Mad World on Kritik: Mad Men Season 5.9
"Ozymandias"
Guest Writer: Carl Lehnen
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
posted under
Carl Lehnen
,
competition
,
control
,
Mad Men
,
Mad World
,
Snoball
,
Weight Watchers
by Unit for Criticism
“Ozymandias”
Written by Carl Lehnen (Graduate School of Library and Information Science)
In earlier seasons, we were told that the appeal of Mad Men lay in the vicarious thrill of watching others guiltlessly enjoy all of the pleasures—alcohol, cigarettes, and adultery—that the mores of our more enlightened and careful age denied us. Perhaps this is the kind of pleasure that Don has in mind when, attempting to recapture the old creative spark, he brainstorms a pitch for Sno Ball. His lurching free association, which recalls--even if it cannot match--last season’s cringe-worthy “Cure for the common breakfast,” leads him from “a snowball’s chance in hell” to the well-worn theme of forbidden pleasure: “Refreshing for the damned. Sno Ball is the sin that gets you into hell... sinfully delicious.” But even he recognizes the tiredness of the conceit, or at least the inappropriateness of such a theme for a children’s soft drink.
This episode asks us to think about pleasure in a different way—as something that must be carefully measured out, not consumed all at once.
Read more