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Originally Posted by MWM
Pete and his train car buddy's wife. The whole Joan being asked to prostitute herself to land a big account (just a stupid story line, IMO). Kinsey and the Hari Krishna thing with his girl seducing Harry. Lane has become a pathetic whiner of a character with no redeeming qualities and I want to fast forward every time he's on screen.
It's just my opinion, but what I loved about the show was the depth of the characters and how little the underlying plots really mattered in my enjoyment of the show. It was all about exploring the complexity of these people. My perception of season 5 is that they've said "ooooo, everyone's watching now, let's see how creative we can get with 'intriguing' plot twists." It's become way to soap opera like for my taste.
All the characters seem to have lost that depth that I liked so much. They have one characteristic they're focusing on this season at the expense of all others. Every character could be labeled pretty easily in season 5 if you ask me. Even Don has become someone very uninteresting. I have no problem evolving a character, even maturing in Don's case which is what he seems to have done. But there's nothing all the "interesting" about him anymore. He's all googly-eyed over his new wife and struggles some with her chosen career path, but he's become boring, IMO. That's something I never thought could happen. I can't think of any characters that are all that interesting this season.
I still like the show and look forward to watching it. It's just lost some of its appeal for me.
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I disagree. I think this season has been fantastic. The Joan storyline parallels Sal when Don basically asked him to prostitute himself out to keep Lucky Strike. It was interesting to see that Don had no problem asking Sal to do what he would not even think of asking Joan. Pete is morphing into old Don... bored with the suburban life and figuring there has to be more out there. Of course, he doesn't have the Don factor to be Don but he's a guy who thought that work alone would fulfill him and is finding out that isn't the case. I don't see how Pete sleeping with the train guy's wife is any more of a soap opera than Don sleeping with Jimmy Barrett's wife. I totally agree with you that old Don is better and I think we'll eventually see that Don back, but there has to be some sort of change or attempt at changing of your main character over five seasons. Especially a character like Don.
I can see where you don't like the storylines as you're going to like what you're going to like. But I can't see where you'd characterize them to be out of the ordinary for Mad Men. I don't see it being more of a soap opera than past seasons at all.