cleaver

Megan Draper and Sharon Tate

http://www.uproxx.com/tv/2013/05/the...n-theory-ever/

The one thing I hated in Mad Men is how suddenly things went sideways for Lane. They dropped in a couple scenes in the weeks leading up but it still seemed like a rapid deterioration. If Megan joins a cult pretty soon, at least there's been some lead up.

Raul3

There are several sites reporting that, I think it came from a reddit thread. I read articles in Vulture and Buzzfeed. They added a few more clues.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/louispeitzma...red-on-mad-men

http://www.vulture.com/2013/05/mad-m...aron-tate.html

Luds

Well that would sure send Don further down the spiral!

Decker

Hey, I just realized that Roger's daughter must have had a Shotgun Wedding :

We all remember she got married 11/23/63. It's now, what, July 1968. She has a four year old son. Just saying.

BTW : Anyone else find it really odd how every episode, not only do you get ads of Joan slinging you a Johnny Walker, but both Slattery voicing a Lincoln ad and Hamm voicing an American Airlines one. Normally, when celebs are used for voice-over work it's so they can be distinctive and memorable but not really recognized. Here those ads feel like pitches on the show.

mphtrilogy

not to mention don's nightmare dream

Decker

What was Don's nightmare? I don't remember (probably because I loathe dream sequences so much).

Raul3

Weeks later, this character still remains a mystery. Who is Bob Benson?

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/n...enson-20130513

BambooLounge

I'd be pretty pissed if Benson turned out to be any of the things in that article. It would feel like a cheap soap opera/Lost type narrative trick.

Mad Men works b/c while it certainly has soap opera elements it ties it all down to a fairly realistic office environment (adjusted for the time and place). Bob Benson is an office "type." The overeager new hire falling over himself to climb the ladder, too obvious to be deemed "Machiavellian," but usually just relentless enough to get noticed by a middle manager.

And I hope that is exactly what Bob Benson is, an authentic rendering of a corporate ladder climber. If he turns out to be a plant of some kind, I think it will go down as Mad Men's jumped the shark moment.

I think the show keeping him a "mystery" is more simply them creating for the viewer the same impression of Bob Benson that it wants its characters to have. Benson is an outsider to the office. Unlike Ginsberg, who behaved in odd ways that were quickly explained (son of Holocaust victims), Bob is a character that initially grates on people with his obvious attempts to suck-up and get noticed, but perhaps eventually earns their respect by actually proving useful (father figure/male companion for Joan and provider of paper goods and nurses to Pete). Only until he is regarded by the show's characters as "one of the guys" should he be afforded "one of the cast" out of the office backstory screen time.

TGM

especially when it is revealed that he is the one who killed her

Decker

I totally agree. Bob Benson is just a corporate suck-up. He's like Pete was in 1960, but slicker and with less obvious flaws. I certainly don't think it's a coincidence that his name is an alliteration that sounds kind of similar to the show's lead character. They did a smart thing with Bob, bringing in a vaguely familiar actor and letting him appear briefly in the background of episodes, and then slowly raising his importance -- it's like what they did with Megan's character two seasons ago. That feels much more realistic than the TV norm of bringing in new regulars with tons of fanfare and big scenes from the get-go to announce how important this character will be this season (i.e. Diana Rigg on GoT).

Rainet

The Sopranos did it, the same way introducing new character.

cleaver

Who did Sopranos introduce without fanfare? Everyone I can think of (Furio, Joey Pants, Buscemi, various hotties) it was with bombast.

BambooLounge

Joey Pants was seen on the fringes before his story bloomed.

Buscemi and Loggia were with fanfare because their characters had just gotten out of prison, so the fanfare was required.

Vito was always just "there" until he got a full blown storyline. (intended)

Furio didn't have that much fanfare. We saw him react to the fireworks prank and slap a kid around in Italy. Then he shows up because Tony bargained for muscle from the old country. I don't think his Carmela storyline took off immediately, but I could be wrong.

Outside of the characters closest to Tony, Chase let most of the other bosses and underlings sort of just exist in Tony's outter orbit and would eventually pull them closer to him when the story went that way. But, generally, we never got a lot of "out of the office" backstory on people outside of Christopher (even Aidrianna was never really expounded upon), Tony and his immediate family, and Paulie (just b/c of how much his relationship with his mother was a part of the character). Everyone else, it was just when something came up that Tony had to deal with.

mphtrilogy

Don killed megan in his nightmare dream in an earlier episode...

sherm42

That wasn't Megan. It was some chick he had previously banged and had run into in an elevator when he was sick. He then dreamed that she followed him home and they had sex. Then he killed her out of guilt for cheating on Megan.

Jimmy James

That's certainly the reason they couldn't just move the wedding.

Jimmy James

I think Benson is going to end up running the agency, that's all.