Sterling Cooper: a Mad Men poll

Aggh what is the criteria here? So impossible.

Seriously I could see a great argument for Don, Pete, Peggy or Joan (and a decent one for Freddy or Paul.)

I suppose the most entertaining/well-rounded character. I voted for Roger.

I've only seen the first season but that one ep where draper pulled a mcnulty was the best

The problem I have with Roger is that he's completely uninteresting to me outside of the office.

voted joan

which one is the redhead with the big tits?

Joan

Haven't got to watching this but I felt she deserved the vote.

I voted for feminist hero Peggy Olson to counteract the guy who's never seen the show but voted for the redhead with big tits anyway.

bert cooper, act like you know

I hope Don doesn't lose out for being too obvious.

bert cooper, even if he likes ayn rand

I went for Peggy too, even if I would prefer to look like Joan..

That woman could end civilization as we know it with her mastery of the male libido. What else can I do here?

I went Roger for pure entertainment value, but I could've gone for anybody else.

had to vote Draper here, but so many great options.

Bump for the Brits.

i'd like to see more of pseudo-intellectual poseur paul kinsey

Oh, because Joan isn't going to win this with help from the horndog crew.

Tough choice between Joan, Pete & Salvatore. I'm going for..

http://19.media.tumblr.com/7hu2U4T6Cno6vr6jg66dOk49o1_500.jpg

On the day Marilyn died, when Joan sat on the edge of her bed, pulled down her bra strap and rubbed the sore spot where it had been, she stole my heart.

"Marilyn's a Joan, not the other way round"

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

http://23.media.tumblr.com/CuZDotL7Alwbd4f1sKcNQ4qNo1_500.jpg

Voted for Pete in the end. Watching that guy is like watching a trainwreck in slow motion.

http://www.designobserver.com/images/madmen_mb.jpg

i wish i could vote for joan but rogerogerogerogeroger

Wound up going for Harry cos, well, no-one else will. Poor schlub.

Am also taking up the option of being the guy that says if this poll's got Jane on it then surely Lois and Hildy should be there, too...

Heart them all, but as well drawn characters go it's difficult to look past Don, Pete, Joan and Peggy.

So I voted for none of them and went for Kinsey because his ostentatious liberalism amuses me.

I rewatched S1 recently, and it's interesting that Kinsey is one of the most vocal Nixon supporters in the election episode. Quite a contrast to his civil rights posing in S2.

I watched S1 for the first time over the weekend, having watched S2 in its entirety on BBC4. For a man who really does look like a cartoon pilot, Jon Hamm is astonishingly good at conveying weakness and vulnerability.

One question, though - there's a guy who's in the whole Cosgrove-Kinsey-Crane set for at least episodes one and two then seems to completely vanish. Is it ever explained what happens to him?

not gonna act like it's not joan

i'd like to see more of pseudo-intellectual poseur paul kinsey

― Michael B, Thursday, May 21, 2009 1:51 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm -- also the atlantic-contributin' dude.

dig them all but voted for peggy in the end - i pretty much love her interactions with everyone else in the agency.

So many well crafted characters, I could have made a case for most of them but went for Salvatore in the end. The 'date' with Ken around the dinner table with his wife was fantastically well done.

Oh gosh, Kinsey's play...

It would be nice to see Cosgrove have some kind of backstory, but it'd probably be a bit forced - there's not much to suggest the feller's harbouring any kind of Massive Dark Secrets.

Peggy, the hero of the show.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

thinking with your dicks, ilx?

Well, we can't help it now, can we?

freddy rumsen was robbed.

"You want me to show you how it's done?"

To be fair, Joan is a great character.

"I rewatched S1 recently, and it's interesting that Kinsey is one of the most vocal Nixon supporters in the election episode. Quite a contrast to his civil rights posing in S2.

― chap, Wednesday, May 27, 2009 7:46 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark"

Not that strange at all. Congressional Republicans (pretty much all of them from the North) voted for Civil Rights legislation 2:1 or 3:1 in favor.

She is, and that's third in line after why I voted for her, after face and rack.

xp

yeah i dont really have a prob w/ joan>roger>don but feel like joan & roger are propped up, so to speak, by gimmicks and don's the better character

hildy 4 life

http://www.newenglandfilm.com/files/images/big-crosswinds_0.jpg

Joan's a good character but she's not a patch on Don/Pete/Peggy.

think ppl voted w/their willys tbf

i literally used my dick to press the keys on the keyboard

didnt notice this in time but wouldve voted roger - don is sort of the best but he has an unfair advantage

I voted for Roger, but really you could make a case for any of them.

I'm glad Sal got a few votes, surprised he beat Pete though.

Pete's a tricky one - very well conceived, but deeply unlikeable. Salvatore's one of the nicer characters, on the other hand.

It might be interesting to have a dick for a day, I suppose.

I still love Roger and Don's conversation over oysters in S1.

Roger: "He was a bold man that first ate an oyster. [Waves oyster around] I believe that was Jonathan Swift."
Don: "Are we naming them now?"

Followed by Roger being violently vomitous all over the office carpet.

someone lied about voting for harry ohno

Roger: "He was a bold man that first ate an oyster. [Waves oyster around] I believe that was Jonathan Swift."
Don: "Are we naming them now?"

Love it when Don and Roger are just hanging out trying to make each other laugh. Wonder how Layne would fair in an updated poll.

I just started watching this show. Yeah, wow, I am completely in love with Joan.

I guess this was taken after Season 2 or 3. I'd like to redo it once 7b finishes. Reasonable choice early on, but I can't see that she'd ever win now, unless the writers are especially kind to her in 7b.

I'm sure I'll vote Pete if this comes up again.

I will spearhead the Anybody but Pete faction.

I never believed that Pete would be successful in the ad business. he's vile but doesn't seem to have any actual intelligence, talent or nous to make up for that. I just never believed the character at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaeZr3HgzX4

I've only seen the first 7 episodes. At this point Joan seems closer to a caricature who's stepped out of How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying than any of the others, what with the swaying walk, Machiavellian juggling of men, etc. I presume there'll be layers later on, fortunately or not.

*tiny spoiler*

There's a scene in which she sits in the bed, pulls a bra strap off her shoulder and rubs the welt underneath. Perfectly done, never forgotten it.

btw it was driving me crazy where i've heard Betty's/January Jones' vocal rhythms before, and then it hit me: Shelley Duvall.

oh yeah, Robert Morse's scenes are always a treat. And the Wellesian copywriter with the pipe.

whoah the Duvall comparison never occurred to me before but that is very true

really glad you've continued with the show, Morbs

And the Wellesian copywriter with the pipe.

Kinsey is consistently a hoot

I'm extremely ambivalent. The production design is the steadiest element, but there's enough wit and desperation, usually.

"Our" Pete Campbell at my first agency was the boss' son. I heard him trying to joke his way through a phone call with his wife in the next cubicle, and ten seconds after his last snorting laugh he quietly hung up, for she had given him The Big Click.

Did they have Peggy dally with Pete in s1 (i hope not after) just so we would hate something about her? cuz ewwwww.

She'll do worse in the coming seasons.

that sortas makes me want to abandon it.

since my childhood memories of pop culture wd begin around season 4, i am perversely curious tho. also from what i've heard about Jared Harris (and Zosia Mamet, right?).

Jared Harris is very good!

both are v good, Harris has the more substantial part

that sortas makes me want to abandon it.

I wouldn't recommend dropping the show, but WARNING: Peggy's just not good at relationships, and--not to get too spoiler-y--when a seemingly good and lasting one comes along she blows it in spectacular fashion.

It's endearing in a strange way.

so women CAN'T have it all, eh?

in this show nobody gets it all

every character is either stifled or self-sabotaged in some key way

The season 1 pan linked in that LRB piece is very funny, tho i disagree with it about Hamm's performance for starters. It places the show in the "We Know Better" genre.

i definitely think the series gets better as it goes on - 3 & 4 are gangbusters iirc

I think the writers listened to a lot of the criticisms of the first series. That "we know better" feeling fades considerably.
Season 1 is undoubtedly the weakest. Season 3 and onwards is gold.

I like season 1, on rewatch it was very very good. Can't remember season 2 at all. 3-5 is highpoint upon highpoint. 6-7 is very good, but not peak.

Season 1 is great.

I didn't mean to say season 1 was bad, I just find all the later ones much more enjoyable. Although in season 2 I find that holiday with the rich eccentrics a little nauseating even though it was interesting.

1 is a little better than both 2 and 3 imo. 4 and 5 are probably the best.

this is why i don't do TV series, goddammit

Finished s1, I will now be proceeding to the second season... of The Sopranos.

Man, Peggy in denial over her pregnancy til she popped proved that she is from Bay Ridge!

(she's kind of a drip, at least in 1960, tbh)

also the prosthetics on Moss' neck occasionally looked bad

excerpt of Matt Z Seitz critical guide: s1 e1

http://www.scribd.com/doc/289257859/Excerpt-From-Mad-Men-Carousel-by-Matt-Zoller-Seitz

i've restarted with s2... the "Flight 1" ep made Pete the dick more interestingly pathological by jumping onboard the pitch for American Airlines right after his dad bought it in their crash.

lol'd at Roger Sterling dissing John Glenn: "throw ticker tape at me when i drive my car around the block three times."

btw the Irish Catholic Queens vibe of Peggy's mom and aunt: PERFECT

"so-and-so was askin' for ya"

Peggy's family is fantastic, I was bummed that they basically disappear after season 5 iirc (altho it made perfect sense plot-wise)

So since I've now fulfilled my vow to wait until this was over to consider watching it (burned by too many shows that start strong and eventually go down the toilet), what's the final verdict? Worth it?

Stays consistently great till Season 5, drops into to cruising mode for the final two, but comes up for a strong finish. It never goes below 'pretty good'.

I do think they could have achieved what they were going for with one less season and it would've been a better run overall, but but it certainly never goes down the toilet.

I think as heir-apparent to Mad Men it maintained a similarly strong level of quality throughout. It never got bad, and was often incredibly great.

Heir apparent to itself?

Lol, you talkin' about Sopranos, Shakes?

haha yes lol sorry

mea culpa, the Olsons are from Brooklyn (Bay Ridge), not Queens

no surprise you guys would pick joan over peggy

from the orig locked thread:

(Draper) has a genuine soft spot for (Peggy) - not sure if thats anything more specific than theyre both outsiders trying to beat the system or if well find out she reminds him of his sister or whatnot - i guess maybe he just kinda likes her like people do

― ice crӕm, Tuesday, September 2, 2008 1:49 PM

she is quite likable

― ice crӕm, Tuesday, September 2, 2008 1:50 PM

She is, esp relative to the rest of the characters, but also sometimes unbelievably naive for a bright Brooklyn girl, even an Irish Catholic one from Bay Ridge.

I'm starting to enjoy things pop culture phenomena showing up in season 2 that I remember from toddlerhood.

also don't spoil it, but Duck Phillips seems like an imminent heart attack and/or suicide, whether he beats the bottle or not.

no surprise you guys would pick joan over peggy

Duck's character arc consistently delivers

xp

that fucking guy

I appreciate Peggy's character arc, in that she keeps progressing through life and having minor (and some major) successes but by the end she's still not sure what she wants or where she's supposed to go with what she has. Very relatable.

i like that Peggy's essential core of primness pretty much stays intact throughout the whole show. the way Moss lifts her chin a bit when she's standing her ground is a wonderful character beat.

i had the most sympathy for peggy

Peggy gets better and better as a character although by early Season 3 she'd yet to hit her full stride. If I had it to do over again, I'd probably vote for her (or Don) since Pete Campbell by contrast got less interesting.

Paul Kinsey revealed to be a dick w/ his whitesplain of "Marxism"/advertising on a Freedom Ride.

i liked how they didn't softpedal the general revulsion when the Funny Euro Gay blurted out his orientation.

It was shortsighted to lock the original seasons 1-2 thread.

The "Telstar" music cue was great, but a sly one at the end of "The Jet Set" (Don chucks work to lounge with Eurotrash in L.A.) is Irving Berlin's "What'll I Do?" It was prominently used in the disastrous '74 film of Great Gatsby, and Don & Betty often seem like the answer to "what if Gatsby and Daisy had gotten married, but in the mid '50s?"

Morbsplaining

why did the seasons 1-2 thread get locked?

I think they just got too long and were replaced with "...Part 2" continuations

need to see more of Mrs Cooper after she dissed Sterling for his engagement to a 20yo -- "You need to take care of your children."

i really didn't buy Peggy's unloading the babytruth on Pete. I DID buy Fr Colin Hanks telling her she'd go to hell during the missile crisis.

need to see more of Mrs Cooper

she's great in her few scenes but yeah she doesn't appear much

Watching the first season again, Don's pithy American Meursault lines ('the universe is indifferent,' 'love was made up by guys like me to sell nylons,' etc.) seems like a thing that disappeared right after we get a shot of him reading Frank O'Hara.

Hey, it's Roger Sterling.

http://variety.com/2018/tv/news/amazon-the-romanoffs-matthew-weiner-trailer-1202904183/

plus Joan and Stan

that looks...insufferable, tbh

and uh not just saying that 'cause the romanovs had it coming

it's hard to say what it looks like considering weiner is famously opaque when it comes to previews. in the mad men days, he tried to pack as little information as possible into the "next week" teasers, to the point that it just showed something like roger saying "that's impossible" and don saying "what?"

I thought the trailer looked okay--they went with a concept, and, you know, it's a trailer. I liked seeing Corey Stoll from House of Cards.

I've only seen the second episode, but if it's supposed to be the better of the two openers, then yikes.

It cycles through such an eclectic variety of badness in 80 minutes: it starts off merely interesting-but-bad, but the middle section is straight-up mediocre, and the ending is holy-shit-who-paid-for-this awful.

Two leads are good though. I felt sorry for em

1st ep was ok-ish idk id watch more~

Yeah, I'll watch a few more.

my recollection is that the best stuff in the early episodes is generally the pitch scenes. it takes a bit for the other elements to coalesce.

joan is really people's favorite character? she is sympathetic and admirable in a way but i never thought of her as the heart and soul of the show.

I'm not sure I could pick a favorite tbh

I can tell you who my least favorite was

when was there a poll for heart and soul of the first two seasons of the show?

solid critique of my post

(NB I mean The Romanoffs, not Mad Men! I pretty much dug every season of MM.)

yes same

i didn't know there was a show called the romanoffs. just googled it -- sounds like an awesome premise and good actors

weird thing is after this thread, ilxors became fervent supporters of the peggys irl

how the world has changed

joan's a feminist character too. in the beginning she advised peggy to go along and not question the order of things but that changes by the end.

honestly, the storylines of both peggy and joan are really bleak.

i really disliked the episode where joan was made to sleep with that disgusting client. i know it gave her lifetime financial security but it was awful.

I agree making her into a literal whore was a bit over the top

and Don being too late to come to the rescue was such a knife-twist

It wasn’t over the top when you consider this isn’t something that rarely happens

Plus there had to be some controversy to keep people on the edge

advertising executives regularly prostituted lower level staff to clients in the 60s?

maybe you know something I don't idk

I know that happened to ballerinas in 19th century paris. Not sure about secretaries. It seemed over the top to me too.

Sometimes I think the core group of actors in this are so well casted and finely conceived + written that some of the peripheral sub-plots look really ordinary to bad in comparison and descend into soap opera tedium at times, but it is worth sticking for the good stuff. Well that is my haven't seen it in years take.

Salvatore Romano actor puts in some really good shifts, he brings genuine pathos to that trying to be one of the lads repressed gay role. Every scene he is in feels quite loaded. I'd have probably voted for Bert Cooper. A complete old world evil cunt with a Rand book in his desk and a Rothko on the wall that he can't stand the sight of.

I didn't realize this thread revive was about the Romanovs fwiw, that should probably have its own thread imo

XP...and has no balls.

but yeah agree w calzino that Don, Betty, Bert, Pete, Joan, Peggy, Roger, Ken and Sally were all just pitch perfect

xp

Οὖτις
Posted: October 12, 2018 at 3:00:49 PM
advertising executives regularly prostituted lower level staff to clients in the 60s?

maybe you know something I don't idk

You’re thinking too narrowly here and literally

Men in power constantly pressure women into things that are belittling, especially women who are vulnerable or feel helpless and act out of desperation when men typecast them

I feel like the joan arc is a little more complicated as opposed to the peggy arc in some ways

I don't disagree with that at all, but what bothered me about that turn in her arc was that it *was* literal prostitution, with the management as pimps, Jaguar as the john, and Joan as the whore. It was very, very explicit and heavy-handed. Otherwise I thought the show did a really good job of portraying the dynamic you describe.

I mean Lane literally calls Pete a "grimy little pimp" a few episodes later, and he is not exaggerating.

I'm actually just finishing up a re-watch of the entire run and frankly the whole thing was kind of incredible from start to finish. There's just nothing close to this well written and performed on tv anymore and I really miss it. Even the often circular plotting (despite the resolution of immediate conflicts no one ever really seems to resolve their central problems nor does that seem like a possibility) starts to seem like a commentary on TV plotting in general as a kind of endless purgatory.

Also, I think it's probably important to place that Joan plotline within the context of the firm trying to get their first car account. It's repeatedly noted as a dirty business: "Well, you said you wanted a car."

Finished rewatching recently, would not have been a worse show if Don had died in a car crash around the beginning of S4 IMO. Every other character had become so well developed returning to his misery over and over distracted from them.

Re Joan being sold and stuff that happens to women generally, I’ve reached the point now where I think, just because it hasn’t been talked about, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It probably did happen, just women weren’t able to/didn’t want to talk about it publicly. I mean, agents have been letting this happen to actors very recently so why shouldn’t it have happened in other types of job 50 years ago?

^^^^^

On the other Romanoffs not great so far.

it looks/sounds awful

At the moment, I'd say it's Weiner's 1941, but there six eps left so it may improve?

Luckily they're incredibly and pointlessly long

I really hated myself by the end of the Corey Stoll ep, and the performances were both pretty good. Eckhart was wooden as usual in the first.

is anybody else watching the romanoffs besides you three dudes who hate everything by default

^^
Tom's way of saying anyone who doesn't like Top Gear and comic book shite!

I loved Mad Men!

You're right, you do like some stuff. Simon doesn't though. Chuck likes some stuff - eventually.

At the moment, I'd say it's Weiner's 1941, but there six eps left so it may improve?

Every TV auteur has his John from Cincinnati, etc., etc.

We’re loving The Romanoffs so far. I normally find anthology series insufferable, but here the format holds up. Deserves its own thread, but I’m too tired atm.