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Mad Men 6x01 Reaction (Patreon)

Published:
2026-01-25 00:37:48
Edited:
2026-03-12 00:52:06
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Mad Men 6x01

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

Comments

tilden katz

Little Carmine moonlighting as a doorman? Whatever happened there?

Mike

Very allegorical.

Jude’s IFs

Took 6 seasons for Roger to finally go to therapy. Yay for little miracles

Scott (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-19 14:00 That Betty scene has aged like a fine glass of milk
2026-01-25 01:15

Jeff

it’s not about cliffhangers; it’s about one contained story, theme & focus being told across two episodes. watching them separately can make it all feel disjointed, awkward, and unfinished, as you found out

Mike

yes it turns out the two-part episode has two parts

Taya

Betty's an edgelord

Antonio

"Why would there be a warning for smoking?" "Shes smoking?! And we're okay with this?!"

Taya

Don doesn't say a single word to Megan during the Hawaii scenes :( And he's reading a book about being in hell...

Taya

"Betty is—as we have always perceived—a perverse person with a sense of humor, and Henry is a straight arrow. As creepy as what she’s saying is, you’re getting someone who is playfully perverse. She’s not a bland, distracted human being. She is teasing him in a way that shows the force of her personality. I’m aware of the fact that that will make some people uncomfortable, but I also felt it was Betty Draper being playful. She is being herself with him. But these are people who are in a relationship for a long time, and that is Betty Draper. It was, believe it or not, in my own way, a symbol of the health of their relationship and her confidence in it, honestly." --Matthew Weiner

Michael M

He could be the doorman for Ver-Sails.

Kara

she's honestly so funny and enjoyable to watch lol, what an insanely out of pocket thing to say. Never has Betty felt more like a 21 year old who got tricked into a long, disparate, desperate marriage and is only finally embracing how weird she is lol.

Darrach

It’s a gobsmacking thing to say, I was stunned lol

Kara

What Milena said is right though: Mad Men has basically never ended on a cliff-hanger. It's not that sort of show (neither was Succession for example, which almost never had a Plot span two episodes).

Kara

Suggesting your husband rape your 15yo houseguest wasn't acceptable in 2013 when this aired. It's intentionally inappropriate, it's aged correctly.

Jamie

“Are you alone?” -> "Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray from the straight road and woke to find myself alone in a dark wood.” Well.

Jamie (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-19 14:00 This premiere is so dark. It feels like things are coming to an end, literally. We just lost Lane. S6 starts with someone almost dying. Sandy’s “my mom’s dead.” Roger’s mom dies. Bobby has a line about how the violin case reminds him of a coffin! Betty's rape joke. Peggy’s presence is missing from the office. We even see Don return to doing hands-on work without her there, and with the boredom of his own marriage. Roger’s in therapy pondering the meaning of life. I love Don’s resistance to change manifesting as him styling himself in exactly the same way from 1960-1968. The times affect every other character’s hair, wardrobe, or office decor but never Don’s. The craziest he got was that sports coat he wore in Signal 30 and that was at Megan’s insistence.
2026-01-25 02:26

Kev (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-19 14:00 Doors, and windows, and bridges, and gates. Roger talks about the door, in the finale for S5 Beth talks about the door. Death hangs over everything. Bobby says that Sandy's violin case looks like a coffin; her mother is dead, Betty's mother is dead, Roger's mother dies. Don drew a noose last season. We appear to be around the holiday season again, so it immediately calls back to the holiday tragedy that took place in the last season: despite the Christmas decorations and the office banter and the celebratory photograph of the partners, Lane's phantom is there. I love this season premiere, and I love Season 6.
2026-01-25 02:33

Juanma88

I think that the infamous Betty joke is just the writers insisting on reminding us that "hey we are in the 60s, it was ok to do grape jokes and talking inappropriately about minors". Yes, we get it.

Kev

Don doesn't talk for the first 5 or so minutes of the episode, and of course the first time he speaks is to a stranger at a bar. It's telling that it may not be immediately obvious, because it's not that out of the ordinary for Don to be hardly speaking to his wife. I also noticed how different Sally's voice was immediately. She grows every season, of course, but S6 is the one for me where she really feels like a fully-fledged character. There's so much more snark and moodiness, normal teenage things yet we as the audience are keenly aware of the upbringing behind that and what she has gone through. It feels jarring because while she is obviously still a kid she's also changed so much, and as she rolls her eyes at her brother and calls things disgusting you can't help but think of the kid from the pilot episode running around with the dry cleaning bag on her head. I also think it's clever to give her a friend that's a year older speaking candidly with her mother and smoking, it makes Sally seem so much younger by contrast and reminds us of that innocence. But more on Sandy later. I love the idea that the Mad Men universe has just one therapist that talks to all the main characters.

Kev
>>200856094

I see that I was a few minutes too slow in typing my comment about death in this episode.

Kev
>>200856868

Henry is clearly uncomfortable, despite Betty chastising him for "blushing". It's half "weird 60s thing" and half "weird Betty thing", making it 100% uncomfortable for the audience.

Kev

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Taya

I can't imagine that joke being okay in any decade tbh.

Taya

Beth: "I get to this place and I suddenly feel this door open, and I wanna walk through it." The Doorway

Juanma88

I would say that rapes jokes and general sexualization of children was very common in media up until recently (except for male rape jokes, it seems they are still somewhat acceptable). If that happened on a mainstream level, of course it happened on private conversations.

Juanma88

Yes, part of it is displaying Betty's dark side, a recurring theme. But I'm pretty sure the main motivation was to put another politicaly incorrect moment to show us that times were different back then.

Mike

@Kara Well yeah, but this isn't a cliffhanger. It's the middle of the episode.

Kev (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-19 14:00 If it was another character making a jarring joke that doesn't feel right for them I could see there being grounds for calling it out of character, but for Betty, the queen of depersonalization who has not had a solid sense of self her entire life, I don't think it's far-fetched to be learning new things about her. Let's go through the list of what we do know: Repressed dark thoughts ✅ Warped notions of sexuality ✅ Envious of female youth ✅ Finally in a marriage where she feels comfortable being herself ✅ Socially awkward ✅ Even for someone who doesn't expect Betty to be a good person, it was jarring for me, but that's dark humor for you. Obviously Betty took it too far, because she's Betty.
2026-01-25 03:08

Jamie
>>200858751

Regarding the warped notions of sexuality.. this is also part of my own personal reading but when she said that Henry wanted to “spice things up” I was wondering if she was thinking back to Don at all. We know Don has powerplay kinks (even if he’s on the receiving end, like with the one sex worker who slapped him). We never saw him and Betty’s lovelife much, but she did mention before “sometimes it’s what I want, sometimes it’s what somebody else wants”. There’s no reason to believe Don repressed this side of him with her for 11+ years. I wonder if she took the idea of light BDSM and just cranked it to 11 as a (failed) joke. Not that that explains the whole 15 year old element but that's just Betty being weird about young women.

tilden katz

You all sound a little bit like po-seurs, if you ask me.

tilden katz

Is this when we met Bob Benson? I wanted to forget him with lightning speed.

tilden katz

That joke officially made Betty the Uncle Jun of Mad Men.

JBK405

Something I take away from Burt Peterson's late-night call to Peggy is that, even though he's very weird about it and gives her no info, he calls HER. He doesn't call Ted or another partner to go over this, he brings Peggy into the conversation first. She's got the respect and authority at this agency that Don has at SCDP, where she's the first person brought into a disaster to fix the situation. Yes, the ear thing was a true event. The specific comedian-making-a-joke-on-The-Tonight-Show didn't happen -- Matthew Weiner gave an interview saying he made that up -- but all of the discussed details (Including a published courtmartial) are correct. The war crimes in Vietnam were (partially) known at the time. Not always the full extent, but the populace had heard about the atrocities which were committed. Some people refused to believe them and dismissed it all as 'commie propaganda', but the news was definitely OUT THERE. A minor takeaway I have with Roger is that he does pour two glasses of alcohol when Caroline comes crying into his office. He thinks it's bad news for HER, not him, and he offers this minor support. I can't imagine the Roger of the early show doing that. It's a very minor thing, but his LSD experimentation and therapy has at least gotten him that far.

mundanelotus

I was lowkey hoping you guys would watch these first two episodes together, especially since Mad Men hasn't really done two parters that frequently.

Kev
>>200860556

I love the game-of-telephone aspect of it, the characters having to rely on secondhand information whereas today it would simply be an email (honestly, probably a text) with a link to the set. It might even just be an article talking about the joke, and the characters wouldn't have to figure out how big of a deal it is. But in the 60s they don't have that luxury. Roger has definitely evolved, not just from the beginning of the series but from S5 as well. Because we think of mental health as a linear thing, it may seem like a downgrade for him to go from the optimistic "I can live how I want" phase of last season to "Life is pointless and death is inevitable", but honestly it's a pretty accurate depiction of how existential crises happen. Often people need to deconstruct what they thought their purpose was, which then leads to a feeling of emptiness and realizing life has no inherent purpose, which they then hopefully grow from to become enlightened. It's growth, even if it seems like he went from more uplifted to now much more nihilistic.

Scott

Unlike the season 5 double-premiere, which I actually think has a clear dividing line between the episodes, this two-parter REALLY needed to be watched together. The purpose of so many scenes is left unclear until you've seen episode 2.

Taya

Noooo I love Bob!!

Julien

People make a far bigger deal of this joke now than when it aired. It was never appropriate but honestly it didn't really stand out to me at the time. I chuckled and moved on. Dark humor in private conversations is a 100% normal thing and every single of us has privately said some horrible shit (much of it we don't believe) that would be appalling if made public. I know I have.

Mahad Ali

I think that is unfair to uncle jun. There was no joke there, just a deeply, deeply disturbing and way to vivid description of assaulting a child. For the life of me, i cant imagine what the writers were thinking.

Mahad Ali

I dont think u can describe that as a jarring joke. And i cant imagine betty thinking that fantasizing about forcibly r wording a child not much older than her daughter would be funny. And if i were Henry i would be offended that at the suggestion that she thought i would find this tantalizing. If i had to guess, the show had some new writers for this season and they were still trying find the right tone. Not everything that makes it on to the screen is some brilliant metaphor. Sometimes writers get it wrong or get lazy, or have a tight deadline and i think that is what happened here.

tilden katz

It was bizarre, and off the wall. Uncle Jun's specialty.

Mahad Ali

I looked up Matthew Weiner’s explanation of that Betty “joke” and i think it demonstrates how absurd the whole thing was. He seems to think what she was saying was playfully perverse and not deeply demented. The writers wanted to demonstrate that her and henry have a healthy relationship… i guess vividly describing about how they could “r” word (a child) that was sleeping down the hall was the only way to do that. Matthew Weiner: “Betty is—as we have always perceived—a perverse person with a sense of humor, and Henry is a straight arrow. As creepy as what she’s saying is, you’re getting someone who is playfully perverse. She’s not a bland, distracted human being. She is teasing him in a way that shows the force of her personality. I’m aware of the fact that that will make some people uncomfortable, but I also felt it was Betty Draper being playful. She is being herself with him. I also love it because it just felt very much like a slight scratch beneath the surface of what we always assume is the most bland and TV-ized relationship. But these are people who are in a relationship for a long time, and that is Betty Draper. It was, believe it or not, in my own way, a symbol of the health of their relationship and her confidence in it, honestly.”

Kara

Not to diminish Peggy's contributions (she is literally Copy Chief there, reporting right to Ted) but he would have called Ted if he could, and he urges her several times to get ahold of Ted ASAP. She doesn't have Don's status - nobody would tell Don to call another creative.

Mahad Ali

Uncle Jun was funny, mostly unintentionally. And for that reason, lots of fans enjoyed his scenes. I cant imagine anybody laughed at that betty joke and thought it was betty being betty. Personally i just think the writers got it wrong, in the same way they got it Roger’s response in the “indecent proposal” episode wrong. Anyway it is what it is.

tilden katz

That's the point. Betty, who isn't exactly full of mirth, says a remark that she thinks is funny. It doesn't land. It's so bad, that it becomes unintentionally funny.

on crip ...

no shade, no tea. this ep felt like mad men (snl/sitcom version) - don not speaking gimmick - "I can't believe Victor won't acknowledge you" - "I met her halfway by getting married." - don officiating - Hawaiian elvis | "Ono, I'm not eating that." - "my mom's dead" - "Ma, you know how I fix those tickets?" - "I like the case. It looks like a coffin." - "Oh, the missus couldn't wait to get me out of the house." - "You're the maid. It's more than ours does." - betty's joke lines - "I don't like vegetarian food. Reminds me of Lent." - "We're at DEFCON 3. We're about to go to DEFCON 4." - "I don't know. I can't do any math right now." - don and dr. rosen -- "I guess I don't say Merry Christmas to you." - roger's every scene - "I'm a widower, Peggy. - guy literally doing stand-up - bob benson -- "I smell creativity. I love it down here" - overly telegraphed 'time passed' attire/hair changes - peggy on the phone with the pastor - etc all tied up with a 'who /is/ don draper?!' maybe i need to see part 2 to get it, but this season already off. seeming like my BEC* but i did really want to like it *BEC: the speaker's dislike of the target is so intense that they could cause the speaker offense by merely eating crackers

on crip ...

yes. writing was off. what did you think of the ep in general? to me, the whole atmosphere felt off. like it'd been off the air for years and got a revival

Mark M

I had always assumed Betty's jokes were supposed to be deliberately over the top to chastise Henry for being inappropriate. But because he wasn't it didn't really make sense to me. Based on the other comments saying it's supposed to be lighthearted it feels misjudged. I'm not against offensive humour but a rape joke about a fifteen year old girl living in your own house is a bit insane. Even Tony Soprano would be saying 'OH!' to that one.

Kev
>>200873449

I don't get how all of these could possibly be an issue. Every single one? This feels like when someone has an issue with someone else but they haven't yet realized it yet so they insist that everything that person does is obnoxious in some way.

Ewan C

Idk how yall write so much lmao Clearly it's not for the community, and the gals would need to hire 5 people to read all that hehe. Maybe look up "parasocial relationships"...

Ewan C

Now this is a good comment, learned something new!

Mahad Ali

I think the writing was uneven and i didn’t think the episode was particularly compelling. The Hawaii storyline seemed like it was just an excuse to surprise the audience by changing scenery. And I thought the way they handled the flashback showing the doorman’s medical episode was clunky. Definitely one of their weaker episodes.

Taya

I totally agree. Personally, I hated when Don said "good morning". A real jump-the-shark moment for the show if you ask me.

Taya

Why are you guys judging half an episode? You have to take the two parts as a whole

Sebastian

Yeah, that scene's a swing and a miss, Weiner. Oddest moment in the whole show to me.

Sebastian

Bob's great, no?

Kara

It really pissed me off when during the intro, the silhouette of Don fell off some big buildings with floating adverts. Oh, he just happened to land safely on a sofa without a parachute?? Get real!

Sebastian

Still a pretty bad glass of milk even in 2013 though.

Kara

Betty is an absolute maniac with a twisted sense of humor that she finally feels comfortable enough to unbox. She's saying stuff an "edgy teenager" would say in the 2000s because she's progressed from child to edgy teen. It's surprising to see a few people in the comments confused that the woman who among other things, cut off her hair and gave it to a child, slapped his mom in the supermarket, shot at a bunch of birds with a gun, fired her daughter like a missile into her ex-husband's marriage, fired carla etc would make these shocking jokes. She's always been like this, she was just trapped performing as a 1950s housewife box with no outlet. She's finally reached a point of comfort in her marriage with Henry where she can fully be herself... or lets be real, "more of herself" (she's still performing) in a way she never would have been with Don. The content of what she says is pretty fucked up but she was always thinking like this, she just never said it out loud. The arc makes perfect sense when you zoom out and it's supposed to make you feel like "oh, that's not... you can't say that... but the fact you're even saying it is interesting". In short: everything makes sense if you stop reading Betty as a demure housecat and instead read her as an absolute weirdo feral cat who is finally let out of the house.

Jamie
>>200903544

I think the line about her being a model in the city, living with 5 girls, and eating soup out of cans is pretty illustrative too. It reminds us that Betty was not always sheltered. Way back in S1 or 2(?) we learn that she went to Italy to model. We also know that she went to college (it was Bryn Mawr but still). Betty as a modest 50s housewife who is in permanent victim mode because of what she was taught / her environment, etc is an oversimplification of her character. She defaulted to these ways after meeting Don because of societal expectations, but it’s not who she always was.

Darrach

Peggy started this show a Catholic virgin, and now she’s dating Frank Zappa, what an arc

Mahad Ali

Fair point, but personally, in my humble opinion, i think the things that worked in this episode payoff in the second. The things that didn’t do not. (It’s difficult to say more without being spoilery.) My main complaint, however, is with the Betty scene. And Weiner’s explanation for it.

Mahad Ali

Thanks for the clarification. I think it does say a lot that it came from the show runner. And it may explain some of the issues i have with later seasons of the show.

Mahad Ali

I think what set it apart was the vivid nature of it. How she described going in the next room. Putting a rag in her mouth and henry doing that act while betty held her down. Sure there was rampant sexism and sexual harassment back then. But nobody thought this kind of thing was a normal way to joke. It’s just way too descriptive and comes off as demented more than anything else.

Mahad Ali

It’s what happens when u mess with the sacred and the propane.

Juanma88

Yes, the thing goes for too long. That's the problem with the scene

Patrick

I have to be honest I never understood the betty /henry scene. Also I’m glad we have fully transitioned to every Roger scene being a banger.

on crip ...

im self-aware how it comes off, like i included the *"bitch eating crackers" footnote PLS. how do then multiple ppl repeat the joke but worse 😭😭😭 but to be clear, it was only one critique: the episode felt like it was a sitcom/SNL sketch and not 'prestige' television or w/e. the list is just to support why it felt that way to me

on crip ...

your critiques are valid. please post more! i'd love to see more 'literary criticism" type comments here

on crip ...

i am also surprised at how much these lines really did not go over well with people. tho, i welcome them :x for me, "betty is now comfortable being herself" explanations are not convincing because of how Henry reacts. it doesn't sell that they have a dynamic where betty says off-the-wall shit every now and again. he's as ??? as i assume viewers were

Scott

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Kara

@on crip: Just because Betty is more comfortable doesn't mean Henry is comfortable hearing a highly inappropriate joke. The point is that she'd have never, ever said that to Don in S1 through 3, and she doesn't get punished for saying it. Their dynamic is 1968 "normal guy, weird girlfriend". It took her a few years but she's settled in, she lost most of the weight that bothered her (whole separate issue), she's into a good home rhythm, she's feeling herself and reached a point with Henry she never got to with Don. Don never got to meet this Betty (not that he would have approved lol).

Dante

@Taya The other half of the episode doesn't make that poorly executed flashback scene work any better. There were several strange decisions this episode.

Thomas Fahey

Very insightful commentary. Therapists in those days were mostly all Freudians: As two psychiatrists get off an elevator, one turns to the other and says, "Have a nice day." The other says to himself, "I wonder what he meant by that?"

on crip ...

hmm. this contextualization does situate the scene more. tho arguably the scene itself doesn't sufficiently translate the intention based on the numerous comments specifically about this scene. but that's just here, not really conclusive, i know. i wonder how it was received in general when it aired

TooBad59

People are criticizing the writing in this episode (or part-episode), but I have to say that Peggy's phone conversation with the pastor is a minor gem of comic dialogue (or half-dialogue).

Screen Larpers

I personally think season 6 is terrible the whole way through until the very end. It's definitely rated lower than a lot of other seasons but the fan base still dies by it. Extremely overrated in my opinion

Ryan

My favorite season!!! (For now) Granted, my opinion on this changes quite frequently 😭