Mad Men 5x13 Reaction

insane and incorrect statement lol. Just let them watch the damn show man.

Kara

rn really feel 5x11 was the peak of this show. i can only recall one personal great moment post season 5 and it's essentially a rehashing. im doubting the show has anything interesting left to 'say' that isn't a retread done better in an earlier season, or accompanied by a retcon funk we'll see

on crip ...

S5 does have a number of powerful episodes. However, The Suitcase, and Shut the Door. Have a Seat, are head and shoulders above almost everything else. Meditations in an Emergency is close.

tilden katz

It is HILARIOUS that Lola thinks she's cursed with editing Pete episodes. Season 5 belonged to him. Even though he's a little shit, Pete TOWERS over everyone this year. Peter Campbell, a man who knows that the only place for his hand, is in your pocket. Pete got out of pocket all over the place, and it was SPEC-TA-CU-LAR.. What did Don do this year? Found out he's incompatible with his younger, newer wife. Ummm, ok. Roger? Had to go to a trip far away, to discover he's incompatible with his materialistic child bride. Bert: Already? Joan had a big year, but as usual she didnt get enough scenes. Too much Joan, is never too much. Peggy spent the year frustrated. Lane? Spent the middle portion of the season away, cause Jared Harris was off filming Lincoln with Spielberg. The end of the season was...... whatever happened there. Megan: Well, at least we got to meet her mother. PETER DYKEMAN CAMPBELL drove the bus this year, and its a triumph for the little guys. Sociopathic, weeny, entitled, malaise forever Little Guys.

tilden katz

F6 va trareny unf gur vqrn bs qrngu unatvat bire vg, zbfgyl va gur cerzvrer.

Kev

I absolutely love how every(?) season has people saying "this one is my favourite". What a show.

Mike

Don is like that Itchy & Scratchy focus group. He wants a wild, modern, self-possessed wife with her own vivid interiority and ambitions... who he can utterly control and have cater to him in every way.

Mike

I've always found the rotten tooth stuff in this episode a little hamfisted, but you can't say that the final 20 minutes here are anything but perfect. The "You Only Live Twice" sequence obviously (obviously!) and Don & Peggy in the theatre, but especially the Pete stuff, and *especially* the scene in the hospital. "A temporary bandage on a permanent wound" just kills me. And I had forgotten that we finally get the big reveal in this episode: Pete is president of the howdy doody circus army?? Well, I never saw that coming. Sylvia Plath, who wrote the poem "Lady Lazarus" that lends its name to episode #508 -- the episode that introduces Beth -- battled depression her whole life, until her suicide at 30 years old. Like Beth, Plath was treated with electroshock therapy. There has been a lot of death and suicide stuff on the margins of this season (Don doodling a noose for no apparent reason, I'm looking at you) which was obviously meant to foreshadow Lane's own suicide, but I think the conversations between Beth & Pete in this episode about depression and "walking through the dark doorway" are part of a larger tapestry about how the characters on this show do (and don't) handle the darkness in their lives. Pete is cheating on his wife in a (subconscious?) effort to blow up the marriage that he barely wants. Don tries to live by the motto "move forward" but is haunted by the spectre of his dead brother. Roger is using drugs to rewire his brain and magically become (he claims) satisfied with life. And then there's Lane... It's not my #1 season finale in the series, but it's still a damn good episode and a terrific capper to imo the best season of television ever made. There's probably 7 or 8 episodes in this bunch that are legitimate contenders for best in the series. And while it's not the most Don-heavy season, that's a feature, not a bug. There is more room for the secondary characters to absolutely come alive (and plenty of really excellent Don material anyway). I just love it, from Are you alone? to Zou Bissou Bissou. Oh and I love how Peggy is doing the Don Draper pose from the credits when Don finds her at the movies. Really nice touch.

Mike

When Peggy left at the end of The Other Woman, I wanted to throw myself off a plane. There was no way I could put up with this without her character, or the jazz that is her and Don's relationship. I must've replayed the movie theater scene on DVD 150 times. "You help people, and they move on", actually had me holding back sobs. I get too caught up in this shit.

tilden katz

Most people don't feel sorry for actors, and the starving artist trope. As Brando said, its a bum's life.

tilden katz

What percentage of marriages end in divorce? Does anybody ever really know who they are with?

tilden katz

Great choice. I had it as my Facebook banner thing. Before that it was the iconic shot of Don on the couch.

Julien

"V trg gb guvf cynpr naq V fhqqrayl srry guvf qbbe bcra, naq V jnaan jnyx guebhtu vg." Arkg rc vf Gur Qbbejnl...

Taya

I had the shot of the partners standing in front of the windows as my desktop background for YEARS. The Phantom could refer to... Adam, Lane, Megan's dream of becoming an actress, Don's dream of Megan & his marriage, Don Draper himself, Pete becomes a phantom after Beth's memory is erased I love Pete's monologue so much. It could be a passage out of a classic novel. "He needed to let off some steam, needed an adventure, needed to feel handsome again. Needed to feel that he knew something, that all this ageing was worth something because he knew things young people didn't know yet. He probably thought it would be like having a few tall drinks and feeling very very good and then he'd go back to his life and say 'that was nice'... Then he realized everything he already had was not right either, and that was why it had happened at all, and that his life with his family was some... temporary bandage on a permanent wound."

Taya

This is a good point and something I took as a regular nicety but I wonder if subconsciously Peggy knows that first Megan, then her, leaving the firm might’ve done a mental number on Don and she wonders about Megan’s wellbeing in proximity to his emotional instability. But now I’m super reading into it.

Jamie

I love how consistently Peggy supports other women. When she talks to Don in the theater, I always noticed how she brings up Megan not once, not twice, but three times, when she really doesn't have to. She genuinely cares.

Kev

Ybyn fnlvat fur pna'g rira or znq ng Qba sbe purngvat vf fb shaal gb zr. V'z yvxr, bx, whfg jnvg na rcvfbqr (jryy, gjb rcvfbqrf -- V ubcr gurl jngpu obgu va bar fvggvat orpnhfr rira gubhtu V yvxr F6 V guvax vgf cerzvrer vf qrsvavgryl abg nf rkcybfvir nf F5!)

Kev

I already spoke about the shot of Don walking away from Megan, but I do need to sing its praises again briefly because it really is what Season 5 as a whole is building up to, and the whole season can be viewed through that lens. It's so memorable: the footsteps, the swelling music, and Don's grim expression as the vividness of all that Megan was shrinks into the darkness. Of course there's the woman at the bar as the implied answer to the ever-looming "Will Don change his ways?" question of S5, but to me the real moment is the disillusionment of the fantasy once and for all. For the S4 finale to end with Don running away to a faraway place and the S5 finale to end with him walking away from that place, which we now see as nothing but a constructed set (a fairy tale, and a commercial, too; perhaps a lie Don *sold* himself, eh?), walking back to where he was and having found himself truly in the same place he started, is deeply poetic. I still like S6 more, but it's clear why everyone likes this season and it tells a beautiful overarching story.

Kev

I said under a previous reaction that I think Beth is the Rachel to Pete's Don, the perfect other half with inexplicable chemistry that does not work out due to other circumstances. However, upon revisiting this episode I don't think that's accurate, because Pete was not particularly special to Beth, and possibly vice-versa. As Lola observes, she likely just found a man who happened to be on that train. As Pete himself observes, she was just trying to get back at her husband for his infidelity. A temporary bandage on a permanent wound. Even though Pete suggesting to run away together does call back to Don's proposition to Rachel in Season 1, Beth importantly implies that, unlike Pete, she is still unhappy even when engaging with the affair. As for Pete, again as Beth says ("You're right again"), they do not really know each other, so it's hard to take his big words as meaningful; but then again, were Rachel and Don that special? "You don't want to run away together, you just want to run away".

Kev

I can relate to Megan's friend in her fangirling over Marie. She's very wise and charismatic. I'm so glad I don't know French so the performance doesn't bother me.

Kev

I feel like we see that visual a lot in this show. I could've sworn we see Lane in a similar shot in a previous episode this season.

Kev

This show is just people getting married without even really know each other. Don and Meagan are the most obvious in this season, but Pete and Trudy obviously also want very different things from life. Pete wants to live in a busy city, Trudy wants the quiet suburban; neither are wrong for wanting it, but this is the sort of discussion that just wasn't had before jumping in. This is combined with the fact that moving to the suburbs and having a family is what Pete is "supposed" to want, even if its not really it, which adds another layer to his misery.

Saul Hughes

"And love is a stranger who'll beckon you on / Don't think of the danger or the stranger is gone" Megan and her whole acting life receding into the background as Don walks away and right into a perfect smoky 60s bar to order an old fashioned and 'wait' might be THE iconic shot of the show for me. If Season 4 was about rock bottom and struggle and rebirth, Season 5 seems to have been about what comes after. What comes after the struggle? What comes after the honeymoon phase? What comes after you quit your job? What comes after you take LSD, develop empathy and then it "wears off"? On some level we all knew it would only be a matter of time and per Milena's reaction, that's why it's not rage-inducing, it's like watching a friend you know deeply make a terrible decision but "that's just who they are". It is what it is. What did Don say last episode? "What is happiness? It's a moment before you need more happiness." Megan doesn't realize it but by pressuring Don (validly) to boost her career, she signed the death warrant for an already waning marriage. To paraphrase Doctor Faye Miller, Megan doesn't know that Don only likes the "beginning of things". Everyone is dealing with the death of Lane here, who is barely mentioned. Some more obviously than others. I think what endears Pete to most of us especially on the rewatch is that he is fundamentally self-aware in a way most other characters aren't. He is in a sense just as broken as Don, just as much a self-inflicted victim of the patriarchy as Lola describes, he just has less of an excuse. Per Joan, Lane kills himself and the company has its best year ever. "If he had just..." "If we had just..." None of it matters, because you can't turn back time. You can't put the whisky back in the bottle. You can't make Adam stay with you in the dentist's office because he's already long gone. What they do to Beth here was sadly extremely common at the time. Pete is not a Good person but he would never ever do that to anyone. A strange but compelling man for sure. While the switch from S3 to S4 was the most drastic, every season of Mad Men breaks down the show and rebuilds it in some way. What comes next? 🤷😊 We have two seasons (S7 is split into A and B halves like Sopranos), 27 episodes to go. ~14 weeks. How many shows stay this good for this long? I can count them on one hand probably lol. Bonus Thoughts: "This is what happens when you have an artistic temperament but you are not an artist" "The world could not support that many ballerinas" Marie does A LOT with not much time. The Peggy / Don cinema scene is obviously great and the snippet of her new job we get is fun. As Lane predicted, Joan slides relatively easily into his role as essentially chief financial officer. First time I'm noticing no Betty or Sally closing scene this ep. A James Bond song for a man who looks like an American James Bond is a fitting end to the season.

Kara

Great final episode. Feels low key, more wrapping up this season and setting up the next. Don and Peggy meeting in the cinema is nice, you can see her move has been better for them both, at least personally. She's like Walter White, taking on the traits of the people she's.... well, not killed, but left lmao. It pairs up against Megan's story nicely too. I have sympathy for her because I imagine every actor needs a leg up somewhere. But I think it causes Don to lose a bit of respect for her because it reminds him too much of his last marriage, and he's still unhappy that she left the agency, so his head starts turning. Marie drives the nail in too. I love her even though I'd hate to have her as a mother. Blunt and cynical but perceptive. The use of 'You Only Live Twice' is amazing too. It's so appropriate for Don it feels like they should've used it already.

Mark M

Waiting..........................................for Godfather 2.

tilden katz

"My daughter left my house a happy girl." I don't know what it is about that line, but I absolutely love it. The movie Don and Peggy were about to see may have been Casino Royale, the James Bond spoof released around Easter in 1967. Of course, the episode ends with the title song to that year's Bond entry, which was released in June.

tilden katz

Let me erase it.

tilden katz

When Don finds Peggy in the theater, she has arm draped like The Man in the opening credits. She is his Shadow. A Phantom?

tilden katz

Don is realizing that Megan is using him, and she's losing the 'purity' in his mind. How easily she shifts her emotions on cue when asked in the audition reel. She's 'acting'. His fantasy is shattered. Woe is him. AGAIN.

tilden katz

tilden katz

I don't know about ASAP. Its an epic poem getting home.

tilden katz

I applauded.

tilden katz

Rachel Menken is THE ONE. It isnt even close.

tilden katz

The stuff with Megan and Don's perception of her is so fascinating to me, because on the one hand yes it's about his lack of power which is very conventionally him needing to control a woman, and we saw that with Betty who he needed to fit the role of a traditional wife, but on the other hand it's also kind of the opposite where he liked Megan best when she was thriving and even upstaging him in his own field, and the moment he becomes disillusioned is actually when she takes the traditional route of her husband giving her a job. It's not like the plot was her succeeding at advertising and then Don becoming jealous and controlling and thinking it's not a woman's place to do that; he was utterly enamored with her modernity. Yet, it does seem he preferred knowing where she is at all times, and he can't understand her having wishes and desires outside of the life he's already created, which is back to being conventionally controlling. Why Don wanted Megan does not seem to be why Don wanted Betty, yet upon closer inspection he placed both women in boxes. It seems that, even when seemingly walking forwards, Don finds himself backwards. That is perfectly symbolized in him walking away from the fantasy of Megan into the darkness, and finding himself back at a bar striking a conversation with another woman. The complexities and contradictions here (in Don's psyche, not in the writing) make it something I feel could be endlessly analyzed.

Kev

Also Lola out here repping Don even while he's cheating, never thought I'd see the day!! (before people respond, I am joking, but her sympathy is a tribute to the incredibly well-built character he is).

Mitchell

"You only like the beginning of things." The only woman that challenged him. I honestly think she was his soul mate.

Mitchell

megan's parents are cool imo

on crip ...

1x1: You’re born alone, and you die alone, and this world just drops a bunch of rules on top of you to make you forget those facts. But I never forget - I’m living like there’s no tomorrow. Because there isn’t one.

Ewan C

Marie gives Don the absolute best piece of advice she could give him and he doesn’t listen.

Luis

My favorite season is next! The season premiere is two parts, so if you want to watch them on the same day it may be ideal.

Kev

"This is what happens when you have the artistic temperament but you are not an artist." How many of us winced when Marie said that?

Taya

I never got this from Don. He didn’t want Megan acting because he saw it as a rejection of advertising (a rejection of him) and as a loss of the control he had when she worked for him at the office. He wouldn’t have liked any alternative career she wanted to go into. But I’m curious which scenes would point to him thinking less of actresses, if you can recall them.

Jamie

Don thinks actresses are pretty much frivolous narcissists. He's just not seriously impressed. He sees Meghan differently, now. He's back on the market - because his heart and his admiration is no longer for her. Btw, in real life, I've seen this. My buddy was just about engaged to a woman training to be a doctor. He was a banker. He decided to go another way - open a pizzeria - something he always wanted to do. He quit, and got started. The day it opened - she broke up with him.

Chuckles

I always felt this episode is a great Series finale. Don’s look at the end when life is going well finally and he still has that moment of pause at the chance to return to his old ways exemplifies the entire journey for me. It’s obviously not and that’s great because there are so many more threads to tie off but I love it. You Only Live Twice as the cap is just perfect for the same reason

Isaiah Bryant

Sometimes the cosmic wheel aligns to give you Pete over and over again... When a tooth gets infected, if it's not treated it can can spread and become fatal. The dentist wasn't joking when he said Don could have had to lose his jaw if he put it off much longer, and it's the same today as well (BTW this is another example of how messed-up healthcare is in the USA: Dental insurance is separate from "Health" insurance, and while Health is considered necessary, Dental is considered a LUXURY. So a lot of people don't get it, and wind up spending a fortune to treat potentially-lethal health issues in their teeth which aren't covered under "health insurance"). I love how Pete becomes the most self-aware when giving his "I have this friend..." story. By depersonalizing it that way, he can finally say -- finally admit to himself -- all of the things that have been obvious for so long. For the always-open seat in front of Pete, groups of people would "claim" areas on a train because they took the same train every day with the same people. So they would all sit together to talk or joke or drink or play cards (Didn't we once even see a train employee come up to Pete and the people in his group with a deck of cards and a table?). So these seats together are "reserved" for them. It's not an "official" ownership of the seats, but it was a strong unwritten custom (Like groups of kids getting the same seats in class at school, or the same lunch table every day). The new Phillip Morris cigarettes -- the as-yet-unnamed real-life brand "Virginia Slims" -- were previously mentioned in the same episode where the partners had to put in that extra collateral in season four. So them coming back at CGC lines up with SCDP also paying out the $50,000 which Lane put into the company at the same time. Peggy & Don see "Casino Royale" at the movies. This was a movie parody of James Bond that came out in 1967, based on the first novel in the series. "You Only Live Twice", a straight-adaptation James Bond movie, also came out in 1967, and that is where the closing music of this episode came from.

JBK405

I mean, modern use with informed consent and well developed protocols that give due consideration to potential side effects is very different from some of the earlier ways in which it was deployed.

Sekraan

might have delayed it at least

Erin

Did Joanie really think a night with her would have prevented Lane from committing suicide? She might have a somewhat inflated view of her skills. Bless her!

Chidi.

No

Eric Viola

If that ain't IT, I don't know what is.

JBK405

2x12: “The only thing keeping you from being happy is the belief that you are alone.” 5x13: “Are you alone?”

Jamie

Andor ? 🥹🙏

Jesse S

somethings never change!

Infode

Megan, taking a shortcut to success, skipping the struggle the moment the going gets hard. Emile was right.

Erik D

Don went about 18 months without cheating.. Can you believe! Also, the end shot on some level mirrors how like for Betty, Don creates an aesthetically pleasing reality for Megan - seen visually as Don exited the shooting stage with Megan's set in the background, surrounded by the same darkness that Don walks into yet again

Infode

agreed - and I think it's a great splash of non-US versions of the same era

pb24rf19

the same astonishing love for Don is part of the Peaky experience, too....

pb24rf19

Hopefully you do get to watch The Doorway in one sitting, even with a talk break in between, because it works much better as a "movie" than two separate parts.

Jamie

“A temporary bandage on a permanent wound” might as well have been Mad Men’s working title.

Jamie

“Clara, can you go down to the lobby and get me a pack of Life Savers?” “What’s wrong with the machine?” “I want them fresh!!”

Jamie

if you are making lists of perfect shows that could follow this art, please please consider Peaky Blinders - the only other show to leave me speechless episode after episode. And there are very few episodes, also....

pb24rf19

Who wouldn't come home ASAP every single second of every single day to Trudy?! She's the GOAT

Scott

Vincent Kartheiser who plays Pete said this about what his character is feeling this season: "There's this moment where he gets the skis. People are coming to him and giving him things. He's building his business. Out in the world of advertising he's looked at as a go-getter and quite good at what he does. And it's those sorts of things that you always want to happen in your career/life, and then they happen - and they absolutely change nothing."

Eric Viola

whats the reason for that? im confused

Synyster

Electroshock therapy is a standard treatment for certain mental conditions. The movie One Few Over the Cuckoo's Nest in the 70s gave it a very bad rap and as a result a lot people think it's cruel and archaic but it's not. It's still widely used today - because it works.

Julien

Aw man no Andor two days in a row is gonna kill me 😫

Jah_Rule_95

Oooh I loved The Americans

Joshua Something

“😏”

Joshua Something

"Well i'm president of the Howdy Doody Circus Army!" is a top 5 Pete-ism

Wojo

Great reaction as always, but I don't agree with your take on Don RE Megan's career. He was right, as you called out with Don asking Faye, that it's better she not get it that way, but he gives in and does support her by getting her the part. He barely refuses, he just suggests it's not a good idea. The problem is, by helping her, it's ruined his illusion of her. I don't think it's a case of him worrying about her getting away or thinking this is her getting away, it's to do with what he projects on to her given what he imagines about what his own life with her should be. It's bad for both of them, because Megan has given in as well and taken the easy path, to the detriment of her own sense of self.

John Mokyr

A season finale so good it could have been the series' ending. And there's still TWO (and a half) seasons left! A thing like that..

Jenny D

Hahahaha Lola getting Pete episodes...oohhh, poor you!

Scott

What I love about Marie is that unlike so many characters, she has fun but she still sees the world as it is. Like she refuses to be a mother to Roger and coddle him like other women have done. Her relationship with Megan is a bit more of a competition it seems, but she is right that it’s very hard to be an actor. Someone can work really hard and want it but still not get it, which Megan realizes by having her husband give it to her

Jude G

"Are you alone?" You Only Live Twice in that ending is one of my favourite TV needle drops ever. As are a couple more that are coming before the show's over.

Hugo Sinclair

"Are you alone"?

Griffen Rosado

Can't wait for you guys to get to s6!

Pratham Dusad

Just wanted to say that I have just finished the show and it might be my new favourite live action series. (Drama at least) I’ll need to sit with it for some time though. That said s6 is probably my favourite season so I’m very excited to see what you guys think of it!

Virgil Hawkins