I think this show does a lot better with character bloat then other long running dramas. Mainly by keeping the focus on Don and Peggy, and limiting the other characters to a scene or to with whatever time is left.
Too many dramas feel they need to give each character a fully developed sub-plot, with result being that none of them are fully developed and most of them the audience doesn’t care about anyways.
I guess, though Roger gets drunk in the office all the time, Pete has fistfights and crashed a car in a clients lobby, Peggy smokes up with the art department and they’re all constantly involved in messy affairs. I guess it seems kinda forced for them all to decide Don is the one that needs to get booted, to the extent they don’t even want him submitting ideas for ads even just to the rest of the staff anymore.
I dunno, if there’s one thing we’ve seen it’s that ad men never seem to go away. Hell, Freddy is still apparently in the game (albeit freelance) and his ass got canned back in season one or two. Everyone on Madison Ave knows who Don is and I can’t see him being quickly forgotten unless he removes himself completely from the game.
This is more true than you realize. I’m in the industry in Chicago, not New York, but no matter how bad a person’s reputation is, there always seems to be a spot for them at one agency or another.
We were confused by that scene for a few minutes ourselves…I thought “wait a minute, isn’t *that *one Dawn? Why are they calling each other by their own names?” Then it dawned on me, that they were playing off the “they all look alike” thing. So I guess the joke worked pretty much perfectly
I thought this was a great episode. I laughed out loud half a dozen times. And the “I love you” from Sally at the end was brilliant. I love that after 6+ seasons, I have no idea what’s going to happen to Don at the end of the show. He could wind up taking a header off the balcony, or he could end up running the firm. Or maybe he’ll take the money and run, and spend the rest of his days sipping piña coladas on a beach somewhere; who knows?
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the show does end with ‘Don Draper’s’ death…and Dick Whitman (or whatever he goes on calling himself) starting a ‘new life’ for himself somewhere far, far removed from the New York advertising world.
I’m not hoping for more screen time for lesser people like Ginsburg. Quite the opposite, they already suck up too much show time. Not a fan of the the CGC people either. I like Stan, but his character is in limbo. Either give him a real story involving, say, Peggy or forget him.
But you have people like Ken Cosgrove and Harry Crane that are given only superficial stuff now and then. These are the core “Mad Men” that should be interacting with Don. Doing Ad Men things, like wooing clients and making pitches. (Which didn’t happen in this episode.)
While i still really like the show, one thing that has lessened my interest is the fact that wooing clients and making pitches has declined in importance over the last few seasons.
Remember the early days of the show, when just about every episode had a pitch or a creative meeting or an art meeting about actual advertising, and the workings of the business were at least as important as the personal lives of the characters? That’s the Mad Men i really loved. Later seasons are still better than average television (usually much better), but i miss the industry focus of the first few seasons.
Because it’s a show about people that work in an office together, and like in real life we don’t always continue working with the same people as much as we maybe did nine years ago. People come and go. They leave the company for some reason (Sal) and you may never see them again unless you run into them at lunch or something. If I had to have my personal storylines still intersecting with the people I worked with nine years ago, I’d kill myself.
Now, I know that this is fiction not reality - but it still has to reflect reality - and in real life, people become more or less important as time goes by.
Sally is a lot more than just a snotty teenager. Remember when she told Don “I’m so many people?” Like Don and most of the other adults on this show, Sally has learned that she must compartmentalize parts of her life and be different things to different people. Sally and Don are slowly beginning to understand one another, and their relationship is turning out to be one of the more honest relationships on the show.
Well that kind of follows Don though, doesn’t it? For Don, wooing clients and making pitches steadily declined from the beginning the series. It’s part of the reason he is where he is now.
Well yeah, but Cosgrove and Crane are still part of the office. It’s interesting how much of a bit player Cosgrove is on the show considering that he’s been with us from Day One (well, I supposed he had a Sterling Cooper sabbatical when he was abandoned by the new SCDP and absorbed by McCann).
I agree with the office/ad pitches part though. I don’t watch to really see the people be miserable and tortured. I accept that sometimes they’ll be miserable and that something interesting may come from that misery but the episodes I enjoy and remember best are the ones when people are their best and win. Don being brilliant, Roger being funny, Peggy being spunky or whatever. One Peggy riding a scooter in an empty sound studio is worth a hundred heart-struck Peggy or mopy drunken Don scenes. I know not every episode can have people on top (or what’s the point?) but the wins are a lot more sparse these days which is why I was happy to at least see Joan and Dawn get a victory.
It would be typical for a partnership agreement to specify that if he were fired they’d have to buy him out. Given how much the value of the company is increased with their new clients I wouldn’t be surprised if they simply couldn’t afford to fire him.
The actress who plays Sally looks too young to be in college. Or is she in a boarding school doing her high school? She looks like she’s 16 at most. Or maybe I’m just getting old.
It seems to me that we might be moving towards a ‘redemption’ season. Don is becoming comfortable in his own skin, he’s had the catharsis of telling his true past, and he’s kicking the bottle. Time for him to come out swinging. In the meantime, Pete, Peggy, and Roger are all unhappy (I was going to add Joan, but she seems to have gotten what she wanted).
I think it would be an interesting twist for Don to decide to form a new ad agency with Peggy as head of creative, Pete as head of accounts, and Roger as… whatever it is Roger does. It would also make for a great season if Mad Men got back to its roots, with Don in charge and he and Peggy coming up with brilliant ad campaigns and crushing SCDP.
The only problem I see with that scenario is that Don, Roger and Pete are partners in the current firm, and all are no doubt under non-compete agreements. There’d have to be some blowup that gets them out of their contracts.
Maybe that’s the point to the two-part final season - the first part is all the events leading up to the big split, and a final season that comes out with a bang with a new Draper ad agency and everyone firing on all cylinders. That would be a hell of a lot more interesting than 12 episodes of watching unlikeable people descend into mediocrity, or some overwrought dramatic twist like a suicide or murder of a major character. I’d rather go out watching them climb back to the top. Also, the Peggy character is based on a very famous and successful female ad exec, so she must get her mojo back at some point.
This show had two subplots that annoyed me: The flower subplot was the kind of ‘misunderstanding driven’ plot that bad sitcoms resort to, and so was the ‘broken telephone that lets everyone hear an embarrassing conversation’ schtick. Both are lazy plot devices, which makes me worried for the quality of this season.
That said, so far I’m enjoying where this season is going.
Sally was born in April 1954 so she’s just shy of 15. Kiernan Shipka was born in November 1999 so she was 14 when this was shot.
I’ve been thinking about the possibility of the show circling around to the beginning. Look at the characters:
Don still has his ad mojo, but his personal confidence is shaken. In some ways that’s not a change - the whole first season led up to him wanting to ditch his identify and run away - and he’s still an attractive player to the industry. He could land clients.
Roger hasn’t contributed anything to the firm in several seasons. Jim all but told him directly that he would be destroyed if he didn’t shut up. He might want to take off but he has no real value, and I’ll bet his divorces have left him short of big bucks.
Burt Cooper similarly is merely a name at this point, more a liability than an asset.
Pete brings in real paying clients. Who else is doing that? He’s unhappy and ready to go. It doesn’t matter than the audience doesn’t like him; right now he’s next to Don as the most valuable player.
Joan is getting her due for the skills she’s painfully gained over the seasons - but only from the other side. Her last real champion at SCP was Layne, and he’s dead. Why would she leave now?
Ken may have been promoted above his competency, but he’s skilled and a veteran and unhappy. He might jump at working with Chevy dealers rather than with Chevy itself.
Harry is among the missing.
And Peggy. We were given a connection between her and Don in the first episode. They could use one another right now. Unhappy doesn’t begin to describe her. She could go in a minute. She’s also acting so weirdly in a world that allows male weird behavior but not female that anything could happen.
Does this sound like the basis of a new agency with these people? I don’t think so. A few of them might possibly band together as a boutique agency - Don and Peggy creatives, Pete and Ken accounts - but that’s missing the heavy hitters on the money end.
You know who’s the only one on the show who looks like somebody ready for the 70s? Stan. He’s laid back, talented, seeped in drugs, and lacking huge amounts of baggage. Next season: Stan the Man, art director and superspy!
Maybe… But I think Don is hungry again - his time in the wilderness has made him a little more humble, and the fact that he’s willing to pay just to get his ideas out into the world is a sign that he wants nothing more than to be at the top of the ad biz again.
Pete is also at the top of his game, having just landed the Chevy dealerships (and had it possibly ripped away from him). Also, his wife seems to be a very good salesperson. Maybe she’ll play a role.
Peggy looks burned out, but that might just be her current circumstances. She feels underappreciated and irrelevant. Give her a job as head of creative working with a sober Don Draper, and they could do amazing things together.
Sure, they can’t bring the old accounts, but part of a rebirth scenario means moving into the future. Accutron is an example of that. Ditch the old clients, and create something totally new for the modern 70’s. If they landed an account like Coke, that would be all the heavy hitting they’d need.
In fact, imagine SCDP losing Accutron because of the idiot creative head’s rejection of Don’s idea, and Peggy and Don taking it and pitching it to them. Accutron used the Apollo missions in its advertising - what better way to signal the end of the old world and the start of the new age?
Still, it’s all just fun speculation.
