For those who haven’t seen it, A Serious Man is a Coen Brothers movie set 1967 in the Midwest suburbs. Besides also being set in the 60s and featuring cool 60s music and fashion, its focus on uncertainty and the randomness of life reminds me a lot of Mad Men. particularly in relation to quotes like “the universe is indifferent” and “living in the ‘not knowing’”. It deals with some similar themes to Mad Men but from a different point of view and background. It’s also very funny, has very smartly written dialogue and great editing.

There’s a scene when Don is hanging out in Greenwhich village, and is acting generally pretty pretentious at a poetry show, it’s pretty clear he looks down on not just the performer but the whole crowd. Then in the season finale, at his very lowest point, he’s scored by Bob Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice it’s Alright. Obviously not intentional, but pretty funny.

I've always loved how Don delivers this line as if it means anything but at the same time, it explains a lot

Hopefully people see the spoiler tag. Lane commits suicide at the end of season 5, after being forced to resign by Don for embezzlement. Lane had a rough couple years and things were finally seeming to look up for him, but this was the final nail in the coffin as it would have essentially uprooted his entire life, even more than it had already been.

We learn, however, that Lane actually has a lot to live for, particularly in the scene that Don fires him, and the scenes after. His wife clearly loves him, though Lane may not fully return the love (hard for me to tell from his interactions with her and his mental state at the time). He has children. While his resignation is unfortunate, he has a pretty good track record and probably could find another job. His taxes in England are payed for, even if done so illegally, as Don makes it clear he’s not going to do anything outside of the resignation and even offers Lane money. I’m not sure how it works with his visa or whatever, though, or if he’d have to return to England.

While Lane’s suicide is a powerful moment and wraps up season 5 spectacularly, I do have to wonder what would have happened if he chose not to end his life. I would imagine he’d end up like Sal when he was kicked out of the narrative, basically never being discussed again on the show, but like Sal, it’s fun to imagine what would happen to him after leaving. How bad would it be for him to bounce back? Could he even bounce back? What would life be like for Lane Pryce if he decided against the suicide after his Jaguar crapped out?

My god every single one of them, except for possibly Lane, is such a tremendous twat. Mr. Hooker. Lane's father. The Jaguar man, with the pubis.

St. John Powell takes the (coffee and) cake though.

"If you're not drinking, what is this about?" to teetotaler Duck.

"It's for our snake charmer. We're sending you to Bombay" to Lane.

"Now that we're done haggling over the dowry, it's time to slip into the tent and spend a night with the bride" :vomit:

I said my piece

Edit: Enjoy the liquor and delicatessen. That Guy had it coming. "He can never golf again"

Writing and buildup for this scene is truly amazing.

On one hand, Don is justly humbled, as he is incompetent as an account. He didn't understand what Hilton wanted at all, ignored his direct talk about the moon, about him wanting to translate his vision - of Hilton being a patriotic/american mission. He didn't ever think "what did actually Hilton see in me", as if he thought he charmed him, or was blinded by his whole father-son talk (and he desperately needed a father figure). Its quite obvious that Hilton wanted someone independent - he could have all marketing agencies in the world, but wanted something unconventional, and Don gave him a briliant, but very typical ad.

It was very ignorant of Don to not even think of taking Roger or Campbell with him (which Hilton would surely accept) to help with the talks, as they would translate to him, what Hilton actually wants. Roger even says it to Don's face - "you wont even let me see the man, what do you think account does?... we've had two of the most important clients leave here angry in one week".

On the other, Hilton is a grumpy ignorant asshole, who wanted to advertise his hotels with a cartoon mouse, who wakes Don up in the middle of the night, is very indirect in what he actually wants, and lures him in with high hopes and dreams, pretending he actually felt a connection to Don.

He could just give Don another chance, as this was a simple misunderstanding. Or accept this briliant ad, which would surely increase his benefits, and then keep talking about another ad campaign.

In the end - we don't actually know which one is it. Or maybe both interpretations are correct?
It was though refreshing to see Don challenged by someone even more brilliant than him.

Two companies favored white applicants over Black applicants significantly more than others. They were AutoNation, a used car retailer, which contacted presumed white applicants 43% more often, and Genuine Parts Co., which sells auto parts including under the NAPA brand, and called presumed white candidates 33% more often.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/08/upshot/employment-discrimination-fake-resumes.html#:~:text=At%2014%20companies%2C%20there%20was,presumed%20white%20or%20Black%20applicants.&text=Known%20as%20an%20audit%20study,jobs%20from%202019%20to%202021.

I think Trudy is. She loves her daughter, takes an interest in her education and is affectionate. I can’t imagine her being cold with her kids like Betty was when Sally and Bobby were older.

I think Mona is probably second. Margaret turned out to be a disaster but I think that was more on Roger.

Since the beginning of the Pandemic, I had a goal to make it through what I've considered the 'God Tier' shows in modern Pop Culture:

• Mad Men

• The Sopranos

• Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul

• Game of Thrones

• The Wire

Yesterday, I finished my journey by watching the Mad Men series finale. I'm feeling a sense of accomplishment/sadness that I don't know what's next. I know it's an often talked about topic on these boards ("Shows like Mad Men") so I don't want to ask that overrun question, but after these shows above, what is in the next 'tier'? Let's say my list above is the 'Platinum' tier, what is the 'Gold' tier?

Why the Diana story line at the end? Was Don just grasping for some kind of connection?

I always cringe when Freddy says, “Women want lots and lots of colors!” Like adult women are children with crayons.

Anyone who wears makeup knows that you need to be very particular about the shades that complement your features and coloring. That’s why most people have a few palettes that they use as their go-to. If everyone was forced to buy a dozen colors of lipstick, most of them would never get used.

It’s such a subtle but solid example of how representation is important, and why a middle-aged man was maybe not the best person to advertise lipstick. 😂

i mean he was too hot to be straight

The Summer Man journal monologues are simple but refreshing. We're let into this silent man's inner thoughts. He's being honest and philosophical and I think we all relate. Who doesn't fantasize about an ideal version of ourselves we can never reach?

Turning it on Betty, what does she see in the mirror of desire? As much as we condemn Betty, she's always compelling because she wants so much. She wants to have more, be better. She's similar to Pete. A blue blood with old fashioned ideals who's ever so dissatisfied with everything. But Pete has a similar attitude to Joan. They both feel that they are the person they need to be and the world needs to change to fit them into it. Peggy is a little bit of both, she has a lot of change and growth to do but she also must bend the world to her will.

What does Betty want?

Her first big hurdle is the ideal female body. She lives as a larger person as a child, internalizing it to the point she attempted to make clothes in a bigger size for herself. The next thing she wants is a good young adulthood. She goes to a perfect school and studies anthropology before running away to Manhattan to become a model and meet a handsome man. She gets married and has kids in her early twenties. Her husband succeeds and they live in a large beautiful house in the country. Everything's right but everything is wrong.

Of course if Don was devoted to her and included her and she was a society mover and shaker she would have been happier. She would have had the Manhattan talk, stayed abreast of art, history, and news to keep up and been intellectually stimulated while a nanny watched the kids. But Don was old fashioned, had to keep a low profile, and he really struggled when other men were attracted to his drop dead gorgeous wife. So Betty became cloistered, resentful, bitter.

When she gets what she always wanted, a marriage to Henry Francis, and after a cancer a scare, her oldest demon, fatness needing to be concurred again, and coming to terms with the whole Don lie/divorce/infidelity/terrible marriage thing she did in her twenties, she goes back to school to study psychology.

We think of Betty getting the bad ending. She died when she was still young, she had to say goodbye to her three children, beloved husband, and life on earth, just when she was finally getting it together.

But Betty grew. She represented some of the worst parts of her era, complacency, racism, fear of change, conformity, entitlement. But she worked on herself. She made mistakes. She left Don. She found a partner who told her how he felt and let her tell him how she felt. Henry and Betty learned from each other in a way Don and Betty never really did.

Would I want to know Betty? Probably not, she hit her kids, supported the Vietnam war, treated Carla terribly, feared civil rights, and smoked cigarettes inside all the time. But she's fictional and the sins I've committed have hurt actual living humans. So why cast stones at Elizabeth Hoftsed?

Betty had a character arc. She represented a kind of change just like every other character. She starts out completely stuck, postured like a Barbie. By the end she's exactly where she wants to be surrounded by exactly the people she wants and she's studying psychology, a fresh forward thinking discipline of the era. Her death is a tragedy, but she is a character who gets what she always wanted. She never has to grow old. And thank god she never has to grown old married to Don Draper.

​

They wrote her as pure good. She was literally always in the right and always the glimpse of hope and good in this show of absolute sin.

They did her so dirty letting Peter run all over her. Especially with his desperate need to cheat on her just to feel like one of the guys.

Her character development was simple but true and honest and authentic. She was a spoiled girl from her dad’s riches but she never pretended.

Peter FUMBLED that sooo badly.