Mad Men Season 5 running thread

Roger's had it his way, practically his whole life.

It gets awkward when you keep trying to play your life hand that way when you're simply not pulling your weight in your current office environment.

 

Roger is the kind of guy who cracks jokes about everything, including race, religion, etc., that's one of his flaws. But I don't see him as somebody who resents or hates anyone because of the color of their skin. Like you said, a product of his time. When it comes down to it he really has no problem hiring a female or Jewish copy writer or a black secretary if they can do the job.

 

I hear what you're saying, but he didn't make those hires.

I'm sure Wifey had some pillow input on Don's latest secretarial hire.

And Gins was Peggy's, with Don't nod of approval. You could see Don was impressed with
the kid's book.

 

Then again, he did marry a Jew ...

 

I'm not saying he did the interviews and made the hires, but his name is on the door. He's not putting up a fight or bothered by his company becoming more diverse. In fact, in a moment of seriousness he admitted he sees the value in it.

 

Yep . . . remember hearing that remark . . .

 

The only real fight Roger ever put up over race was when they were trying to get Honda's business is the Chrysanthemum and The Sword. He's still furious about the Japanese over WWII.

Pete: "These are not the same people."
Roger: "How can that be? I'm the same people!"

 

* Awesome to see Bert Cooper asserting his authority. Early in the episode, he's lounging around without his shoes on, and he looked like the most irrelevant bigwig in television history. Two acts later, he's giving Don the business about letting his work slip. The old man still notices everything.

* Megan can be a brat, but she's a brat with substance. Perhaps just still a little immature with how she handles her emotions. She's way more than Don bargained for when he picked her over Dr. Miller.

* I like how someone said Roger is a tomcat who is otherwise a good person. That's interesting. Between Tiger Woods, Jesse James, and some other celebrity philanderers, adultery has basically become one of society's most stigmatizing behaviors. I never condone it, but we have a society where there is a lot of pressure to marry, even though not everyone's wired that way. The result is twice-married guys like Roger Sterling, who would probably be considered a pretty stand-up guy if he didn't live in the most puritanical nation in the Western world.

 

Like the Sterling character, of course, but he remains a privileged suit who can't face the music squarely. His handling of the American Tobacco kerfluffle was childish.

 

Here's my prediction - Megan cannot have children and she has kept this secret from Don. This secret will be the cause of a rift between the two - a rift that is cannot be overcome will lead to them divorcing. And if it is a messy divorce then Megan sharing Don's secret could be the end of the firm.

 

I don't doubt it could be the end of them, but is it necessarily a secret? Recall that in a car ride a few episodes ago, he said, "Let's make a baby." Her response: "You know that's impossible."

 

Did she say "you know" before "that's impossible"? I didn't rewatch the episode but I got the idea that it could be something that she was hiding from Don.