There are virtually no costumes on the entire show that are “without purpose” in one way or another. I take it you don’t read Tom and Lorenzo’s Mad Style posts? They discuss the costuming in detail. Even if you aren’t interested in clothes, it’s well worth a read because the columns provide some excellent insight into the show.
I’m really looking forward to seeing what they say about the hat/suit combo.
I suppose what was worse was her reaction when Henry have his new position. She challenged him and said something like “Since when do you think that?”
I am now! Thanks! 
The whole Ginsberg character and story arc was just annoying, and I wish he had disappeared before this ridiculous story was written. In fact, most of the cast has gone from interesting to merely annoying or implausible. And they have the balls to split this season! Bah!
Tom & Lorenzo review Mad Men, but they dissect the FASHIONS, a whole separate article called Mad Men Style, on Wednesday afternoons. Amazing analysis, if you go for that kind of thing. You can take a look at previous shows (“Mad Men Style”) and see what the colors blue and green signify, see who’s stuck in the past, who is fashion forward…great fun.
I disagree that the ménage a trois was fan service. I don’t think Mad Men is angling for the Coors Light crowd in its penultimate season and existing fans all seem to hate Jessica Pare. Fan service would be Meagan dying offscreen on the way back to her home planet.
I do agree that the overheard in the bathroom stall bit was pretty awful. The writing should be tightening up when they have so few episodes to produce, not sinking down to Sitcom Gags 101.
Canada? 
Agreed on the bathroom stall thing. Didn’t they do that every 5 minutes on Ally McBeal?
Lou is really a twerp though. Stan and Ginsberg were being jerks about it, but they’re a couple of “creatives” in an ad agency. A certain amount of jerkiness is a job requirement. Amazing that Lou has gotten as far as he has in the industry without growing a thicker skin–or at least being able to fake one.
It’s amazing analysis even if you don’t go for that sort of thing. Reading it brings out a lot of nuances that are easy to miss.
One example would be from a couple of seasons ago, after Pete and Trudy bought the house in the 'burbs. Trudy wanted that lifestyle, but Pete really didn’t. There was a scene in the house, where Trudy was wearing a dress in warm tones that fit in with the home’s decor. Pete was wearing cool tones that clashed. This emphasized that she was comfortable in/attached to the home while Pete was somewhat alienated.
Another way the analyses are interesting is that Tom and Lorenzo point out things about what the clothes signify that viewers in 2014 might overlook. We might see secretary A and secretary B in similar outfits and not realize that secretary A’s is more expensive and more fashionable. That tells us something about the characters.
p.s. Did you notice that Lou ditched the cardigans for suits as soon as Don came back on the scene?
This was one of the falsest notes for me in the entire series.
Sure Nixon had a “secret plan” to end the war that got him votes in 1968. Any adult working politician who thought that Nixon really meant it is buried deeper in a cult than Marigold. Betty said exactly what her half the country thought. Henry’s reaction was nuttier than Ginzburg’s. I didn’t believe it and I still don’t get it.
I thought that point isn’t whether Henry thought that Nixon meant it, but whether Henry was sticking to the talking points while in public.
This. Henry wasn’t upset that she expressed a point of view. He was pissed because she questioned his in front of the constituency.
Nixon’s talking points were about ending the war, but also about the evils of those opposing the war. Betty got that sentiment exactly right and the couple they were talking to seemed to respond positively. Henry was the one who was off-message.
And it’s impossible to believe that a politician wouldn’t have talked to his wife extensively to school her in the proper talking points. Their argument after made clear that the subject had never come up. Vietnam never came up? They’ve never talked to neighbors before? They’ve never been in a room together when the subject was raised? It’s circa May 1969 and Henry is mad at Betty saying what is certainly boilerplate for someone in her position as if he never heard it before?
The scene only makes sense if Betty was saying something wrong. I can’t twist her words into wrongness from either her or Henry’s pov. Another baffling scene in a season full of them.
Betty has gone from exasperation with her children to out-and-out hatred of them. She tells Sally, “I gave you that nose!” and then wonders why “they don’t love me.”
Jon Hamm has got to be the most attractive man God has ever put on this planet. Don Draper acts like a dog yet still I root for him. When he was curled in the fetal position a couple episodes ago after Peggy called him a monster, I thought I was going to cry.
I felt like Hamm was making the durpiest facial expressions in that final scene with the cigarette people. Not on purpose because he was trying to look goofy but maybe the angle they had him sitting, or the tightness of his collar.
Hard to really capture his weird looks in screen shots, but I tried: Imgur: The magic of the Internet
Just to fill in folk who weren’t around or don’t remember the political backstory of the era.
Henry is what would have been called a “Rockefeller Republican”. Hard to believe now, but the GOP had a liberal-ish wing, with a famously rich guy as the figurehead!
Nixon was a moderate. A such, he was hated by the conservative wing (the Goldwater supporters).
But if the liberal Republicans dared not go too far in denouncing the war. By saying things like “I support the President.”, they are indicating they aren’t supporting the war at all, they are just trying to avoid sounding controversial. I.e., if the President wants to fight this crappy war, I guess that’s what we’re doing. By highlighting any note of war-regret that Nixon says, Henry would be drawing attention to the not-exactly-pro-war nature of his own stance.
(Nixon, as mentioned, got elected on a “secret plan to end the war” platform. Turns out his plan was a serious escalation. Oh, well.)
Betty was screwing it up. She made it sound like they were strongly in favor of the war. (And people would of course assume she was just parroting Henry’s views in those days.)
I picture Betty turning into a Phyllis Schlafly out of sheer bitterness from watching it all pass her by.
No. Fucking. Joke.
Although I thought the threesome scene was icky within its context, when Don took off his shirt and revealed that line of hair from his chest down his belly, I thought I was going to cry.
I’ll probably be proven wrong, but I think Philip Morris are going to balk at going with the agency or insisting on having Don. That seems too much like the show migrating toward a happy ending for Don, but I just don’t see it. I just cannot see this ending well for Don. I have a bad feeling about Sally as well.
If this show is going to end on a bad note for Don, they really need to be setting that plotline up now; there really isn’t much of the show left, as slow as it develops. And for dramatic effect, they would have to build Don up before ripping him down for that ending.
He’s still not clawed back from his comeuppance at the end of last season. If they end this season by kicking Don, the dramatic buildup would be: Don starts to recover his life from the crapper, but it turns out he doesn’t, The End. That is utterly flat drama – that is, in fact, no drama at all.
This show is going to end with some drama. And we have seen that the writers work on a very slow build to each season’s ending. We’re already on the very slow path they’ve chosen to the finale… and it’s on a “Don reclaims his life” path.
Although I think they could have literally worked the falling man from the credits into the ending, we’re past the point where they’d need to set that up.
He was wearing one during the Scout’s Honor meeting, wasn’t he?