Why the hell don't we have a [Mad Men] thread? (past season SPOILERS)

ElJeffe

Also, Peter is basically Don with charisma as the dump stat.

And hey, does anyone find the weekly previews for Mad Men to be among the most useless and uninformative things ever? My wife and I burst into laughter after each one, because it's 30 seconds of non sequitors strung together for no reason. It's not even like they take reaction shots and remove the context - it just seems like someone selected dialogue with a random number generator and cut it together.

Straygatsby

ElJeffe wrote: »

Also, Peter is basically Don with charisma as the dump stat.

And hey, does anyone find the weekly previews for Mad Men to be among the most useless and uninformative things ever? My wife and I burst into laughter after each one, because it's 30 seconds of non sequitors strung together for no reason. It's not even like they take reaction shots and remove the context - it just seems like someone selected dialogue with a random number generator and cut it together.

Kindred spirits! We do the same thing. We actually look forward to the previews after each episode just to see if they can keep up the string of sequences that have nothing to do with one another. I think some kind of preview savant creates them just to fuck with viewers.

Robos A Go Go

The thing is that, while Pete tries to be Don, even Don isn't Don. Don Draper is just another unfulfilling product, another illusion of happiness, that he's successfully sold to others.

I mean look at this past episode

and how he crumples when his lover decides she isn't playing along anymore. She's decided to give up the playful fantasy and return home, to her real life, but Don can't do the same because be doesn't have a real life. Everything he's done, the marriage, the kids, the confidence he shows, is the culmination of a series of a calculated, often hollow gestures made under the umbrella of a larger deceit.

And at his core, I think Don still thinks of himself as Dick and feels a degree of detachment from everything that happens to him as Don, which insulates him from risks but also insulates him from the emotional experiences he's apparently searching for. Every good thing happens to someone else, the doppelgänger he invented for himself, not to him.

ElJeffe

In this last episode, I was wondering if

Don was deliberately sabotaging the relationship, because he wanted to be a good and faithful husband. This, based on his earlier comments about not wanting to be with her. I thought maybe he didn't have the strength to give her up, but he could try to drive her away instead. Except the way he acted after she said she was leaving didn't fit that theory well. I was hoping for some kind of Don Draper Moral Victory, and was disappointed. Not disappointed with the episode, which I thought was good, just disappointed in him.

KetBra

ElJeffe wrote: »

Also, Peter is basically Don with charisma as the dump stat.

And hey, does anyone find the weekly previews for Mad Men to be among the most useless and uninformative things ever? My wife and I burst into laughter after each one, because it's 30 seconds of non sequitors strung together for no reason. It's not even like they take reaction shots and remove the context - it just seems like someone selected dialogue with a random number generator and cut it together.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=F9fsxhWvlkQ

ElJeffe

Oh man, the random Will Arnett clip just made that.

Mike Danger

ElJeffe wrote: »

Also, Peter is basically Don with charisma as the dump stat.

And hey, does anyone find the weekly previews for Mad Men to be among the most useless and uninformative things ever? My wife and I burst into laughter after each one, because it's 30 seconds of non sequitors strung together for no reason. It's not even like they take reaction shots and remove the context - it just seems like someone selected dialogue with a random number generator and cut it together.

The historical answer that I've heard is "Matthew Weiner hates spoilers and refuses to reveal any plot points before the episode airs". Whether or not there's any truth to that, I've never checked.

ElJeffe

That's actually entirely defensible, if true.

Lawndart

ElJeffe wrote: »

In this last episode, I was wondering if

Don was deliberately sabotaging the relationship, because he wanted to be a good and faithful husband. This, based on his earlier comments about not wanting to be with her. I thought maybe he didn't have the strength to give her up, but he could try to drive her away instead. Except the way he acted after she said she was leaving didn't fit that theory well. I was hoping for some kind of Don Draper Moral Victory, and was disappointed. Not disappointed with the episode, which I thought was good, just disappointed in him.

I was ascribing somewhat darker motives to Don (last episode spoilers):

Rather than trying to sabotage his affair, it seemed like he was trying to assert control over Sylvia after her husband moved out, and it backfired on him. It seems that Don needs to be in complete control of a relationship (especially since he's lost his previous level of control at work, see for example Peggy leaving), and that his lack of control over Megan once she actually started succeeding at acting is what motivated him to cheat on her.

Of course, my reading of those scenes was also influenced by Jon Hamm reading his lines like something out of "Fifty Shades Of Mad Men".

Casual Eddy

They are absolutely hilarious. I get the feeling he's mostly trying to convey the tone of the episode and maybe let people know who is gonna be in the next one

ElJeffe

"The tone of the next episode will be sort of Mad-Men-y. It will feature the cast of Mad Men."

Robos A Go Go

Lawndart wrote: »

ElJeffe wrote: »

In this last episode, I was wondering if

Don was deliberately sabotaging the relationship, because he wanted to be a good and faithful husband. This, based on his earlier comments about not wanting to be with her. I thought maybe he didn't have the strength to give her up, but he could try to drive her away instead. Except the way he acted after she said she was leaving didn't fit that theory well. I was hoping for some kind of Don Draper Moral Victory, and was disappointed. Not disappointed with the episode, which I thought was good, just disappointed in him.

I was ascribing somewhat darker motives to Don (last episode spoilers):

Rather than trying to sabotage his affair, it seemed like he was trying to assert control over Sylvia after her husband moved out, and it backfired on him. It seems that Don needs to be in complete control of a relationship (especially since he's lost his previous level of control at work, see for example Peggy leaving), and that his lack of control over Megan once she actually started succeeding at acting is what motivated him to cheat on her.

Of course, my reading of those scenes was also influenced by Jon Hamm reading his lines like something out of "Fifty Shades Of Mad Men".

Don had the opportunity to control Megan completely, though. If he hadn't given her that national commercial last season, she wouldn't have a career now and would be resigned to just being Don's domestic sex toy.

That's not to say he's okay with her success. It's implied that he began cheating immediately after she got the commercial, so it seems like her success did reopen that void in him.

But he enabled that success, so I think there is a degree of self-sabotage to Don's behavior.

Robos A Go Go

All I get out of the preview is knowing whether or not I'll have to put up with Betty next week.

And of course I shed a tear for Salvatore's continued absence.

NickTheNewbie

y2jake215 wrote: »

It is shameful we didn't previously have a mad men thread. It's a SHAMEFUL SHAMEFUL DAY

We DO have a mad men thread! Guess who made it 5 years ago!

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/70450/mad-men/p1

DiannaoChong

Yeah, count me as another who absolutely hates the teasers.

Captain Tragedy

I love them. They're hilarious in their randomness and complete lack of information. They come across as AMC forcing Mad Men to have some sort of teaser despite Matt Weiner's secrecy about future plotlines, and Weiner or whoever cuts them just cutting the most ridiculous, unhelpful thing ever.

Lawndart

After this many seasons I've grown to appreciate how the teasers manage to make completely context-free snippets seem tense and important, even though in the context of an episode those moments can (and usually do) mean absolutely nothing. Once I gave up on them actually signifying anything about the next episode, they became much more entertaining, especially once you realize they could just run the exact same teaser after every single episode and it'd be just as fitting.

DiannaoChong

I'd find them more hilarious if they were more obvious. Like have 15 seconds of intercut characters drinking liquor. Or just saying the first half of words. Or the gaping mouth pauses between words in a dramatic sentence.

edit: I know what I am doing when I get home tonight.

DasUberEdward

Robos A Go Go wrote: »

The thing is that, while Pete tries to be Don, even Don isn't Don. Don Draper is just another unfulfilling product, another illusion of happiness, that he's successfully sold to others.

I mean look at this past episode

and how he crumples when his lover decides she isn't playing along anymore. She's decided to give up the playful fantasy and return home, to her real life, but Don can't do the same because be doesn't have a real life. Everything he's done, the marriage, the kids, the confidence he shows, is the culmination of a series of a calculated, often hollow gestures made under the umbrella of a larger deceit.

And at his core, I think Don still thinks of himself as Dick and feels a degree of detachment from everything that happens to him as Don, which insulates him from risks but also insulates him from the emotional experiences he's apparently searching for. Every good thing happens to someone else, the doppelgänger he invented for himself, not to him.

"it's my birthday. . ."

ArbitraryDescriptor

Captain Tragedy wrote: »

I love them. They're hilarious in their randomness and complete lack of information. They come across as AMC forcing Mad Men to have some sort of teaser despite Matt Weiner's secrecy about future plotlines, and Weiner or whoever cuts them just cutting the most ridiculous, unhelpful thing ever.

My wife and I love them as well.

Compare to Nurse Jackie where the preview is a full plot synopsis and you're left thinking "Great, I guess I don't have to watch it now?"

DiannaoChong

Yeah those were weird, you literally saw the resolution in the preview.