Mad Men Season 6: Going the wrong way on a one way street

[~ZombieWife~]

I love the drug episodes. I love the wacky episodes. Poor Don, he needs to dazzle Chevy and all he can think of is how to win a girl back.

My only complaint is that we didn't get to see Roger high. WTF? High/drunk Roger is my favorite kind of Roger.

[Tears of Lys]

Yeah. High Roger is fun. High Don is sweaty and desperate.

[~ZombieWife~]

Yeah. High Roger is fun. High Don is sweaty and desperate.

No kidding. I was expecting him to have a heart attack or a stroke.

[Spring Bass]

Wow, that was all kinds of messed up. I loved how it leads you on, thinking Don's got this crazy and probably terrible idea for a Chevy ad, and then you find out he's thinking out some type of feverous pitch to Sylvia. Crazy Don is hilarious, too - I loved seeing them sitting there, and seeing Don run around them before stopping and telling them about the "darkness". Awesome. How often have we seen Don run?

I don't know what else to think about it yet.

EDIT: I loved Bobby Draper leaning over to Sally and saying in all serious, "Are we negroes?"

[PhoenixFlame]

That con lady was the scariest thing I've ever seen on Mad Men.

[delete this account pls]

Yeah, I knew for sure that it was speed when Kenny did his hilarious tap dancing speech because a friend of mine on speed did almost the exact same thing once, except he was popping and locking (seriously, my friend was actually explaining to everyone what his job was while dancing, after telling us that he didn't need a taxi to get home, he could just run the 40 km or so and save himself the cash and oh, he could carry his girlfriend too if she couldnt keep up)

Very weird episode. I don't think they quite pulled it off, but it sure was very funny.

[Rhom]

Betty changed her hair back to blonde and we didn't see it on screen? The change to black was a big moment and now her character has gone backwards with no explanation?

EDIT: I loved Bobby Draper leaning over to Sally and saying in all serious, "Are we negroes?"

My favorite part too.

[Spring Bass]

It's interesting that Don's now basically given up on the entire reason he went for the merger with Chaough in the first place (the official reason, at least - not the real "change the conversation/situation compulsion" reason). He claims to no longer give a shit about Chevy.

[Rhom]

It's interesting that Don's now basically given up on the entire reason he went for the merger with Chaough in the first place (the official reason, at least - not the real "change the conversation/situation compulsion" reason). He claims to no longer give a shit about Chevy.

I thought that as well. I also think its interesting that in the "Previously on Mad Men" clips they used the line "For the record, if this doesn't work; I was against it." And then the episode ends with both of them staring at Don as he walks off.

I have found that the "previously" bits really help frame the show. With all the disjointed pieces they put together, it helps other parts make connections that I might not have drawn. Before this episode there was the scene with Joan selling herself and the part with the merger; why the Joan part was important really made no sense to me until the end of the episode when Don draws his whorehouse comparison.

Also, I know that Blaine and others explained a bit about the merger last week; but I'm continuing to be more and more confused about what exactly they gained from it. They merged because Chevy would want a "big" firm, but then they immediately start firing employees and dropping conflicting clients. So other than increasing the number of partners, how exactly did they get substantially bigger?

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

Well their creative dept got almost twice as big. The pair of writers, Peggy, and Ted added to Stan, Don, Ginsburg, the older lady and the other guy (both of whom seem to have been fired). Haven't seen a lot other than that admittedly.

They even mentioned it in the episode... why not hire more? There's no reason not to. Big clients need big support. They shitcanned half the office when they lost Lucky Strike.

I think Betty is finally out of the fat suit, though they dressed her in very unflattering clothes to make Jones seem bigger than she is.

I thought this episode was all over the place. Don bangs one of the hookers and gets beaten for it, which might help explain the roots of his self-loathing a bit more, while a black woman claims to be his mother and robs him? Cutler, who seemed a nice enough guy, is a sometime-druggy who doesn't seem to care at all that his ex-business partner has died and is more than happy to watch Stan get it on in his office.

Interesting that they chose to skip right over RFK. I guess one assassination in the season was enough to focus on.

[Spring Bass]

I think the idea of the merger is that it gave them greater overall billings, and thus greater revenue in order to survive the gauntlet that GM is making them go through.

[Tears of Lys]

Oh, the hoops. Yes. Living in or around Detroit, you can't help but know how suppliers are put through the wringer by the Big Three. It really rang true that SCDP, et al., were running around like rats in a maze (speeding or not.)

[Rockroi]

So, just popping in here. Did not like the episode.

Last season they had the episode where Roger takes acid. And everyone thought it was brilliant. Critics, writers, everyone on this board etc. Everyone, that is, except me. I thought it was a cheap thrill-ride where you do not have to follow any rules becauyse LSD frees you from such constraints. Now, my original opinion has changed somewhat, (I found Roger's "break-up" scene with his wife to be very strong and helps justify the prior 10 minutes of WTF?), BUT- I still find the "insert drug craziness here" brand of story-telling to be lazy, void of substance and utterly pointless.

And so then we had last night. Yes, its AWESOME that Ken Cosgrove can tap dance, but does that do anything for the story? Is there anything that actually happened outside the "trippyness" of the drug-enduced acceleration?

I will say that Peggy was terriffic. But apart from that, for an episode driven by speed, it was largely barren. No Joan, no hardly any Pete, no Bert, hardly any Roger, etc. It was mostly Don acting really F-ed up for 48 minutes, intersperced with memories of his horrible childhood (which worked, srangely enough). But did we need the vapid inanity of the drugs to get us there?

I do not believe so. I think the drugs are an excuse to be "hip, man"; to "not play by the rules!" and tell a really warped story that does not seem anything like a story. I mean, at the end of everything, what did we gain? Even Don's last line seems to indicate that we are all wasting our time- "Talk to me in 1970 when they want to make an ad."

Okay... but then why did we pay such close attention here in 1968?

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

I thought they were pretty clear about the reason for the merger in the episode they did it - they wanted to be a bigger ad company because the major companies hire bigger ad agencies when they want to advertise. It's about the perception of size and also about the ability to have enough extra hands floating around to make it seem like the big companies are being personally serviced (like with Ken traveling to Detroit every week). It's not about GM or any one company, it's about putting them in a league to compete on equal footing with the big boys of the advertising world.

As for this episode - didn't like it. There were some amusing bits (Ken's tap dance was hilarious) and nice character beats (Peggy's more-gentle-than-he-deserved rejection of Stan) but overall, I think Don's story was a big miss and the drug angle was more gimmicky than enlightening (the opposite of what I felt about Roger's acid trip last season, which I quite liked). Personally, I'm not a huge fan of the young Don flashbacks and they were by far my least favorite part of this episode and I don't think they really told us anything about his character that we didn't already know. Don's last line of the episode was both baffling on a character level and a bit too "on the nose" as a bit of metatextual commentary.

[Rhom]

I thought this episode was all over the place. Don bangs one of the hookers and gets beaten for it, which might help explain the roots of his self-loathing a bit more, while a black woman claims to be his mother and robs him? Cutler, who seemed a nice enough guy, is a sometime-druggy who doesn't seem to care at all that his ex-business partner has died and is more than happy to watch Stan get it on in his office... WITH HIS DECEASED PARTNER'S DAUGHTER

Added a little bit that I thought was relevant. :lol:

Interesting that they chose to skip right over RFK. I guess one assassination in the season was enough to focus on.

Well, they didn't exactly completely skip over it. They closed last week with it.

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

Right, but a single mention. Granted I wasn't alive in 1968 but I would've thought the event had a bigger impact than that.

And that weird chick was Gleason's daughter?? I totally missed that!

[Mlle. Zabzie]

I liked the episode overall, though the time gaps and dreamlike quality made it hard to follow. "The Crash" is perfect. It began and ended with literal crashes and every step along the way had some sort of juxtaposition.

It's hard for me to formulate a coherent reaction to an incoherent ep, but:

First of all, the Grandma Ida scenes were terrifying. Fabulous acting from everyone involved. And there was a crash - expectations v. reality. Betty's reactions were somewhat restrained, I thought. I know Henry kept saying "not the place", but I might have been physically assaulting Megan and Don at that point.

Did you catch that they still don't have a name for the merged entity??

Ken Cosgrove soft shoe!

Peggy and Stan! (She was less dismissive than I thought she might be, actually).

Jim Cutler is a dirty old man!

Don may have had an epiphany! (Not sure of what kind and I don't think it will make him a kinder, gentler, better person).