Perhaps many of you already thought this, but Sally’s perspective of what she saw just occurred to me. She doesn’t know Don and Sylvia have been having an affair, so after seeing them in bed, then learning about the favor Don did for Mitchell, maybe she thinks Don might have requested/demanded sex from Sylvia for his deed.
That’s why I asked about the expression Bob had on his face when he walked away from Pete. It was sort of inscrutable. In fact, HE is inscrutable. Maybe someone who has the episode recorded can check out that look. He didn’t seem embarrassed or rejected or even self-conscious. He didn’t slink away or anything. He’s not dumb, but I can’t figure out what his game is. I can’t believe he is attracted to Pete.
What about that moment early in the show when Pete’s mom was talking to Peggy and referred to “the child you two have together”? :eek: That was a heart-stopper. Until you realized mom thought she was talking to Trudy. Yikes.
Bob doesn’t always know the right thing to do or say. He’s irritated Don, Ken, and Cutler for various reasons. The Creative guys just sort of seem bemused by him. It’s only Pete and Joan that he’s ingratiated himself with, and Joan dismissed him at first and only changed her mind for her own reasons. He’s kind of a dud as a suck-up and manipulator, actually.
His expression leaving Pete’s office was keeping his game face in place, acting like it was no big thing and everything was casual.
Did the “one month’s pay” apply to Manolo. Bob or both?
And yeah, colossally stupid to make a gay advance on someone who:
A. Has made no indication that he is gay, and in fact is almost certainly straight
B. Can fire you.
BluePear: Good call on Sally’s mindset. I hadn’t thought that, but you’re probably right.
I think the one month’s pay was for Manolo.
My friend mistakenly referred to him as Manuel, to which I asked, “Manuel Release?”
Peggy also called him Manuel at some point. Kinda took me out of it.
More Megan/Sharon Tate parallels fodder (stolen from Reddit):
When Sally and her friend meet Sylvia’s son in the lobby, the friend makes a comment about ‘Mark Lindsay living in your building.’
Mark Lindsay was the former lead singer of Paul Revere and the Raiders and a teen heartthrob at the time.
According to Wikipedia, he and his producer rented a house together for a while. It’s the same house where Sharon Tate was murdered.
Can anybody identify the TV shows that were being watched throughout the episode? It seemed to me that they were more prominent than just being in the background.
I thought I saw Jack Lord on Peggy’s TV in b&w and the same show at Don’s in color. I assumed Hawaii Five-O (ran from 1968-1980). At the bar, it was a different program, maybe some sports event?
Thought it was interesting that Stan Rizzo had a Moshe Dayan poster up on the wall - other than Dayan looking badass with his eyepatch, what’s the political upshot of that? Support for Israel? Rejection of pacifism?
All in all this struck me as a pretty meh episode which did not do much to move the plot forward, or at least not any part of the plot that i’m interested in. So Bob Benson’s gay - it could lead to something interesting but why was the whole crazy Manolo thing needed in order for that to be made clear? Other than that, it seems as though not much happened although I know there were some Don-Ted developments as well as a new lease on the whole Don-Sylvia thing that is going to stay with us now that Sally saw what she saw.
I’m pleased to see Pete slowly (or not so slowly) circling the drain descending into what I hope will be insanity.
Also, I thought the Stan and Peggy phone call was interesting - it appeared as though this was not the first time that her and Stan were involved in some sort of friends with benefits thing. Never mind that Pete was speculating about how her and Ted love each other.
I don’t think that was Jack Lord, was it? I thought it was an episode of The Rifleman, with Chuck Connors.
I’m really falling off the Mad Men bandwagon. For me, the best parts of the show used to be the ad campaigns, with Don coming up with something brilliant to redeem himself. The Kodak Carousel presentation is the best scene in the history of the show. Don’s mysterious past and his struggle fitting into his fake life was also very compelling.
All of that is gone now. Don comes across as a washed up hack who doesn’t care anymore. The endless series of affairs are completely tedious. Been there, done that. Roger is nothing more than comic relief now, whereas before he had his own complexities. Peggy has become completely uninteresting, and she used to be the second most interesting character on the show.
Finally, I’m tired of seeing the 60’s through the eyes of these writers, who seem to think it consisted of nothing more than drugs, hippies, Vietnam, and civil rights clashes. There was a hell of a lot more going on then - the space race, a revolution in music, the cold war - the iron curtain descended on Europe, the Prague Spring was crushed in Czechoslovakia. None of this gets a mention?
In 1967 the Apollo 1 fire killed three astronauts and it was a big damned deal. There were state funerals, flags at half mast throughout the country, etc. Not a mention on the show. All through the 60’s each space mission captured the attention of the nation. I was in grade school in the 60’s, and we had school assemblies to watch space launches on TV. There were tickertape parades for astronauts in New York. And for a show on advertising they don’t seem to be mentioning that space-themed advertising became a big deal around that time.
If they get through 1969 without mentioning the moon landing, I’ll be seriously pissed. As it is, they’re totally missing the effect that the space race was having on the people. Even in the 70’s when I was a teenager people were routinely talking about the space program in casual conversation. “If we can put a man on the moon we can do <X>” was a common phrase.
But that’s a side issue. The real problem with Mad Men is that it’s lost many of the things that used to make it great.
Agree with a lot in your post, but the iron curtain descended on Europe in the late 1940s, not in 1968. The Prague Spring being crushed clearly showed that it wasn’t being lifted, true, but it had been in place for a good 20 years by then.
It was definitely Jack Lord.
Bob Benson reminds me of another actor, but I can’t think who – someone from the old days, not anyone current. He’s awfully cute.
Yeah, hard to believe he’d come on to Pete. But for a couple seconds, Pete looked like he was considering the offer. Or maybe he was just puzzled. It was a WTF look.
The ‘Iron Curtain’ speech by Churchill was in 1946, but I’ve always considered the construction of the Berlin Wall to be the act that completed it, and the Berlin Wall started being built in 1961.
Certainly the cold war had a major effect on the people of the 1960’s, but you don’t see much of it on Mad Men. In addition, the show seems to presume that almost everyone ‘knows’ that the Vietnam war was lost and no one really supported it. In reality, the majority of the public supported the war until after the Tet offensive in 1968, and opinions on both sides were strong enough that I don’t think it would have been discussed in business meetings any more than people discussed the Iraq War with clients in the 2000’s.
That really is the key ingredient missing now: we don’t ever see them doing any of the ad work. All they do is talk about it… in between drug hallucinations or Don schtupping whomever.
We used to see Don being brilliant, or Peggy coming up with something. Now, Ted says that Ginsberg is “lightning in a bottle”, but no examples of being so. We did get a brief glimpse of Roger being effective to land GM, but this episode all we get is him juggling oranges instead of showing how he got that account in.
Don’s affairs and the dull drug hallucination episodes are the most boring part of the show, and they’ve dropped the fascinating advertising bits in favor of the dull stuff.
That was clearly Jack Lord and I thought I hear a “5-0” in there so that was clear to me.
What is decidedly less clear is what 46% of dopers saw in the episode to give this a “loved it” grade. My god this was a giant bowl of “meh” if ever there was one. Really, what made this great to someone???
Pete just took a moment to catch on. Even enlightened Peter “Blacks are people too” Campbell has the immediate reaction of calling homosexuals “degenerates”. Plus Pete desperately wants to see himself (and have others see him) as the suave New York ladies man. Bangin’ dudes doesn’t fall anywhere into that dream.
I gave it a “like” based off the Ted/Peggy/Pete scene, the draft-dodging plot (watching Don pick his leads clean and Ted come through), Ted reversing last week’s “It’s not them and us” into “But I want MY juice!” and Peggy & Stan was amusing.
Points off for the return of the terrible Sylvia romance and the suggestion that now I’m supposed to give a fuck about Ted’s wife & kids. I barely care about Don’s wife & kids.
The show is running high enough and has enough redeeming episodes that I’ll be with it for the last season+2 episodes. But it is starting to wear out its welcome.
Edit: Grudging admiration that the expected “Sylvia’s kid is going to nail Sally or her friend” was turned completely on its head. Although once Sally walked into the apartment, you knew what was coming.
I thought that too; it’d certainly make Sally even more pissed off and disgusted at her father. I also though of Sylvia using that as an excuse if Arnold found out, but that lie would fall apart really fast (though not before Arnold beats the crap out of Don, possibly killing him).
I highly doubt Pete was considering the offer; he was just too shocked to respond. Bob’s taste in men can sure put Peggy to shame, not to mention his horrible sense of timing. I don’t see Pete firing him per se. It’s more likely he’d tell him to resign and leave quietly in exchange for a reference. Pete sure as hell isn’t going to want to justify firing Bob to anyone.
And yes I think Joan’s aware Bob’s gay; there are already rumours flying around, and Joan’s spent enough time with him to realize something’s up. She’d laugh her ass off if she found out he hit on Pete. Actually the entire office would.
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Peggy had a bunch of great scenes: with Pete’s mom, with Ted and Pete, with the rat and the phone call to Stan.
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Kiernan Shipka’s performance as Sally was amazing.