r/madmen

Rewatching the series this last month has left me astonished at how actually great this show is. I loved it on my first watch 10 years ago, but I was too young to appreciate the incredible craftsmanship and story telling.

There are so many details about characters, events, plot, and culture that are shown only implicitly or as foreshadowing for the future. Yet even if a viewer doesn't catch all of that, the show isn't diminished. The acting and dialogue is so good that reading between the lines isn't necessary at all. Achieving that, where one viewer is happy on the surface and another can choose to (or not) dive in is what I think really defines great art.

Other prestige TV shows got by with hype (Game of Thrones), surprise (Silo), or cultural commentary (Severance) but get weaker after the first time through. Mad Men doesn't. It is stronger after rewatching it.

What a great show

Edit: to add an example, S6EP02 has two great moments back to back. Minor spoiler>!Roger getting a shoeshine box from a man who died right as Roger is realizing he is alone in the world and begins crying (a great performance by John Slattery there) then Megan and Don showing slides on the Kodak carousel of their trip to Hawaii. We last saw the carousel when Don was sleeping around while married to Betty. He became teary eyed at the reminder of how much he cares about his life and knowing he's making mistakes. This time, with Megan, Don is flat, no emotions, no remorse or regret. The parallel and meaning is great.!<

Flight 1, S2 E2.

Betty and Don host a card night with Carlton and Francine. Betty becomes more and more irritated as the night goes on (due to Bobby sneaking downstairs to grab M&Ms, the story about him tracing George Washington). Then after the get together, she is snappish when Don says Carlton isn’t happy. She takes out the trash and lights a cigarette outside.

Is her irritation due to having to host cheating Carlton? Bobby pissing her off?

What’s do you think is the best needle drop in the series? What’s your favorite?

Mine’s at the end of S7E8 “Severance” - the Peggy Lee song “Is That All There Is?” It’s just sooo perfect for the mood of that episode. Ken’s firing and then rehire at Dow, continuing to forego his writing career. Peggy’s first date, don’s dealing with Rachel’s death and the obsession with the waitress.

Stay with the woman you’re with. The grass is not greener.

Whenever I hear Lujon by Henry Mancini, I think it has to be in Mad Men somewhere, but it's not!

Anyone else? 🤣 I look forward to the conclusion of his storyline. In what world would it have been appropriate to pester your ad agency to that degree? He wasn’t a large client billings wise. Yes, huge name and potential but calling at all hours of the night on your HOME phone when you know your client has a 2 month old, wife, and 2 other kids? Not that men were all that helpful with the kid labor back then. But still. Conrad is a pest 🤪

I think 2nd or 3rd seasons, because they gave time to all characters, had the merger, the collapse and rise again and fall again of the drapers, introduced megan, rogers marriage, peggy rise, duck's fall.

You tell me.

She’s not blind She had cataract surgery.

Don meets an older man at a party he doesn't even want to be at. He even mistakes the gentleman for a bartender at first before casually (and quite coolly) sliding behind the bar and making him and this gentleman, Connie, a pair of Old Fashioneds. They reminisce on their childhoods and it's obvious the older gentleman is smitten with the cool calm casual demeanor of Don. They leave things on a friendly basis.

Then, a few episodes later, a few months in the timeline of the show, out of the blue, Conrad Hilton, yes, *The* Conrad Hilton of Hilton Hotels calls Don and asks to have a meeting as soon as possible. That same cool demeanor of Don even senses the urgency and replies to the question of when they can meet with "how about right now?" 15 minutes later, he's in the Presidential Suite shaking hands with what would be the biggest account in the history of his company easily.

"We've met before," Conrad Hilton says shaking Don's hand. Don's face looks briefly puzzled before the recollection hits him. "We have, haven't we?" Don says, smiling.

By being himself, his real "born in the bottom, making it to this moment" self and just having a casual conversation with a nice older man about small beginnings, Don has just gotten a private audience with a man that could literally sway his entire career. It's such a great moment and really delivers. Season 3 is already an exceptional one, and we all know how the Hilton storyline ends up ("when I ask for the moon, Don, I expect the moon.") but for this moment, it's one of the best moments of the show in my opinion.

Oh and then the most important meeting of Don's life (until that point) is interrupted when that British smile machine gets his foot lawn-mowed. Lol.

I keep seeing posts and comments about her being 'the worst' of Don's affairs (which is a weird way to engage with a show like this, in terms of characters -- none of them are supposed to be paragons of virtue or particularly 'titillating').

But Don's relationships with non-main characters have always served to typify something about Don's character at any given moment. He has the affair with Sylvia as a protracted act of self-injury, and it's meant to be gross and squirmy how Don has "fallen" to the level of sleeping with a married woman who lives near him and with whose husband he has a genuine friendship. Bobbie Barrett was about showing that Don's consistent compartmentalising of his affairs will soon become impossible, and that the women he sleeps with aren't just disappearing into thin air with no agency (it's interesting that she's the first person to let him know of his own 'reputation', and whom Don is the closest to on equal footing with power-wise. It certainly explains why he ends the affair in the midst of a sexual power play).

People complain that the show wastes it's final episodes on a sad mopey waitress but of course that's the point. We want Don to be out there wrapping up his relationships and conflicts with a bow but he chases a ghost across America after literally sleeping with a woman in an alleyway (and paying her for it). His obsession with her makes no sense to us but it also depicts a character whose previous sheen on charisma and desirability is waning -- in just five or ten years Don will be an objectively old man and all of his flirtations will have this air of sadness and desperation. He will be trading on the remnants of his handsomeness and fake affability for the rest of his life; it was a way for the writers show a glimpse into his future. Don will never change inside but the world around him will. Don has no idea he's nearing a series finale and his action reflect that.

If Don is hypothetically alive by 1980, take the discomfort you feel watching him sweatily chase Diana and multiply it by 100. He will be a 50-something man who looks his age if not older seeking the company of the precise kind of women who intrigue him; the few women who will return his affections will be those like Diana who are also broken. Any sense of obligation to his domestic life Don feels in season 7 will be gone as his kids are either independent or in the care of another family, ex-wives dead or bought off.

(If Weiner wasn't essentially persona-non-grata these days I'd be morbidly interested in seeing some sort of one-off sequel which captures the pathetic-ness of a Don in late middle age, but aside from being a cash grab it would also make the entirety of Mad Men much sadder in retrospect.)

So, again, whenever I see things about Diana either being an annoying character or a boring plotline I always wonder how it is that this person would expect the show to wrap up Don?

It took a deep personal loss, I think, to really "get" the point of her character. From my new perspective, she's essential.

Who have you come around on with time? Why do you think that is?

"When people die, everything gets mixed up..."