Amph [MAD MEN] Guy walks into an advertising agency...

Sally Draper had best start thinking up her stripper name now with all of the daddy issues that are bound to spring up from what she saw. And leave it to Don to go and screw things up right when we think he has redeemed himself.

The twist with Bob was one of the theories I had thought of earlier, although I think he and Joan would make for an interesting couple, perhaps he's bi?

 

I think it's more likely he's out to her and he's her nonthreatening gay buddy now.

Honestly, I think the reveal was kind of dumb. Not that he's gay -- although I don't think he really needs to have a "secret;" he can just be a go-getter who's overly dependent on motivational-tape over-friendliness -- but that he's into Pete. It just makes Bob look kind of stupid. "Maybe if I buy this straight man a prostitute, he'll love me!" What the hell would he even see in Pete?

Too bad Sal's not still around for him.

 

Yeah... I mean, Bob being gay is fine for a "secret," but him openly hitting on Pete makes him seem very dumb. Maybe he misinterpreted Pete's relationship/love/etc. difficulties as those of a closeted man? I don't know.

Anyway, with this and Sally finding out that her daddy's a cheater, there was glorious awkwardness all around.

 

I did love how off-balance Don was when he came home and his world hadn't immediately fallen apart around him. He spends the whole day thinking, "My life is over, my life is over," and then he comes home and no one follows the scenarios running through his head. No catharsis. It's almost worse for him, having that sword still hanging over his head. I can't wait to see it drop.

 

Pete. lol

 

god, don is just so loathsome this season.

 

Yeah, I think it's why this season has felt the weakest. Don has always been fairly awful, and the show has always acknowledged that, but it's also acknowledged that he's more than just a jackass -- he's intelligent, perceptive, great at his job, he aspires to be better. This season, it feels kind of like the show has lost all that. Don't still selfish and self-destructive, and hey, he's no longer particularly good at his job, his people skills have disappeared, he never actually loved Bobby before, and all he wants to do is wallow in self-pity and confusion as his relationships with everyone else around him fester and worsen.

Combine it with the heavy-handed whorehouse flashbacks adding unneeded, boring, generic layers to a personality that was perfectly well-explained already, and this season is really not doing Don any favors at all.

 

I'm ambivalent about the whorehouse stuff, but I always assumed Mad Men would show Don's inevitable decline. And since this is (probably) the penultimate season...

 

I can't wait for his crash + burn

 

Don's never going to find happiness, but I'm not sure decline is inevitable. In either case, there's decline, and then there's "Well, Don sucks at everything now." They're hitting it pretty hard without either giving us a whole lot else for him or spreading the focus to other characters.

 

I wanted to wring Don's neck when he just pulled that weak "I was just comforting Mrs Rosen!" shtick with Sally. I thought that finally he was going to come clean to someone. Apparently not.

And the thing is, Sally most likely knows that he's lying to her but just doesn't know how to respond to the obvious lie he's given her. Massive daddy issues for sure.

 

Sally should be happy. At least now the next time they get broken into by someone who' knows her daddy', she can expose the person as a crook by asking who Don is currently banging.

 

Prediction: Pete IS gay.

 

hmm, that actually seems plausible.

 

Wait do you mean gay, as in homosexual, or gay in the way kids use it to describe generally negative things? Because both = yes.

 

If Pete is gay then it'll likely be Sally Draper who catches him in the act with Bob Benson. That poor girl sees everybody's shenanigans. Betcha there's some desk jockey at the NSA who is trying to work out her name into an acronymn for the latest incarnation of the programs they use to spy on us.

 

I'm glad we got some forward progress to getting Secret Agent Gay Mole Soviet Spy Bob Bunson.

 

He's always seemed genuinely interested in women. I don't think it would be believable to make him gay at this point. Bi at most.

 

why would it matter if he was interested in women? sexuality is fluid.

 

I mentioned to someone a few weeks ago that I was pretty sure Bob was gay, and that this was what was really going on with him/why he was sometimes so awkward with people. In fairness, I know that actor from Happy Endings where he played a gay guy, so I sort of had that association in my mind.

Anyway, while I think him being gay makes sense and make him potentially much more interesting going forward, I agree that him hitting on Pete was dumb. I've always hated the "gay person hits on person they know is straight" cliché. I mean, the only way it makes sense is if Bob genuinely thinks Pete is gay too. But I have a hard time seeing how he'd come to that conclusion. Otherwise, it makes sense to develop feelings for a straight guy, but not to try to act on them. Especially not in 1968.

Now, as to Don... I'm not sure why Havac thinks it's disappointing to see him being a checked-out ass this season, but I feel like it's the natural progression of the character. I thought it was the only thing that made sense. He's a horrible person and eventually that catches up with you. He's got to a point where even he can't deny his misery. Work just isn't enough to keep him afloat and distracted anymore. Yes, old Don was really cool and entertaining. But if I wanted to see the same characters acting the same way for 7 seasons, I'd watch CBS.

 

Well, it's not that he shouldn't decline, but that "Don wallows in misery" has sort of been the dominant character point for him this season, and they've dwelled on it over and over all season long. Don floundering week after week just isn't that exciting. If Don is going to have lost the more compelling traits that made him so exciting to watch, I'd just prefer we not dwell on Don so much, and let him flounder without taking so much screen time away from Roger and Pete and Peggy and Joan and Ken and Stan and Ginsberg and Ted and Cooper and Harry to say "Don is in a funk" over and over again.

It's a logical direction, it's just not as rewarding to watch, especially not the way it's being handled. Season four was my favorite, and "Don in a tailspin" was a major theme throughout the season -- but it was handled more interestingly and with a little more to say about it, so it's not necessarily Don in decline itself.

 

This season is the logical conclusion to how Don handled his situation in the 4th season - newly divorced, living on his own and in definite need of stability, Don went ahead and married Megan as if that would solve most of his problems. Of course now are we seeing just how deep those problems run in Don's psyche and how they cannot and could not be fixed by getting married to his secretary. Hopefully this most recent episode's shocker will be something of a wakeup call to him as to just how bad his decisions have been as of late and that the consequences of those choices have an effect on people other than himself.

Of course, should he ever come to his senses and realize what a cad he has been it must come at a very high cost as it seems to be with this show, and that is where the fun shall lie.

 

I concur with all of this.

 

Yeah but if you think about it, we all want to see what a successful, driven, non-asshat Don looks like. Can he actually relatively settle down? Arguably not, but part of me wishes it wasn't all "Don can only learn when he loses everything"

 

I'm with Kyle on this one. I remember when Don proposed to Megan at the end of season 4 (which is probably my favorite season), a whole lot of people in the thread were saying how great it was, how they were happy to see Don happy, etc... and I was totally baffled. I just kept saying that the only thing that made sense was that Don was obviously trying to force himself suddenly into happiness and that we'd now get to see that unravel. Which is exactly what's happened over the last two seasons.