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

Weiner worked for the Sopranos. If he follows that model, Don is going to keep on going, and never learning.

 

Well, at least we'll see the pavement rushing up to meet the camera prior to it going black.

 

Catch Me If You Can: The Bob Benson Story

 

Poor Cosgrove can't catch a break this season, neither can anybody else for that matter. This was easily the best episode of the season thus far. The Bob/Pete drama via Duck, Cosgrove getting shot, Ted & Peggy's awkward run in with Don and Megan, Sally honing her manipulation skills (and lighting up with Betty!), and Don's masterful and devious power play with the St Joseph's pitch. This episode delivered. Saying anything more would be overkill,

Best line: "You found a hooker who takes travelers checks?"

 

I would complain about how lame the show's handling of Benson has been, but Ken Cosgrove is a pirate. My argument is invalid.

 

Ken got Cheney'd.

Pete hates Bob because Bob is the gay Don: a successful fraud and so, so incredibly handsome.

 

Actually, he's the gay, gay Don.

 

Ken Cosgrove=Young Governor from The Walking Dead

 

i don't really like the bob benson character either, but i thought this was probably a top ten episode. probably the best sally episode. great pete episode. lots of great adverting stuff. i hated the ted and peggy thing, and was glad don walked over it. all that and ken getting shot in the face.

some genuine chill moments too. the tension in the room when both peggy and ted thought don was talking about them, a smoking sally saying, "my father has never given me anything", and the look on don's face after peggy told him he's a monster. the whole episode was just classic mad men.

 

Yeah this episode was great. I'm actually interested to see where the Bob thing goes, and by the way did Pete just literally become a pimp?

The Sally stuff was great (Glen! Somehow growing up to be slightly less creepy, or at least a little protective). So was opening with Don being completely wrecked. I loved this episode. Though I was genuinely worried for a while that they'd actually killed Kenny (I swear I'm not trying to make a South Park reference, but there was no other way to say that). As usual, there's absolutely no way to know what's going to happen in the season finale.

Also, I absolutely loved Peggy telling Don he's a monster and leaving him to wallow. All I could think of was The Suitcase, and how she saw him break down crying in there then. And how much he's pissed away one of his only actual friendships by being an enormous ass.

I still think this show might end next year with Don killing himself.

 

Pete's already been a grimy little pimp since last season at least.

I don't know, I'm thinking "Lee Garner, Jr. made me hold his balls!" may rival it.

As for Bob, I like the character, or what he could potentially be and bring to the show, but the handling of him has been bungled. He was introduced as this guy who just kept toadying all over the place, and it took them forever to show him being an actual human being, and the result is that he had the feel of, and got treated by the fans as, a puzzle piece rather than a character. It was all "What is Bob Benson here for? What's the mystery?" and not "Why do I care about this character?" Something as simple as the shot of him in his office, listening to motivational self-help records, is enough to humanize him and give you something to grasp behind the brown-nosing public mask. Had that scene been a few episodes in instead of near the end of the season, we could have clicked with Benson as a character while still wondering what purpose his introduction could turn out to have.

And the revelation in this episode was too on-the-nose. He can be a Don parallel -- a self-made go-getter whose secret is just how self-made he really is -- with just a phony resume. He really doesn't need to be a coal country kid with an alliterative alias. That's a bit too much. Or just being gay is enough of a secret to give him parallels to Don's secret identity and to give Pete the ability to do the secret-exposure routine redux. The show already has plenty of characters with parallels to Don to play with . . . do we really need a whole season building up to the revelation of Don 2.0 . . . existing? I'm still not sure what his actual purpose is, other than giving Pete a season one parallel, and I hope it wasn't all just for that. I hope the finale really sets up where this character is going, because so far I'm skeptical.

Also:

 

That Don gif. Yes.

How on earth did Ken get shot in the eye at that close range and not end up dead?

 

It was just birdshot.

 

He's at least permanently blind in that eye, right? I don't know much about shooting birds so I can't say.

Also, what's up with Pete and his secretary? Is there something going on there?

 

Last scene between Don and Peggy was brilliant.

 

I will be VERY angry if Jon Hamm does not get an Emmy for this episode. That is all.

 

Heck of a finale. The decision to drop Don was kind of abrupt, but I can't wait to see where it goes. Also, the saga of Pete's mom had a hilarious ending. I'm going to love seeing Pete in California. It didn't take Bob long to outmaneuver him.

 

Oh man, the meeting with Hershey's. The Draper facade is just going away completely, huh?

And I thought the partners were going to fire him outright and not do some wishy-washy indefinite leave thing.

 

this is definitely the best soap opera ever.

 

I know it's technically a soap opera, but the term is such a pejorative that I cringe whenever I see it applied to something I like and think is of high quality.

 

i know, i know. that's why i said it. but i mean sometimes with its plot twists it just strikes me as such a soap opera. i realized this year though that if it were to keep going for like 30 years like some of the daytime soaps i would totally watch it. imagine an old grandpa don in the year 1993 and watching that in the year 2030.

this finale didn't really do it for me until the hershey meeting. i really loved the final scene though.

 

I don't get how they can make me hate Don so much throughout the season then suddenly make me like him in just one episode. Crazy. That dude deserves an emmy for sure.

 

The obvious thing to do would be a time jump to show an elderly Don (if he doesn't kill himself or something), but I wonder if it will just end with 1970, like That 70's Show did with 1980.

 

Holy crap, that was probably the climactic episode of the series, brah.