I like that she wasn't even unrealistic about it, saying how she let him have his apartment in the city, and then he has to go and shit where he eats. I also appreciate the contrast between him and Don. Don knowing, "how to pick them" being able to get away with an affair with a friend in the same building, while Pete can't successfully have an affair with a neighbor, her obviously being a type who can't handle being discreet and keeping it to herself.

Yes! She just jumped up to be my favorite character (at least this week).

Don's undermining of Pete's and that car guy's advertising reallocation was great. Something like.. "Who needs a Jaguar? Truck drivers!!"

semi unrelated, but:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvLS5Ou8 ... r_embedded
mad men x the jesus and mary chain

im probably late with this, but oh well

I really enjoyed seeing what's going on with Joan this episode. Although were getting into the late 60s (68 maybe?) now that I hate.. The scenes with the electric circus etc..
Harry cut deep when he went off about Joan being a partner! I see why he is so pissed about it, I mean, he got the firm on television, he's really helped them grow blah blah.

Thought this was kinda interesting: potential spoiler maybe just people reading into things..

I think it would be a really interesting turn, I'm liking her less and less..

O boy

I've been bored with this show for so long, these days I just watch it out of habit.

Shut your mouth

Sorry. I mean really bored, as in gagging at Don's puerile antics and hoping nobody identifies with his character. I'd love to see an entire series based on Peggy, though.

That would be boaring as hell.

She's not that overweight.

Yeah, I think I like seeing Peggy in misery than happiness.
The last shot of her and rugged and back to work, totally exhausted was hilarious.

For Mad Men, that episode was action-packed and one of the better episodes of this ho-hum season.

I really hope Don kills himself at the end of the series.

Like, he's actually the man falling in the intro. Literally.

Or maybe like a Godfather Part 3 ending. Flash forward to when he's old, alone and hate marketing, and then he just collapses.

I'm enjoying the whole affair now, but they just need to end this show.

Ho hum season !?

You guys are nuts.

SB art-heads probably already know this, but that image was almost certainly inspired by Robert Longo's 1980s drawings of urban professionals falling ... some examples here.

Sometimes I feel like Don is just spinning his wheels in the ditch, but then an excellent episode like "The Better Half' comes along and restores my faith in the show's writers. I really like that Peggy has become one of the most compelling and strong characters despite her own existential crises.

I think this season has actually been pretty good, I kinda hated the first episode, but I like all the inner-turmoil you can see in Don and the struggle of merging the two firms . I'm enjoying this season more than the last.. but I watched it so long ago I'm not even sure what happened last season really.. Whoring Joan to jaguar? Her kid with Rodger? .. why can I only remember things about Joan's story line? Did Lane kill himself last season or earlier?..

This season got off to a shaky start for me, personally- I was feeling much disinterest in watching more of the same from Don. But it's picked up since then (I love me the drug episodes, so "The Crash" was right up my alley (and goddamn, did that opening joyride scene with Kenny feel very Lynchian); I'm really hoping we get to see Don's personality and multiple webs of deceit dissolve in some LSD, at some point), and I'm really enjoying the season now. In fact, I'd been feeling that something huge is about to happen, and the multiple instances of sirens on the soundtrack of the last ep made things seem even more portentous; I mentioned that to my wife as we were watching, actually.

Two days ago, my mind was blown a bit by this, posted by a friend on FB:
http://www.uproxx.com/tv/2013/05/the-me ... eory-ever/

!

Being kind of out-of-it when it comes to all promotion around TV series, I hadn't seen that poster before ... VERY interesting. The same friend who posted the link also made this observation: "Did you notice that Bob (apparently) lied about his Dad? He told Roger at Rogers's mom's funeral that his Dad died. He told Pete that the Cuban nurse had miraculously restored his health."

To that, another friend of ours (who had, only the day before in a gchat we were having about the last ep, praised Bob Benson as perhpas the only truly decent character (with Ted as a close second)) replied:
"Oh man. I thought Bob Benson was a shining beacon of goodness. I fell for his charisma like a gullible schoolgirl. I need to re-assess everything now."

That's great stuff, thanks for the link. However I wouldn't necessarily assume that just because an art director confirmed that Megan's t-shirt was inspired by photos of Sharon Tate wearing the same indicates literal foreshadowing of murder. You never know, though. I usually take the countless era-bound allusions in every episode to be indicators of time and place more than clues to plot developments and the inner lives of the characters, but reading that speculation made me think I may have been missing a lot all along. E.G. the cops on that season poster ... they've got to be there for some reason (?)

Speaking of indications of era, does anyone else of a certain age sometimes get the weird sense of "oh yeah, I forgot that I remembered that" while watching Mad Men? I was just a wee laddie in the late '60s, but every once in awhile there will be some trivial detail, maybe just a curtain fabric or some tchochka on someone's desk that pings some corner of early memory. As intended.

Oh yeah, I get the art reference, but you know, they should just make things come full circle. It would be expected, but not at the same time?

Either way, it should end with Don either dying or being miserable and alone.

And the more and more we learn about Don's backstory, the more he's a gigantic creep!
Bad haircut, weird sickly cough, peeping tom, getting beaten by wooden spoons, stealing identities, and then the most recent 50 Shades of Gray with the apartment fling- the dude has become more of a creep then Pete Campbell!

I do love it when the show gets weird. Especially with the apartment break in with Sally. That was freaking weird and hilarious.

Got my eyes on Bob Benson now.
And if he turns out to be a psychopath, well, he's kind of my new favorite character, if not already!

Speaking of psychopaths, anyone watching Hannibal?

He's got a mug straight out of an actual late '60's TV series. Hadn't considered that he might be a psychopath but the glossy glibness is just so plastic ... maybe! I'd been thinking that he easily could have been the third Darren Stevens ... one more oblique connection to Bewitched (Darren was an ad agency guy who drank like it was nothing.)

I feel this season has introduced many interesting characters, all which will be analyzed deeper as the season progresses. Bob is definitely a strange case, came right out of left field and now seems to be the only decent man on the show. Ted is complicated, first he's a sleezy oportunist guy, the he is seen as a good person with compasion and now again back to being an insensitive person. But seeing Betty and Don together again was unexpected. This season is definitely layered with clues and foreshadowing, hard to sell oftentimes though.

What I am really hoping is that the last we see of Don as the show ends, he has become a Father Yod-type, leading his own version of the Source Family...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3f4aleOAxo

Really.

I love whenever Don goes to California
"dying doesn't make you whole. You should see what you look like."

That whole trip/dream sequence reminded me a lot about the Soprano dream sequences, specifically the one in "The Test Dream" in season 5.