small potatoes

Thanks for linking the article, ShelleySue. It really does help explain some of the inconsistencies of the show.

Betty Draper's best pal, Francine Hanson, aka Anne Dudek, played the battered wife.

The Gaslight Cafe became famous as an early showcase for some of the great folk music acts of the century, most notably Dylan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gaslight_Cafe http://bedfordandbowery.com/2016/12/the-story-of-the-gaslight-cafe-where-dylan-premiered-a-hard-rains-a-gonna-fall/ According to the Wikipedia article, at least one famous comedian performed there. I'm picturing a future episode in which Lenny Bruce rescues Midge from an uncomfortable encounter with Bill Cosby.

Well stated. I agree.

My favorite episode of the season. I think Midge saw something of herself in Sophie, in that she and her parents live pretty grandly compared to some of her new friends, like Susie. Aaron Copeland writes doorbells for his friends. Great line, in my opinion. I thought the Sophie at home routine was funnier than any of Midge's stand up material.

Luke Kirby played a lawyer on Rectify, the love interest of Abigail Spencer, who was in Season 3 of Mad Men as Suzanne Farrell. He's great as Lenny Bruce.

Series Premiere November 29, 2017

Nice. I forgot all about that one.

I did not intend to cause pain. Instead, I should have said "that's up to you." I'd edit my post but you've already quoted me so it wouldn't do any good.

Weiner often said misleading things about the show. He didn't spell out his intentions with Megan because that would have spoiled us, something he carefully avoided. That would have taken all the fun out of hating her. So he praised Megan, and praised Jessica Pare to the skies, and the audience got more and more annoyed. It worked like a charm. Meanwhile, we are given clues, like Michael Ginsberg complaining about how she borrowed lunch money from him and never paid it back. She's married to Don Draper, wearing an expensive new outfit every day, and borrowing money from Ginsberg. The woman had no shame.

If you stopped watching, that's your problem. If Matthew Weiner wanted to give us a character we liked, he could have easily done so. He didn't. Instead he gave us a character the audience loved to hate. Go check out the Megan thread. There are thousands of complaints about Megan. Far more than any other character generated.

I think you are wrong about this, you and the vast majority of other fans and posters. The show didn't telegraph how much we were supposed to love her. The examples you cited were calling attention to her in the sense of foreshadowing that she might become important but not that we were meant to like her. Then later, when she was made to look good, it was only through Don's eyes or from the perspective of employees who had to go with the flow. In one of her early appearances, she accidentally yanked the projector plug out of the socket. It was the third time a Mad Man character had pulled a plug: the first was when Greg ripped the vacuum cleaner plug out of the wall; the second when Duck turned off the TV so that Peggy wouldn't be distracted by the JFK assassination and ruin their nooner. When Megan did it, accidentally, I took it as a way of telling the audience to look out for her as a toxic influence, although not necessarily in a deliberately mean way. When Don announced their engagement, Peggy was dumbfounded, Joan was skeptical, and Roger more or less said welcome to the club of old guys who marry vapid arm candy after leaving their equally attractive and far more deserving first wives. Megan was so tone deaf she gave Don Revolver and told him to play Tomorrow Never Knows first. It's the least accessible song on the album and turned him off from listening to the rest. If Don had played Side One from the beginning he would have heard Taxman and called Lane into his office, first thing in the morning, loaned Lane enough to take care of his problems, and prevented a tragedy. So I say, wrong, wrong, wrong. We were not supposed to love Megan. We were supposed to resent her for taking time away from characters we liked better.

I've always wanted it explained, as well. For lack of an explanation, though, I took him to mean in comparison to the way he was treated by his father and stepmother. Compared to those two sorry, abusive people, Uncle Mack was nice to him. It's a sad commentary. But I don't see Mack as the type to offer comfort and I think the infuriating devoutness of his stepmom, by itself, was plenty to fuel his contempt for religion.

Bette was also pretty good as a cold-hearted waitress in Of Human Bondage. "After you kissed me I always used to wipe my mouth!"

That's a great question, QTPYE. Hypothetically, if Megan had a passion for advertising and stuck with it, the marriage might very well have worked. At least Don would have had some respect for her. The real problem with the marriage was that Don began to see that Megan lacked an artistic spark. She didn't have what Peggy had, that ability to see things differently from others. It wasn't about the work and the craft. Advertising, acting, it was all a pose for her. From Wikipedia, a poseur refers to someone who “poses for effect, or behaves affectedly.” The scene in the lobby when Megan observes that Joyce is very affected turned out to be quite ironic.

I binge watched it because that's what I do but I disliked the show. As others have mentioned the writers hit on every sixties cliche like they had a checklist. The male characters were annoying stereotypes. What turned me off the most was including Nora Ephron in the mix when she wasn't the least bit involved. Why did they need to do that? It made me question the historical accuracy of everything else. I heard the catchphrase "magical thinking" a couple of times and waited patiently for the imminent arrival of Joan Didion. Sure enough, next episode, one of the researchers mentioned her book, Slouching toward Bethlehem. Is it my imagination or did she quote from The Second Coming and attribute it to Didion without crediting Yeats? Of course, Hunter S. Thompson and Gonzo journalism was name-dropped before the term had been used to describe Thompson's writing style and a couple years before he used it himself. I enjoyed learning about Eleanor Holmes Norton, one of the unsung heroes of the Civil Rights Movement. Also, the postal worker's strike was historically accurate. Am I the only one who thought the reporters should have been arrested for tampering with the mail?

The postal strike was real. http://www.aflcio.org/About/Our-History/Key-Events-in-Labor-History/Nixon-No-Match-for-Postal-Workers

Maybe I'm reading too much into it but the more I think about it, the more it seems like the show was having fun with the idea of Don as "wing man." He wasn't (conventionally) successful with Sal, but he did bring home a wing for Sally. As an aside, I've hit the like button for a couple of posts today and nothing happened. I tried several times and it just wouldn't take. I sent a note to the mods and couldn't get through to them. That's why I'm mentioning it here.

It might not have seemed like Don was cheating with the stewardess because he wasn't really trying to pick her up in the first place. To me it seemed like he was just trying to be a good wing man for Sal, helping him get laid on a road trip. Funny how that turned out.

Sister Magpie said: "Don gets the same deal with his family--he has his freedom. He's not a company man. He's not a family man. He's always part-hobo. And the people around him now plan for that and aren't surprised when he disappears." Except he is a company man and he is a family man. He was a key employee and later a principal at Sterling Cooper. As a family man, he and Betty raised Sally to be the awesome person she became. The jury is still out on the boys. Saying he's not a family man is kind of absurd. It's his family we're talking about. Of the three options discussed- 1) I don't think Henry has much interest in the children apart from Betty. Although we had every reason to believe he loved his wife, evidence of Henry bonding in a deep way with the the Draper children is notably scarce. I can see them staying at the mausoleum but I don't believe that's what any of them really want. 2) William and Judy are out of the question. My hands are covering my ears. I can't hear you. 3) Draper returns and they work out an arrangement. As you said, "The show ends with people creating relationships based not on the roles society assigned them but their individual selves. Roger, Kevin and Joan have a completely odd set up but it's one that works for them." I feel certain the Draper's can find a similar creative solution, even one that involves Don becoming the custodial parent.

Melancholy said: "Basically, it's unfathomable that Don would allow himself to be pinned down by Jim Hobart/McCann but not by custody of his children. ;-)" Exactly! Bingo! I could not agree more! Person to Person forces us to make this assumption.

I didn't get the sense that she was bluffing, either. She's that good at it. As for what they will need more than anything, who is to say what they need? And if it's stability, do we even know that William and Judy have a happy marriage? Also, they probably don't have the financial wherewithal to take care of two more children, so Don will have to pay for them to stay there. Melancholy, I started to say "at the expense of Don's happiness" but happiness seemed too much to ask of Don Draper so I substituted "his muse." I agree with you that Sally was not taking her own needs into consideration nearly enough, but I don't think it's up to Sally to make the decision. Your last paragraph supports my belief that they are better off with Don than with the solutions proposed by Sally and Betty.

My own understanding of the relevant phone call between Don and Sally is that she was taking care of her father. Sally knows he'd do the right thing but doesn't believe he wants to be tied down. In her heart of hearts Sally would wish for nothing more than for her dad to become an involved parent on a day to day level but not if it comes at the expense of his muse. She's trying to take care of him just as much as she's trying to take care of her brothers. As for Betty wanting to leave the kids with William and Judy, I think she was bluffing. Betty couldn't stand them and neither could Don. She pushed one of his buttons. With the wisdom of Solomon, Betty knew Don would clean up his act rather than let Sally and her siblings live with the hated brother and sister in law. Right or wrong, this is the only interpretation that allows me to sleep at night, and I do think it's consistent with the characters of Sally and Betty as we've come to know them over the course of the series.

Yeah, I mentioned it earlier, in the episode thread. It nicely bookended the season, and highlighted how valuable Freddy has been to Peggy and Don. I always saw Freddy Rumsen as the unsung hero of Mad Men. Tell us more. What kind of huge impact did it have on you? Edited to add--- The episode threads are now in the past seasons links. There's over twenty pages of comments on Person to Person.

My cat learned how to say "What if it's my time" from watching Peggy ask for a raise in S3. Whatever you do, don't let him see that episode. You'll never hear the end of it.