Man, people sure are bent out of shape over what was probably a 5-minute sequence in an extra-long episode.
Plus, I’m not sure it was a drug trip we were seeing… that wasn’t really what a hashish trip is like (from what I’ve heard). I think it was a near-death experience from when Don was in the pool, which is why he snaps out of it when Roger is slapping him back to consciousness. If you recall, the “Previously On” bit at the beginning showed the scene from the first episode where Don is suggesting the print ad of a man walking into the water.
PS, I just spelled consciousness correctly on my first attempt for maybe the first time in my life.
Either way I hate that shit, and it’s not a 5 minute section in this episode, it’s yet another gobbledygook drug/dream/death sequence in a season that has relied too much on them. It sucks in Mad Men and it sucks in every other show where they try to do it*.
*There may be exceptions to this but as a general rule drug trips, dream sequences etc. are the worst parts of often otherwise very good fictional tv.
It’s not (from what I have experienced as recently as a couple of weeks ago). There isn’t really such a thing as a hashish “trip”. It’s more or less similar to a marijuana high.
Sharon Tate was pregnant… Between that, the red-star t-shirt last week, and the LA scene stuff, I’m beginning to think there’s something to that Megan-as-Tate theory.
BTW, I had to look him up because I couldn’t remember him - but here’s Danny Siegel the last time we saw him. He was the copywriter that Roger had to hire as a favor to his wife Jane (he’s her cousin). They weren’t going to hire him but were forced to after Don inadvertently used one of Danny’s taglines (from his interview).
Someone at the LA party last night mentioned going to a different house. I thought that might have been Sharon Tate’s house for that infamous night, but looked it up in Wikipedia, and the murders were in 1969. (And I thought perhaps Bob Benson might be tied to the Stonewall Riot, but again, that was 1969.)
I thought that in the so-called previews there was a hint that Megan might be about to tell Don she’s pregnant. But I think I’ve established that no one can trust my recall of this (or possibly) any episode. Peace out.
Sounds that way. It makes sense, actually. Bob worked with Ken and it’s not as though they’d send Pete out there and lose their other head account guy. Nor is either of the senior partners in accounts about to play court jester to some guys in Detroit.
I like Roger, but really, enough is enough. He deserved that shot to the scrotum. He was being an ass.
Harry Hamlin continues to amaze me. He creates a character that is about as far from his previous persona as is humanly possible, and makes it work. And funny!
The drugs bugged me, but what bugged me even more was the political rants from both sides. They seem cut and pasted, with no real reasoning. I was in high school at the time, with a lot of political discussion, and went to Cambridge for college the year after, and no one I knew, left or right, spoke that way. I don’t think Weiner has a clue about how we discussed politics back then.
Don, with his jacket and tie at a Hollywood pool party, is increasingly out of it, isn’t he? I think younger ad men started fleeing and opening up boutique shops around then - maybe that will happen. The self loathing they must feel is beginning to come through.
Pete’s entirely right, though, that the merger has completely changed the firm and that Chaough and Cutler are angling to squeeze out the SCDP people, and it’s basically kind of a running gag at this point that he can’t get anyone to listen to him. Coupled with his loss of Vicks, Joan’s angling to squeeze him out, and Ted saddling him with “New Business,” I can certainly see where his fears are coming from.
Cutler wanted to squeeze out the SCDP people. Chaough was against it. Cutler brought up mass-firing SCDP people in everyone’s absence and Chaough was talking about “It’s not ‘their people’ and ‘our people’…” and that they can’t fire Ginsberg because he’s too good.
Maybe something will change to reflect otherwise but, right now, Chaough is depicted as the only real mature and level-headed guy in the partnership (except maybe Cooper). Which is quite the departure from the glimpses we saw of him as Don’s nemesis in previous seasons.