Mad Men (TV Series) In Care Of (2013) User Reviews

"Going Down?..."

[tv_gypt · 9/10 · 28 June 2013]

Yes he is, very much so. But the show isn't. A great finale to a great season. Although at times it felt like the episodes were losing some momentum and the same story lines were being explored, the finale does nicely to wrap up some overhanging issues and, as always, build up more expectations for the next season.

The move to California was played out by the writers to not only be an exciting new step for the firm, but also a promise of new beginnings for several of the characters that face their own demons and inner conflicts. I loved that, loved the way it created struggles and more office drama. Stan's ambition and yearning to be a self-made man, Ted's guilt and lust for Peggy, and of course Don's ever self-destructive behavior all intertwined in a struggle to get as far West from NYC as possible. Of course none of the women come out satisfied with the results of this dispute, feeling helpless to the whims of the men and their own damaged lives and mistakes, having no power to make any decisions for themselves, as Peggy put it. This speaks true to the male-dominated world of 1960s America that Mad Men has become so famous for portraying. As always, Bob Benson remains a mystery to me, and his complicity with Manolo in Pete's mother's death remains a big question mark. Did he know Manolo was up to this sort of stuff? Did he intentionally get Manolo involved to split the wealth of Pete's mother? I have to admit, though, I felt that the whole "married her at gun point" and "pushed her off the ship" storyline was done a little bit in poor taste.

Finally, HATS OFF to the most impressive scene of the episode and one of the best in the show: Don's unexpected confession during the Hershey's meeting. Great acting by Jon Hamm and beautiful writing. For the first time, Don is completely upfront about some of the most shameful aspects of his past, while trying to land a huge account in a room filled with clients and coworkers. He's embracing Dick Whitman. He is Dick Whitman. Even though it's not what Hershey's were expecting to hear, he still delivers it with profound and clever salesmanship, as always. This time, however, it feels real. It feels sincere. He's not just trying to seal a deal, he's actually speaking from the heart. He knows how to sell Hershey's, he has the idea, he knows what it means to himself and others and whether his story is masked in a beautiful lie or told in its bitter truth, the message is the same and equally convincing. I expect he'll have a lot to answer for next season.

Season Six

[zkonedog · 8/10 · 4 July 2019]

After two of the best seasons (4-5) in show history, the Sixth Season of "Mad Men" starts off a bit slow. For the first 3-4 episodes it doesn't really seem like anything is happening, or when things do happen they don't seem all that consequential. In short order, however, as only a show like this can seem to do, all of a sudden the drama comes together again to make for marathon viewing.

(Warning: Minor Spoilers Ahead)

As this season of "Mad Men" begins, many changes are keenly evident. Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) now works at a different advertising agency, while Donald Draper (Jon Hamm) is struggling to lead HIS company to the heights they would like to reach. Just when it seems like Don & Peggy have hit their respective low points, though, a unique opportunity arises that could be mutual beneficial...as long as both sides can swallow a bit of pride.

As usual, this show is best when centered around Don and his family(s). Megan Draper (Jessica Pare) plays a significant role in the proceedings, as does young Sally (Kiernan Shipka). An entire episode is even devoted to Don's relationship with his now-growing son. Even Betty (January Jones) returns again for a key character arc towards the back end of the season.

Of course, the ensemble cast is still a delight. Viewers are now so invested in the characters that we want to "see how it all turns out". I won't list all the names here, but suffice it to say that the "old gang" is still as present as ever. Personal favorites for me include Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), the guy we all love to hate, and Roger Sterling (John Slattery), who cracks more jokes this season than perhaps any previous (and that is quite a feat!). Even Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) has some meaty scenes.

My only knock on this season is that it starts out very slow (thus the four-star rating). The first 3-4 episodes feel a bit scatter-brained and disjointed. I have never seen a show quite like "Mad Men", though, with its ability to suddenly "throw a switch" (I'm sure it's more difficult than that) and suddenly, in a one-episode span, start producing top-notch drama and character development again. That is exactly what happens here...after those meandering 3-4 efforts.

Overall, I don't see why this season gets such shaky reviews here on Amazon. It might be not quite as good as, say, Seasons 1, 4, and 5, but it is high-quality viewing nonetheless. If you liked the five seasons previous, I can't imagine you'll finding anything here to dissuade you.

Exit Don Draper, enter Dick Whitman?

[tforbes-2 · 10/10 · 24 June 2013]

This sign-off to Season 6 of Mad Men packs a wallop!

Pete Campbell's mother is lost at sea, and and Pete himself ends up leaving the agency for California after a terrible time in Detroit. Ted Chaough ends up as the agency member leaving for California, because of his yearning for Peggy Olson.

And Don Draper is facing the fact that he is Dick Whitman.

In a meeting with Hershey executives, he reveals his unsavory past to everyone, including the partners. This, plus all of his behavior during Season Six, results in his being deep-sixed by the partners, in a meeting led by Bertram Cooper, who knows Don all too well.

At the end of the episode, Don shows his children the run-down house he grew up in. Very powerful scene indeed. The acting is terrific, and this makes a great end to what for me has been a better season than Season Five.

Now here's onward to Season Seven!

Season 6: Enjoyable season but not all of it works in the way that previous seasons have engaged and compelled

[bob the moo · 29 June 2014]

I say it every year, but Mad Men is one of those shows that I generally enjoy when I watch it but yet for some reason am never particularly excited to be coming back to until I do so. I have no idea why this is the case since season after season has given me strong adult soap opera plots of one form or another. In this penultimate season (something I knew going in) we see Don balancing his usual affairs with a changing and challenging work environment while all around him the other characters have their own interacting lives and situations, and the 1960's continue on their merry way, changing society as they go.

Fundamentally the sixth season is a good one; we have a lot going on with the characters and the central theme is one of Draper's life continuing an accelerating downward spiral. The world is changing and we see him tire of his own cycles, lies and flaws, while also seeing others starting to see him for who he is rather than who he says he is. Across the whole season a lot of things go on with many other characters but Draper is and was the core of the show and season. The reason I say it was fundamentally good is that it is not a season where everything works perfectly. There are a lot of plot lines that are not quite as strong as others and too often I felt like time was being filled by the use of the characters and their situations, rather than really working to draw me in for narrative reasons. Likewise, while I like the direction of Draper in the season, it does feel like a lot is treading water at times. Ironically then, it is also the case that a lot happens quickly – the merger happens really quickly and feels like it happened to create drama rather than being something that would really have happened in this way; meanwhile Draper's self-realisation, while understandably brought on abruptly by events, seems to have been reached and accepted a lot quicker than it should have been.

Such things do not affect the show so that it doesn't work, but it was noticeably less compelling than previous seasons and I thought that key narrative pillars were perhaps not as strong or as well constructed either – even if the broad strokes of it all worked as before. The cast continue to be very strong, with good performances across the board and quite a few really memorable turns at key moments. Generally speaking the strengths of the show outweigh the weaknesses, although it is hard to see this sixth season in the same class as some of the previous. Hopefully they can tighten up somewhat heading into the final season and close out with a high standard.

Excellent, engaging, endearing ending

[christian94 · 10/10 · 3 November 2014]

Creator Matthew Weiner gives us his best episode and it clearly shows us where all these greatly crafted characters and amazing actors have arrived after six solid seasons. Peggy and Ted relationship vs Don and Megan. Very different to be sure, connect in conflict and in pursuit of happiness in the vast loud chaos of life. Choices, feelings, heartbreaks and complicated realities are re-enacted to pure perfection. Elisabeth Moss and Jessica Pare embody the multi-level writing under Weiner's equally deft directing.

Don childhood finally takes an exquisite form in a fantasy vs reality meeting about chocolate and so much more.

The show ends wordlessly, when all is said and done perfectly. Profound, sad and so satisfied even if probably as unsettling as life itself.

So good I am afraid to watch season 7 as I do not see how one can possibly top this although I am happy to keep following the lives of these vivid (sometimes livid) people.

One of the best episodes in the series

[Viation · 10/10 · 18 October 2020]

We see a very different Don in this episode, one that is reckoning with his past and trying to make up for some of the mistakes he has made. A very good emotional episode overall and a great setup for the final season.

Comedy Turned to Tragedy Part II

[Miles-10 · 9/10 · 11 May 2014]

The only reason this episode does not get a ten is because of a few quibbles I have. It is not that the show is too subtly involved in its period. "Mad Men" can only do so much to spoon feed us what things were like in that different era. For example, when Don says that Nixon is president and all is right with the world, he is probably being a sarcastic drunk, although he is a bit all over the place in talking about different presidents. When the barroom preacher says that not one of the men Don has mentioned is or was a Godly man, it is hard to be sure which president was the sacred cow that made Don angry enough to punch the preacher (if this is the correct interpretation of the scene).

Another problem is Don's quick turnaround both in recognizing that he has an alcohol problem and that he has an identity disorder all in one episode. He doesn't solve these problems overnight, but he has a good start with the breakthroughs he makes. Don might not crash and burn after all, but we will have to wait and see.

Despite its speed, Don's nobody-saw-it-coming revelation about who he really is (he didn't reveal his name, but he told everyone who he once was anyway) was a breath-taking scene. He started out giving executives from Hershey's a false story about how he grew up middle-class and associated his Hershey's chocolate bar with the loving father who gave it to him. My eyes rolled and then he sat down. Then he tells the true story of how he grew up an orphan in a brothel and his real Hershey's memory was that a prostitute used to give him a chocolate bar for helping her rob her johns. "It was the only time I felt normal" he says about eating the chocolate. Then one of the executives says, "I don't get it. Do you want to use that in a commercial?" Comedy turned to tragedy and back to comedy. But, as in earlier episodes, the comedy is drained out of it because of the pain on display.

Don has made himself vulnerable once again, but unless he can't finally give up the bottle and unless he can't pull his career and his marriage and relationship with his kids back together, he might just make it. The final scene of this episode, of Don showing his kids the house where he grew up might be a start to repairing the tear in his relationships with them.

Pete's situation also betrays comedy mixed with tragedy. He can't get himself to stop being the prick that he is, and he and his brother prove not to be as different as they think they are. When they find out that their suspicions that Manolo murdered their mother are not being pursued by law enforcement, they are at first outraged, but then they both agree that since it would be costly to mount their own independent investigation, it is very tempting to let the matter lie. They are both funny and vile but it is tragic for poor Mrs. Campbell--unless she turns up next season, alive and happy. Then it will be comedy again. But her sons will still be vile.

Time to Rest

[DKosty123 · 9/10 · 30 July 2013]

A great finish for Season 6, and the climax of the episode is so fitting. It is one of the rare times Donald Draper is with his children though it is his own childhood as Dick Whitman he is revisiting.

There are some great sequences in this one including the meeting with Hersheys, a classic as it seems to trigger a switch in Draper that makes him fade to Whitman. That fade is mysterious and will lead to an interesting opening in Season 7 as Don is told too take a leave from the agency because of the meeting.

It is safe to say there will be a lot of fireworks next year as a lot of happenings are going on with this exit. It amazes me how the producers of this show find vintage music to pull out that fits the ending like the Joni Mitchell written tune used here.

This one wets the appetite for next year, for sure.

Continue to play the childhood card

[alcibiades-y-d · 9/10 · 24 June 2013]

To be fare, the season six finale is not a bad one, considering the fact that the whole season has seemed headed into a kind of dryness as the plot became a little bit predictable. Generally speaking, it seems to me there are two ways in which the screenwriters are trying to make the show entertaining if not great. One is to make connections between Draper's Ad agency and the politico-cultural ups and downs happened in the 1960s, like the episode about Kennedy's death or the one filled with the shock and sadness brought by the MLK assassination do. The other way, which is used more often, is to make connections between Draper's current city life and his unusual childhood.

It is more than clear that Draper made a lot of critical decisions with a mental state consciously or subconsciously affected by his childhood memories, which are visualized as flashbacks set in 1930s, a time period antithetic to the 1960s. For much part of the story, the childhood card is satisfactorily played. His womanizing is well explained by his whorehouse upbringing, and his trouble with his own personal identity by his orphanhood and his lack of a farther figure. What passing my understanding is how can we ever make sense of his alcoholism with the "childhood theory." His hand was shaking as a sign of withdrawal symptoms when he was pitching his idea in front of the clients, however, the show blamed this on his teenage memory. He punched a minister and went to the jail for a night, just because he was preached 30 years ago in his brothel/home. His life was falling apart throughout the season, but he chose to start afresh by revisiting the ex- brothel with his kids. It doesn't make much sense, at least to me.

Just when I thought Pete Campbell had finally outgrown himself as he learned in a hard way how to bury the hatchet with someone he disliked in the penultimate episode, the show decided to let him retrogress in terms of personality development. In the finale, he went back to his old irascible self after he found out his mother's sudden death. In my opinion, the show should have kept on making him more complex than he appears to be.

Where Bob Benson is going? It is puzzling. He is a closeted gay with a not-so-mad- man early history. He could become a prettier Don Draper or at least a younger Sterling. However, the show tells us his darker ego by unraveling his continuing farce with Campbell. I like his smile and don't want to find out that he will become a super-villain in the next season.

Miss Harrison is a treat, and I want to see her more involved into the business in the next season. She was pushing herself in hope of becoming an account-woman in season six, and I see no reason why she should fail.

End of the Path Again

[TheFearmakers · 7/10 · 26 October 2019]

A little more of the same. Not really going out with a bang but a whimper. Leading to the next season which is basically Don the Nomad season. Peggy's love with Ted doesn't mean much and isn't that interesting, although Pete's chagrin of James Wolk's advances is hilarious, as is the side-plot involving his mother.

6.13 ****

[edwagreen · 24 June 2013]

The season finale episode of this show really went out with a bang with Jon Hamm giving a knockout performance. He was totally memorable in the conference regarding Hershey Bars. Here, he comes out and tells of his terrible upbringing and relates it to the chocolate bar in a most bizarre, but sad way. Finding no empathy from his co-workers, he is placed on a suspension for his antics.

No question that the talented Don Draper's life is falling apart completely. It seems that his daughter may be forever emotionally scarred by what she saw.

Don was not happy with the Viet Nam but seems to be content that Nixon has been elected president in 1968. Isn't that some sort of conflicted interest?