TV Time: Mad Men Season 5 Review

The surviving partners check out an expansion on Mad Men

Mad Men Season 5

A+

A Review by Frederick Cholowski

SPOILER ALERT FOR ALL OF SEASON 5          

After a long break due to extended negotiations the much anticipated fifth season of what many consider to be television’s best show has come and gone. Sterling Cooper Draper Price has grown and changed into a much different place since we last left it becoming an even less moral place to work. Mad Men season five ramped up the big moments and delivered yet again another near perfect season of television. 

 Don (John Hamm) opens season five in a happy place; he loves his new wife Megan (new regular Jessica Paré), he gets to see said wife all day at work, and he doesn’t have to do much at said workplace. Peggy (Elizabeth Moss) is trying to expand her career into something fantastic and she even at times attempts to be like Don (which knowing how the perceptions of women where in the 1960’s that didn’t go so well sometimes). Roger (John Slattery) has to deal with a crumbling second marriage and a crumbling importance at the work place. Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) is dealing with the “I’m not happy with what I have even though I have everything” syndrome. Finally Lane (Jared Harris) is well… We’ll talk about him in a second.

There was a lot to go through this season so bear with me. I’m going to start with Megan. Many people’s complaints of this season that it was Megan focused and that some people would have liked to see more of the other characters around the office instead of Don’s second wife. For me Megan’s regularity was just fine and she filled the mold quite well. This is due to the great work of Jessica Paré who turned the character from Don’s former secretary to the complicated woman she is by the end of the season. Overall Megan’s character never hurt the flow of the show even when she was out of the office mid season. 

 The other main difference this season was that the show wore it’s themes on it sleeve and felt a little more like television. Mad Men in the past felt more like a series of short films which had subtle themes that were connected throughout the season; this season’s themes where much more obvious and were hammered in through many different means. This wasn’t a problem to me for the most part unless the symbolism and themes were really obvious. The worst offender of these was the finale which pushed the Don’s rotten tooth subject really really hard, to the point of telling us literally that Don was the rotten one. Again for the most part the storylines worked and gave us some of the biggest and best moments in series history.

Speaking of, wow a lot of was big and amazing things happened this season! Some of the best episodes of the entire series were here including “Far Away Places”, “The Other Woman”, and “Commissions and Fees”. First off “Far Away Places” was the one of the “different” episodes that went through three different perspectives on the same day. It was emotional, powerful, and feature Roger Sterling on LSD! Roger Sterling on LSD alone is one of my all time favorite moments on the show and was an amazing turning point for the character. “Commissions and Fees” featured poor Lane Price committing suicide after having financial troubles (which is one of those come out of nowhere “TV” stories of this season that worked) in what was a fantastically ominous and emotional episode (that had one of the funniest, and darkest, pieces of comedy of the season when Lane tried to kill himself in the Jaguar and failed because it wouldn’t start after it had been touted as unreliable all season). 

The best and most controversial of the bunch was “The Other Woman”. In the episode Joan committed prostitute like actions and slept with a Jaguar exec to get the account and to gain a partnership. The sticking point for most was that some of the actions taken by the characters throughout the episode were acting uncharacteristically and it was hard to buy Joan going through with it. I bought every single second and between that storyline (which despite the critics no one questions the way it was executed) and Peggy leaving SCDP it was one of the all time best Mad Men episodes and one of the best hours of TV this year.

Another thing I would like to mention was some of the amazing end of the episode montages this year. The two most prominent ones were the “Tomorrow Never Knows” montage and the final montage of the season to “You Only Live Twice”.  “Tomorrow Never Knows” was awesome because Mad Men use a Beatles song and worked in the frustration of Don watching his wife leave the office into her new life of acting and his frustrations of not being in with the hippest fads. “You Only Live Twice” was amazing due to the emotional ends of all the characters and that fantastic shot of Don walking away from the commercial set (and in a way from his happy married life with Megan).

When we leave Don at the end of season five he’s hit on by the young lady on the bar who asks him “Are you alone?”.  The scene is heartbreaking and ties up the season in a nice bow. Don feeling alone in his marriage now that Megan left the office, Pete feeling alone despite having everything, Peggy feeling alone despite her happiness of moving up in the world, Lane feeling alone and stranded and eventually killing himself over it, and Roger taking LSD for the second time on his own. All the themes despite being bigger and more obvious were wrapped up in what only could be described as another amazing season of one of television’s greatest drama.

Oh and all the other great moments Pete getting beat by Lane, Joan dumping her rapist husband, and Don putting the pressure on with the fantastic pre Jaguar speech all there and amazing as well.