Mad Men

Springbok_sl said:

Decent, but seemed to drag in places.Lots and lots of talking.

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lolwut?

Wtf was the preview for next week. It was like 15 clips of half sentences with no context

Johnny Football is so awesome he made the Mad Men writers put in a reference to an A&M victory over Alabama.

I really liked Betty in this. Her private conversation to her husband about the violinist was great.

for those of us who torrent this show, apparently the torrent is missing the last 3-4 minutes where its revealed don is fucking the doctors wife and has been for a while. yikes.

loved all the shrink scenes, great roger stuff. also roger breaking down over the shoeshine kit, not really a moment of sadness for the shoeshine guy but roger realizing his death will be even more pathetic, his daughter just sees him as a checkbook and he has nobody who will truly miss him.

I didn't realize the importance of the lighter until I read some other posts elsewhere, it was the one that set off the explosions that killed the real Don Draper and allowed Dick to become Don. Losing that to a soldier who says he wants to be more like Don (but will probably die in Vietnam, the real Don was married too) really shook him up.

http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-wat...the-other-side

Guess he's decided he needs a suicide and a Pete beatdown per episode


This week's was pretty good but season premiers are always like that where the majority is just catching you up on what has been going on with the various character's lives while the audience was gone so they're never my favorite. I see quite a few storylines shaping up that I'm interested to see how they evolve. Mainly the Betty storyline and more backstory/shrink time with Roger.

Generally I watch the show on the DVR but I watched it live last night. I noticed it didn't end until around 11:05 EST. So no clue if my DVR would have cut it off as well.

Agraza_sl said:

I really liked Betty in this. Her private conversation to her husband about the violinist was great.

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That tripped me out, that was so unBetty. "I'll hold her down if you want to rape her. You can stuff a rag in her mouth so no one can hear" whoa... fat Betty is a fuckin freak.

It was a great episode. I loved getting more Peggy. I also loved reading the review on yahoo today where the reviewer just could not understand basically anything in the episode.

chaos_sl said:

That tripped me out, that was so unBetty. "I'll hold her down if you want to rape her. You can stuff a rag in her mouth so no one can hear" whoa... fat Betty is a fuckin freak.

It was a great episode. I loved getting more Peggy. I also loved reading the review on yahoo today where the reviewer just could not understand basically anything in the episode.

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I think this Betty is just more comfortable than the one with Don. Betty has always shown signs of being a little disturbed. They threw a lot of subtle symbolism at us that she might have been abused by her father...and I think that has given rise to both her sexual fetishes and relationship/emotional quirks(IE I want it all the time, Don--from Season 1/2, or giving her hair and the odd relationship with Glen), to also her really dark humor about sex and how she correlated power through sex. (Her way of "evening the score" by sleeping with a stranger.)

It was amazing though how he took something "genuine", as in with Betty's odd humor, and made it feel alien to us (By being such a shock). This episode was all about that--Everything else was done perfectly to kind of give an "odd" or "alien" feeling to the normal workings of the show. The radical shift in styles/clothes, as well as the huge shifts in relationships and personalities were pretty jarring--and I think as that article linked above mentions, that was all intended. This episode was just ridiculously full of death and "false rebirth" symbolism--everyone is leading a "fake" life, everyone is reborn without actually changing.

I particularly loved the scene where now Megan is literally being referred to by a made up, fake name. It really hits home that Don's in the same relationship he was before, with someone he doesn't really know (Because of her large shifts in character during last season). He's gone through a metamorphosis and ended up in the exact same life. His realization of this is even happening in the same way--he's reading a series of poems about someone going through pain/destruction to achieve a new state (Meditations, I haven't read it, but supposedly that's what it's about vs Inferno)---he's in a warm, light filled place, smoking weed (California vs Hawaii) and he's confronted with death (Heart Attack vs Cancer).

Yeah. It was top notch.

I didn't think they COULD double down on Pete being a complete douchebag, but by god they proved me completely wrong. The Betty shit was hardcore. When betty isn't being a barbie doll, she's kinda fucked up.

I liked Pete. What did he do that stood out?

The new accounts guy that sent the catering is interesting. I'm curious if he's a throwaway or if he becomes important.

Oh, I liked him too. But he was being a complete jackass to Don in every scene we saw him in. Just these smarmy not-so-subtle not-so-witty insults. It was the equivalent of flicking boogers at Don whenever they were in the same room.

I half expected Don to smack him or something. Not like a Lane style beatdown, but a "friendly" pat upside his head. But Don was just like "Ehh. It's another day at the office!"

Classic Pete!

Lithose_sl said:

It was amazing though how he took something "genuine", as in with Betty's odd humor, and made it feel alien to us (By being such a shock). This episode was all about that--Everything else was done perfectly to kind of give an "odd" or "alien" feeling to the normal workings of the show. The radical shift in styles/clothes, as well as the huge shifts in relationships and personalities were pretty jarring--and I think as that article linked above mentions, that was all intended. This episode was just ridiculously full of death and "false rebirth" symbolism--everyone is leading a "fake" life, everyone is reborn without actually changing.

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This, in particular, is what I picked up from the episode. Nobody changes. They change on the surface, but they are still the same person. Don is still Don, even after his "experience" in Hawaii or marrying Megan or whatever. Betty is still Betty even with new hair and a few pounds. The office changes, styles change, but their identity remains constant.

Iannis_sl said:

Oh, I liked him too. But he was being a complete jackass to Don in every scene we saw him in. Just these smarmy not-so-subtle not-so-witty insults. It was the equivalent of flicking boogers at Don whenever they were in the same room.

I half expected Don to smack him or something. Not like a Lane style beatdown, but a "friendly" pat upside his head. But Don was just like "Ehh. It's another day at the office!"

Classic Pete!

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The funeral had me rolling. "I'm going to watch from over here."

chaos_sl said:

This, in particular, is what I picked up from the episode. Nobody changes. They change on the surface, but they are still the same person. Don is still Don, even after his "experience" in Hawaii or marrying Megan or whatever. Betty is still Betty even with new hair and a few pounds. The office changes, styles change, but their identity remains constant.

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Which is obviously setting up a lot of how this season is going to go. They're all slowly realizing that the big changes they made (most of them, last season) haven't really changed anything in their lives. They're all just repeating the same cycles they tried so hard to break out of.

The whole sequence with Peggy felt especially familiar to me, down to her giving away her sandwich. I really wouldn't be surprised to learn that her scenes last night were just her replacing Don from earlier episodes, since that's obviously what they were trying to project.

chaos_sl said:

The funeral had me rolling. "I'm going to watch from over here."

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Best line of the night was Roger talking to his ex-wife about Don throwing up, saying, "Eh, he was just saying what we were all thinking."