Mad Men (TV Series) The Other Woman (2012) User Reviews

The prices we pay and the behavior we forgive...

[tbmforclasstsar · 10/10 · 28 May 2012]

"What price would we pay? What behavior would we forgive?"

This line still rings through my head as I try to piece together the massive changes that have occurred in the last hour of showtime in Mad Men. As I have been saying for weeks in these reviews, something is building up here and the end of the season is going to be extremely exciting. Well, if you think Mad Men is still slow after watching this episode, you may need to get your head checked.

This quote that Don Draper uses in the pitch for Jaguar is not just fitting for Jaguar, or even just for this episode, or season. This is Mad Men. It is a character study of a series of hard working individuals in the advertising industry that have a moral compass stuck spinning in the Bermuda Triangle.

"What price would we pay?" Well, let's ask Don if he is happy with paying the price of his cheating and being forced to see his kids every other weekend. "What behavior would we forgive?" Ask several of the men in this office (Don, Roger, Pete, Lane) and see how they have forgiven themselves for cheating on the women in their lives, treating co-workers as scum, and doing whatever it takes to reach the top of the ad world.

But this can't just end with the men. Sure, this is Mad Men, but this episode and this entire season has shown us the impact of women on this world, both directly and indirectly. And last night was no different.

"Let's stop playing games…your love affair with Manhattan is over," Trudy tells Pete. But Trudy has no idea what she is stating. Sure Pete looks like a great father and family man when he reads Goodnight Moon to their child, but Trudy hasn't seen what Pete does outside of the house. He cheats on Trudy with another man's wife, continues to pursue her, sleeps with a woman at a brothel, flirts with a high school girl at a driver's ed class and tries to get her to go on a trip with him, publicly ostracizes Roger Sterling in front of all of SCDP, and then what he did last night (which we will go deeper into momentarily). Unfortunately Trudy, if upstate New York is where you want to raise you child because of the scum, noise, and danger in the city, the fact is your husband's love affair with Manhattan is not even close to ending. Anything but.

More evidence needed? Well take the dinner Pete and Ken take with one of the Jaguar executives, Herb. When he asks in about Joan and starts to imply that it would really help SCDP's chances to land Jaguar if he could spend a night with the redhead bombshell, Ken immediately throws the notion away by saying Joan is married, but Pete pushes the issue and says he will see what he can do. Before you know it, the slimiest Pete we have ever seen is sitting across Joan's desk discussing the proposition and saying what it could mean for the company. Joan says they could never afford it, but Pete is not done yet.

In a meeting with all the partners, Pete brings up the proposition to all of the senior partners. Don immediately says no and walks out of the room. Clearly, we see the relationship between Don and Joan is extremely strong and their night out in the previous episode meant a lot to Don. But the meeting doesn't end. The other three senior partners are not willing to openly like the idea, but they don't turn it away. Slowly, Pete gets them to agree with him and tells Lane to look into getting some money together to offer Joan. You can hear future Don Draper during this scene again: "What price would we pay?"

To read the rest of the review (IMDb form too short) visit: http://custodianfilmcritic.com/mad- men-5-11-the-other-woman/

On Tolerance for Ambiguity

[rajah524-3 · 10/10 · 28 May 2012]

The adroit juxtaposition of Don's presentation with Joan's aside...

How many of us were raised (taught, instructed, indoctrinated, trained) to tolerate ambiguity or unresolved conflict? If the conductors of our cult-ure promoted anything other than black and white, all or nothing, all good or all bad, all right or all wrong thinking, do you think our cult-ure(s) would survive in the contests against the similarly raised competition?

I've seen every last episode. And just when I thought that Matthew and his monumentally conscious collaborators could not outdo their previous efforts, they knock me in the head with a triple play like this.

Angry feminism is the "feminism" most of us either buy into (out of guilt?) or reject (out of hand). In the world of centerless, immoderate mental polarity most of us take for granted, it's all about "Hanoi Jane" or "hairy legged ragers" or "intellectual dominatrix's" ... and the "overweening" Helen Reddy, the "subversive" Betty Friedan, or the "castration-bent" Alanis Morissette.

Change does not go down easily with those who have been regimented so effectively that the majority of them will sit tight when the wealth accumulators elect to vacuum the pockets or slaughter the sons (and now daughters) of those they trained to make, consume and fight.

I've no idea if Matthew & Company understand all this, but it surely =looks= like they do in episodes like this. The hopeful, achievement- obsessed Cosmo Girls up against the wall, or perhaps more accurately, painted into the corners of their indoctrinated identities as objects accepting the rights of others to use them as they see fit.

The adolescent female of today loathes her mother for giving in. She can afford to. In today's world, the woman are =all= putting out. The dilemmas faced by Peggy, Megan and Joan are Just The Way It Is now.

Is our ardent willingness to sell out and be "all that we can be" abetted by better clarity and conscious resignation? Or are the Peggy's, Megan's and Joan's of today just as "snowed" by their instructors as their mothers and grandmothers were?

In 1966, most of us still believed in a "fairness" that was not yet so obviously a fairytale. It was part of the "glue" of our cult-ure then.

No; I do not expect to be widely understood. And neither, I think, does Matthew. (He knows he needs to make the characters, the plots and the scenery interesting.) But MM's niche success suggests, at least, that there are people out there who are least "fascinated" by The Way it Was (and Still Is?) and this ensemble's nuanced, perfectly articulated packaging of it.

How to Succeed the Old Way ***1/2

[edwagreen · 9/10 · 28 May 2012]

Our firm can land the Jaguar account providing that our red-head employee has a one night stand with one of their leading executives. This proves the culture existing in far too many of the businesses of yesteryear and probably currently.

Don shows that he is ethical when he complains that after all, our lady has a husband in Viet Nam and the baby. Yet, he is over-ruled by the other partners and our red-head pulls a real surprise. She will do it providing that she is made a partner with a 5% share.

Don shows little to no remorse when one of our lady workers leaves at the end of the episode and when his wife thought she'd be going to Boston on tour in a show.