Television Mad Men | SPOILERS

mr.suave said:
Wow, brilliant again.

Still shocks me how few people can be arsed watching Mad Men, it's on a different level to nearly everything out there at times.

They even managed to throw a bit of dark humour into that episode when...

...Lane couldn't get the Jag started to monoxide himself.

Quality writing, quality show.
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I'm pretty sure that wasn't intended to be dark humour by any stretch. More like a highlight of how hopeless his situation is.
 
Mad Men is a weird show, not much action, not much plot but it's still a fecking great show.The writers and directors have this so spot on.
Brilliant episode and so long Lane, very good character gone :(
 
I thought Game of Thrones was definitely my favourite show, but I think Mad Men is now number one.
 
Definitely going to get on this soon, is it consistently brilliant from the off or is it a slow-burner that just gets better each season?
 
Brwned said:
Definitely going to get on this soon, is it consistently brilliant from the off or is it a slow-burner that just gets better each season?
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every season will be worth it. having watched in sequence its still hard to say which season is better, although this season has been really good.
You won't be disappointed that you watched this.
 
Brwned said:
Definitely going to get on this soon, is it consistently brilliant from the off or is it a slow-burner that just gets better each season?
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I can't quite remember but was it you who took my recommendation to watch Brideshead Revisited? I remember you (if you are indeed that poster) said you enjoyed that and I'd say the pace of that is very slow. Certainly don't let that put you off Mad Men; the movements in the story are slow but the dialogue and development of the characters mean you are constantly on edge. Mad Men is one of the best television dramas I have ever seen; every season has been wonderful.
 
Wow, what an episode, it just gets better and better.

It's a shame to see Lane go but that seemed like it was always going to happen given the way his character was going.
 
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Bear Attack said:
I'm pretty sure that wasn't intended to be dark humour by any stretch. More like a highlight of how hopeless his situation is.
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Was set up as a dark joke for couple of episodes where a few characters mention how Jaguar looks good but is not a reliable car.
 
"He (Pryce) was vindictive. He was angry. It was a passive aggressive act," says Harris. "His choice of doing it there was an f-you to the office, the people who work there, particularly to Don." The passive side of that, he says, was in the suicide letter — a boiler-plate note that explained nothing.

"He was trying to dig a hole for the people there, particularly Don, and make them feel bad about what he'd done. It was a cowardly thing to do. He did it to try and hurt them the way that he feels they've hurt him."

Harris says it took two hours in the makeup chair to give his face the ghastly gray color of death, and then he was sneaked onto the sound stage with an umbrella hiding his face so none of the actors could see him. He was then strapped into a safety harness and hanged from the ceiling.

When the other actors were brought in to discover his body and cut him down, it was the first time they had seen him "dead" — so their shocked and chaotic onscreen reaction, Harris says, was in part based on this initial look.

And, says Harris, there was no time for gallows humor on set.

"There's so little time to shoot," Harris says. "I just wanted to break into that Monty Python song, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, while hanging there and start dancing, but it would have put them off because they were trying to act their reaction in a genuine way. I didn't want to be disrespectful to how they felt. My job was a lot easier than their job — I just had to hang limply from the door and stick my tongue out."

Harris says he loved playing Pryce, and cited two of his favorite moments: One was the fist fight Pryce had with Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) earlier this season, and the other was the failed suicide in the Jaguar. "I laughed when they told me the Jaguar was not going to start. I fell off my chair."
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I had no idea he was Richard Harris' son until a friend told me at the weekend.
 
Every season is of impeccable quality.....some just fimd it slow to get into i guess, i didnt, with this or the wire. Season 3 easily the weakest season, but its still like a top calibre season, it's probably the best of the big 3 shows around right now, other two being breaking bad and game of thrones.
 
I started watching this a few weeks ago, so I find it hard to differentiate between the seasons.

What made season 3 weak? Was that not the season with the lawnmower incident?
 
Actually it was, I'd forgotten that tbh. Been a while, but I think that's around the same time the Hilton stuff started, the episodes with the Hilton stuff are saved completely by that arc, Don and Hilton, everything else in them was dull, the Rome trip, what felt like an incredibly forced relationship with the teacher etc. It's like they knew they had a brilliant ending to the season, which they did, 2 of the final 3 episodes were fantastic, but didn't really know how to bridge the gap.

I can only assume watching them back to back makes it's a little easier to deal with though, but going about 4 weeks where your only interest in the show is one single arc can be a pain sometimes, especially when Mad Men is usually incredibly layered with the vast cast it has.
 
4th was the weakest for me. Very difficult to rank Mad men season but if I absolutely had to, it will go like this

2>5>1>3>4
 
I actually think 5 has been the strongest of the lot, though that could depend on the finale too.

The fact that Betty has rarely been in it is a big bonus.
 
Ooh cliff hanger, thought the episode set things up nicely for season 6

Loved the shot of Don walking away from the soundstage, the part owners spread across the empty office space, Roger :lol:
 
Like Game Of Thrones this was a bit of an anti climax after last week, still fecking brilliant though.
 
I thought for a show that is usually a master of subtlety, most of this episode was very hammering-us-over-the-headish with things like Pete explicitly laying out his entire thought process to Alexis Bledel in the hospital room and Don's hallucination of Adam telling him that it's not his tooth that is rotten, and as a result the first part of the finale was a bit of a disappointment.

It got better towards the end though with Don and Peggy's meeting in the movie theatre and the ending with Don at the bar. I also liked the way they wrapped up the running joke from the previous season that SCDP already owned the floor above them by actually buying it.
 
I swear the writers must've made Megans blonde friend look like the blond girl at the end on purpose, had to watch that 3 times to make sure it wasn't her.

Certainly not as great as last week but still excellent.

I agree though, it wasn't exactly subtle with Don's rotten tooth and Pete spilling his guts out.
 
Meh for me. Only the last montage bit was good. This season in general has been too on the nose with all the symbolic references. Still this season had too many good episodes.

Also I don't think the ending was a cliffhanger at all.....
 
Been a great season. I just recently got Netflix and started watching the first season. The characters are all so different. Joan and Pete are almost unrecognizable from season 1 to now. Probably Peggy as well. Interested to see if the following season s change them or just the actors/writers changed them.

Best part of the season was a voice over from Don as he was picking up boxes from the garage at his old place. "A man walks into a room. He's got a million reasons why he's there and he'll tell you if you'll listen....."

It goes on and is brilliant I think.
 
It is still a slow, sometimes pseudo-intellectual and unisexual soap opera but bloody hell when it all comes together it makes it seem worth it. The two episodes surrounding Jaguar and Lane Pryce's embezzlement was drama at its best.
 
It it possible to get into this mid-season 6 or should one go to the beginning of the series?
 
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