175 replies to this topic

[Tyler]

RE: last night's episode

Spoiler

I thought Lane's death was as much an admission the show didn't really know what to do with him as anything. All of his moments this season felt out of context and were just there to telegraph his end. Don's reaction to the situation was good, though.

The best moment of the episode might be Betty's smile when she held Sally on the bed. Betty clearly saw it as proof she had won her daughter back from Megan and Don. It was the best (only good?) moment January Jones has had this season.

[Anders]

Tyler, on 04 June 2012 - 10:11 AM, said:

RE: last night's episode

Spoiler

I thought Lane's death was as much an admission the show didn't really know what to do with him as anything. All of his moments this season felt out of context and were just there to telegraph his end. Don's reaction to the situation was good, though.

The best moment of the episode might be Betty's smile when she held Sally on the bed. Betty clearly saw it as proof she had won her daughter back from Megan and Don. It was the best (only good?) moment January Jones has had this season.

I see your point.

Spoiler

I figured Lane was a goner as soon as he forged the cheque occured. (My wife can verify). A man who can't ask others for help with money is not the sort who is going to rebound from the much more massive humiliation that comes when it is revealed.

Quite the episode that makes me very uncomfortable (in a good way) about what's going to happen in the finale next week.

[Ryan H.]

Well, I think we can now properly begin to interpret the title of next week's episode.

I thought the development, whatever else we might say about it, worked as an extension of Lane's character. If you look back at some of the stuff in season four, you get a glimpse at stuff that really seems to lead into last night's episode.

[Tyler]

Ryan H., on 04 June 2012 - 08:39 PM, said:

Well, I think we can now properly begin to interpret the title of next week's episode.

Yeah, seems pretty obvious now.

[andrew_b_welch]

Finally all caught up--and wow...I'm still in shock. Even though I'd come across a few spoilers, I really didn't see things moving in the direction that they did. No real complaints, but

Spoiler

part of me wishes they hadn't shown us Lane's body. Maybe it was the right decision on the creative team's part, but it felt like too much in the moment. I would have preferred if they'd cut the scene at the moment when Don, Roger, and Pete break into his office

. Still, I think I can understand why they didn't. Very excited (and a little scared) about next week's finale.

[Ryan H.]

So what did we think of the finale?

It definitely appeared to be designed more as an epilogue than a slam-bang finish. I thought the focus could have been stronger, and that some sections were a bit heavy-handed, but it did an okay job of wrapping up the season's themes (the choice of music for the closing montage was spectacular).

Overall, I think season five was very, very strong--I love the up-front desperation of this season--but it has admittedly struggled with the more tertiary characters, and that really shone through in the finale.

[Tyler]

I thought it felt anticlimactic, too. It was the best Alexis Bledel has been on the show so far, though that isn't a very high bar. The pound it in, wave and shout, "This is what it means!" approach to symbolism is getting annoying, too.

[M. Leary]

I... enjoyed is the wrong word... this season because it recaptured a very particular sort of dread that drew me into the show during the first season. There is a scene in Midge's apartment in the first season that is basically a drawn out Hopper painting and I like the show best when it recaptures that network despair you can sense beneath all the smoke and bourbon - which is sadly the very shape of Don's attraction to Midge.

And then all the subtle reflection in this season on the Jaguar account points us back that direction. Though Peggy is now freed from the existential mess that is Draper's life. Cue the Kinks.

But I don't do a lot of reading on Mad Men, and one thing I found increasingly alarming this season is that Don Draper doesn't actually look handsome anymore. His face looks like that of a hard drinking adult that has gone through a Draperish tumble through life, and he has lost that chiseled edge that drew everyone to the show in the first place. Am I off here? Are my TV settings off? Or did anyone else notice this?

Edited by M. Leary, 13 June 2012 - 10:31 AM.

[Darren H]

No, you're exactly right, M. I can't tell you how many times during this season I said to Joanna, "Jon Hamm is just better than everyone else." I have to think Don's aging has been by design -- in the storytelling, in the makeup, and most definitely in the performance. In a recent interview, Weiner talked about how Don's pitch to Dow Chemicals was written to be incredibly ugly--grotesque, even--and that he was fascinated by the way Hamm made it that and also a classic Don Draper moment. I was talking to a coworker yesterday about the show's tendency to bludgeon viewers over the head with its themes and symbols. I've always enjoyed that because I put this show in that mid-century American literary world of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, John Cheever, and maybe even Douglas Sirk, but Hamm has a real knack for grounding the expressionistic touches in something real and human. Watching his face age (or maybe "weary" is a better word) is an important part of that.

[M. Leary]

So... for discussion. What is the "phantom"? Given the conversation in which the word emerged. I spent the last few seasons thinking little of the show, but this season was rife with that word. Would like some critical response.

[Tyler]

Watching Vincent Kartheiser play Pete Campbell for 5 seasons, and then tonight discovering he played Connor on Angel is giving me some major actor dissonance.

I'm positive I've looked at this IMDB page before, too. I don't know how that didn't register.

[Ryan H.]

M. Leary, on 15 June 2012 - 10:45 PM, said:

So... for discussion. What is the "phantom"? Given the conversation in which the word emerged. I spent the last few seasons thinking little of the show, but this season was rife with that word. Would like some critical response.

Given the way this episode specifically makes use of the idea--through the literal phantom that haunts Don, the phantom that haunts the office now that Lane is gone, the phantom of Peter Campbell's dream affair, and the phantom of Megan's wished-for-life as an actress--I'm going to say that the phantoms that drive this season, as well as the show in its entirety, are the selves we want to be and the selves we actually are. MAD MEN embedded that idea early on in its revelations about Don Draper's rather melodramatic backstory. This season takes that notion and builds almost every arc around it.

I'm very curious to see how the next two seasons progress.

[Tyler]

Ryan H., on 17 June 2012 - 03:55 PM, said:

I'm very curious to see how the next two seasons progress.

It'll go in a really different direction after they finally reveal Bobby Draper is a Time Lord.

[Tyler]

Model Gita Hall May is suing Mad Men over her image in the opening credits.

[Tyler]

The Draper clan is going to kill us all.




More pictures here.

[Nick Olson]

Tuning in tonight, my A&F friends? I'm pretty excited for its return.

[Ryan H.]

As a MAD MEN devotee, I'll be tuning in. I've been hearing very, very good things about the premiere.

[andrew_b_welch]

Same here. Definitely watching tonight.

[Christian]

i still need to catch up with Season 5. My co-worker, who lent me the first four seasons on DVD, recently told me she'd been too impatient to see Season 5 and had downloaded it on iTunes instead of (before?) it became available on DVD. So she can't loan it to me. I don't have cable or Netflix, so I guess the library's my best bet, although I haven't put a "hold" on the item and suspect it'll be months before a copy comes through.

[Anders]

Oh, man. I can't wait for it.