Mad Men

In my experience Mad Men fandom by large part blamed a lot of shit on Betty. I remember the excuse of oh well Don had a hard life, and Betty is an awful mom. The latter in particular.

Kiran wrote:In my experience Mad Men fandom by large part blamed a lot of shit on Betty. I remember the excuse of oh well Don had a hard life, and Betty is an awful mom. The latter in particular.

To me they're two separate arguments...whatever kind of mother Betty was, it's not like Don was shown to be straying because he heard her call Sally fat or thought she was too rough on Bobby and thought, "Oh, what a terrible woman! Why don't I sleep with Bobbie Barrett?" I guess I shouldn't be surprised by anything...were there MM fans really saying that Don wouldn't have constantly cheated and kept his true identity a secret from Betty if she were less childish? By S3 that dog really wouldn't hunt, he was screwing Sally's old teacher who lived a few streets away for heaven's sake. But when people don't like a character there is a tendency to think they deserve everything bad that happens to them.

I think the reality the show presented and the reasoning fans came up with in their heads because they wanted to be able to justify their interest in Don is two seperate things tbh.

I dont know, I (politely) disagree with you on this one. I think initially Don was the same man but presented in such a way to show that there is still hope for him. But that has slowly been show to be a false hope. And I think its been done very well. But I also like Megan.

Betty kind of was an awful mom, and she and Don were awful together. But I think the show is doing a great job of now showing that waaaay more of it was Don than Betty. I like that she and Henry have a genuinely loving marriage (even with her issues, which are legit) and that she is more patient, mellow, and self-assured than she was with Don. Grading on a curve, granted, but still. Remember when Don said to someone about how in the beginning Betty was always happy? I think that she probably was, overall, and that her marriage to Henry is showing that if she'd married someone like him the first time she probably would have, by and large, stayed that way and not become the Betty we first met. I don't know; I used to really hate her but she's totally growing on me.

I've always felt sympathy for her. I don't think Betty was the most likable character early on but she was the one I felt a lot of sympathy for. She settled for a role in life that was expected of her but not one she truly wanted. Add to that her mother truly sounded awful to me. I wasn't surprised with her preoccupation with Sally's looks when we learned her mother used to leave her at the grocery store and make her walk back because she was chubby.

WTF was that? It was like one of those Sopranos dream sequence episodes. I wonder what Joan and Bob and his coffee cups would have made of the office shenanigans. I thought Grandma Ida was another hallucination at first and then I was worried she was going to stab Sally once she started getting suspicious.

Betty seems to be back to her old self. Seems like history is repeating itself with the dig that Sally earned the money for her skirt on a street corner. Nice.

Did I see Pete cozying up to Joan in the previews?

That...was...very weird.

What was in that shot? Meth?

I can see why Sally believed Grandma Ida. I almost did too, and I've seen a lot of flashbacks of Don's life.

Apparently the shot was just speed. Remind me never to do speed. Also, isn't speed like, really bad for people with heart conditions? Methinks that wasn't a real doctor.

I actually felt bad for Don after seeing how he lost his virginity. I haven't felt bad for Don for awhile, but that explains a lot of why he is like he is. It doesn't excuse it, but it does explain it. However, he was beyond creepy with Sylvia.

On the lighter side of things, I really enjoyed Ken Cosgrove tap-dancing and think that it should happen a lot.

Seriously, what the actual fuck was that? I know Mad Men has done some offbeat stuff before, but I wasn't expecting speed-dosed SDCPCGC employees and an elderly African-American female cat burglar.

On the plus side,
Ken Cosgrove dancing gif!

I think my favorite thing was the look on Don and Dawn's faces when he danced off.

Doctors like that were a real thing in the sixties, I've read a lot of Kennedy bios, JFK and Jackie had a Dr. Feelgood giving them "vitamin" shots behind the official White House physician's back during the Camelot days.

I think Don is actually supposed to be younger when he was molested but they are just using the same actor whose played young Dick Whitman all along so it doesn't look quite so creepy.

I felt like that was the least subtle episode ever, too.

At the very least its tied with that episode where Betty gives birth and has fantasies sequences about her parents and civil rights activists chilling and crushing caterpillars.

I've been a fan of this season but that episode was kind of a hot mess. Though I guess its a credit to this show that even as a hot mess there were things I liked (Betty's bitchy lines, the tap dancing, Stan/Peggy, Abe bitching about everyone.)

When I saw those "vitamin" shots laid out, I thought omg those things are gonna kill Don ('face made of walnuts') & Roger and the next season and a half are just going to be flashbacks.

Except for the opening shot of the attempted murder of Ken I was really enjoying this ep. Until GRANDMA IDA. And poor Dick Whitman getting beaten with a wooden spoon.

For whatever reason I laughed loudest at "Chevy is SPELLED WRONG".

The SECOND the doctor said, "stimulants" I thought, "oh hey someone got their hands on some high quality speed." That shit will do things.
I found myself enjoying that balls tripping episode. That line Ken said, "My Mother taught me... no my first girlfriend." That and the tap dance was like the physical expression of Don's entire psychological life. It might have been a so-so episode but I laughed and laughed.

"This is Aaron Stanton, please leave a message"
>beep<
"Aaron, It's Matt. I know you've been feeling a little side-lined lately, but you've got some screen time coming up. More than backboard conversation scenes. We're not planning to kill you off, no matter what it looks like when you first read the pages. Trust me you'll love it. "
>beep<
"Oh, one more thing. Remember when you did that tap dance at the Christmas party? Me, too."
>beep<

Oh lord, and when Stan got hit with the .. was it a pen? I was yelling at the screen "DON'T PULL IT OUT. DON'T PULL IT OUT." It was a bit of a mess of an episode (getting sick of Don's flashbacks), but I could not stop laughing for most of it.

Corvus wrote:"This is Aaron Stanton, please leave a message"
>beep<
"Aaron, It's Matt. I know you've been feeling a little side-lined lately, but you've got some screen time coming up. More than backboard conversation scenes. We're not planning to kill you off, no matter what it looks like when you first read the pages. Trust me you'll love it. "
>beep<
"Oh, one more thing. Remember when you did that tap dance at the Christmas party? Me, too."
>beep<

Hee.

He says he had a bit of lead time to practice! I'm more intrigued by the fact that he used to be in Mamma Mia on Broadway.

gannetguts wrote:Oh lord, and when Stan got hit with the .. was it a pen? I was yelling at the screen "DON'T PULL IT OUT. DON'T PULL IT OUT." It was a bit of a mess of an episode (getting sick of Don's flashbacks), but I could not stop laughing for most of it.

I thought it was an Exacto knife, which are usually in art departments to use for precise cutting. That was awful.

At least no one ran over his foot with a lawn mower.

I can't believe Abe got stabbed twice in one episode. I have to admit, I was laughing pretty hard when Peggy stabbed him.

Who played Megan's lesbian co-star? She looked so familiar and I couldn't place her.

And Don. I said, "Oh, God Don!" so many times this episode, I lost count. I could see the Betty thing coming since he married Megan. He needs to stop. Just stop being Don. It's too much.

I don't trust Bob. I don't know hat he's up to but he's up to something.

If Betty gets pregnant again I'm going to laugh so hard.

I ALSO don't trust Bob. How tense was that when it seemed like he might be about to squeal about Roger/Joan? Except it was totally obvious he wasn't going to, but still.

So Betty lost all the weight I guess. That was fast.

I was cracking up that Peggy's weapon was a harpoon (that's what it looked like to me anyway) even before she accidentally stabbed Abe. Abe, dude, I see where you're coming from and all, but my lord you are annoying. Paul Rudd called from the set of Anchorman and he wants his entire look back. I'm so happy we're done with you.

The Comcast episode info says "Roger is plagued by a recurring dream." If that happened I apparently blinked and missed it. Do they put together the summaries from the informationless episode previews?

We couldn't stop laughing at how much it sucked to be Peggy in this episode. Heh.

We were also pretty convinced Betty will get knocked up because apparently that always happens when she and Don mess around, plus they showed Henry all over her earlier in the episode thus creating a "who's the daddy" situation, but then that seemed like the act of a lesser show.

The Comcast episode info says "Roger is plagued by a recurring dream." If that happened I apparently blinked and missed it. Do they put together the summaries from the informationless episode previews?

iTunes said that too, and also said that Joan "goes to the beach" - she does, but that's not at all the point. I'm wondering if they changed the plot around at the last minute? That or They were intentionally misleading.

Abe, dude, I see where you're coming from and all, but my lord you are annoying.

I liked Abe at first, but he was definitely getting annoying. He actually reminds me of a few people I know - and while they have great ideas, not getting stabbed is also a great idea.

The Comcast episode info says "Roger is plagued by a recurring dream."

Seriously as if the previews aren't random and obtuse enough, Wiener can't even thrown the tiniest synopsis bones of accuracy.

Who played Megan's lesbian co-star? She looked so familiar and I couldn't place her.

That's Joanna Going who has spent most of her career on soap operas, I know her best as Lisa from Another World, but she was also on Dark Shadows, and briefly attempted to break out in the mid-nineties in the dull flop Wyatt Earp. I felt really bad for her when that happened. Costner on his down trajectory.

I'm going out on a limb and saying I like Bob Benson, there's no doubt he's a manipulative suck up, but I think he is also probably more earnest kind of suckup, and I love that for all his mechanizations no one can remember his face/name. I hadn't remembered this but apparently he had mentioned to Ken in the premiere that his father was dead, but now he's all "this dude nursed him back to health".

I think this is the most I've liked Betty in a long time, good for her that she has moved on to reasonably more solid relationship with Henry and isn't foolish enough to think beyond one night with Don again. Poor Peggy, Don was more right about Ted than she wanted to think.