that were just that short. </p>
<p>The most compelling scenes for me are between Don and Sally. The actress who plays Sally is outstanding. When she said “just tell the truth” she delivered the line with all the layers of meaning that it needed. Sally is really becoming Don’s touchstone – his connection both to his past and to his future – and I love watching them as they find their way to each other.</p>
<p>I think the shortness of Shirley’s dress was a statement: you are meant to look at her and go “wow” and then hear Dawn call her Dawn. The show revels in unveiling sexist and racist assumptions and beliefs. Shirley is beautiful. You can’t help but look at her legs … and people call her Dawn because they all look alike.</p>
<p>The called them micro-minis … one of my professors was in graduate school at that time and she recalled reaching up to write on the chalkboard with her right hand while holding the hem of her dress down with her left. </p>
<p>I really don’t think that Don followed through with the dine and dash. I think he said that as a joke to Sally to create a shared moment of naughtiness and break some of the awkwardness between them. It did seem to help her to relax and open up a bit more. In the end, he puts down enough money to cover their meal.</p>
<p>Don has his faults but I just don’t think he’d ever do anything so cheap and mean as to run out on a restaurant tab. It’s just not his style.</p>
<p>I also saw the scene in the diner the same way.</p>
<p>This article about Dante’s The Divine Comedy- as the ultimate self help book, is relevant background, if like me,you haven’t read it. The author of this article makes the story very contemporary.
Remember Don read The Inferno on the beach? </p>
<p>This last episode had a scene where Peter sat on the couch, lamenting about his life and the intertwining Circles, of angst and despair. This soliloquy reminded me immediately of dantes’s The Inferno.</p>
<p>I wonder if Sally, expressing love, a moment many commented on, is Don’s Beatrice and beacon of hope and salvation. It was a pivotal moment.</p>
<p>This is really relevant article - <a href=“The Ultimate Self-Help Book: Dante's 'Divine Comedy' - WSJ”>http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303663604579503700159096702</a></p>