Also, Peter is basically Don with charisma as the dump stat.
And hey, does anyone find the weekly previews for Mad Men to be among the most useless and uninformative things ever? My wife and I burst into laughter after each one, because it's 30 seconds of non sequitors strung together for no reason. It's not even like they take reaction shots and remove the context - it just seems like someone selected dialogue with a random number generator and cut it together.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Also, Peter is basically Don with charisma as the dump stat.
And hey, does anyone find the weekly previews for Mad Men to be among the most useless and uninformative things ever? My wife and I burst into laughter after each one, because it's 30 seconds of non sequitors strung together for no reason. It's not even like they take reaction shots and remove the context - it just seems like someone selected dialogue with a random number generator and cut it together.
Kindred spirits! We do the same thing. We actually look forward to the previews after each episode just to see if they can keep up the string of sequences that have nothing to do with one another. I think some kind of preview savant creates them just to fuck with viewers.
The thing is that, while Pete tries to be Don, even Don isn't Don. Don Draper is just another unfulfilling product, another illusion of happiness, that he's successfully sold to others.
I mean look at this past episode
and how he crumples when his lover decides she isn't playing along anymore. She's decided to give up the playful fantasy and return home, to her real life, but Don can't do the same because be doesn't have a real life. Everything he's done, the marriage, the kids, the confidence he shows, is the culmination of a series of a calculated, often hollow gestures made under the umbrella of a larger deceit.
And at his core, I think Don still thinks of himself as Dick and feels a degree of detachment from everything that happens to him as Don, which insulates him from risks but also insulates him from the emotional experiences he's apparently searching for. Every good thing happens to someone else, the doppelgänger he invented for himself, not to him.
Don was deliberately sabotaging the relationship, because he wanted to be a good and faithful husband. This, based on his earlier comments about not wanting to be with her. I thought maybe he didn't have the strength to give her up, but he could try to drive her away instead. Except the way he acted after she said she was leaving didn't fit that theory well. I was hoping for some kind of Don Draper Moral Victory, and was disappointed. Not disappointed with the episode, which I thought was good, just disappointed in him.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Also, Peter is basically Don with charisma as the dump stat.
And hey, does anyone find the weekly previews for Mad Men to be among the most useless and uninformative things ever? My wife and I burst into laughter after each one, because it's 30 seconds of non sequitors strung together for no reason. It's not even like they take reaction shots and remove the context - it just seems like someone selected dialogue with a random number generator and cut it together.
Oh man, the random Will Arnett clip just made that.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
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Mike Danger"Diane..."a place both wonderful and strangeRegistered Userregular
Also, Peter is basically Don with charisma as the dump stat.
And hey, does anyone find the weekly previews for Mad Men to be among the most useless and uninformative things ever? My wife and I burst into laughter after each one, because it's 30 seconds of non sequitors strung together for no reason. It's not even like they take reaction shots and remove the context - it just seems like someone selected dialogue with a random number generator and cut it together.
The historical answer that I've heard is "Matthew Weiner hates spoilers and refuses to reveal any plot points before the episode airs". Whether or not there's any truth to that, I've never checked.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Don was deliberately sabotaging the relationship, because he wanted to be a good and faithful husband. This, based on his earlier comments about not wanting to be with her. I thought maybe he didn't have the strength to give her up, but he could try to drive her away instead. Except the way he acted after she said she was leaving didn't fit that theory well. I was hoping for some kind of Don Draper Moral Victory, and was disappointed. Not disappointed with the episode, which I thought was good, just disappointed in him.
I was ascribing somewhat darker motives to Don (last episode spoilers):
Rather than trying to sabotage his affair, it seemed like he was trying to assert control over Sylvia after her husband moved out, and it backfired on him. It seems that Don needs to be in complete control of a relationship (especially since he's lost his previous level of control at work, see for example Peggy leaving), and that his lack of control over Megan once she actually started succeeding at acting is what motivated him to cheat on her.
Of course, my reading of those scenes was also influenced by Jon Hamm reading his lines like something out of "Fifty Shades Of Mad Men".
They are absolutely hilarious. I get the feeling he's mostly trying to convey the tone of the episode and maybe let people know who is gonna be in the next one
"The tone of the next episode will be sort of Mad-Men-y. It will feature the cast of Mad Men."
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Don was deliberately sabotaging the relationship, because he wanted to be a good and faithful husband. This, based on his earlier comments about not wanting to be with her. I thought maybe he didn't have the strength to give her up, but he could try to drive her away instead. Except the way he acted after she said she was leaving didn't fit that theory well. I was hoping for some kind of Don Draper Moral Victory, and was disappointed. Not disappointed with the episode, which I thought was good, just disappointed in him.
I was ascribing somewhat darker motives to Don (last episode spoilers):
Rather than trying to sabotage his affair, it seemed like he was trying to assert control over Sylvia after her husband moved out, and it backfired on him. It seems that Don needs to be in complete control of a relationship (especially since he's lost his previous level of control at work, see for example Peggy leaving), and that his lack of control over Megan once she actually started succeeding at acting is what motivated him to cheat on her.
Of course, my reading of those scenes was also influenced by Jon Hamm reading his lines like something out of "Fifty Shades Of Mad Men".
Don had the opportunity to control Megan completely, though. If he hadn't given her that national commercial last season, she wouldn't have a career now and would be resigned to just being Don's domestic sex toy.
That's not to say he's okay with her success. It's implied that he began cheating immediately after she got the commercial, so it seems like her success did reopen that void in him.
But he enabled that success, so I think there is a degree of self-sabotage to Don's behavior.
I love them. They're hilarious in their randomness and complete lack of information. They come across as AMC forcing Mad Men to have some sort of teaser despite Matt Weiner's secrecy about future plotlines, and Weiner or whoever cuts them just cutting the most ridiculous, unhelpful thing ever.
After this many seasons I've grown to appreciate how the teasers manage to make completely context-free snippets seem tense and important, even though in the context of an episode those moments can (and usually do) mean absolutely nothing. Once I gave up on them actually signifying anything about the next episode, they became much more entertaining, especially once you realize they could just run the exact same teaser after every single episode and it'd be just as fitting.
I'd find them more hilarious if they were more obvious. Like have 15 seconds of intercut characters drinking liquor. Or just saying the first half of words. Or the gaping mouth pauses between words in a dramatic sentence.
edit: I know what I am doing when I get home tonight.
The thing is that, while Pete tries to be Don, even Don isn't Don. Don Draper is just another unfulfilling product, another illusion of happiness, that he's successfully sold to others.
I mean look at this past episode
and how he crumples when his lover decides she isn't playing along anymore. She's decided to give up the playful fantasy and return home, to her real life, but Don can't do the same because be doesn't have a real life. Everything he's done, the marriage, the kids, the confidence he shows, is the culmination of a series of a calculated, often hollow gestures made under the umbrella of a larger deceit.
And at his core, I think Don still thinks of himself as Dick and feels a degree of detachment from everything that happens to him as Don, which insulates him from risks but also insulates him from the emotional experiences he's apparently searching for. Every good thing happens to someone else, the doppelgänger he invented for himself, not to him.
I love them. They're hilarious in their randomness and complete lack of information. They come across as AMC forcing Mad Men to have some sort of teaser despite Matt Weiner's secrecy about future plotlines, and Weiner or whoever cuts them just cutting the most ridiculous, unhelpful thing ever.
My wife and I love them as well.
Compare to Nurse Jackie where the preview is a full plot synopsis and you're left thinking "Great, I guess I don't have to watch it now?"
Yeah those were weird, you literally saw the resolution in the preview.
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Linespider5ALL HAIL KING KILLMONGERRegistered Userregular
So...this might be a dumb, or even purposeless question, but...I kind of want to know where people think Mad Men is going. As a series.
It started out as a refreshingly effective take on a relatively overlooked portion of social strata in a particular part of the twentieth century, and has, over the seasons, readily built a stable of characters who have grown and aged together. Watching Pete chat with Harry this week I really got the sense that the two of them have settled into somewhat of a copacetic relationship, (no doubt helped by the fact that their roles in SCDP don't seem to interfere with eachother ambitions much) and their little back and forth reminded me a bit of Roger and Burt, and I could see the possibility of the future parallels of their careers mimicking Sterling and Cooper.
The show has steadily grown more complicated as well as complex, but the through line of the whole show has also increasingly turned in another direction.
Don Draper-who, obviously, has never really been the shiniest of guys, when you get past the glamor-lose his hold on furthering his own life to the fullest. His efforts become more labored, more halting, and he continues to lose the finesse he once commanded. His affairs, such as they are, have become mundane and pathetic. The people closest to him can see where the mask no longer fits, or are so inordinately blind that they never registered a mask to begin with.
So...as a series, what do you think the end game is? What are we building towards?
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y2jake215certified Flat Birther theoristthe Last Good Boy onlineRegistered Userregular
edited May 2013
This episode has
taken a jarring tonal shift
y2jake215 on
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
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y2jake215certified Flat Birther theoristthe Last Good Boy onlineRegistered Userregular
edited May 2013
My god, underdog Bobby Draper with the line of the series
E: this was one of the funniest episodes I can remember
y2jake215 on
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
I love them. They're hilarious in their randomness and complete lack of information. They come across as AMC forcing Mad Men to have some sort of teaser despite Matt Weiner's secrecy about future plotlines, and Weiner or whoever cuts them just cutting the most ridiculous, unhelpful thing ever.
My wife and I love them as well.
Compare to Nurse Jackie where the preview is a full plot synopsis and you're left thinking "Great, I guess I don't have to watch it now?"
My wife and I just yell out random things we see in the preview. "Next week we see a window." "Next week doors!"
I dislike both Betty and January, so there you go.
I actually don't think January Jones does nearly as bad in Mad Men as some of her other works, but I think the character is now supposed to be unlikeable, even by Mad Men standards. The show seemed like it was trying to make her sympathetic once upon a time, then realized that everyone hated her, and just went with it. Now she seems to mostly exist so bad things can happen to her and we can all laugh.
She's a little like Michelle Rodriguez's character in Lost. (Lost spoilers below)
Lost started out with this character, and it was all, "Look at poor Michelle Rodriguez! She is awesome and yet so tragic! Don't you love her?" And viewers were all, "No, she's a fucking bitch who screws up everything she touches and then blames it on everyone else. Can't you just, like, kill her off or something?" And Lost was like, "Oh. Umm, okay. *Michelle dies*"
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
I've been working my way through the series and I can't tell if I fundamentally dislike Betty Draper, January Jones, or both.
I don't buy into the general notion that January was cast because she is Betty, or Betty was written around January's inherent bitchiness. I think she's putting in a very good performance and there's real meat on that character. On par with Vincent I think, both are playing people you love to hate and that's always a hard thing to get right. As an aside, you can tell she's doing good work because there are other characters who are designed to be the same level of annoyance/hate fuelling but feel like damp squibs because of a poor performance. That guy from Lucky Strike, for example.
I mean, she's not Olivier or anything, and probably a terrible person outside of the show. But credit where credit's due, I think.
Posts
And hey, does anyone find the weekly previews for Mad Men to be among the most useless and uninformative things ever? My wife and I burst into laughter after each one, because it's 30 seconds of non sequitors strung together for no reason. It's not even like they take reaction shots and remove the context - it just seems like someone selected dialogue with a random number generator and cut it together.
Kindred spirits! We do the same thing. We actually look forward to the previews after each episode just to see if they can keep up the string of sequences that have nothing to do with one another. I think some kind of preview savant creates them just to fuck with viewers.
I mean look at this past episode
And at his core, I think Don still thinks of himself as Dick and feels a degree of detachment from everything that happens to him as Don, which insulates him from risks but also insulates him from the emotional experiences he's apparently searching for. Every good thing happens to someone else, the doppelgänger he invented for himself, not to him.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=F9fsxhWvlkQ
The historical answer that I've heard is "Matthew Weiner hates spoilers and refuses to reveal any plot points before the episode airs". Whether or not there's any truth to that, I've never checked.
I was ascribing somewhat darker motives to Don (last episode spoilers):
Of course, my reading of those scenes was also influenced by Jon Hamm reading his lines like something out of "Fifty Shades Of Mad Men".
Don had the opportunity to control Megan completely, though. If he hadn't given her that national commercial last season, she wouldn't have a career now and would be resigned to just being Don's domestic sex toy.
That's not to say he's okay with her success. It's implied that he began cheating immediately after she got the commercial, so it seems like her success did reopen that void in him.
But he enabled that success, so I think there is a degree of self-sabotage to Don's behavior.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
And of course I shed a tear for Salvatore's continued absence.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
We DO have a mad men thread! Guess who made it 5 years ago!
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/70450/mad-men/p1
edit: I know what I am doing when I get home tonight.
"it's my birthday. . ."
Compare to Nurse Jackie where the preview is a full plot synopsis and you're left thinking "Great, I guess I don't have to watch it now?"
It started out as a refreshingly effective take on a relatively overlooked portion of social strata in a particular part of the twentieth century, and has, over the seasons, readily built a stable of characters who have grown and aged together. Watching Pete chat with Harry this week I really got the sense that the two of them have settled into somewhat of a copacetic relationship, (no doubt helped by the fact that their roles in SCDP don't seem to interfere with eachother ambitions much) and their little back and forth reminded me a bit of Roger and Burt, and I could see the possibility of the future parallels of their careers mimicking Sterling and Cooper.
The show has steadily grown more complicated as well as complex, but the through line of the whole show has also increasingly turned in another direction.
So...as a series, what do you think the end game is? What are we building towards?
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
E: this was one of the funniest episodes I can remember
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
Law and Order ≠ Justice
ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
Dat dance.
Best episode of the season?
Or best of the show period.
My wife and I just yell out random things we see in the preview. "Next week we see a window." "Next week doors!"
Magic Online - Bertro
I actually don't think January Jones does nearly as bad in Mad Men as some of her other works, but I think the character is now supposed to be unlikeable, even by Mad Men standards. The show seemed like it was trying to make her sympathetic once upon a time, then realized that everyone hated her, and just went with it. Now she seems to mostly exist so bad things can happen to her and we can all laugh.
She's a little like Michelle Rodriguez's character in Lost. (Lost spoilers below)
I don't buy into the general notion that January was cast because she is Betty, or Betty was written around January's inherent bitchiness. I think she's putting in a very good performance and there's real meat on that character. On par with Vincent I think, both are playing people you love to hate and that's always a hard thing to get right. As an aside, you can tell she's doing good work because there are other characters who are designed to be the same level of annoyance/hate fuelling but feel like damp squibs because of a poor performance. That guy from Lucky Strike, for example.
I mean, she's not Olivier or anything, and probably a terrible person outside of the show. But credit where credit's due, I think.
I know that's not fair.
Whoa, Whoa, Whoa let's not go nuts.
Mannerisms, position in the company. Heck, he even looks like a dark world counterpart.
This shot was hilarious for that very reason.
Also the theories that Weiner killed Roger off screen this week are kind of crazy but make me kind of nervous.