2 Comments on “TV Recap: Mad Men Season 6 Episode 6”

1. Lavanya May 7th 2013 5:58 pm #

   Re: the Vega. Its working name was the Gemini, a bit of a word play on “GM Mini” for their new compact car, but then corporate changed it to Vega because some big wig liked it better. That ties into the terminal cancer artist’s complaint about being sick of astronauts and rockets. Peggy’s Company was pitching the Gemini branding.

   So the supergroup’s marketing ideas? They’re going to get rejected by GM late in the game for its own idea.

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2. Nick May 10th 2013 5:49 pm #

   You point out Peggy as not wanting change and Don always wanting something new, and how Peggy is a completely different person than she was. I don’t think it was pointed out though how Don right now is pretty much back to the way he was when the series started. He thinks he needs constant change, but every time he tries it he goes back to the same behaviour. He engages in a fulfilling relationship with a woman who is the complete opposite of his ex-wife(Dr. Faye) – then marries the hot young secretary who looks after his kids for him. He tries to be a good husband and resist temptation – then starts having an affair. He tried to cut back on drinking at one point, and he tried to find fulfillment outside work (the whole honeymoon phase with Megan last year) – and now he’s back drinking alone in bars and making ballsy, last minute pitches that win over clients. Peggy thinks she hates change, Don thinks he loves it. What they think they want and what they actually want are not the same thing.

   Of course this kind of falls down when you look at the characters full lives outside the timeline of the show itself, since Don Draper actually has changed from literally a different person before the series began. Maybe Peggy never experienced change until she started working for Stirling Cooper, and Don was always changing until he did. That may be too tenuous, but there could be something there.

   I had a whole thing predicting that we’d never get to see how the Vega story panned out, due to it being released in 1970 and Mad Men probably going to stick to the ’60s, but then I saw Lavanya’s reasoning above on how that story’s going to work out, so that solves that. Viewing this show from the future is weird sometimes…

   But just one more thing about the Vega, because it ties in to the episode title: it was a lemon, but some quick googling says that it was actually well received and successful upon its introduction. It won car of the year awards from various places from 1971-73. It was only later that it was recognised as a problem car. Immediate release.

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