Mad Men 6x02 Reaction
Added 2026-01-28 23:58:32 +0000 UTC
Comments
ppl like that are so off-putting. Harry is the same to a degree. however, his execution feels desperate and bob benson gives off calculated/sociopath. like if called out, harry would admit he's making a play, but bob benson would never break character
on crip ...
2026-02-01 02:02:07 +0000 UTC"I like being bad and then going home and being good."
Kara
2026-02-01 00:51:16 +0000 UTCKens reaction to Bob Benson was so harsh, because he picked up on him being a kiss ass. We saw him before, where he talks to Don in the elevator, having two coffees (claiming he always gets two, for some dumb reason) and offering one to Don. Shortly after we see him standing around the partners again, and Pete having the other coffee. Bob seems, like he is not working, but just trying to be seen by the partners and impress them.
Andrew
2026-01-31 20:38:01 +0000 UTCFor anyone who watched it combined with the first one, just look at Don's face at 1:27:30 LOL he can't even hide it.
Sami
2026-01-30 17:48:43 +0000 UTCD E A T H What perspective(s) of death will Mad Men offer? E T A A T E H T A E D What is death? Alok Vaid-Menon argues that "death is truth," and to live truthfully "means to braid death into life." That is to say, a shift away from fearing death, a shift towards death "dancing with us." The season opener presents death as its thematic centerpiece. Dinkins returns to a warzone, Jonesy momentarily dies, Roger's mom and Giorgio permanently die, etc. We get Roger's perspective on life & death through snippets of his therapy sessions. Though, the 'Royal' pitch meeting hints this theme will be explored through multiple characters. After his failed pitch, Don earnestly asks Stan, "does that make you think of suicide?" To which Stan responds, "of course, that's what's so great about it!" I'm excited to see if Mad Men can show us "what's so great about" death this season. Because for me, as Willibald explains, "death is that which completes Man." It is through death that we can learn to embody love. "[...] to live truth ... means to say this might be the last time I ever get to see you again so why the fuck would I not speak with my full chest? is to live like that" -Alok Vaid-Menon
on crip ...
2026-01-30 09:18:10 +0000 UTCTelling a woman that the Inferno made you think of her is so out of pocket lol
Mike
2026-01-30 05:02:10 +0000 UTCI think there's a decent episode of Mad Men in there, if you take the best of both parts and filter it down to one single episode somehow. But it's especially rough coming off the heels of Season 5.
Jamie
2026-01-29 17:43:31 +0000 UTCThis is perhaps the most tedious episode of Mad Men to my memory.
PIG
2026-01-29 16:49:05 +0000 UTCHarry Burns to Sally Albright: Men and women can not be friends.
tilden katz
2026-01-29 13:44:46 +0000 UTCBest comment ever.
tilden katz
2026-01-29 13:35:12 +0000 UTCHas S6 finished yet?
tilden katz
2026-01-29 13:07:25 +0000 UTCPeggy definitely had Don vibes in the conversation about the headphones. The 'you've bought me the same idea three times' thing sounds like something he'd say. They're kindred spirits, they clash but they care about each other. I don't think Peggy is better than Don though, or vice versa. They are who they are. Same with Abe. He is different from Peggy but I like their relationship. He supports her but still speaks his mind. Zvyran fcbggvat gur pbaarpgvba jvgu Fgna rneyl vf irel vzcerffvir. Fur'f tbvat gb srry fb inyvqngrq yznb. V ybir Fgna'f punenpgre nep naq uvf eryngvbafuvc jvgu Crttl.
Mark M
2026-01-29 09:56:34 +0000 UTCWhat does Betty say to Henry when she shows up at home with Sandy's expensive violin? There's no good explanation, unless she wants to tell him the whole story. That's the moment she commits to ending her search.
Kara
2026-01-29 05:54:22 +0000 UTCIt's complicated. She's a Kennedy era 1960s liberal who grew up in a very conservative white Catholic working class household. On race issues she's definitely naive at best, and awkwardly racist in the way a lot of liberals are at worst. But we see her not just "tolerate" but fully accept a gay coworker too, and voice concerns over the southern boycott after Abe makes her aware of it. She's not a totally progressive leftist (even adjusted for 1968 - and the show highlights her innate racism in the scene with Dawn) but just calling her just "tolerant" doesn't sum it up fully for me. She's a complex liberal with spikes of progressiveness in areas she's informed about, and huge weaknesses in areas she isn't (which is in part her own fault, she could be more clued in, she has a pretty leftist-seeming journalist partner).
Kara
2026-01-29 05:52:23 +0000 UTCI don't know where this idea that Peggy is progressive came from; she's tolerant sure, but progressive is pushing it
dandelions2
2026-01-29 04:12:50 +0000 UTCBetty Draper's identity crisis continues. There's a profound pointlessness to the storyline of her looking for Sandy which, aside from Don's affair with Sylvia, is what I mainly think about with the S6 premiere. The fact that it's all for this friend of her daughter who she had one conversation with, who Sally doesn't even seem to like, who just vanishes, is very typical Mad Men. I find myself going through the same emotional journey every time I watch Betty's story these episodes, from horrified at her joke to appreciative for her connecting with Sandy to contemplative as she waits in that house and then finally feeling empathy as Betty returns home looking for some connection with the daughter she does have, only to get the door shut in her face. And of course I laugh aloud every time she shows up with the dark hair. The weight gain and the black hair remind us how different she is to the 50s blonde beauty ("You're ugly!") identity that comprised who she was for so long. Yet there's a freedom to that, and I think this episode portrays Betty probably at her most selfless and most empowered to make choices that she has ever been, going on this little unsuccessful "errand" and not even telling anyone. A very different person than either the helpless trapped birdie or the petulant lashing-out rebel we saw frequently in the first four seasons. I love the moment where she decisively storms out with the violin case, probably thinking she doesn't need to take any crap from these snotty kids and the violin is better used for Sandy who, unlike these kids, can actually become something meaningful. There's probably a sense of entitlement that she can just take it: even if one of the kids bought it what are they gonna do, take it back from this rich woman whose husband has connections? But then she just kind of relents and sets the violin down, because who is she even doing this for? Is she gonna track that girl down, make her take the violin, demand that she continues playing? Like with a lot of Betty's stories, it ends in anticlimax, though at least this time there is another person's life whose Betty's surrender refers to, rather than her own like we're used to in the earlier seasons. Now, if we look symbolically then the story is definitely about Betty, but there are a lot of varied interpretations that could be made, many of which were already said in the Part 1 discussion.
Kev
2026-01-29 04:00:14 +0000 UTCI'm pretty sure everyone wore lots of perfume back then too. I wonder, what if Sylvia always wears the same perfume and Don always comes home reeking of it. That would be more than a little suspicious lol. But yeah maybe the cigarette smoke covers it up.
Taya
2026-01-29 03:35:53 +0000 UTCGuvf vf yvxr jura gurl fgnegrq npphengryl thrffvat gur Fbcenabf raqvat.. ohg ng yrnfg n Qba/jngre raqvat vf abg fhecevfvat. Jbaqrevat bhgybhq nobhg gur Fbcenabf raqvat jnf bar bs gubfr gvzrf jurer, vs lbh qvqa'g xabj orggre, lbh'q guvax gurl jrer fcbvyrq. Nf sne nf Crttl naq Fgna tb, V'z tynq fur pybpxrq gung rneyl orpnhfr fb znal crbcyr guvax gurve raqvat vf abafrafvpny be pbzrf bhg bs abjurer. Pyrneyl abg!
Jamie
2026-01-29 03:27:36 +0000 UTCDon's standard operating procedure is wanting to run away and be reborn. 1x12 "We'll start over, like Adam and Eve." Everything is downstream from that.
Kara
2026-01-29 03:22:02 +0000 UTCBetty does dye her hair. At points in the show we see her roots, which are much darker. Nobody is naturally that color blonde. ROT13 spoilers: Yngre va Frnfba 6 fur tbrf onpx gb orvat gur fnzr oybaqr nf orsber, yrff guna n lrne sebz ure qlvat ure unve oeharggr. Fur shyyl er-qlrq ure unve oybaqr ntnva. Va 7k14 (gur svanyr) va ure ynfg gjb fprarf jr frr ure qnexre ebbgf pbzvat guebhtu, nf fur yncfrf ba ure unve znvagranapr ebhgvar.
Kara
2026-01-29 03:19:55 +0000 UTCAbg gurz fnlvat gung gur svany fprar bs gur fubj pbhyq or Qba ba n pyvss jvgu gur fbhaq bs jnirf va gur onpxtebhaq...
Kev
2026-01-29 03:16:34 +0000 UTC"The air and water are the same temperature as your body" is beautiful or terrifying depending on how you look at it. Are you swimming in warm waters in paradise? Or did you collapse on a cold new york tile? oop
Kara
2026-01-29 03:08:50 +0000 UTCImagine how much everything had to reek of booze and cigarettes for you to have sex with your downstairs neighbor and crawl into bed with your wife, undetected.
Jamie
2026-01-29 03:08:42 +0000 UTCNot just Republican, but worked for the Rockefellers ☹️
Alex Bernier
2026-01-29 03:04:38 +0000 UTCI pay a lot of money for an anime reaction channel that does Mad Men on the side lol
Alex Bernier
2026-01-29 03:02:39 +0000 UTCA season opener of opposites and self-fulfilling prophecies. Roger doesn't cry at his mother's funeral, but breaks down over a shoeshine kit from a guy he barely knew. Peggy yells at her subordinates for waiting around for inspiration to strike her, and then inspiration strikes her. "Bob Benson" wants to seem important and climb in his career, and Ken points out he looks unimportant hanging around a lobby. And of course, Don goes an an all-expenses paid trip with his beautiful wife to a tropical paradise and returns with an idea that screams to everyone "I wanna kill myself". A misalignment between thoughts and actions, between choices and motives. At the end of 1967 and the start of 1968, why would the show be showing us all these people, torn between what they say and what they do? Food for thought. Speaking of suicidal moves, Don is cheating on Megan with the wife of a couple they are friends with who literally lives one floor down. This is so much worse than Suzanne, the teacher who lived in Don's neighbourhood. Don seems to genuinely get along with Arnold the husband too, it's the friendliest we've ever seen him be with someone who isn't Roger or Freddie. We need to know more about Sylvia (the wife) but Don says "I don't want to do this any more" right after crawling into another woman's bed, starting off 1968 with a deep personal betrayal. Another opposite, another misalignment. "Did you read my Dante?" It's not even subtle, like almost everyone who ever cheated they know it's wrong. Don knocks at her back door like a visitor, like a stranger. Megan doesn't question it because that's their rhythm now - Don said he's going out for cigarettes in a blizzard, that's just Don. Megan isn't Betty but she's somehow fallen into the same patterns. Betty too has a complex realization that the world is changing in a way her stroppy, teenage daughter is isolated from. A haunted mansion of privilege that isn't just not aspirational to part of the younger generation, its emblematic of the failings of government and capital and society that is drafting them to die in a far off jungle. Last episode she tells Sandy "Sally will be heartbroken" at her leaving, but this episode we find out Sally doesn't give a shit because Sandy like so many young girls things she's "mature for her age". Uh oh. Betty leaves the violin because... what's she going to do with it? Bring it home and explain to Henry and Sally that a little girl is just another young woman lost in NYC? There's nothing she can do except appreciate what she has. And die her bleached blonde hair black - it's still from a bottle baby, but at least it's something. Bonus Thoughts: Peggy becoming Don... or Don-light, female Don, is so resonant. She doesn't know another way to work. Meanwhile Ted ignored all his "emergency work calls" and the emergency resolved itself: Ted isn't Don. In a weird way its sort of nostalgic seeing Don cheat again lmfao like "ah yes, the good old days of Seasons 1 through 3". Don and Megan use the CAROUSEL projector from S1 to show their holiday photos! I love the continuity in Mad Men, like when Trudy pulls out the Chip n Dip... the show is about selling consumer products and our characters actually keep and use the consumer products they're selling for years.
Kara
2026-01-29 03:02:15 +0000 UTCI don't think that guy was calling her out for being a fake blonde lol. Betty's daughter and brother both have blonde hair, I believe her mother is in a dream sequence and she has blonde hair too. Since Don is not blonde, I don't know where Sally would have gotten her hair from if not Betty. It was more of a figure of speech about her caring too much about her appearance and being the fake, perfect-seeming housewife. Or if literal well she probably uses conditioner or whatever to enhance the blonde to keep it looking perfect and shiny, so her dyeing it dark is kind of an attempt to radically distance herself from that connotation (the only radicalism from Betty this episode, no Mad Men is not a wish fulfilment show that will make Betty a leftist after spending one afternoon with poor people)
Kev
2026-01-29 03:02:11 +0000 UTCSome fondue was good. That classic fondue with the alcoholic cheese is absolutely disgusting
Alex Bernier
2026-01-29 03:01:45 +0000 UTCIt was funny to watch them questioning if the man with Mona was Margaret's husband, considering there were multiple shots of Margaret's husband sitting right next to her. And also questioning if Margaret was pregnant, considering we saw a child sitting with her during the funeral. Also did they miss that the catering Bob sent was shown and that Roger had a very annoyed reaction to it? Ken wasn't overreacting, he was calling Bob out for being conniving, not falling for his act. Don said he was going to cigarettes, and I'm not sure if he was also going to walk to the shops but Megan did say "You are never going to get a cab" and maybe she was talking to him too, so safe to say she decided to go to bed instead of waiting possibly hours for Don to return.
Kev
2026-01-29 02:43:32 +0000 UTCI believe they were joking but it is hard to tell, they want a lot out of the characters they like.
Kev
2026-01-29 02:42:54 +0000 UTCThank fucking god I am old enough to have experienced the lingering fondue pot era in the 90s...less thanks for having high cholesterol
Scott
2026-01-29 02:39:47 +0000 UTCI think Milena is right that Don wants to be reborn in some way and that it does relate back to him going into the ocean like a baptism when he visits Anna in season 2. Unlike his attitude with his previous affairs of being content, satisfied he says to Sylvia "I want to stop doing this".
Eric Viola
2026-01-29 02:08:15 +0000 UTCcould you just abandon all other projects and drop a Mad Men every day?? Fun to hear you think through the final arcs of the series as a whole, and it's a lot to hold back from commenting!
pb24rf19
2026-01-29 02:06:14 +0000 UTCCall me pessimistic and I get wanting characters to become better people but if a traditionalist, conservative, wealthy WASP like Betty turned into a radical leftist, that would not feel like an authentic evolution of her character lol. The vast majority of people that come from her background believe (uncompromisingly) that poverty is a choice. (I love Betty's character btw).
Eric Viola
2026-01-29 02:02:22 +0000 UTCThe reason Megan didnt question Don going out for so long at the end as he said earlier that he was "out of cigarettes" so, he went out to get some. ALSO Henry - great guy, damn near perfect in comparison to the other men BUT, he's still a republican, probably responsible to the living situation of those kids
Infode
2026-01-29 01:47:55 +0000 UTCBu, naq gurl ner tbvat gb RKCYBQR jura Gehql xvpxf bhg Crgr arkg rcvfbqr!
JBK405
2026-01-29 01:42:35 +0000 UTCI think Betty dyes her hair not because she doesn't want to appear fake but because she didn't like that that kid in the village read her (correctly) as traditional, conventional. I think that's what he meant by "bottled", like formulaic, obvious, routine. So she dyes her hair as a reaction to that.
Eric Viola
2026-01-29 01:36:40 +0000 UTC"My wife's a big TV star" everything he always wanted
Scott
2026-01-29 01:13:09 +0000 UTCA very interesting persective on Stan that I saw in a discussion on an episode a few months ago was how he was set up as a foil to Joey Baird in season 4. Joey was introduced at the same time as Stan, and initially he was presented a LOT better than Stan was. Joey and Peggy bantered very well with one another, and Joey never felt the need to challenge Peggy's authority. Stan could not banter with Peggy at all at the time, and he made remark after remark on gender-lines to challenge her. Stan was the guy who Peggy chose to strip naked in front of him to force him to back down. But as we saw over the course of season 4, Joey may have behaved well with Peggy -- his direct boss -- but he was rude and condescending to other women. He was so offensive to Joan that Peggy fired him. We learned thay Joey's smooth working relationship with Peggy was an ACT. Meanwhile Stan has stuck around, and as he has come to respect Peggy more and also gotten to know her he can now banter and engage with her on an equal level. And unlike Joey, it seems to be HONEST friendship and banter, instead of playing the role of "cool guy" to get ahead at work. --------- Ken's over-the-top reaction to Bob Benson sending food to the funeral is because he can tell that Bob is playing an angle. Ken doesn't quite know WHAT the angle is just yet, but sending catered food to a funeral is a glaringly large act. On a normal day you might send a bouquet or a placard, but you don't send STAFF. It's as blatant an attempt to curry favor as you can get without unzipping your pants and saying "Guess what I'll do for a promotion..." Ken's a smart man, and he's trying to figure out what Bob is up to. --------- One of the guys at the house in New York used the term "grok" when talking about what Betty (and by extension The Establishment) didn't understand about them and what they want. "Grok" is actually a very new word which was only 'invented' a few years before this episode, in Robert A. Heinlein's 1961 science fiction novel "Stranger in a Strange Land". The fictional definition is long and complicated, but it is usually used to mean to understand something fundamentally intuitively. Betty doesn't grok this life, and I think she CAN'T grok this life.
JBK405
2026-01-29 01:11:13 +0000 UTCI know kids get very disturbed at change, like when their dads have beards and then one day they shave. It’s jarring and scary to not recognize someone. But Bobby’s “I hate it. You’re ugly!” reaction is so fucking funny. He was pissed!
Jamie
2026-01-29 01:04:12 +0000 UTCyeah and just adding some extra Sterling family lore cause Lola asked if Margaret was maybe pregnant, she already has a kid, Ellery who Roger mentions here. Born off screen sometime after her unfortunate JFK assassination day wedding.
Hugo Sinclair
2026-01-29 00:47:24 +0000 UTCSeason 6. The Jumping Off Point.
Jenny D
2026-01-29 00:40:40 +0000 UTCRoger’s arc so far is so good
Jude G
2026-01-29 00:36:08 +0000 UTCDon's asking Jonesy if dying feels like a hot tropical sunshine near the ocean because that was the feeling he had when he was in Hawaii.
Eric Viola
2026-01-29 00:26:44 +0000 UTCRogers mentions Bruce Pike, Mona's partner, back in season 3. He actually attended Margaret's wedding with Mona. Roger always talked about him with disdain.
Eric Viola
2026-01-29 00:23:53 +0000 UTC
