Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Mad Men 2x05 Reaction (Patreon)

Published:
2025-08-10 21:15:19
Edited:
2025-09-25 23:40:03
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

i feel unwell about this episode

Files

mad men 205

________________________ patreon - https://www.patreon.com/LMreactions twitter - https://twitter.com/LMreaction tv time - lola - skysstillblue, milena - oneofthe100

Comments

Jay Craig

Been waiting for this one. Seeing Don by her bed hit me like a truck.

Jude’s IFs

This piece of advice that don has is so interesting. It explains so much about what and who he is

Sebastian

i’ve forgotten like 80% of what happens in mad men since i first watched it a decade ago but “it will shock you how much it never happened” is one of those infamous lines that’s just kind of seared into my brain since i first saw it. very haunting

Edin Burak

This episode never happened, it will shock you guys how much it never happened!

bondbond53

That transition from Pete having to masturbate for the semen sample and Roger beating the paddle ball is *chef's kiss*

Dhaval Kale

When I saw the caption I thought this was a certain other episode

Kenzo Yamashita

When Peggy's abandoned child turns 12 hes gonna go to the Advertisement Exam to become a Ad men and figure out whats is so good about advertisement that made his mom abandon him lol

JBK405

Name's have power. Talking to "Mr. Draper" is a whole different world than talking to "Don". The BAC driving limit varies from country to country (and state to state within the USA), but most are currently below 0.1. The modern New York limit is .08. Don's .15 is higher than almost every modern standard around the world, and nearly DOUBLE the current New York standard. I love the exercise of power in this episode because the cop knows that drunk driving is bad, but he's got no power to enforce a harsher punishment than a fine, so he enforces the current rules to the letter. The dollar amount may not be a lot to Don, but demanding this payment before he will release Don lets him keep Don in jail and off the roads just a little bit longer. That inconvenience and frustration is a greater punishment than the money, which Don't won't even notice is gone. Betty asking why Don didn't call her hearkens back to what she's been saying for many episodes: She wants to be involved in Don's life. In the story he told she couldn't have done anything to help, but she would have KNOWN. It's so much better than stewing in fear at knowing nothing. All she's asking for is for the two of them to communicate and be partners, and he can't even meet her on that. "Donnybrook" is slang for a loud fight or argument. Pete was saying that he wouldn't want to have a kid see its parents fighting like this. Much like I often say with Don, Pete realizing that it's bad to raise children in an unhappy home is stepping over a bar that a lot of other characters can't clear. But also just like Don, he can't go from there to a more meaningful realization about how he treats his wife or his lifestyle in general.

Kara

To build on what you're saying, by demanding payment in full the cop forces Don to call someone, basically increasing his punishment because he has to tell someone else he got into an accident while drunk with his "wife" (even if Bobby were his wife, its still embarrassing to call a friend, a family member, a neighbour etc). The cop knows this so its just a little "fuck you Mr Moneybags, call someone, let them know ur a scumbag" move.

cheech

I can’t explain it but if you’re a certain type of person there’s like a 50% chance watching that don/peggy scene for the first time changed the trajectory of your life. It’s that good.

Kara

i know this is a joke but you're actually kinda cooking here... I would watch Ad Man X Ad Man

Kara

+1. It changed my life.

bondbond53

Me looking at the camera The Office-style as if I'm the one filming a reaction the first time I saw it: 'Y'all seeing this shit?'

Chris B

Lmao dude

Taya

Lol, you guys forgot to talk about Rachel Menken. It's a testament to how good the episode is! So many important things happened. Rachel's reappearance knocked Don off his axis and made him want to go on a bender. He probably wouldn't have agreed to go to Bobbie's seaside cottage otherwise, nor would he have been joyriding, drinking, and acting so reckless. If they hadn't crashed, would Don have even bothered to call Betty with some excuse? Or would he have just let her stay up all night worried? I just finished a full rewatch of the series and I can emphatically say that Joan is my favorite female character. I love her so much! I wish I could say more without spoiling.

Chris B

Maybe hyperbolic, but the "It will shock you" scene was such a watershed moment for this show for me. Says so much about Don. I was shook the first time I saw this episode lol

Taya

Same here. It's a line that's always stuck with me. It really comes in handy during particularly difficult moments. Move forward.

Chris B

13:05 "you don't have to my boy". Lola is already so on point with Pete as a character.

Kara

um that's Rachel KATZ actually. her husband Tilden Katz loves comedians!

Kara

There was a debate in the community over whether to tell you about peggy's sister's child earlier, but we decided to wait until this episode because tbh I thought you might figure it out. It's one of the most confusing plot points of the show, myself and Taya and others didn't even realize until we rewatched 🤦 But yeah, the little boy we see is Anita's (sister's) baby, who would be roughly the same age as Peggy's actual child. So the show is still using the child to tell stories about Peggy - why she doesn't like saying goodnight to her nephew, why the priest gave her the egg "for the little one" meaning the newphew but also quietly telling Peggy he knows about her situation. It even builds Anita's confession, she's angry in part because she has to raise her third child (that she probably loves and wants) and Peggy doesn't. 'The New Girl' is one of my favourite episodes of the show, and one that has stuck with me for years. It's a great 'trick' because it recontextualizes the first 4 episodes of the season, when you rewatch you know that this happened with Don and Peggy and like Milena says it just "makes sense", same with the Korea flashbacks. It's funny because Don is basically perfectly built to deliver the exact situational advice Peggy needs to hear in the moment, it's such clever writing, and it connects this ~36yo man with this 20-something young woman in a way that no random observer would clock. I've suffered from dissociation and derealization most of my life and while there are obviously downsides its can SITUATIONALLY be sort of a super power, to be able to compartmentalize and move past discomfort and trauma, to not be trapped in it. I said it in another reply but this episode unironically changed my life and it's not the only one. I said this before but imo, this starts a run of episodes that are peak television for multiple seasons lol... Don is so quick with the lies, and what we'd call "gaslighting" these days. Someone once said that great liars often mix truth and lie and tell half truths in a believable way. Here Don tells a truth - that he has high blood pressure - to form a believable lie - that he got into an accident because of it, and it instantly defuses Betty's anger and makes it about how Don is the victim and Betty is "hysterical" (ugh) for being mad Don didn't call HIS WIFE after crashing a car. And then later Betty modified [the meals she cooks FOR HIM] because she loves him. It's really tough to watch sometimes. Jon Hamm can really sell a conflicted feeling with a silent look huh? In the final shot we see Don from behind like the intro, at a table with his family, and he's literally physically broken... "I started tearing up because the show is too good" me toooo Lola 😭😭😭 its honestly still so vindicating that you're both so into the show. Even now I'm still shocked it won the poll lmao. These reactions are my fav content I watch all week.

Creamish

the Pete masturbation scene wasn't in the script, but they filmed in, and the creator was only okay with including it because he remembered the paddle ball would follow it.

Nina

If your husband lies to you and then calls you hysterical you are legally allowed to uppercut them into the ceiling Tom & Jerry style.

Gaboxxy

6:54 Pete is like this show's version of Chris Moltisanti: objectively not great human beings, but there's an underdog quality to them which makes them so endearing to the audience (even if in reality they both come from "royalty" in their respective worlds).

Julien

Don is the creative director. He runs the whole creative side. If he were not good at his job (which includes managing the creative side), he wouldn't be such a sought after executive. I'd say he is a difficult and demanding manager, with very high standards. And like many creative geniuses, he can be nebulous and mercurial. But not good at his job? Nah. If Don were just good with ideas and nothing else, if he didn't know how to manage people, he would have stayed a copywriter, like Freddy, who is quite a bit older than him.

Kara

Bad managers get promoted to managerial positions all the time. This isn't a good argument. There's an entire principle about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle I think it would be incredibly hard to argue that Don is a "good manager" based off what we've seen so far. His department produces great creative work but that's not the same as being a good manager of people. His direct reports are terrified of him (with the exception of Freddy, maybe). Nobody understands what he's saying. He's late or skips many scheduled meetings. People can't get ahold of him during office hours sometimes. He's extremely demanding and harsh. He waits until the last second to do lots of things, leaving everyone in the lurch and dependent on his sudden creative heroics. Thankfully, he works in an old-school 1960s office where they don't give a shit about things that we would consider "good managerial qualities" in the modern era. You can be a genius creative director and a good, kind manager. They aren't mutually exclusive. Don's innate creative talent and direction offsets his, arguably shitty management style. He is "good at his job" in the sense his department delivers great creative work, yes, but I don't think he's a good manager. Many orgs today thrive and are filled with awful managers + directors, all the way up to the c-suite level lol.

Gaboxxy

@Kara You're not wrong about most of what you're saying. Bad managers obviously exist and just because a department has good results that doesn't necessarily prove that's thanks to the manager, matter of fact sometimes it can be despite them. Having said that, it's pretty clear to me Don is written to be a good Ad Men and boss all things considered. He clearly gets the job done every time and avoids micro-managing his team, and isn't shy to recognize when someone else came with a better idea than him (most times at least). Also, one thing is to find success despite not being talented, another thing entirely is to be recognized by your peers for being good at what you do. If every company and Ad Man in town recognizes Don as a good Ad man, chances are he is a good Ad Man instead of everyone being and idiot. Don came from nothing, he had no formal education, no safety net, no contacts, it's clear he didn't reach his position just by "playing the game" or nepotism. He is talented at his job, that's a given, another discussion entirely is how he is as a person outside of it.

Gaboxxy

Don didn't lie, that never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened.

Kara

Betty: where were you last night? Don: forget that boy in the box

Kara

@Gaboxxy: I don't think we've seen Don be a "good manager" really. He is very micro-manage-y actually, he tweaks individual lines of copy on a whim, he gets into the weeds on things whenever he wants, he tears his reports down when he's unhappy. He's just absent a lot of the time, so can't micro-manage when he's not physically there or doesn't care. Peers recognize Sterling Cooper's work as good, yeah, I said that. He is Creative Director at an ad company that makes good ads. From what we've seen he's a self-made man, also true. He "gets the job done", albeit by pulling something out of his ass half the time - not great leadership either, hence why everyone was panicking with American Airlines, and why Roger was panicking with Lucky Strike. None of this makes him a good manager. I can't talk about the rest without relying on future knowledge. For the record: I think Don is an insanely good creative director, when it comes to the creation of good work. I just don't think he's a good day-to-day manager of his direct reports (I've managed a lot of folks, it's purely my opinion and people can disagree)

Mike

This is what I was talking about when I said that understanding how much time elapsed between seasons was important for understanding one of the stories this season. If you are expecting Peggy's kid to be 5-6 months old, the baby fakeout here doesn't ever work. But honestly, the fakeout with Anita's child is just confusing -- one of the weaker choices in the run of the show imo. I've never thought it was effective, or even really understood what they were going for. The image of Peggy holding *a* child in church at the end of episode 2 is just as strong if you know it's her sister's child.

Haye Zeus

The Don and Peggy relationship is one of the few things that I still recall from this show. I loved the moments between them, especially one moment. We all know which one. Peggy really becomes one of the best characters.

Mike

The casting for Rachel's husband -- shout out to Tilden Katz! -- is so funny. They really went out and found the anti-Jon Hamm.

JJ

@Kara: It seems like all of you are responding to two different things LM said in the reaction, and are thus talking about different things. Don being good at his job ≠ being a “good” manager. Yes, Don would be a nightmare to work for, but for better or worse he gets what *he* needs out of his people even if his process makes him a “bad” manager. He is great at his *job* which ultimately is producing good creative work, not being a good boss. I mean, pretty much everything you said about his managerial style also applied to Steve Jobs.

Chris B

Absolutely. Can't wait.

Chris B

Even just "The Wheel" is alone an example of how he is a creative genius when the proverbial lightbulb happens to occur for him. But its been shown that he's often been bailed out because of this seemingly innate ability. But damn, on a day-to-day basis? At this point, I would hate working under Don.

Kara

@JJ - im responding to comments like "if he didn't know how to manage people, he would have stayed a copywriter" which just isn't true, he would have gotten promoted either way, there's no management training or tests at SC. Whether he's "good at his job" is a semantic debate really, we all agree he's good at the creative parts of his job but as written above, he sucks at some parts of it (especially the day to day managerial milieu) and the show acknowledges this. It's really hard to discuss this more without full show context so I won't.

Mark M

"This is an office that hinges on professional decorum" - biggest lie of the episode

Kev

SPOILERS: [ROT13.com] to decipher - Zvyran orvat cflpuvp nobhg Wbna'f fgbel pbagvahrf. "naq gura ure fgbelyvar raqf va Frnfba 3" vf vebavp orpnhfr vg'f rknpgyl jung gur fubj jnagf lbh gb guvax ng gung cbvag. V nyfb tbg n puhpxyr bhg bs gurz fnlvat "Jr unira'g rira frra [Tert'f] snpr", V'z yvxr jryy lbh unir ohg gung jnf uvf svefg irefvba. Naq vs lbh guvax gung'f fbzrguvat jnvg hagvy lbh frr ubj znal Oboolf gurer ner.

Kev
>>183570349

Gur svefg bs gur Crttl naq Qba gevybtl, gung pbagvahrf va Gur Fhvgpnfr naq, gb zr, pbapyhqrf jvgu gur Ohetre Purs rcvfbqr. Gurer nf cvibgny fprarf gbb, yvxr gur F3 svanyr jura Qba unf gb pbaivapr Crttl gb wbva gur arj ntrapl naq bs pbhefr jura Crttl yrnirf gung ntrapl va F5 (avpr obbxznex, abj gung V guvax nobhg vg). Nal bguref? V xarj gurve qlanzvp jbhyq or n snibevgr bs gur tveyf' ohg vg qvqa'g uvg zr hagvy guvf rcvfbqr gung guvf vf jurer vg fgnegf.

Thomas Fahey

Summers in the Catskills. "Take my wife... Please."

Julien

@Kara: Our reactors think Don is so bad at his job that "no one would hire him." They literally said that. That why I wrote this comment. They think he is some kind of ideas genius who is terrible at all other aspects of the job. That is just flatly wrong. I wouldn't want to work for for Don. In that sense, sure he is a bad boss. But from the perspective of the company, he is a golden goose. Like I said earlier, he doesn't come up with most of the ideas, not anymore. He manages people who comes up with the ideas and he shapes them into a final product. He is obviously brilliant at that. Not just his own ideas, for his ability to recognize the good stuff from others or coax it out of them. That is his job. Don's success as a creative director REQUIRES him to be good at managing his underlings. He is no longer a copywriter. His job is to get results from people and he does, in spades. That makes him good at his job. Good management is inherent to Don's continued success. It's true that vad managers get promoted all the time in corporations but SC isn't big enough for this kind of bureaucratic miasma where shitty employees manage to bubble up to the top. The reason Don Draper is a creative director and a partner is because he isn't just a creative genius, he has demonstrated the skills to be an upper manager and an executive who gets shit done, and brilliantly enough that McCann pulled all the stops to poach him. Do I really need to get into the "no one would hire him" part when we dedicated a whole episode to the opposite last season?

Erik D

Yeah, the “no one would hire him” is insane, if anything, Mad Men goes out of its way to show the opposite. Within the industry, Don is portrayed as one of the best in the business. His name carries weight, even if Sterling Cooper itself is only a mid-tier shop. Anyone in advertising at the time would see working under Don Draper as a privilege, even if they dreaded the day-to-day. From the company’s perspective, he’s exactly the kind of creative director you build an agency around.

Kara

Don is simply not a good manager and the show knows this. Theres not much more to say. You keep appealing to things that are irrelevant. Bad managers are poached all the time, so that doesnt matter. Bad managers who are seen as geniuses (or "asshole geniuses") are promoted all the time. Sterling Cooper is absolutely large enough to have a substandard middle management structure, it has 150-250 employees. "They made Don creative director so he must be a good manager" isnt a good argument. There are many instances in the show of him being a bad manager and arguably the work would have been produced better or happier if he had a better management style. We've witnessed several conflicts that arise directly from him being a bad manager. Having direct reports who write good copy that you edit doesnt make you a good manager by default, a bad manager can have their reports create good work - I'm sure everyone in this community has done good work for a bad manager at some point. I think you might be confused over which bits of the job are people management. "Getting shit done" doesnt make you a good manager and we see on screen that half the time Don is just pulling an idea out his ass at the last minute because hes a 'genius', this is the opposite of being a good manager. The list goes on. Ultimately it doesn't matter but I think its a somewhat dangerous position to have a built in assumption that if an executive is successful they must by default be a great manager. This is how so many shitty bosses thrive. Don runs a department which produced great creative work in spite of his lackluster people management, constant absences and last-minute heroics. It feels crazy to me that we're even arguing about this if we've both seen the whole show lol.

Kara

@Kev: in the "its Peggy's child" world, the family would be lying and saying its someone else's kid. A distant family members kid or something, they wouldn't be telling anyone Peggy had a baby out of wedlock. Though thinking about it idk how they'd pull this off, but people do IRL - when a grandmother or aunt raises a kid as their own etc, idk how that works within a community lol. But yeah, agree wirh everything you said ❤️

Julien

Eh. I don't understand how anyone who has watched the series (or even just to this point) could fail to understand why I would push back against the idea that Don "is not good at his job" or that "no one would hire him." To me that's like 2+2=5. We obviously have very different ideas of the scope of Don's job and whether he is doing it well, so.... it is what it is! ;) 🤷‍♂️ One last thing: the "Don was promoted because he was good" thing that seems to be the issue was incidental to my main point. That's not a hill I'm willing to die on. Like I acknowledged, plenty of shit workers get promoted. My main point is exceedingly simple: Don *remains* a highly successful and sought-after executive (and has been for some time) because he is good at his job, which for many years now has been inherently managerial - as well as creative. Maybe there is a fundamental misunderstanding about what being good at one's job means, but in my view there is just no universe in which the phrases "Don is not good at his job" and "no one would hire him" make any kind of sense.

Patrick

One thing I always appreciate about John Ham’s acting is he can just do a micro change to his expression to get across how Don is feeling. That's normal for human interaction, but it’s hard to do it on command as an actor. Also I never once noticed that Peggy's sister was pregnant in the hospital scene, so I always assumed the baby we saw was Pegg