DON DIDN’T JUMP BUT HE DID GET THROWN OFF THE BUILDING!

There wasn’t much in this episode that is unexpected but I have got to say that I didn’t see most of it coming. No surprise Don ran away from his trouble at the start of the episode by going to the local bar and drinking. The unexpected was his getting in a fight and thrown in jail, he usually avoids these kinds of confrontations; obviously his brain had a different agenda for Don as we find out as the episode unfolds. Pete’s mother drowning, and possibly getting murdered, is also not necessarily a shock but once again I didn’t see it coming but it might be a rather fortuitous turn of events as it turns out for Pete. It gets rid of the problem of his having to take care of his mother and allows him to get a new start in a new city, the second of two cities he was talking about moving to as a result of his “good” buddy Bob. Then there is Peggy and Ted, I expected what happened to the two of them and I can’t say I was totally surprised that Ted chose to stay with his wife as his future with Peggy is less than promising, and his wanting to get out of town with his family was a smart choice. It was pretty big of normally self-centered Don to let Ted go save his marriage in California since he had his heart, and Megan’s, set on it. Though he may have also wanted to get her away from him and this solution took care of that without it being his fault. I don’t see that Roger’s daughter has a lot of room to be mad at Roger since she hasn’t seemed to have a lot of use for her father in her life though there may be good reason for that not knowing anything about how much he was there for her when she was growing up. I did find the scene at the end with Joan, Bob and Roger kind of odd, it was nice to see Joan allow Roger to start to have a relationship with his son but more than a little weird for odd Bob to be there. It’s not because I thought that he was gay although he may be, because I think he just came on to Pete to try and get ahead at the firm, but even though Joan is most likely unaware of Bob’s set up of Pete at Chevy to make him look like the clueless car guy that he is but Joan of all people should be able to pick up on subtle male signals. Then again maybe she is picking up on them and finds Bob non-threatening and is using him as a pawn in a game she might be playing. Roger is reacting to Bob as a threat because Joan has let Bob be a part of the family that he longs to be involved in. Joan may be the one person who might actually see Bob for the slimy ambitious worm that I think he probably really is, I don’t see him as being anything but what we have seen at face value. He is a dishonest manipulator who will do anything to get where he wants, oh, I guess that means he fists right in with everyone else! Don should have seen his getting asked to take some time off coming, can he really think he is so irreplaceable when he manages to be late, AWOL, or inappropriate at so many of the meetings with clients? Nobody is that good and especially in this advertising firm which has so many people that are capable of doing each other’s jobs and seem to be able to change accounts easily when things go sour for one person, like Pete taking over when Ken gets shot in the face by Chevy for one of many examples of admen changing clients in midstream. I thought it was a very humble and human touch to have Don take his children to see where he grew up and I think he might get a little of his daughter back by his allowing her to see some of his soft underbelly. The first episode of the new season has a lot of expectations to live up to with all of this action in the last episode of the season. I have to say though that I really find the constant wishy washy changing one’s mind 3 times in an episode without ever acknowledging it to be a little disconcerting. I mean first Pete is moving to Detroit, then he if moving to California, I know why he changed but why doesn’t anyone else want to know why? Then there is the “who gets to go to California” contest, first Stan offers to go to Don and Don tells him it is crappy job, then Don decides he wants it, then Ted tells Peggy they will take it so they can be together, then Ted tells Don he wants it so he can take his family there and save his marriage. Why doesn’t someone ever call anyone on all the mind changing that goes on every episode?

The Monkees Movie “HEAD” is a Head’s up for the series MADMEN!

In case no one else noticed they play the Porpoise Song by The MONKEES as they played the credits at the end of episode 12 this season. It is obviously not a coincidence because the movie Head by the Monkees is what the “Porpoise Song” is from and during the playing of the song in the movie it has a man tumbling from a building, just like in the intro to the series “MADMAN”. I thought this was a nice touch. You can find the song and video on you tube.

ALL FALL DOWN – ORDER IS BEING RESTORED IN THE MAD UNIVERSE!

Everyone in the madman world are finally having to pay the piper and I suspect it is going to get a whole lot worse if everyone gets what is coming to them, Unfortunately I have a feeling that hell may not reign down on the worst offenders as much as the lesser ones will probably have to pay. I am pretty sure it is Don’s fault that Harry doesn’t know that Don agreed to drop Sunkist, although Don would never admit that, when he calls Don at home and tells him that Sunkist is willing to spend some real advertising dollars with their firm. Pete is so transparent in his volunteering to take to Chevy account from Ken, but that is right in character. So then when Ted finds out that Sunkist is going to pay way more than the Ocean Spray account, the account that Don told Ted in the previous episode he would defer to him on, obviously an untruth, and in the words of Gomer Pyle “surprise, surprise, surprise” not! But of course in the end money talks and you know what walks! As for the Bob developments I find them highly inventive and amusing. Pete wanted to get rid of Bob because he came on to him and now everyone wants to keep him, a Machiavellian twist to say the least. Pete is already experienced in people not being what they appear to be through Don so he isn’t as floored by Bob’s unreal identity as a “normal” person might react but it is a conundrum to say the least. Ted and Peggy are way too happy for them to be able to continue on this way. Ted is obviously feeling guilty or he wouldn’t tolerate Don’s accusation that his feelings towards Peggy aren’t just because she is “that good”. Don seems to be drifting into the darkness he so richly deserves, his daughter doesn’t want to see him after she saw him literally with his pants down, and if he had talked to her more than to just try to secure form her not to rat on him that scenario might have played out differently but because Don seems to only be looking out for Don he didn’t have the foresight to see that maybe he should have reached out and told Sally he regretted what he did that she saw him do with Silvia.   I guess that would mean he would have had to admit he did something wrong and he isn’t very forthcoming in making those kinds of confessions. The figures I see as good in this show are Joan, Stan, Ginsberg and Ken, and maybe Peggy though she is a less innocent than she used to be. I don’t recall any of these figures trying to screw their fellow workers over in any major way, will the good win out in the end here? Peggy is kind of in the middle and Ted and Roger are each a little closer to Don than they are to anyone else. Roger would be as sneaky as Don if he were that smart but he is not and in this case I would have to say smarter is not necessarily a virtue. Wouldn’t that make a nice ending episode for the best people to come out ahead? I didn’t say they were all that good but there are several that are a lot better than the rest. I see something very dark happening in the final episode for this season, perhaps a much deserved fall from grace for several of the cast? I was very amazed that I was able to recognize that the song they played at the end of the episode was by the Monkees from the movies “Head”, maybe I lived through the 60’s and still have my brain! And as for foreshadowing the Head intro had a man tumbling off of a building just like in the Madman introduction. Coincidence, I think not!

DON DRAPER FINALLY GETS CAUGHT WITH HIS PANTS DOWN!

I really find this television show entertaining but Don’s constant womanizing has really been getting to me. I found the episode in which they took the “Jaguar” rep to a “whorehouse” such a prime example of what a hypocritical asshole he is. I found Don to have a lot of nerve to lecture Pete for fooling around in his marriage after Pete slept with a hooker (and Don chose not to probably because of his own weird relationship with growing up with whorehouses) when they were riding home in a taxi afterwards awfully ridiculous. First, because he would even have the nerve to give anyone a bad time for sleeping with anyone besides their wife since he sleeps around on his wives and mistresses constantly. Secondly, because he made a bald face lie about if he had met Meghan first he wouldn’t have fooled around, since he married her and then sleeps with Silvia, this is doing something differently?  Is he lying to himself as well as everyone else? When Don’s daughter sees him in the throes of having sex with Silvia he is caught red handed, and yet he has the nerve not to apologize to his poor daughter who still had managed to look up to him up until this point and possibly still will because children want to look up to their parents, oftentimes even when the parents don’t deserve it. What a complete sleaze Don is! He already has an amazing ability to change lies in the middle of the stream at the drop of his hat so to speak, like the time he quit Jaguar and just as everyone was jumping on him for being such a self-centered jerk he grabs on to Roger’s announcement of having Chevy as a prospective new client as if Don actually had anything to do with it, he so easily slides from flip flopping whatever direction pleases him at any moment. He is the epitome of the sleaziest used car salesman I could ever imagine. He does the most flip flopping of any character on the show and when I read people saying how much they like him it totally floors me as he is the worst example of morality of anyone on the show, at least I can remember Pete screwing up with the neighbor gal one time and a couple of hookers and not every woman he meets like Don seems to do, Don may not use hookers but he doesn’t seem to treat the women he does bed any better than a hooker.

 

AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO THINKS DON DRAPER REALLY IS A DICK (no pun intended)?

I think this is an interesting and well done show but isn’t the “main man” really a chauvinistic womanizing pig who is an asshole to other men as well as all of the women in his life? I keep trying to come up with any redeeming characteristics and I can’t seem to find any for him. He is not nice to anyone, except his children, unless he wants something out of them. The more I watch this season’s episodes it seems like Don is becoming an even bigger jerk than he already was. He uses and abuses everyone around him, am I missing something here? He is not the only man in the office who is a creep but he is by far the biggest creep, partly because he is so calculating about all the conniving things he does. Roger doesn’t have any particularly great characteristics but he isn’t a serial womanizer and doesn’t constantly scheme to undermine other people in the office like Don, probably partly because he doesn’t seem to smart enough to do that but in this case that might not be a bad thing. Pete can be sleazy but he also show some morals and conscience now and then which is more than I can say about Don or Roger. The woman in the office are heads and bodies above the men in scruples, usually woman are portrayed as the “catty” ones in the office but in this series the “witches” is the office are men and not women.