Mad Men Season 5 running thread

Bonus points for those naming the female vocalist torching the Christmas tune on the jukebox during the bar fencing between 1 and 1A.

As AS noted in last night's piece, if we had more Don/Joan tete a tetes in the show, we wouldn't give a shit about ANYTHING else.

 

The Joan/Don scene was as good as anything the show has done.

I know we talk about Sepinwall a lot here when it comes to TV recapping, but i actually think Mad Men is one of the shows he's just OK at breaking down sometimes.

Some good insight from AV Club's Todd Van Derwerf here.

http://mobile.avclub.com/articles/christmas-waltz,75247/?mobile=true

 

Last night set up the finish of the season quite nicely. Lane is going to be in about 100 feet of deep shit by stealing the money, not revealing it's actually a loan and not forgoing it like the other partners.

And Don's going to be going nuts on the Jaguar presentation after his wife complained that he wasn't passionate about his work.

 

"Try standing by the Young Readers section. That looked intelligent on you before."

Doesn't mean you can't try that at Barnes and Noble this week.

Carry on.

 

I loved how Layne and Pete got their lunch handed to them in the bonus announcement meeting. Hell, after Don's speech I was ready to go write Jaguar copy myself.

 

Yeah, that Jaguar speech made me to run out on the field.

Best line of the night for me:

"You can have me like this."

 

Another thing about Don's "Jaguar" speech: It was a total walkoff. He finished the speech, waved for the creative team to follow him, and just walked out of the office.

 

It says something either about the maturity of this group, or something more disappointing, that nobody has mentioned Harry and the frenzied doggy-style sex with Lakshmi in his office, and the bizarre aftermath, right down to him giving Paul $500 to leave town.

But the Don/Joan thing was clearly the highlight.

And I was positive, up to dread rising in me (I'm telling you, 5 years ago, there was no TV show in the world that could have created that feeling for me) that Don was going to drunk-wreck the Jag, was surprised that he didn't. Which is probably the point.

 

I don't know if it's Sepinwall or Fienberg, but one of them is always saying that any time someone in Mad Men gets in a car, they always fear they're going to wreck.

 

That was Don's, "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" moment.

 

I think nobody's commenting on it because it was weird and confusing. Hot, but weird and confusing. Harry trying to figure out how having sex with him helped her cause reminded me of the rule that the writing is especially bad when the characters are pointing out the problems in your plot.

 

Outstanding chemistry between Joan and Don. One question -- it's either bad eyesight or bad TV, but either way I missed who sent the flowers to Joan? What did the card say? Was it Don, picking up on Joan's line that she used to get flowers (not court papers) in the office? Or was it the guy at the bar after Don left, presumably from a one-night stand?