Official Mad Men Season 5 Thread - Episode - 13 - "The Phantom" 6/10 10pm - Season Finale

[hybridsoldier23]

Originally Posted by Born illa

Megan's lack of mass

Fixed.

 

[krazychino]

Originally Posted by Big J 33

Funny thing is, this episode could have been total garbage and my anticipation wouldn't even allow me to dislike it

Overall, I thought it was a great episode. Other than Betty, we pretty much got a glimpse of what everyone's been doing and how things have changed, or not changed. I love the show opened and closed with the protests and all of the black applicants. Good to see that race will play a role this season.

Probably the most interesting thing about Don this episode was when Peggy said, "I don't recognize him, he's kind and patient". Obviously referring to his lack of intensity at the meeting, but it's interesting to see what Don will be doing this season. He's finally getting older and that's a concern, and we'll see if he focuses less on work and more on Megan. Speaking of her.. I didn't like her last season, but after I re-watched it I really became a fan. Her song and dance was equal parts ridiculous and sexy

Her power in the relationship will be something to pay attention too.. like when she whistled at Don for him to come

I was really glad to see she called him **** which means Don told her about his past.

Roger vs. Pete might be one of the best things this show has done.. I'm calling it early

Roger was hilarious this episode, after Megan's song his line to his wife "Why don't you sing like that?" and her reply "why don't you look like him"

Then when he joked about the song to Don.. when he saw Joan and the baby and said "there's my baby".. him having 1100 dollars in cash on him to give to Harry.. dude was on fire.

Pete's transformation has been really good, too. He's more like Don in the first season, taking the train in, wife and baby at home, focused on work. The back and forth with Roger was great, especially when he tricked Roger to showing up at 6am at a fake meeting. They've butted heads in the past, but he and Roger will probably get into a fist fight at some point this season.

Even Harry was awesome this episode. He's still a creep and idiot.. I was dying when Stan (the art guy) got Harry to keep talking about what he would do to Megan

I wrote a lot

^ Everything he said...

The dialogue between Harry and Roger had me in tears...  Both of them are such fools.

 

[weaponry expert]

Is it me or is every scene with Cooper just hilarious? 
His entire role in the agency is just comedy considering how it began. He doesn't even do #%+!, he just be chillin. 

When he asked when the partner meeting was going to start... 

 And then him trying to get an office like "Since we're just handing out offices" 

 

[big j 33]

Cooper is a really underrated character. When he yelled out at the party "Did you buy him a pony?" and how he manages to just hang out and fit in wherever.

 

[wildmoodswings]

Good summary, Big J.

Roger is the king of pretentious quips.  

You can see Joan is not Megan's biggest fan, by the comment she made to the secretary upon her entrance, and the joke she made with Peggy in season four's finale, that Megan may become a copyrighter after she learned of Don's proposal.

Great episode. 

 

[Maximus Meridius]

Damn forgot to set the DVR.

 

[flasheightzero]

can't get into this show, all their problems are so banal, it's like the ultimate in first world problems. i can see the appeal, but subjectively not for me

also, peggy's supposed to be from brooklyn right? she talks like she's from la. not a single new york accent in this show

 

[snuks5]

After about 17 months off, it was a good episode to kick off the new season.

 

[|A-Man|]

Damn Big J, ask and thou shall receive. I particularly remember your post about race being more of an issue on the show and just like that it's in the premiere. Might even get a black cast member out of it.

This Megan chick came off well with how she's adjusting and coming to realize things about Don and the rest of the staff. Was the main thing I was unsure of how that would work. She's bit of a freak too

but

@ how her body is shaped. Wasn't sure he was gonna tell her his real name either.

@ Pete making Rog go to SI at 6am.

Really liked the premiere.

 

[big j 33]

Interview with the director about the premiere in the spoiler. Link here

Also in the spoiler is Chuck Klosterman of Grantland on the new Don Draper. Link here

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler [+]

Spoiler

"Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner is famously tight-lipped about what's happening on the show before it airs, but he was willing to talk to me about the events of the season 5 premiere (which I reviewed here), provided I posted the interview the morning after it aired. So here's Weiner discussing why the season is set when it's set, why not every character appeared in the premiere, and more, all coming up just as soon as we all go water skiing together... 

Why set the season now? I know you choose the setting more on what's going with the characters than what happened historically, so what's happening in Don's life about nine months after "Tomorrowland" that made this the good time to return? 

It's about nine months, that's right. I felt I wanted to come back after he was married and see what the dynamic of his life was, how he had integrated Megan into his life at work and how their relationship was working with work. It felt like Joan would have had the baby already. That just seemed like the best place in the story to come back. 

Did the length of the hiatus — and Kiernan (Shipka) growing like a weed — give you any pause on making the in-show gap shorter than the real-life gap?

I went to work last May, so that much time did not pass for me. We were shooting in August. It really was a little bit more than normal, not much. I don't even worry about that. Kiernan does continue to grow, and I keep that in mind, but Sally is continuing to grow. She hasn't outgrown Sally yet. The only real-world thing I had to deal with was January's pregnancy, and how much we could use her.

So was Betty not in this episode because of January's pregnancy, or because you wanted to focus in the return on the new Mrs. Draper? 

There's plenty of story to tell with Betty in relation to the new Mrs. Draper. We actually shot out of order, and by the time we got there, she wasn't really available. We shot stuff with her earlier that we feathered in to other episodes. I like to dole the story out in pieces. I don't want to rush into something just to get it over with. I hate the idea of just "checking in" on everybody. I want there to be story.

The premiere opens with a civil rights protest — 

That story about Young & Rubicam was in the New York Times. It's a real story. All that dialogue is from the New York TImes article: "They call us savages," all of that. I just loved it. I felt like there was a certain amount, that they were not taking any of this seriously, and had contempt for it, and that frat boy atmosphere. It's not our agency but not that different, and whether they like it or not, that is coming into their world. Completely the same spirit of frat boy disdain, lack of seriousness, about something that's very serious for people, that's how it entered their lives.  Everybody thinks that there's this solemn call to attention of We Shall Overcome and the world is so unjust, and that's how change is made, but at the time, people were not taking it seriously, they were behaving badly, and that's what I love. It's a comeuppance. And it's the way things happened. 

Well, you've talked in the past that the civil rights strugle hasn't impacted the character's lives all that much yet because people in their socio-economic position wouldn't have been touched by it all that much earlier. Are we at a point now where even they can't avoid it? 

You''ll have to see. You'll see that it has so far. It did impact their lives. Paul went down for the voter registration. I am not doing a history lesson. I am looking at the lives of the people on Madison Avenue. If you look back at this period, you'd think every conversation would be about the war and economy, and it's not. Life is going on as it should. It doesn't mean change isn't happening, and that these people aren't going to wake up in five years to realize that the world has become incredibly different from what they're accustomed to.

We find out that Don has told Megan at least something about **** Whitman. Exactly how much does she know? 

I just want the audience to know that he's told her that that exists and he's told her about his childhood. If they were expecting for the tension of the season to be about him keeping a secret from her the way he did from Betty, it's not going to happen. How much he's told her? You can see from the judgment and their conversation. It's everything. She jokes about it. 

It's a different relationship. It's obviously more straightforward and honest. There are a couple of things Don says that should shock you, and one is that this woman knows more about him than anyone else. 

But he told Faye about ****, too, and you've said that this is one of the reasons he chose Megan instead — that he wanted someone who wasn't touched by that knowledge. What changed his mind? 

We'll have to see. Something about telling Megan did not scare him. I think you can see it symbolized by that white carpeting, but he is trying to make his life with her. It's integrated into the office, and that's complex, but he's trying to make his life with her, and that requires a new level of intimacy, beyond the relationship with the people at work. She's both places, which is part of the story, but I love the idea that "I don't want those people in my house. I don't want them to see what we have. I like locking the door and having you flash me, I don't need them to see your youthful sexuality." 

When last we saw Bert Cooper, he was leaving the agency in a huff over Don's New York Times ad, vowing never to return. Now, he's just back. Is this something you intend to explain later, or do you just trust that this one's pretty easy for the audience to fill in the blanks? 

I think so. I do not feel bad, or that it's a hanging thread, that that man would have just come back. I think it's completely within character. If anything, he is one of the most capricious people in the show. That fits the behavior. 

In the premiere, we see that there are some people like Pete and Peggy who are continuing to work very hard, and then others who are just lurking around. What kind of shape is the agency in at this point?   

I think you can always judge it by the amount of typing and phones ringing you hear. There's a very specific statement made by Ken about where they are. We see that Pete is dissatisfied despite their stability. To me, the question is about ambition, and the most important thing is to look at how much work Don is doing — or how much he isn't. Pete says, "You have nothing on your schedule," and Don says to Megan, "I don't care about work." I don't think we expected those words to come out of his mouth, whether or not he actually means them. 

Yeah, the Don from "Tomorrowland" on seems very different from the man we got to know earlier.    

I guess so, yeah. We've had this conversation many times. To me, one of the defining truths about the human condition is we are always in the process of trying to change. And one of the endearing things about Don is that despite his behavior, he is trying to be a better person. He got very far last year, and then had to write the Lucky Strike letter to save it, and part of it comes off as business genius and part as an act of real selfishness. This relationship may be selfish, but maybe it's time for him to focus on that part of his life. 
Grantland

[h1][/h1]A New Don
Making sense of the radically changed Don Draper[h3][/h3]

Television has certain advantages over film, but few are more meaningful than the flexibility provided by time. Because their duration is open-ended, TV shows can radically modify secondary characters to better serve whatever narrative path they decide to pursue. There's a long tradition of this1 (especially in soap operas), and it usually involves a mild antagonist evolving into a sympathetic protagonist (Ed Helms onThe Office is the easiest present-tense example). When this happens gradually, only thesuperviewers notice, particularly if the tweaks occur on the periphery of the story. A casual consumer might not notice at all. However, just about everyone notices when a program'smain character changes, because that's rare.2 It transforms the show in totality. And this is why most people thinking and writing about Mad Men this morning are collectively wondering, What in the hell is going on with Don Draper?
The Draper in last night's fifth-season premiere is not the man we are supposed to know. This man walks into work late and seems disconnected from his job. This man chases a woman home from the office when she gets unjustifiably upset about a surprise party he never wanted. He is uninterested in the life he created; the job that once defined his ethos is now an empty, unsatisfying nuisance. He seems closer to the drunken plagiarist who stole the phrase "The cure for the common breakfast" and pitched it to Life cereal, except now he's sober. He's only drunk on apathy.

This being the case, asking "What's going on with Don Draper?" seems like a reasonable query. We've only seen one episode of the new season, so that answer is impossible to irrefutably deduce (and the writing on this show is too good to make it that easy). But what if the answer is this: What if the 40-year-old Don Draper we're seeing now — the one we don't fully recognize — is actually the real person he's always been?

There are so many quality threads woven through Mad Men that it's always possible to create your own personal meaning for what the show is "about." It's pretty easy to make the argument that this show is "about" the sixties, or feminism, or masculinity, or the nature of work, or the dissonance between the intellectual notion of advertising and the fabricated society that advertising generates. I suppose it's about all of those things, to varying degrees. But I've always believed the true vortex ofMad Men was the process of Don Draper consciously inventing himself. It was not that he merely changed his personality — he stole an identity and constructed a life as someone who did not exist. He's (literally) a self-made man who's fundamentally unreal. But because of the way television works — because he was introduced as a cool, bold, brilliant machine with absolute control of his day-to-day existence — it was impossible not to infer that those qualities were the concrete composition of his actual character. This creation, it seemed, was who he was. But that cannot be. That version of Draper is the first one wesee, but it's the second iteration of reality. It's an iteration he selected and manufactured. The qualities we associate with "Don Draper" are simply the qualities he elected to adopt and promote; they are advertisements for the unreal product of him.

Look at it like this: Think about your most successful friend. Think about how you'd describe this friend to other people, and think about the elements of their personality you'd use to define their character. What would happen if everything you know about this friend suddenly proved to be false? Assume they've lied to you about every single aspect of who they are, including their name and origin. Now, it's possible you'd continue to have a relationship with this person. He or she might continue to exist as your friend, and perhaps you'd even like them more. But he or she would not be the person you thought you knew; instead, they would be someone in between the person they were born as and the person they invented. They would become a third iteration of themselves (and they wouldn't get to control what that means or how that looks).

What if this is Don's third iteration? The fact that he was once **** Whitman is no longer a dangerous secret: His ex-wife knows, his new wife knows, Pete Campbell3 knows, Bert Cooper knows (I can't remember if Roger knows, but I'm sure he wouldn't care if he did). That first reinvention no longer matters, because there's no longer any fear that he'll lose everything if his past is exposed. And that was what made Don Draper unstoppable — fear. He stoically lived in wordless fear, and that made him work harder (and better) than all those around him. But that period is over. The fear is gone. The unafraid person we now see might be the human he really is: Kind of lazy, distracted by cheap desires, and unable to reconcile the existential despair of excelling at a profession that's as unreal as the personality he occupied for most of his adult life.

It's hard to find real-world examples of people who invented themselves as completely as Don Draper, but here's one: Robert Van Winkle. Winkle was a motocross racer from Dallas who turned himself into Vanilla Ice, presenting himself as a street-smart, cop-hating rapper from Miami. Obviously, that charade collapsed. So now he's in his third iteration — that of a failed reality star who's a better-than-average carpenter. It's weirder than his original version and less exciting than his second, but it feels natural. When I see Vanilla Ice hanging drywall on the DIY Network, I no longer believe I'm seeing something fake. It's a mediated event, but not a hoax; it's sad, but not pathetic.

I feel the same way about this third iteration of Don. It was uncomfortable to see him showing up late for work, but not unrealistic. It was strange to see him emotively controlled by Megan, but that's "probably" what he unconsciously wants.4 He's not faking it anymore, and that means he will lose. But this is the central question of personhood: Is there anything more important than being whoever you actually are?


The answer is probably. But the difference is negligible.

 

[aepps20]

Big J, I wanted to get your thoughts on Peggy. To me, Peggy is a very underrated character that is way ahead of her time. She essentially represents the modern working woman that is stuck in a world where the good ole boys rule. While everyone else is lounging and slacking off, Peggy is on her grind working hard trying to earn respect that she'll ultimately never get. I believe that Peggy resents people like Joan and to a lesser extent Megan that seem to get ahead of her based on their looks. Peggy knows she'll never be beautiful, so she compensates by hard work and dedication. I also think she is the most disrespected character on the show too. Don treats her like crap, Pete dogged her out with the baby situation, Joan never really liked her all that much and now she sucks up to Megan because she knows that Megan has more clout than she does.

 

[Air273]

best episode ever, so nice i had to watch it twice

 

[vaphenom06]

Good episode.  Meagan 

.  Sally's voice changed crazy since the last season.  First time she spoke I thought it was someone dubbing over her voice.  I can't empathize enough how much I'm in love with Meagan now after this episode

 

[venom lyrix]

Just caught up.

- Zu Bisou Bisou.YOWZA.
- Roger's speech following Megan's song was AWKWARD
- "they're all great girls....until they want something" - Roger
- LOL @ Harry with Megan behind him
- "do I suddenly appear to be wearing a skirt?!?" HAAAAAAAAAAAAA
- The black workers "infiltrating" Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is certainly an interesting angle if they play it out.

 

[venom lyrix]

Originally Posted by hymen man

Why is Pete's tie clip on so low? It's annoying me.

this angered me as well. Between the 3rd and 4th button...ALWAYS.

 

[wildmoodswings]

Oh, and in addition to Joan not being fond of Megan, Megan seemed to have tried to evade having to talk to Joan, but halted when she saw Harry walk in the direction she tried to go. So the feeling is mutual.

 

[hybridsoldier23]

 

[thegoat121886]

can someone explain the black applicantart piece scene at the end? i had to watch this episode in 3 parts and im sort of lost at that bit

 

[vanillagorilladx]

Megan singing "Zou Bisou Bisou". So sexy 

 

[hankmoody]

Originally Posted by thegoat121886

can someone explain the black applicantart piece scene at the end? i had to watch this episode in 3 parts and im sort of lost at that bit

The newspaper ad professing SCDP's Equal Opportunity Employer status, taken out only as a jab at the bigoted Y&R agency, has been misconstrued by black people, who have long  been marginalized on Madison Ave., as a call for applications. 

 

[thejrob]

Not gonna lie, I have a feeling this is the season I will lose interest in this show.

Was so much better when I could watch the episodes back to back without commercials...

thank god for Sterling though

 

[|A-Man|]

Damn did January actually gain that weight or did the extra money in the Mad Men budget allow them to use cgi to add on the pounds.

Even though she's said to be a %+$!$ and isn't a good actor props if she gained that weight.

 

[caerus]

Dude...Betty was my dream chick. This fat betty is making me not even wanna watch this show hahaha

 

[laker4lifeman]

They must have done it because she was pregnant.

 

[Josizzle]

they're probably using the same make-up and stuff when peggy was fat...p.s haven't seen the episode yet; i will peep later though