Mad Men: TV for Grown-Ups

[isadora]

UGH I loved it. It was just the right bit of fan service while being hilariously cynical!

STAN AND PEGGY. I didn't know I cared as much as I did. And her "What?" blink "What?" is so great.

In the end everybody stayed true to their character, which is what you'd want for this show. But they maybe also found a way to get to the next part of their lives? It was pretty satisfying (and, IMO, it was very different in tone from the first season, which I still say was an artsy self-indulgent bit of navel-gazing).

I LOVED that Peggy and Pete never had that painful conversation or resolved anything (because what would it matter if they did--that's GREAT writing, IMO). I loved that Joan, eternally conflicted and deeply angry, found her own kind of success: the business success she always dreamed of for herself. <3

I rarely cry at TV shows but I had to stifle a sob when Don sobbed out a "Birdie!" to Betty. I was like: NO DO NOT DO IT. I loved when Betty basically told him he's never there anywhere so why confuse the kids now. OMG. I LOVED that Don called Peggy to tell her goodbye in his darkest moment.

Also Don's sobbing man hug was like the most awkward thing I have ever seen on television.

I basically thought the entire thing was amazing.

And, I wasn't sure if we were supposed to think that Don came back and got Coke or not until I saw the girl styled exactly like the dopey hippie chick in the old commercial!

PEOPLE NEVER CHANGE. Best show ever.

[LaaLaa]

ETA! I can't make myself delete it from the DVR. And I also choose believe that, despite where we leave her in the show, Sally's life will still be an adventure.

[emmaleigh]

I just co-sign Isadora's entire post. Except I floved the first season, ha!

The Don/Betty call made me ugly cry for real. All three phone calls were perfection.

Still not sure why we had to spend so much time with Liz Reaser because I think there were other ways to get Don on the road but I read somewhere that some people felt she was a harbinger. Betty was dying and no one knew and she represented loss and death and such. So, maybe? It was still a downer perf though.

I was fine with Joan and Peggy not working together too. It was just in this season's premiere that Joan was way harsh to her in the elevator. They're survivors of the same war and I like them as ladies who lunch occasionally but they were never besties. Love that Harry was the only original character to not get an ending. We even saw Ken again and heard about weird Eddie hee.

It really was the absolute perfect finale for this show. I honestly wasn't sure Weiner had it in him to not fuck us all over.

[vanessa]

I've been watching Season One (don't care about spoilers), and I just wasn't sure it's the show for me - I mean I get that the men are this sexist on purpose, and I love Joan and Peggy and Betty and Rachel - but it only once I got to the episode where Betty starts shooting the neighbor's birds that I really liked the show. She's the best. Season One was just depressing to me until that moment.

[isadora]

Season one first viewing is a slog, IMO.

I really found the male characters so over the top in their unlikability and the female characters so unrelatable initially that it was confounding. That said, they dial it all back and season two becomes way more about the women and by the end I love them all completely and irrationally. Except Pete Campbell.

[vanessa]

Pete Campbell is such a piece of shit. But I also don't care about Don Draper's sad childhood - boo hoo - and roll my eyes whenever he's on screen.

[isadora]

Don Draper's childhood is REAL dark tho! He's so broken from it!

I don't forgive him for his slutting it up, tho, to be clear. But I think over the course of the series everybody is just so painfully stupid and human and flawed that it makes them real.

[Iva]

I think everybody slutted up in the 60s. There was no internet and all that


I love the show but the finale left me ambivalent. I think the episode which plays My Way penultimate episode of part1 of last season was a much better finale. This final stretch used Betty to wean us off Mad Men and, I think, to say we can occasionally branch out of the circle in which we're chasing our own tails but in the end we come back because of belonging. I think that's what that final coke ad means in the context of Don's life

Might rewatch the whole thing later this summer

[vanessa]

Second season is much more enjoyable to me, as predicted.

All of my thoughts on this show can be summed up as "My love affair with Peggy Olson."

[NeoMaxy]

No.

HOW could it leave you ambivalent? You root for Pete Campbell for the first time ever. Betty goes out on her own terms, afraid of aging, getting her wish to be beautiful forever, even at her funeral. Don, for all his new age guru crap and Manly Breakdown uses the whole thing to be just Don, as he is, creating (fictionally) probably the most known ad campaign EVER.

[isadora]

Preach.

[Iva]

No.

HOW could it leave you ambivalent? You root for Pete Campbell for the first time ever. Betty goes out on her own terms, afraid of aging, getting her wish to be beautiful forever, even at her funeral. Don, for all his new age guru crap and Manly Breakdown uses the whole thing to be just Don, as he is, creating (fictionally) probably the most known ad campaign EVER.

I guess I never bought Pete will actually change. Sure he'll try, but for how long. The show played with that motive so frequently. Wanting to change but falling into same old tired messes.

I was gutted with the initial Betty episode and her short parts were definite highlights.

Don falls back into the only place he really belongs. And that's a little bit depressing, he's amazing at his job because he's a born salesman but he's also miserable because time and time again he sells himself on various things that end up pulling him back to the darkest of places. Creating someone's real ad does not impress me as much as his various pitches did over the years. It was just fine but it just didn't create that ginormous effect I wanted it to.

[vanessa]

Netflix does not yet have the second half of Season 7, so I am stuck in limbo after having zoomed through all the rest up until Bert Cooper's farewell song. My love for (and overidentification with) Peggy is still super strong, I was a total Peggy/Ted shipper for 5 minutes there, until he wussed out, and now I hate him..

I would watch the show that follows Sally's life.

Still roll my eyes all the time at Don and his self-destructive assy ways. The only time he is tolerable to me is when he is with Peggy, which brings out the human in him, and with Roger, because Roger is amusing with everybody

I have come to appreciate Pete. He's a reprehensible human, but he's funny and I often feel sorry for him based on how stupid he is wrt human relations. NOT GREAT, BOB.

I am highly amused by all the "best show ever" accolades that this show gets - I mean, I enjoy it; I think it's stylish and fun, but are these people admitting to themselves that they love a well-written soap opera? I love a good soap, but I am thinking that all the dude-bro fans wouldn't be happy about that.

Also, WTF was with the nipple-ectomy? OMG.

[vanessa]

Finally finished the last run of episodes, and the finale left me cold. I get the nobody changes thing and the Don journey + Coke ad was true to his character, but the feel-good fanservice happy endings just didn't ring true - even though that last set of episodes made me like Pete and Pete+Trudy very much. I wish the last image of Peggy had been her strutting down the hall, or even the goodbye conversation with Pete, because as much as I believed Stan had always been in love with Peggy, I do not think she loved him. If I am supposed to believe that in a month she dumps him, then sure, but that's not what I saw there. The Roger and Joan stuff was sweet, but felt too neatly like a happy ending.

And Betty being the sacrificial victim to make it a bittersweet finale pissed me off.