Mad Men, Season 5. General Discussion Thread (spoilers welcome)

I thought it rated a warning, just not for the reason they (TPTB) thought it did.

 

Why so surprised? Surely you guys knew if anyone was going to moon the entire audience, it would have to be Roger Sterling.

 

Though Don did try to stay faithful this past season, I don't think Matt Weiner was playing tricks with us in that last scene. Obviously I could be wrong and we'll have to wait and see, but I think what happened afterward is exactly what we expected. The look and the song You Only Live Twice sold it to me. Don wanted to play his part in their marriage the right way this time, but it takes two to play, so if Megan wasn't going to be around then in his mind... The question is what was the reason Don started to cheat on Betty? Don had what he wanted at that point then, too, but then he lost it. He liked the idea of Betty but what did he think of Betty? The same as "now": He liked the idea of Megan but what does he think of Megan? Sure, he'll ultimately support whatever she decides to do with her life; but won't the disappointment that it's not what he thought take away from the idea of Megan that he fell in love with?

The writers might split the difference: have Don cheat and then feel guilty about it. Megan would not go out of her way to cheat but something would happen in the heat of the moment, maybe with someone more on her wavelength than Don, and the difference would be that she wouldn't feel guilty about it.

On an unrelated note, I don't see how they could avoid 1968. A two-year skip would be hard to do if they want to keep Kiernan Shipka. From 14 or 15 on, it wouldn't be such a big deal. At this point, even one year makes a significant difference.

 

I don't think he'll cheat.

 

As good a call for Peggy as it was to leave SDCP, I am worried about what if anything will be done with the character going forward. Like Betty leaving Don, another moment that was powerful and felt dramatically right but in TV terms cut her off almost completely and left her story often feeling somewhat extraneous.

Now as Don's ex-wife and the mother of his children, Betty does still have a point on Mad Men. But assuming Peggy comes back next year, she'd probably be like Betty - cut off from the rest of the narrative in her own different-agency bubble - without Betty's remaining plot hooks.

I don't know, I really liked the times the series dealt with the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of JFK. In both cases neither episode was about those events, but that was just a touchstone that happened and effected everyone living their day-to-day. When JFK died, the disaster was the wedding of Roger Sterling's daughter, that kind of thing.

 

OTOH, if they wait as long between 5 and 6 to produce new episodes as they did between 4 and 5 they might have to do a two year skip to keep up with Kiernan Shipka and the effects of puberty.

 

^

The gap between seasons four & five was caused by contract negotiations. That issue has been resolved, which is why we know to expect two more seasons of the series.

 

This episode ended in March of 1967. They could start in April of 1968, just before MLK's assassination. That would account for a year in the life of Sally Draper. Kiernan Shipka filmed these episodes about 6 monts ago. She was born in late 99, so she's 12 and a half. If you're not an early bloomer, puberty starts to hit girls hard at about that time. Giving the series another year's gap would work well. Wow, Don your daughter is turning into a beautiful young lady.....one or two lines to that effect and you're fine. I grew 7 inches between the ages of 12 and 14. 7th to 9th grades seem to be when girls do their most growing in terms of height----unless they're Olympic gymnasts. Then they don't grow until they're 18.

 

I'm rewatching Season 5, as I always do after a season of Mad Men ends; and rewatching Pete's hairline recede.

I feel bad for Vincent Kartheiser. Just imagine how that must've looked when he was trying to grow it back. That's throwing yourself into the part. I wouldn't have done it.

 

I am glad you mentioned Pete's hairline. Early in the year I noticed it had receded in a publicity photo before the first episode of the season. Anyone else notice it before it was mentioned in the show?

 

I'd just assumed Kartheiser's hair was receding and it became more pronounced when they gave him that 50s-60s suburban dad cut

 

Recent pictures of him outside the show his hair was not receding. Which is why I noticed. Its a smart move. A lot of time has passed for the characters since the the Pilot. The growing generation gap has been a looming theme. In that time period Pete would have been seen as middle aged! How things have changed.

 

On another forum people were discussing Mad Men and Breaking Bad in terms of how they differ in going forward, now that the end is in sight for both. They're an interesting contrast, with being on opposite ends of the expectations/difficulty spectrum.

Which is to say, you might think that Mad Men is a harder show to end, in a way, since it's less obvious what a satisfying ending to the show would look like. But by the same token, there's no huge weight of expectations around any particular ending. Mad Men is really structured as a series of short stories that accumulate detail over time; there's no big overarching narrative. And even a less-than-stellar ending wouldn't really undermine the preceding ones.

Conversely, Breaking Bad has a much clearer ending, or, at least, general direction (Walt's fall, though there are a range of options on the table there - he can be alive and a drug kingpin, but at the cost of his family, etc.; he can be caught by Hank; he can be gunned down by rivals, or by Jesse, etc.). But the whole series has been building to this point, and fans have been speculating on how this will play out for years, meaning there's a lot more expectations for what a good ending to the show will look like. And if they falter (I don't think they will, mind you) on the show's ultimate payoff, it would diminish the show.

 

Nope. They shaved his hairline back to make him look older.

That's just our perception. At 32, I don't identify myself as "middle-aged" but when I look around at 15-year-olds, I might as well be.

 

My first thought was that I hoped they offered him a pay raise, but it doesn't sound as if extra money would affect his lifestyle much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Kartheiser

 

In 1967, the general perception was that someone who was 32 was middle aged, or close to it. The average lifespan of an American male in 1960 was 66. People got married a lot younger as well. Furthermore, the mantra of the youth was (or was about to be) "don't trust anyone over 30," on the premise that 30 was when people became "old fashioned" and stuck in their ways.

 

Well said the G-man. That is exactly the point I was making. Times have changed. I will be 34 in one month and I don't feel middle aged. Not just personal ego but cultural changes.

Paul McCartney is going to be 70 years old on Monday! I get younger girls, teenaged and twenty somethings, complimenting my Beatles shirts. When I tell them I have seen Paul in concert, they are amazed and say thats on their bucket list. You would never had young girls wanting to see 70 year old musicans perform in the 1960s.

 

Pete's punchable face (among other amusements.)

 

How different would Mad Men be if it were set today?

What could go virtually unaltered, how much could still work if it were modified to fit the times, and how much couldn't happen at all?

Don Draper could still be raised in a farm, and his childhood wouldn't have to change that much. The bad economy and rampant inflation of the '70s and early-'80s could substitute for the Depression. Archibald could still own horses and, under different circumstances, still end up dead because he was struck dead by a horse scared of thunder.

If he wanted to get away, he could join the army and be sent to somewhere like Bosnia, circa 1993, which would put Don in the ballpark of 40 today. Identity theft was (and is) still common but I don't think Don could get away with it to such an extent in the '90s, so the Dick Whitman aspect of the character would have to be dropped. Even if he legally changed his name from "Dick Whitman" to "Don Draper", it still wouldn't be the same.

That's for starters.

Betty would probably not be a bored housewife unless she decided to only be one until her kids were old enough to go to school; which would make her still try returning to modeling after she had left it, even if the context would be different. Betty dealing with being cheated on would be the same. The process of getting divorced would be different and simpler. Would she still attach herself to Henry?

Peggy's origin would be completely different. She wouldn't start off as a secretary. She'd have gone to school for advertising. She could still work in a male-dominated environment but it wouldn't be the same.

Pete, if he were the same, would've been fired from the start because of sexual harassment. He would've been charged for raping the German woman for sure. He'd be off the show no matter what. Pete would have to change the most in order for him to stay. He could stay rude, arrogant, and rub everyone the wrong way, but that's where it would end. He'd be much less powerful.

There'd have to be another industry besides tobacco that Sterling Cooper would have to lean on that's unhealthy. I'd say fast food, but Sterling Cooper should represent something unhealthy that wouldn't take away from the prestige and high-class nature of the series.

Could the transition from SC to SCDP happen or would PPL have put in place-guards to prevent the defection of Lane and the Partners who gutted their sale of SC to McCann?

 

Considering that the whole point of the show is to use an ad agency and its employees to encapsulate the drastic changes in the U.S. during the 1960s, and considering that part of the reason it set in ad agency is because the sixties are considered the golden age of advertising, setting the story in a different era would make it a completely different program.