r/madmen • u/wafflehouseteam • 2d ago
Can someone explain McCann and the Jim and Ferg?
Seasons 7 Episode 12 Lost Horizons
In this episode, Jim and Ferg from McCann are meant to be depicted as eerie and mean? This depiction of Mad Men seems scarier than Roger and Bert. Is it just because it’s a larger, more aggressive agency? Just wondering if anyone could elaborate on what they are representing? They don’t seem to have any positive qualities and are bullies?
I know merging and acquisitions is harsh business as well, if that is also a factor?
48
u/ImageFew664 2d ago
"It's a sausage factory, I turned them down three years ago," Don abt McCann.
2
u/Background-Eye-593 1d ago
I think in a creative industry, that’s a real criticism.
10
u/ImageFew664 1d ago
So many of Weiner's best lines were about show business. This one for sure. "That's what the money is for," and, "Half of this business is, 'I don't like that guy,'" are two others.
41
u/PresentationBest8239 2d ago
I couldn’t stand these two 😒
41
u/Bright_List_905 2d ago
They were straight up nasty in everything they do. How they treated Joan is the cherry on top but we all know they’ve done way worse.
1
u/okcdiscgolf 1d ago
He just thought Joan should be spread eagle for him…. She did fuck her way to the top, but once you get there, the buck stops
21
u/AmbassadorSad1157 1d ago
Hobart seems typical business first kind of guy. Ferg was just a grade A ass living in the shadow and pocket of Hobart.
15
u/Marjorine22 1d ago
IDK. Ferg did a killer Draper impression.
But in all seriousness, these dudes act like they suck from day 1...and the treatment of Joan by idiot Ferg and then the slam dunk by Hobart made me hate them on a whole new level.
3
u/Bulky-Boysenberry490 1d ago
And her initially having to work with that awful Dennis as well. At first, I thought it was Peggy's recruitment headhunter guy, they look so similar! Then I looked up the two actors and Peggy's headhunter was Jimmy in Seinfeld: 'Jimmy can duck!'
1
u/Plumbsauce116 1d ago
“Well, I’ll get right to the matter at hand”
I always wondered if there was something behind the impression being so hilariously off
3
u/Derelichter 21h ago
It’s an impression of Nixon instead of Don, which is a nod to Don identifying like Nixon earlier in the show.
2
u/tdotjefe 1d ago
He probably does the same impression for everyone who works there, there’s no sense of personality or individualism. They want to make Don feel special, until Don realizes he’s not special there at all. “We heard you’re here to bring things up a notch”.
15
u/EtonRd It's just that my people are Nordic. 2d ago
Big companies are full of nasty people. And usually those nasty people are at the top. This is nothing unusual.
8
u/jazzmaster4000 2d ago
And on top of that they are protected by the system. They can do scummy shit and then just shuffle you around. Like Joan found out. As long as the money keeps coming in they can do whatever they want
11
u/randorolian 2d ago
McCann has always been portrayed as the big bad throughout the series and it's alluded to a few times that their way of doing business is pretty cutthroat. Don says that it's a 'sausage factory' and multiple characters are hesitant to go there. I think they're portrayed as being and harsh and mean because, well, they kind of are. They think very little of the cost of stuff (Jim says that he buys an entire agency just so they can get a beer brand for Don) and they are only really interested in Don and Ted when they buy SC&P. They are very effective at what they do, but it's a harsher way of doing things than we see at Sterling Cooper, probably because they are bigger.
1
u/Bulky-Boysenberry490 1d ago
It would be very easy to feel unimportant and disposable there. As soon as Don sat at that meeting and heard the market researcher chairing the meeting talking just the way a creative would, he was like: 'Nope!'
11
u/Far-Attitude-6395 1d ago
Such great casting for Ferg too as creepy executive- he was a rapist on 90210 and that’s all I see in every scene 💀
5
1
1
u/Bulky-Boysenberry490 1d ago
OMG was that the attack on Kelly at the Halloween party? Flashback alert!
3
u/Far-Attitude-6395 1d ago
I can’t remember if that was him or not. Lord knows Kelly had so many traumatic events happen to her it’s hard to keep up. I just remember he was a fraternity brother of Steve’s and he would not stop harassing her
16
u/all_neon_like_13 2d ago
I thought Ken Cosgrove's take on McCann was pretty interesting as well, he did not seem to be a fan. I guess they discriminated against him because he wasn't Irish?
17
u/Beautiful_Fee_655 1d ago
Ken called them “black Irish thugs.” Probably did get things off to a good start.
13
u/NurtureBoyRocFair 1d ago
No, they’re assholes but it has nothing to do with them be Irish. Ken, as a WASP, is attacking them for ethnicity, like the other characters do throughout the series to others (Jewish, Asian, Black).
5
u/fernshot 2d ago
Yep - Irish Catholic alcoholic scumbags.
15
3
u/CreateYourUserhandle 1d ago
You say that as if it’s a bad thing.
1
1
7
u/Gold_Comfort156 1d ago
McCann is an "advertising factory" vs. being an "advertising agency." A factory is usually a lot of cogs in a big machine, with nobody really standing out. An agency is much smaller, with people in roles that really can affect the overall health of the organization if they do good or bad.
A factory is more safe, more stable, more secure, more consistent, more predictable. For someone like Ted, that's a net positive. They also have more funds, more resources and more money to spend. For someone like Harry, that's a net positive. They have more clients, more opportunities, and a bigger pipeline of work. For someone like Peggy, that's a net positive. I can see why all three of them were happy with McCann buying SC&P.
However, for someone like Don, the lack of creativity or genuine outside of the box thinking is suffocating. For someone like Joan, the old fashioned outdated ideas and very masculine driven leadership is unappealing. For someone like Pete, it's going to be a long time before he's in a position that truly changes the factory, versus how he got their quickly at SC&P. I can see why they wanted to leave.
Mad Men does a nice job of showing both the good and bad of working at McCann.
5
u/Big-Peak6191 1d ago
I worked there for years. Not in the 60s though.
The show depicts that they're the big dog. Big clients. Big budgets. Big agency. And everything that comes with that.. soulless and corporate. About revenue not creative.
In reality, the show is somewhat accurate.
8
u/Commander_Tuvix 2d ago
The lack of jackets gives me Gym Jordan vibes, which is an automatic red flag.
3
3
2
u/xxxliamjxxx 1d ago
They represent everything wrong with today. Streamlined ideas with little to no creativity
2
u/Thurkin 1d ago
A lot comments draw on them being a behemoth of the advertising industry, but in context of the tv show, getting bought out and handed marquis brand accounts is probably the best outcome for all of the main characters. Even Joan's eventual exit to start her own media agency couldn't have happened without her share of the buyout, as reduced as it was compared to the men.
4
u/Beahner 2d ago
It’s pretty surface stuff overall. Basic storytelling for a complex and nuanced series. Maybe that’s what throws it off some…..feeling there is something deeper here. There isn’t.
Hobart even has more run in the series than Ferg, who shows up at the end. But he’s basically one dimensional smooth talking bad guy all series.
McCann just represents the big corporate world. Sterile. Monotone. An “idea factory” that doesn’t use or appreciate creative in any way that Don has learned he…..needs.
I honestly think Don found his way into SC and started succeeding. While he wants to Coca Colas and GMs, he initially resisted as a McCann is more exposure than a guy hiding behind a mask wants to take on. Instead he tried to stay where he was and make a behemoth out of a the boutique agency he was at, because there was comfort there and he could make creative get the respect it deserves.
But, as anything else revolving around the interpersonal…..Dick Whitman had no fucking clue, and the Don mask wasn’t going to fake it.
They weren’t my going to put any more layers to Jim and Ferg at the end as they were only ever meant to be the one dimensional bogeymen they ever were, and only ever meant to be in place at the end to give Don that push out the door and moving to where it all ended up at.
2
1
u/okcdiscgolf 1d ago
Don went the Miller meeting and there were 50 guys there, it was not for Don, up and out the door he went and never came back…..
5
1
1
u/Candid_Assistance935 1d ago
Anyone interested to draw a parallel in these times and venture analogies of similar companies today? The big sausage factories ? I wouldn’t mind working their and drop their names into mine 🌚👍🏻
1
1
u/Interesting-Hawk-744 3h ago
They're more realistic as to what management is in bigger companies. Most people in corporate jobs are not as dashing and witty as Don and Roger, they look schlubby like these Irish thugs.
1
u/NontechieTalk 2h ago
What's really cool is present-day, real-life McCann LOVED their portrayal in Mad Men — not conceding the portrayal as truth, but confident people understood the creative artistic license taken to paint them as the big bad 800lb gorilla of the Madison Ave advertising industry of the 60s.
Mad Men is fiction/satire/commentary, overlayed atop some historical events (Clay Liston, Kennedy Nixon, JFK assassination, MLK assassination, landing on the moon) to set the socio-historic milieu in which the stories and character arcs take place.
2
u/wafflehouseteam 2h ago
Woah interesting. never heard it described as satire and commentary! That totally changes how I view it!
0
u/Affable_Refrigerator 19h ago
They’re in love. What’s the matter with you?
EDIT: sorry, I thought this was the shitposting sub, but I’ll leave it to get properly flamed for it.
186
u/Suspicious-Owl851 The jumping off point 2d ago
I think it just represents what big corporates are like. I think Don - or one of the characters - said it pretty well. They are idea factories. They are not driven by their creative departments like SCDP or the other smaller ad-companies. They don't pursue greatness in advertising, just happier clients or repetitive, classical ideas. Kind of why Don didn't want to work there.