Mad Men Season 5 running thread

I think it was accurate, but it felt incomplete for the sake of the show. She's been basically the second main character for however many years the show has been on, and her exit felt unceremonious to me, even though accurate.

 

Recently starred in Bobcat Goldthwait's movie God Bless America.

 

You forgot the hottest conquest of all ... Joy in L.A.

 

My guess is that Sally finding out about Anna is the token mention we get this season. You can only tease "OMG, Don is going to get caught!" so many times before it becomes meaningless or he has to actually get caught, which would end the show.

 

Until Allison and Megan, he had no interest in his secretaries. Remember how pissed he got at Peggy in the first episode of the first season for coming onto him? They established that pretty early.

 

Of course, the hottie in the desert with convertible, forgot about her. I do recall their dinnertime conversation.

Joy: Have you had Mexican food before?
Don: No.

Of course he hadn't. It was 1961. There weren't any tacos in Ossining.

 

I believe last season Don blacked out and nailed the diner waitress, who called him Dick. Also, Betty was some kind of model, was it a hand model?

 

According to this site...

http://images.tvtome.com/tv/images/genie_images/story/2012_usa/m/madmen_draper_women_final_large.jpg

 

That's up until this season, but doesn't change the number.

 

I miss Midge Daniels.

 

This is a great, great comment on the AV Club about VanDerWerf's theory that S5 is secretly about "writing for a television show." It slaps down that theory pretty good, and gets right to the heart of what MM is really about, and I would argue, why all this stuff about a "BIG REVEAL!" kind of misses the point. MM is really about the fact that we're all hiding something, that we all put on a facade, and that by telling our own story, we're essentially "selling" our own product.


If "Mad Men" was a show about writing television, it would be a shitty show. There's a place on television for inside-baseball commentary about that process, and it's called "Episodes." It's not bad, but it's not "Mad Men." I kind of understand why somebody who writes about TV would start to see most TV shows as being about TV, but I wouldn't bother watching this if I really thought Weiner was shooting that low.

I'll grant, to some extent, the process of generating slogans and jingles on this show may more closely resemble the process of writing saucy quips for Roger Sterling than the actual hack-work that produces Mohawk Airlines ad copy, but beyond that minor conceit, I don't really think this is a show about writing television.

"Mad Men" is one of the finest works of long-form fiction created so far in the 21st century, and over five seasons it's explored a single core theme in a number of different ways. This is a show about the keeping of secrets and the distortion of appearances. Every character on this show has some outward facade that masks some secret shame or insecurity. They're all lying to each other and to the world and to themselves.

Salvatore was secretly gay. Peggy has her secret baby. Roger concealed the loss of Lucky Strike from his partners. Lane concealed his embezzlement. Don's whole persona is manufactured. The iconic moments of this show are "You won't believe how much this never happened" and Don stepping out of his office perfectly coiffed after his near breakdown in Season 4.

Even the smaller arcs reinforce the theme. Ken Cosgrove creates Ben Hargrove to conceal his side-gig as a sci-fi writer; he's manufactured a second identity the way Dick Whitman manufactured Don Draper. Harry Crane can't tell Paul Kinsey the truth about his script or his girlfriend, so he tells him he's got talent and he buys him a bus ticket to California.

And, like Don, everyone is reinventing and rebranding themselves. Peggy writes "copy chief" on the napkin in her interview with Cheogh. Roger pretends he's had a spiritual awakening on acid as an easy way out of his marriage, but he's clearly the same old Roger. Harry is trying to transform from a slovenly fuck-up into a suave Hollywood insider. Sally Draper is trying on miniskirts and go-go boots. Megan thinks she's an actress. Paul Kinsey turned from an ad-man into a Hari-Krishna, and then decided to turn from a Hari-Krishna into a Star Trek writer. When he sat there in his robe and topknot and told Harry he was faking it, that was a quintessential "Mad Men" moment.

Through its various plot arcs, the show explores the characters' secrets in various ways. We discover who these people are by observing the versions of themselves they manufacture, by learning the squalid truths the lies cover up, and by seeing how these people respond when they face exposure.

Lane Pryce was not consumed by the monstrous SCDP. He died of his own pride. He couldn't admit his financial problems to his partners, so he embezzled. He found it easier to kill himself than to resign from the partnership and admit his failure to his wife. Lane's manufactured identity was cool pragmatism and control, and underneath it, he was neurotic and insolvent. And unlike Don, who is ready to walk away from everything, Lane couldn't live without his lies. That's why he killed himself.

 

That's a great way to encapsulate the show's main theme.