Mad Men - General Discussion

[Luckylyn]

6 hours ago, txhorns79 said:

Honestly, I think Don was willing to give up the account because he felt he didn't "earn" it, i.e. he was so against the Joan situation because it would mean that his importance was undermined, and it would always call into question why they got the account. 

With Jaguar Don's ego was at stake.  He wanted to be the one that got that account.   That's why he was so willing to just throw the account away.  He didn't feel he'd earned it and didn't like enduring the price of being in Herb's horrible company.  Herb was a reminder that Don wasn't the hero who got the account on his own.  In the end Don and Joan's lovely work friendship was destroyed.  Joan wanted her prostituting herself to be worth it, and Don was casually throwing the sacrifice of her dignity away.   I think Joan viewed Don as being on her side in that whole situation initially and so she was really thrown by his decision to drop the account.  It's like they were running a relay race and Joan ran the hell out of it but when Don was doing his part he just decided to quit rather than cross the finish line which diminished Joan's effort.  Joan prostituted herself for financial security and could be vicious toward anyone who threatened that security because than her actions would end up being worth nothing.

Regarding Don's marriage to Megan.  I think he married her for the ways he thought she was similar to Peggy (a partner in advertising) and different from Betty (a more warm mother) and different from Faye (who wanted Don to confront his issues rather than avoid like usual).   Later he discovers she's not as much like Peggy as he thought. He realized he didn't get a second mother to his children with Megan.  She was willing to be babysitter and pal to the kids when it was convenient to her, but Megan was never going to tolerate Don's constantly leaving the kids as her responsibility the way Betty did.   Betty wasn't the best parent, but she could be counted on to be there whenever the kids needed her.  Betty and Don were both unhappy with their lives but Betty never abandoned the kids in the ways Don would.   Don could get away with his self indulgent escapes because he knew Betty was solidly there for the kids.  Megan didn't seem to understand how Don's past mattered and just wanted Don to focus on the present while Faye better understood that Don wasn't going to escape his issues just by ignoring them.  Don married his idea of Megan and then later learned who she really was.  Megan on the other hand worked at the company and was Don's secretary.   She was familiar with his drinking and womanizing especially since he started up with her while with Faye.  Don apparently told her about being Dick early on.  Megan had a better idea of who she was marrying than Don did and yet still seemed surprised.   Don married a fantasy to escape dealing with his issues while Megan was arrogantly or naively believing that somehow she would be the woman to change him.  Both are responsible for how poorly things ended up since neither was approaching the marriage realistically.

[Melancholy]

7 hours ago, txhorns79 said:

Honestly, I think Don was willing to give up the account because he felt he didn't "earn" it, i.e. he was so against the Joan situation because it would mean that his importance was undermined, and it would always call into question why they got the account. 

That was a reason too. I think there's just a ton in the mix with Don in The Other Woman. Don wants the credit. However, I don't think it's the be all and end all or even the biggest reason behind what Don does. Don has accepted other creatives taking more credit in acquiring an account like Peggy winning Topaz or Megan selling Heinz (or Don's hope that Peggy would sell Heinz). He's fine with account-men just acquiring an account through connections and charm without any need for a creative bake-off which happens a lot on the show. Don very specifically put Joan prostituting herself for Herb in a completely different category from those, and it makes complete sense why it's in a different category. There is something very specific about Don objecting to Joan whoring herself out to get Jaguar. Based on every other instance of past history, Don wouldn't have put up objections to someone winning Jaguar just based on their personal connection to the company. 

Moreover, Don was willing to take some kind of a hit/disappointment in his persona to the agency because Don promised the agency at Christmas that they'd win Jaguar but then, he was willing to lose the competition so Joan didn't pimp herself out. I mean, maybe you could argue that Don intended on saving his reputation that way by telling the agency rank and file that Herb propositioned Joan but Don the Hero stopped it so that's why they lost Jaguar. However, I doubt it what with Don immediately coming up with a white lie that Joan was being promoted to partner based on her years of service to the agency instead of self-promoting/"confessing" to Peggy that Joan got her promotion by prostitution with Herb and Don the Hero was the only righteous man in Soddom and Gemmorah willing to stop it. Whatever the outcome, I think Don wasn't going to blab about Joan's prostitution. 

At any rate, I think Don wants the credit- but he's concerned with his internal feelings about the credit more than external. Don's external importance to the agency isn't threatened by Joan's prostitution. He still convinced the other two execs on the board even if Joan secured Herb's vote. And actually, the deal was just that Herb wouldn't vote AGAINST SCDP if they delivered Joan. Herb didn't promise to vote *for* them for the sex. Pete underscored that by saying that the creative was still responsible for winning this. Don was still singled out in the congratulatory phone call with Roger telling them that they got the business. ("Roger: Yeah, we like him too.") Don would have more egg on his face if they didn't get the account.

However, I can agree that Don didn't want his new-found assertion of his professional validity chalked up to Joan's prostitution in his own mind. But also, it meshes exactly with what Don said to Sal. A certain kind of girl shouldn't be pressured into having sex for business. Joan is that certain kind of girl in Don's mind. Also, Don (IMO, correctly) predicted that Jaguar/Herb was going to be a hassle to work with if they were requesting things like this right off the bat. "So we just keep saying yes. Because we didn't say no to begin with. You know what this is- this is Munich." Not long after becoming a client, Herb was leaning on SC to sabatoge their own national ad campaign and do so by lying to the British-contingent of their own client and deal with the danger of either successfully lying to their client to hurt their own campaign or looking like morons and engendering the contempt of the British-contingent of the client. But Herb felt comfortable making those demands because he has dirt on SCDP. Plus, Don thought he could afford to make such a sacrifice because failing to get Jaguar is something he can financially easily live with as opposed to losing Lucky Strike in S3. 

Edited August 12, 2016 by Melancholy

[Melancholy]

59 minutes ago, Luckylyn said:

Herb was a reminder that Don wasn't the hero who got the account on his own.  In the end Don and Joan's lovely work friendship was destroyed.  Joan wanted her prostituting herself to be worth it, and Don was casually throwing the sacrifice of her dignity away.   I think Joan viewed Don as being on her side in that whole situation initially and so she was really thrown by his decision to drop the account.  It's like they were running a relay race and Joan ran the hell out of it but when Don was doing his part he just decided to quit rather than cross the finish line which diminished Joan's effort.  Joan prostituted herself for financial security and could be vicious toward anyone who threatened that security because than her actions would end up being worth nothing.

I didn't think Jaguar ended up being worth it. It could be interesting to poll on the matter because the show raises the question with a bunch of clients on whether the money is worth the moral compromise/injury to employees/lack of respect to the agency. It comes up with Lucky Strike, Chevy, Jaguar, Dow, Clearasil. However at the same time, you can't just pout and throw out doing business with everyone who's an asshole because there's assholes everywhere. (ETA: I think they should have fired Jaguar for the reasons below and Lucky Strike because it was just that unconscionable to fire Sal for Lee's sexual assault and the modern hindsight that advertising cigarettes was particularly damaging. Every other client was worth handling, with allowances made to allow certain staff members to refuse to work with the client if the chemistry is too dangerous like Ken and Chevy.) 

At any rate, I do think that I'd put Jaguar as the least worthwhile of those companies. It really felt like moral compromises and danger of humiliation for ultimately very little once the initial prestige of having a car was over. Herb was forcing SCDP to play a very, very dangerous game- lying to the British contingent of their client to try to sell an idea that the Brits weren't into and that SCDP wasn't into. You really seem to have very little in advertising without a relationship of trust and respect with clients and Herb was striking against that between SC and Jaguar Headquarters. Then, I concur with Don's assessment that Herb's idea to have the kid on his lots evaluate SCDP's work was a way to humiliatingly fire them. You also have very little in advertising if you can't convince companies that your Mad Ave agency can do things that no one else can, especially some kid on a dealer lots. I think some of these other agencies resulted in more grievous injuries but at least, they were paying a ton and they were big prestigious companies who were dealing with SC/SCDP as a real ad agency. Maybe Joan would be more aware of this if she was actually involved in Jaguar business beyond The One Night that she was already paid for with a partnership. However, she wasn't- Joan couldn't stand dealing with Herb after she was paid with a partnership to be cordial to him in five minutes, but instead, made fun of his weight when he hit on her.  I don't think Joan was running the hell out of any kind of race. She had The One Night that she was paid handsomely for and then, she didn't have anything to do with the business, and that contributed to her utter lack of perspective or interest in learning the whys of Don's decision-making. However even though Joan knew basically nothing about why Don fired Jaguar and Joan didn't ask why Don fired Jaguar, she still made it a two-year crusade to punish Don for it. 

I think Don should have held his tongue and waited to announce to the agency that he wanted to fire Herb. And Don would basically be bailed out by Roger coming in with the invite to work on Chevy. It's basically been crystallized as an SC/SCDP rule that you fire your smaller client for a shot at the big league client. Maybe Joan would have still made the argument that they can't because she wants to go public NOW and she wants Jaguar on the roster so everyone can take a moment of silence for her "sacrifice" whenever it comes up. Replace my sarcastic tone with a self-righteous tone and it sure sounds like Joan. But I think Joan would be alone there. It was undisciplined and rude for Don to fire Herb on the spot without announcing it. However, I do think Don was very reasonable in firing Herb and I think he had the power to do so unilaterally. Don didn't fire Herb because Herb was drooling all over Megan or he didn't want to hear Peaches' puppy stories or he didn't want to do the ad work. He fired Herb because Herb was jeopardizing the fundamentals of Don's role as a Creative Director and in such a way that the writing was on the wall that Herb was interested in humiliatingly firing them after toying with them.  

Edited August 12, 2016 by Melancholy

[txhorns79]

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That was a reason too. I think there's just a ton in the mix with Don in The Other Woman. Don wants the credit. However, I don't think it's the be all and end all or even the biggest reason behind what Don does. Don has accepted other creatives taking more credit in acquiring an account like Peggy winning Topaz or Megan selling Heinz (or Don's hope that Peggy would sell Heinz). He's fine with account-men just acquiring an account through connections and charm without any need for a creative bake-off which happens a lot on the show. Don very specifically put Joan prostituting herself for Herb in a completely different category from those, and it makes complete sense why it's in a different category. There is something very specific about Don objecting to Joan whoring herself out to get Jaguar. Based on every other instance of past history, Don wouldn't have put up objections to someone winning Jaguar just based on their personal connection to the company. 

I'd say it is different though.  It's one thing to get an account because of a personal connection that is known up front.  In that case, it was never a question as to whether the campaign was good, because they had it in the bag already.  With Peggy or Megan helping to land an account, that's a situation where they are Don's subordinate/wife, so their glory reflects back on him.  With the Joan situation, he clearly put a huge amount of work into trying to land Jaguar, only to have that essentially sidelined so Joan could step in and win the account for doing something that has nothing to do with Don.  His campaign sounded very good, but because Joan did what she did, it's essentially like Don didn't matter at all.     

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I didn't think Jaguar ended up being worth it.

I'd say it was worth it, in the sense that it helped open the door to Chevy.  I doubt Roger would have been able to set up the meeting if the firm didn't already have a car account. 

[Melancholy]

47 minutes ago, txhorns79 said:

I'd say it is different though.  It's one thing to get an account because of a personal connection that is known up front.  In that case, it was never a question as to whether the campaign was good, because they had it in the bag already.  With Peggy or Megan helping to land an account, that's a situation where they are Don's subordinate/wife, so their glory reflects back on him.  With the Joan situation, he clearly put a huge amount of work into trying to land Jaguar, only to have that essentially sidelined so Joan could step in and win the account for doing something that has nothing to do with Don.  His campaign sounded very good, but because Joan did what she did, it's essentially like Don didn't matter at all.     

I'd say it was worth it, in the sense that it helped open the door to Chevy.  I doubt Roger would have been able to set up the meeting if the firm didn't already have a car account. 

It is a little different. I did say that Don resented Joan prostituting herself for Jaguar because he felt like he didn't do anything to win the account (even though that's not true because Joan's prostitution ostensibly just secured Herb's vote or just secured that Herb wouldn't blackball SCDP). I agree that was a factor. However, your distinction is real but small. I don't think Don would object if he put in work to land Jaguar, but then Joan found her long-lost father in the company as a decision-maker and she convinced her dad to sign her agency. Because Don hasn't objected to getting accounts based on nepotism. The key point here is that Joan was prostituting herself to get the account. That's not meaningless. 

I also agree that Jaguar was worth it to the point of giving the agency the credential of being a car-level agency to get Chevy. However, that value was over by the time that Jaguar/Herb revealed itself to have the other problems that diminished its worth as a client discussed above (Herb's game-playing with the agency). In the face of getting a meeting at a Chevy bake-off, Jaguar was rendered particularly valueless to SCDP.

Also, I don't think Don's/Ginsberg's Jaguar campaign was that good. It's one of my least favorite campaigns. sistermagpie says above that Kinsey lost his one good idea.  I really liked Kinsey's "Jackie or Marilyn: Two Sides of the Same Woman", despite the sexism and I get why it even became something of a meme among MM watchers in the 2000s. However, "At last, something beautiful that you can truly own" is basically nothing BUT misogyny as far as I'm concerned even with Jon Hamm all-sexy-voicing about desire. 

Edited August 12, 2016 by Melancholy

[sistermagpie]

6 hours ago, Melancholy said:

Also, I don't think Don's/Ginsberg's Jaguar campaign was that good. It's one of my least favorite campaigns. sistermagpie says above that Kinsey lost his one good idea.  I really liked Kinsey's "Jackie or Marilyn: Two Sides of the Same Woman", despite the sexism and I get why it even became something of a meme among MM watchers in the 2000s. However, "At last, something beautiful that you can truly own" is basically nothing BUT misogyny as far as I'm concerned even with Jon Hamm all-sexy-voicing about desire. 

Yeah--I was referring to the Jackie/Marilyn ad as his one good one in case that wasn't clear, and at least that ad gives an air of mystery to the woman. It's basically saying that she's got more than one woman inside her and she's in charge of who she chooses to be. The Jaguar ad is explicitly about prostitution all around, since it's literally talking about owning the car. I guess you could say that at least that implies you can't truly own a woman, but the idea that you'd want to is disturbing in ways that "two sides of the same woman" isn't, at least to me.

And that's fitting because it does seem like the Jaguar thing just brought up all those issues for Don that were going to come bubbling to the surface. In S6 he has Megan in her red outfit doing a sex scene and him calling her a whore, his whore soup memories with Chevy, the final Hershey pitch. I think the Joan thing probably hits more buttons in him than he's aware of at the time. He's not so upset by Lee Garner saying he'll pull Lucky Strike (admittedly an account with way too much power) if Sal won't sleep with him (he even lectures him about how he's got no real grounds for protest), sleeps with Bobbie Barrett himself on the Utz campaign despite the obvious prostitution/slut-shaming hints. But with Joan it's suddenly very important that he keep her from doing this, and once she does he feels like the whole thing is tainted even though it actually wasn't a case of Joan getting them the account through sex. She just kept Herb from keeping them out of the competition to begin with. By the next season Don's seeing prostitutes everywhere. That line about the place turning into a whorehouse must have been so confusing to Ted.

As to whether it's worth it, I guess it's hard to really quantify since we've no way of knowing where everyone would have ended up without it. With Lucky Strikes they already owned SC because they were so dependent on them. They'd dealt with Lee Jr.'s petty demands before, even if he didn't seem to want to take over creative and so potentially sabotage his own campaign. Jaguar was just an account they didn't have at a time when they weren't as desperate as they were when they went after Topaz, and one that brought with it a terrible client who was never going to stop being irritating. It helped them go after Chevy, but then, Don's wanting to go after Chevy could be said to have also caused the merger which opened the door for Cutler to try to take over... so it's an endless "what if?" situation. It's funny, actually, to think how the account in question is Jaguar, a fancy, British car company, one whose current ads play up the fact that it's what James Bond villains drive, and then the guy the agency deals with is...Herb. The ugliest American you could imagine, whose wife's name is Peaches.

Ironically, one person who I think is very comfortable with the whole thing being worth it is Joan herself. She's left with her own scars from it but I think she thinks she got a good deal out of it when she imagines where she'd be now without it.

[Luckylyn]

2 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

Ironically, one person who I think is very comfortable with the whole thing being worth it is Joan herself. She's left with her own scars from it but I think she thinks she got a good deal out of it when she imagines where she'd be now without it.

That's my take on it too.  Whatever discomfort Joan feels about how she earned her partnership in the end she was glad to have it.  It made her independently wealthy and able to to start her own business by the end of the series despite not getting the full value from Mccann buying her out.  Where would Joan have ended up without the partnership?   Dawn had Joan's old position and thought she was going to be out of a job because of the merger with Mccann.  Joan's a resourceful woman so she would have found some position somewhere, but she wouldn't have had the financial security.  The partnership provided Joan with opportunities.

[Melancholy]

I agree that Joan did what was best for her and Kevin. And that's the most important thing behind me saying that the prostitution should have gone forward, given that Herb made the offer/threat and Joan negotiated an asking price that made it worth it for her. I can just imagine how much pain Joan would be in if she decided to go for the "dignity" of refusing Herb, after Lane suggested a 5 percent stake in the company. It would have been torture for Joan to keep on as a head secretary and see the company get richer and richer, knowing that she could have had a piece. It would have carried some dignity if Joan knew that she could have been promoted to a similar position based on her merits. However, given the times, Joan has no such assurance that a more respectable way forward will ever pay off or that she can even have a shot at it. Look at Peggy- she's a unicorn of talent and glass-ceiling breaking who did bring and retain accounts using her brain instead of her other parts. When the series ended, she was 31 and a long way off from ever possibly making CD or partner. It's a competitive business, and especially an unfairly competitive business for women. 

However, I do really get why Don thought he was helping Joan by telling her that it's not worth it. There's a key distinction in what Joan negotiates. For the prostitutes of Don's youth, the prices for sexual interactions were small. It just kept them in The Life earning a few dimes at a time, unable to bust out of that career until they don't kick up enough to a pimp like Mac and he makes them a homeless street whore which is worse. For Joan, the asking price was actually for an empowering career as a partner as Joan put an emphasis on "NOT SILENT" which even if Joan used it to make votes and comments that I didn't care for, she really did use the Not Silent part of her five percent stake a lot.  In a lot of ways it's a repudiation of the sexist joke of establishing that a woman is a whore by throwing out a huge price tag because then it's just a matter of negotiation. If the objection to prostitution is actual concern for what it does to women, the price tag's ability to offer independence really does become a meritorious point. 

But you know, thinking about all of this just puts me EVEN MORE on Don's side in S6. He didn't agree to be the pimp/whore to land Jaguar. He was against it. He went ahead with the pitch to Jaguar, because Joan lied to him and acted like she heard what he said. Of all of the partners, he did not consent to be trapped into a form of The Life where Herb has salacious dirt over their agency and can now blackmail them into lying to the British contingent or punish them for resisting by making their work subject to review by some kid on Herb's lots. And he couldn't pull a Joan and just snit at Herb in the two minutes that Herb wanders into his office. Don had to actually show up and deal with Herb all of the time on both an accounts and creative level. I really get how to Don, the Jaguar move didn't empower him at all as it did to Joan by giving him another job. Instead, it just trapped him into a dirty subservient relationship of blackmail and potential humiliation and damage to his reputation. And irony of ironies, he wound up responsible for maintaining this bullshit. Joan doesn't feel a thousand pounds lighter because she basically cut ties with dealing with Herb once The Night ended and she was made partner. Jaguar was just percentage-money to Joan because Joan doesn't feel responsible for maintaining Jaguar as a client right down to being courteous for two minutes to Herb. However, Don sure feels a thousand pounds lighter at no longer having to lie for Herb, go to dinner with Herb, do creative work for Herb, negotiate with Herb, etc. 

IMO, right up until CGC merged bringing Ted, Don really should have far more unilateral power to fire clients than other people in the agency because Don literally has to be on every account because they only had one CD. As opposed to other employees who could at least, make a case that one of their counterparts should handle a client instead of them because it was too objectionable- Ken and Chevy/Dow, Roger and Honda, Peggy and Kinsey via tantrum for Heinz and Madison Square Garden respectively. However, particularly in the Jaguar case, where Don didn't consent to the type of relationship brokered with Herb at all and made his pitch under the impression that they weren't doing that. 

It's strikes me as very unfair to demand that Don have this reverence for Joan's Great Sacrifice or constantly do business in a way that he HATES indefinitely because of Joan's Great Sacrifice when Don didn't even want the Great Sacrifice to occur. 

Edited August 18, 2016 by Melancholy

[txhorns79]

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Of all of the partners, he did not consent to be trapped into a form of The Life where Herb has salacious dirt over their agency and can now blackmail them into lying to the British contingent or punish them for resisting by making their work subject to review by some kid on Herb's lots.

I'm not sure I follow this.  I didn't get the impression Herb was blackmailing anyone, or that he was even holding the prostitution over the agency.  I mean, how could he, without exposing himself? 

As to Don, I would say he's part of a partnership.  Even if you think he should have more unilateral power, it doesn't work that way, because he wouldn't have all his creative without Roger and Burt's money, as well as the new accounts that Pete and Ken bring in.  That isn't to say Don isn't very important, he is. However, I think the danger of giving Don too much power is that when he gets out of control, it's hard to reel him in and you end up having to put him on leave after he unilaterally sinks Hershey. 

[Melancholy]

I got the impression that Herb was peculiarly indispensable to Jaguar's American offerings because Herb controls the sale of American cars and Herb occupied a rather kingly position where no one was monitoring him in the United States and he remained untouchable no matter what he did as long as the metal was moving. Herb has veto power on any agency pitching. The agency felt compelled to follow Herb's orders to convince Jaguar to halve the national campaign, even though no one liked the idea. No one felt empowered enough to tell the British contingent how they really felt or what Herb really said. Instead, Pete stuck his neck out arguing for a strategy that he disagreed with and that the British contingent was unsure about from the outset of the conversation. IMO, it was murky and unclear but there was a understanding that Herb picked SCDP because they'd do anything to please him, no matter inappropriate, and Herb obviously expected that to continue past the bounds of propriety or he'd fire them certainly. However, I think ratting them out for whoring out Joan wasn't off the table either. Herb's the untouchable seller who's within the company; SCDP are the just the ad agency who are very easily fired. Herb can get to the Jaguar with his own version of the story like "SCDP is so gross that they tried to ply me with their own secretaries" or even if they don't believe it, Herb is still the irreplaceable one.

I don't think Don should ever have the power to unilaterally fire/sink an account without informing his partners and hearing objections. I agree that he was out of line in Hershey and Jaguar and heck, Jantzen for that reason because he did without informing the partners. However, within reason after it's debated, I do think he had should have the power to fire an account even if partners or even the majority of partners disagree. It's similar to how I think that certain high level employees or even medium-level employees should be able to be ask to ask to be transferred off certain clients or accounts and onto other work if they can't stand that work. People can't get along with everyone or successfully work every assignment. However pre-Ted, Don could only achieve that transfer by firing the client from the agency entirely because there's only one creative director at the agency and all accounts, especially a big account like Jaguar, demand his presence in particular at meetings/dinners/drinks. It's a recipe for disaster to force Don to creatively manage or entertain companies/clients that he can't abide.  In ten years, that was Jantzen and Jaguar. I think Don should have two shots at "I can't stand this company and I refuse to work with them". I just think he should have informed the partners first and heard out/debated objections to see if there was another solution. (Although, I don't think there was with Jantzen/Jaguar.) 

I totally get and agree with Joan's and Pete's initial outrage at Don because it was out-of-bounds for Don to fire Herb without informing the partners. However since I do think that Don has good rationales justifying his right to unilaterally fire Herb, that's a part of why I think Joan was ridiculous to make a two-year grudge out of it. 

Edited August 24, 2016 by Melancholy

[sistermagpie]

Also I think some of the power of Herb was psychological. They showed him off the bat that they wanted Jaguar so much they were willing to do this for him, and once you do that it’s pretty hard to act like there’s a limit on him being a dick. It’s kind of similar to Lucky Strike who had all that power because they were the biggest client. Jaguar ultimately didn’t have that kind of power because they absolutely could dump it and still go on—they even got Chevy. In fact, it turned out by coincidence that they were just getting a chance at it that probably would have got them to consider dumping them anyway.

 

But as long as they were weren’t dumping Jaguar they were wanting to keep them and Herb knew that and was pushing it and acting like Lee Garner Jr. over it because he’d already thrown his weight around and won.

 

So it’s kind of both. He doesn’t blackmail them or anything, but he totally can push them around until somebody decides it’s not worth it and pulls the plug. That person was Don, the person who felt zero interest in really keeping them or getting them from the start. So Jaguar did have a lot of power, but only so long as SCDP gave them that power by wanting to keep the account. If Herb had wanted to presumably he could have gotten them kicked off the account just as so many of the clients we see have that power. He was always the guy they were dealing with iirc.

[Melancholy]

I'll also add that while I think Don was wrong to fire Jaguar without first advising the partners, it's interesting that this season also features Joan going rogue in a very big way when she disregarded the understanding that Pete would lead reeling in Avon and didn't tell him about the meeting. It was particularly rogue and sneaky since Joan didn't voice any objections to Pete leading to Ted/Pete at the time but decided to throw Pete off the business completely on her own and only told Peggy just a minute before the client came in. Joan is lucky that Avon signed and that Peggy didn't get into any trouble for participating in such a breach of protocol as an employee instead of a partner. Because absent success, Joan could have been tagged with harming their business by going rogue just as much as Don was in Hershey/Jaguar in S6. 

Avon could have signed for any reason but based on what I'd saw, I'd guess that the guy was already UNUSUALLY receptive and interested because he thought that highly of Joan's friend and her recommendations and/or SCDP's work. Or possibly, because Peggy said some good stuff at the meeting like referencing one of her best campaigns in Mark Your Man and she had some good turns of phrase like "unintentionally nostalgic" that I could see impressing the Avon guy. However, Joan really didn't distinguish herself as an account-woman at either meeting and she actually seemed to make some instances seem particularly awkward and unprofessional. Her inexperience showed, especially as the scene was right next to Roger turning the frothing-at-the-mouth Carnation maniac into a fan with sheer smooth charm. I think Joan did stuff right as the account-woman for Avon over the next two years because she retained them even through the McCann transition. And she got a great contact through her friend. But Joan was visibly trying to lane a Fortune 100 company without any experience at all in order to further her own career, even if it was a risk for the agency or heck, a risk to Peggy. 

I mean, I don't even bear anger at Joan for this so much because, like Don with Jaguar, I think Joan really thought that she was doing what was best for the agency even if it was a risk and Joan was trying to correct a dreadful situation where she's a partner stuck in an office-manager ghetto. I just get angry for how Joan treated Peggy through the whole thing. Pretty badly from roping her into breaching protocol to trying to rewrite history that she encouraged Peggy's career and when that failed, acting like Don was wholly responsible for Peggy's career for no other reason than to tear Peggy down and then having a false pout of indignation that Peggy was accusing her of being a whore to end a debate that she was losing.

However beyond the situation, it's kind of funny that this is the season where Joan goes totally rouge but also preaches on how Don sucks because he doesn't understand "WE" and how "*I* will win this" is infuriating when she cut Pete out the deal and ignored Ted's instructions for no other reason so that JOAN could win this and the other partners can cheer on the sidelines. I get that Don has a longer history of cowboy rogue maneuvers while Joan has a longer history of accepting her designated widget place in the company. However, this occasion and others showed that a lot of these characters would pull the cowboy/cowgirl stuff if they had the stomach for it and could get away with it but people like Joan don't put up with being an order-following-widget out of the moral satisfaction of doing so. If they can find a way to be win stuff and have other people root for them from the sidelines, they'll do it. 

This is a little choppy but I also just thought of the irony of Joan voting to fire Don in Waterloo for largely firing Jaguar without partner approval but yet, going along with Team Cutler after he sent a lawyer's letter firing Don for breach of contract and robo-signing the other partners' names to the bottom of the letter even though the vast majority of them didn't even see the letter, let alone approve of their name at the bottom of the page. Joan notes as a method of strategy that Cutler shouldn't have done that but that doesn't disqualify Joan's support even though it's just as much or more of an inappropriate unilateral action as Don firing Jaguar in the heat of the moment. 

Edited August 25, 2016 by Melancholy

[sistermagpie]

Heh. I remember so many intense discussions when Joan pulled that stunt, with I think a lot of searching for proof that Joan was either an Accounts savant being kept down or making a fool of herself. Really things are set up so she can be a little of both. The guy is a novice like herself and wants to work with a friend. And Joan still probably would compare what she did there with Don and say see, Don does this stuff all the time and nobody calls him on it. I try too get an account that should have been mine anyway and I get yelled at by Pete Campbell!

Just watched The Gypsy and the Hobo again. Wow, that episode's so wonderfully intense and of course I even forget a lot of the stuff that happens early on. Back when I first watched it I had no way of knowing that was going to happen with Betty.

Roger’s ex says her husband died of lung cancer...cut to Don lighting up. But it won’t be him who gets it.

I LOVE the moment where Annabel is talking about horsemeat and Don says, “I’ve eaten it” and Roger cuts his eyes to him, obviously wondering about that past he doesn’t know about. Annabel’s no doubt eaten it because she tried it on purpose. Don, no doubt, was served it out of necessity. Roger's look is also a nice connection to Betty later saying she'd figured out Don was poor and ashamed of it since he didn't understand money. Betty and Roger have both stored up little clues about Don's origins over the years.

Joan’s an amazing coach for Greg for his interview and he doesn’t seem able to accept it--and by the end of the ep we'll see he literally doesn't or can't or won't accept it. Seeing Greg makes me appreciate how Weiner made the Campbell marriage more complicated. As terrible as Pete could be as a husband he was openly admiring and grateful of Trudy as an advisor. He wasn’t written with Greg’s masculine insecurities and he totally could have been. Many people would have expected or preferred it. Greg also later complains about not being able to be a surgeon despite doing all he was supposed to do—Pete was also raised with expectations that turned out to be false. They're just both complicated characters with different insecurities. And really, if Pete had been written that way the Campbell marriage couldn't have ended the show the way it did--Greg is obviously never going to make it work with Joan.

Don asks Suzanne to run away with him—albeit only for the weekend—but this trip will not happen and instead the relationship will end, just like what happened with Rachel.

I like how Betty’s regrouping and talking to a lawyer, strategizing before she confronts Don, who’s happily pretending in the little cottage with Suzanne, taking off work to go away with her etc. not knowing about the impending attack.

Roger really doesn’t do well with rejection. Annabel is probably one of the few people who have done that to him. It’s not that this woman was “the one” for him anyway—I believe him when he says that. But it also makes sense to me—him still being in love with Jane aside—that he’s not somebody who would want to revisit his youth by sleeping with his first love. If anything he'd find some 20 year old who reminded him of his first love. At least at this point in his life.

Also it’s neat how when she tells Roger he was the one and he says “You weren’t” that it’s not really clear what he means. The most obvious answer is that he’s saying Jane, his current wife, is the one. But I think it’s really more that Roger doesn’t have “the one.” Or if he does it’s more like Joan, the woman he’s getting a job for later. She’s not the woman he’s going to be married to, but he’ll always be connected to her.

Greg’s line about wanting something and planning on something your whole life and not getting it is SERIOUSLY great with Joan’s reaction. Oh yeah, she knows about that. She’s no doubt known for a while that this marriage is not the one she’s dreamed of or worked for, but this moment she admits it to herself. Still, that vase thing makes me wince. I think she’d have really hurt him!

“Dog’s don’t like uniforms.” Ha! Also, “I can’t turn it off it’s actually happening.”

I love how Jon Hamm is always so clear that Don is TERRIFIED of being found out. Because obviously it goes against Don’s manly image—the direction even shows his hand go limp when he’s confronted by Betty, like losing an erection. Viewers might be jaded about Don’s secret after 7 seasons but Don never is. You can really see how it doesn’t even just make him afraid of jail or whatever, but that it probably taps into all the feelings he had where suddenly everyone’s pointing at him and saying WHORE CHILD!

Little Tom and Lorenzo shout out, I notice Betty is wearing PLAID here, like she’s literally wearing the pants.

Looking ahead, it’s funny how here and in S6 Don will totally get away with the affair it seems like he’s going to get caught by. The risk he took with Suzanne and Sylvia wasn’t really about being caught with them. It’s more symbolic of him getting seen for himself or something.

I read Don dropping the cigarette as just showing his physical state and that same lack of manly control we saw with his hand going limp, but of course it’s also a subtle callback to him dropping the lighter back in Korea, which led to this moment.

Watching the scene with the photo box now I can’t help but think about that surprise reveal in S5 where we see that Don’s told Megan his past off-screen. Because there’s just no way he confessed to her the way he’s confessing to Betty here. Megan was somebody who’d made clear she’d accept anything. If she’d rejected him after hearing about his past it really wouldn’t have been that bad at that point. But telling this to Betty is really baring it all, especially because it’s the context of all his betrayal of her. Imo, that makes her sympathy for him all the more real. She did love the guy. But she can’t simply comfort him because of his own choices with the lying.

I also find myself comparing this to the scene where she confronts him about Bobbie. There he completely kept his cool—but then, in that scene he was totally Don Draper who’s entitled to have mistresses.

By the end of the series Joan is no longer the kind of woman who would just smile at her husband telling her he joined the army without talking to her first. RED FLAG. When you think about it, Greg’s story’s really pretty wonderful as one note in those whole orchestra. The way he winds up basically marrying the army because it provides the thing he so desperately needs, some stamp of validation that he’s a man (with his nurse by his side to boot). He's nice to Joan here because he was able to avoid taking her advice and become a surgeon. (He can be Vietnam's Frank Burns.)

I always start humming “Another Suitcase in Another Hall” when Suzanne finally gives up and walks home. it’s funny that it always seemed at the time like that affair went on forever but it’s only a few episodes. In the scheme of things it doesn’t even seem like one of Don’s most important liaisons.

There’s something kind of childlike about Don brushing his teeth like a good boy in his pjs before bed.

Betty’s in plaid again. Is that the dress she wears when she lies down on Sally’s bed and in the very last scene we see her? If not, it’s reminiscent of it. But that dress was, even from Janie Bryant’s own mouth, about the mother becoming the child and that’s not Betty here.

I like how Sally clearly senses something’s up with her parents. Bobby doesn’t. (And it’s in response to Don asking if Betty’s going to have something when she asks if he wants something to eat—he’s being contrite and solicitous and that’s unusual.)

“Did you get caught?” is such a great line from Suzanne. It makes her and Don sound like kids, but in fact Don just had to grow up.

I like how Sally’s actually carrying around a crystal ball with her costume.

[qtpye]

I love reading all the intelligent insightful posts on this site.  I love the Joan character, even though, like everyone else, she is definitely flawed.

That being said, I have a question.  Joan totally loses control two times and they both have to do with Greg.  The first is when she throws the vase at his head and the second when she throws something at the ditzy receptionist who hands her Greg's divorce papers.

My question is, why is she so mad at the divorce papers?  Is it because she is shocked that Greg is not fighting for her and comes to the realization her never loved her or respected her as a person (something the audience, with our modern day goggles realized after her raped her).

Do you guys think she was so shocked, because she really did love him, despite all his shortcomings and it sort of broke her heart?  Heartbreak is hard for everyone, but for a controled person like Joan it would be infuriating.

Edited August 26, 2016 by qtpye

[Luckylyn]

1 hour ago, qtpye said:

I love reading all the intelligent insightful posts on this site.  I love the Joan character, even though, like everyone else, she is definitely flawed.

That being said, I have a question.  Joan totally loses control two times and they both have to do with Greg.  The first is when she throws the vase at his head and the second when she throws something at the ditzy receptionist who hands her Greg's divorce papers.

My question is, why is she so mad at the divorce papers?  Is it because she is shocked that Greg is not fighting for and comes to the realization her never loved her or respected her as a person (something the audience, with our modern day goggles realized after her raped her).

Do you guys think she was so shocked, because she really did love him, despite all his shortcomings and it sort of broke her heart?  Heartbreak is hard for everyone, but for a controled person like Joan it would be infuriating.

I think she found him sending the divorce papers to her at work rather than at home was humiliating because she wanted to control who knew what and when about the state of her marriage..   Also she wanted to be the one to file the papers and end it, and Greg beat her to it.  It was her idea to end the marriage, and so it pisses her off that he's the one to file the papers as if he was the one doing the rejecting.

[Melancholy]

15 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

I LOVE the moment where Annabel is talking about horsemeat and Don says, “I’ve eaten it” and Roger cuts his eyes to him, obviously wondering about that past he doesn’t know about. Annabel’s no doubt eaten it because she tried it on purpose. Don, no doubt, was served it out of necessity. Roger's look is also a nice connection to Betty later saying she'd figured out Don was poor and ashamed of it since he didn't understand money. Betty and Roger have both stored up little clues about Don's origins over the years.

This could be over-morbid but I wonder if Abigail/Dick ate the horse that killed Archie. Some kind of "desperately eat whatever we've got since we're about to lose the the farm anyway and we don't have the money to buy food other than the surplus of grain that probably already rotted in the silo." 

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Roger really doesn’t do well with rejection. Annabel is probably one of the few people who have done that to him. It’s not that this woman was “the one” for him anyway—I believe him when he says that. But it also makes sense to me—him still being in love with Jane aside—that he’s not somebody who would want to revisit his youth by sleeping with his first love. If anything he'd find some 20 year old who reminded him of his first love. At least at this point in his life.

Roger really doesn't do well with rejection. I think it's of a piece with how much he's on a months-long-martyr-petulant streak about Don being displeased with him right around this time. Speaking of petulance, I love his "Look, Annabelle. We were not in Casablanca. The only similarity is that you left me for another man.....That woman got on the plane with a man who was going to end WWII. Not run her father's dog food company" and "Well, I got mine. I married Mona, joined the firm, and then I got shipped off to the Pacific for the duration. When I came home, I went to work while you were watching Casablanca. And I got blamed when we lost the account." It's really a lot of anger and petulance for a twice-married guy that was dumped decades ago who doesn't even carry a torch for the dumper and never considered her the one.  

I think it's also one of the most underrated parts of the Man v. Woman sexism issues of the time. Men who went to war and then, came home to work in the mid-20th century felt a particular contempt for women because they don't deal with those immense life events and heck, IMMENSE HISTORICAL EVENTS and they're particularly resistant from hearing any criticism from women who didn't deal with those problems. A lot of histories of WWII and Vietnam in particular discuss how they empowered women by leaving women to manage the homefront in WWII and how the protests against the Vietnam War ended up intersecting with other social movements in the 1960s and it became a rising tide that lifted all boats. However, this is from the stand-point of the marginalized groups. From the standpoint of white men, the wars were a reason to hang onto their entrenched social power because they deserved to come home and rule the roost after fighting to defend it. In this, Roger putting Annabelle in this "Do-nothing women" class of accusing her of marrying a guy to run her dad's dog food company. It's not crystal clear whether Annabelle's active role in the company and finding an agency and dealing with the movie maligning the company is brand new from her husband's death. However, Annabelle is there like a full-fledged executive of her company making the big decisions. No more of a dilettante or housewife than any of the other execs that SC deals with and actually if anything, Annabelle seemed particularly serious  and she's been truly attached to the business as a family business for decades now. 

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Greg’s line about wanting something and planning on something your whole life and not getting it is SERIOUSLY great with Joan’s reaction. Oh yeah, she knows about that. She’s no doubt known for a while that this marriage is not the one she’s dreamed of or worked for, but this moment she admits it to herself. Still, that vase thing makes me wince. I think she’d have really hurt him!

It really goes to show what an amazing actress Joan is and how much she works at "effortlessly" playing the cheerleader to men. When first watching the ep, I distinctly remember having this impression when watching Joan coach Greg through his interview to be a psychiatrist. "Wow, Joan really loves this asshole and sees lovable qualities in him. I'm amazed. When is it going to register that he's a rapist loser?" When Joan smashed the vase over his head, only THEN did I fully get that she was unbelievably disappointed in him and angry at him and regretted their whole marriage. 

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I love how Jon Hamm is always so clear that Don is TERRIFIED of being found out. Because obviously it goes against Don’s manly image—the direction even shows his hand go limp when he’s confronted by Betty, like losing an erection. Viewers might be jaded about Don’s secret after 7 seasons but Don never is. You can really see how it doesn’t even just make him afraid of jail or whatever, but that it probably taps into all the feelings he had where suddenly everyone’s pointing at him and saying WHORE CHILD!

Yes. It also strikes against his arguments of "It was just a name change. It all happened in the past. You know who I am now so what difference does it make on who I was. Our lives now- the house, the kids, the marriage- is all real." I actually think there's a rationality to those arguments. I mean, why can't Don leave that crap in the past and instead, be judged on who he is now. Why does dog-food get to have a fresh start with a new name but people can't? But the thing is that it's not all in the past. To compare Don Draper to Jean Valjean, I think there's a sympathetic similarity to Don's type of desertion from IMO wrongly fought war like Korea and Jean stealing a loaf of bread and then, trying to steal candlesticks. However on a psychological level, the fact that there's no statute of limitations on desertion even today but yet, we currently have statutes of limitation on petty theft and the fact that Don took a dead man's name while Jean just called himself something else means something on a the moral weight of those identity makeovers and how Don lives like there's no tomorrow while Jean builds a future, certainly before Inspector Javert renewed his hunt but even afteward. 

As usual, Jon Hamm is spectacular in The Gypsy and the Hobo and its one of his best performances. However, I think January Jones turned in an arguably more impressive performance in how she had to really show the conflict between the urge to comfort Don versus the righteous fury at Don. She really did a perfect job at balancing two completely contradictory powerful emotions but within Betty's restrained, controlled affect. 

With regard to Joan, I agree with Luckylynn's post entirely. I also think it's possible that Joan dumped Greg, but she was still counting on spousal support money coming from the army for her and Kevin and she still wanted to stay in the sort-of-cocoon that she's still married and doesn't have to think about the next step in her life. This is all very understandable and INCREDIBLY relatable to me. That's something. I also love Joan a lot (even though she's hella flawed like the whole cast) but I...have her at more of a distance than some of the other characters like Don/Peggy who I particularly relate to or Betty where I'm close to women like her or Roger who I find particularly charming.  

She does make a choice to dump Greg in July but not take any steps to actually dissolve the marriage until he served her near Christmas. I think couples that cohabitate together feel more of a compulsion to actually dissolve the marriage, especially when it is a very angry divorce as Joan/Greg was, because they'd like to rid themselves of the spouse that they can't stand. However, Joan wasn't in a hurry to actually get the divorce because she didn't have to deal with Greg. He was away. Greg was always a feeling of regret and heartbreak for Joan, but from far away, he could just be a source of spousal pay and the vague comfort that she has a husband and doesn't have to think about dating or finding a new husband. It finally hits Joan as a blow in when she's served that she has to start all over with a baby. And then in the next ep, Joan whores herself out for Jaguar while she's still feeling raw and financially nervous from the divorce.

Edited August 26, 2016 by Melancholy

[sistermagpie]

36 minutes ago, Melancholy said:

This could be over-morbid but I wonder if Abigail/Dick ate the horse that killed Archie.

They either ate it or sold it, definitely. No doubt in my mind!

36 minutes ago, Melancholy said:

It's really a lot of anger and petulance for a twice-married guy that was dumped decades ago who doesn't even carry a torch for the dumper and never considered her the one.  

Yeah, he masks it under his usual humor and charm so it doesn't sound as scary as it could coming from someone else but it really is a lot of anger. It's all right there at his fingertips the way she betrayed him even though he doesn't actually want her back and doesn't honestly seem to feel her loss as a big blow to his life. He just still can't really accept that time he had to feel that pain. It's so in-keeping with the way he never misses a chance to remind Don that he was judgy over Roger marrying Jane and then "went out and did the same thing." It's never not going to be something that bothers him.

I hadn't thought about the war connection with Roger but yeah, that's very true too. Excellent thing to remember!

39 minutes ago, Melancholy said:

I actually think there's a rationality to those arguments. I mean, why can't Don leave that crap in the past and instead, be judged on who he is now. Why does dog-food get to have a fresh start with a new name but people can't? But the thing is that it's not all in the past.

Watching it this time I was thinking about how characters on The Americans say similar things and yet even though the lies on that show are bigger than Don's, they can actually mean what they're saying because they relate to the lie so differently than Don. Don's so ashamed of who he is it's not in the past at all. Plus even the person he is now is someone who's often hiding because of his secret and his shame. From Don's pov in that scene, sadly, he might be saying "But why can't you judge me as I am now--a successful businessman with respect?" but Betty would hear "Judge me as I am now" and remember all his lying and the way he's humiliated her. And just that he put so much effort as coming across as a certain thing that he isn't. Don so often seems to only be able to swing between being a superstar and being a terrible person in his head.

I mean, just think of his "I was surprised you ever loved me" line and Betty's understandable reaction "Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?" He does such a good job covering up that insecurity that when he actually voices it it always sounds like a handy excuse or justification. 

42 minutes ago, Melancholy said:

She really did a perfect job at balancing two completely contradictory powerful emotions but within Betty's restrained, controlled affect. 

I love JJ in those scenes. She just nails it and has so much going on. Despite the fact that Don's the one on the hot seat Betty's almost more interesting to watch, maybe because she's suddenly in such a position of power with Don, with him not even able to light himself a cigarette. And you can see her take that in. Sometimes it seems like it's not until she sees Don here that she really starts to understand just how much he isn't the person she thought he was. Just because he's suddenly so afraid and weak and childlike. I don't think she could have really predicted that after so many years of Don being so elusive and such a good storyteller. And her reaction to that is really complicated--it's not like she's relishes the chance to turn the tables on him for that time she was the one wandering around in her rumpled party dress. This revelation really does, I think, improve their relationship even if it ends their marriage. Like I said in an earlier post, it surprises me that when I go back and watch these earlier eps Don is superficially more together but really seems sadder because he's so isolated from other people by his persona. Betty really can't start relating to him more honestly until that image crumbles. 

I also agree on Joan's reaction about Greg. I think she had ever reason to want to put off dealing with the divorce and Greg yet again went out and made the decision for her because it's what he wanted. And he sent her the papers at work so she could be humiliated yet again. Greg had such a toxic relationship with Joan's job at all times, too. He raped her in the office, made her quit her job too soon and then she couldn't go back and had to work in a department store and go to Roger for help. Of course he also sends divorce papers to the receptionist who can tell the whole company. Joan was really invested in her professional image and Greg struck out at that at every opportunity. Even after all that time together he never got what that meant to her--or else just never stopped seeing it as something he resented and wanted to attack.

[txhorns79]

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made her quit her job too soon and then she couldn't go back and had to work in a department store

Did Greg make her quit?  I don't recall that being clear. 

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I love JJ in those scenes. She just nails it and has so much going on. Despite the fact that Don's the one on the hot seat Betty's almost more interesting to watch, maybe because she's suddenly in such a position of power with Don, with him not even able to light himself a cigarette. And you can see her take that in. Sometimes it seems like it's not until she sees Don here that she really starts to understand just how much he isn't the person she thought he was. Just because he's suddenly so afraid and weak and childlike. I don't think she could have really predicted that after so many years of Don being so elusive and such a good storyteller. And her reaction to that is really complicated--it's not like she's relishes the chance to turn the tables on him for that time she was the one wandering around in her rumpled party dress. This revelation really does, I think, improve their relationship even if it ends their marriage.

I thought it was a nice scene.  You can tell Betty wasn't expecting him to simply fall apart when she confronted him, and she seems honestly concerned over just how quickly Don turns to jelly.   

[sistermagpie]

56 minutes ago, txhorns79 said:

Did Greg make her quit?  I don't recall that being clear. 

As I remember it, it's not that he forced her to quit. But she was following the traditional script--one he agreed to as well--where she stopped working when he became chief resident or whatever it was. Then he didn't get that and told her whelp, you have to go back to work and she couldn't go back to SC because she'd be too ashamed.

So the issue isn't that she wanted to keep working and he made her quit but that she quit with the understanding he would be chief resident and support them in NYC. Greg himself seemed to present this as a done deal. Then it fell through in ways he should have been prepared for and Joan had already quit her job. Had Greg been more realistic she probably would have held onto the job until the residency was absolutely certain at least. So in her mind I think she sees him as the reason she quit her job too soon and wound up having to flail around for something else to support them--and she's not totally wrong in blaming him for that.  She made choices she wouldn't have made based on him doing things he didn't/couldn't do and Joan had to pick up the slack.

[Melancholy]

On August 26, 2016 at 3:18 PM, sistermagpie said:

Yeah, he masks it under his usual humor and charm so it doesn't sound as scary as it could coming from someone else but it really is a lot of anger. It's all right there at his fingertips the way she betrayed him even though he doesn't actually want her back and doesn't honestly seem to feel her loss as a big blow to his life. He just still can't really accept that time he had to feel that pain. It's so in-keeping with the way he never misses a chance to remind Don that he was judgy over Roger marrying Jane and then "went out and did the same thing." It's never not going to be something that bothers him.

It makes me wish that there was more time spent on Roger/Margaret after The Monolith when Margaret definitively rejected Roger and he felt it as a rejection of him personally instead of Margaret throwing another weird tantrum that he could dismiss or slough off. Being rejected by your child is one of the biggest rejections of all, if not the biggest. I have to believe there's a lot of anger where "Margaret is...lost, so she's not in the will anymore" is just the very tip of the iceberg. Joan rejected Roger definitively in S4-5 but Roger really reacted pretty maturely and kindly over it. However, I think that's a testimony to how much Roger loved Joan and how Joan really was The One that Joan is actually beyond petulance in some ways. 

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Watching it this time I was thinking about how characters on The Americans say similar things and yet even though the lies on that show are bigger than Don's, they can actually mean what they're saying because they relate to the lie so differently than Don. Don's so ashamed of who he is it's not in the past at all. Plus even the person he is now is someone who's often hiding because of his secret and his shame. From Don's pov in that scene, sadly, he might be saying "But why can't you judge me as I am now--a successful businessman with respect?" but Betty would hear "Judge me as I am now" and remember all his lying and the way he's humiliated her. And just that he put so much effort as coming across as a certain thing that he isn't. Don so often seems to only be able to swing between being a superstar and being a terrible person in his head.

I don't watch The Americans but this still makes sense to me. You know, another pivotal difference is that Don actually doesn't even want a fresh start. I don't know if that's the case for The Americans characters. However when you get down to it, Don doesn't enjoy just being judged as his Don Draper self. He craves absolution for his past Dick Whitman self, forgiveness for his present acts when evaluated in the context of his past, a chance to voice the opinions that he came by the VERY hard way in the past and for people to get the context of those opinions, do-overs of what went wrong in the past- all of the benefits of history out in the open. Don has a hard time saying that he just wants to be judged by the present, when he doesn't even want things that way. Betty hits on that by noting that Don seemed like he WANTED to get caught by leaving the Dick Whitman Box of Secrets in their home instead of like, putting in a savings deposit box of Liberty Capital Savings EXECUTIVE account of hanky-panky that Don came up with himself. 

It bears particularly relevance in their marriage since Betty kind of knows that Don punishes her or acts like he dislikes her for some strange reason. "Do you hate me?" from A Night to Remember. Don's backstory is part of the origin. He wants acceptance on real terms and then he punishes people for not delivering that to him even though he doesn't provide them with any of the context to provide such acceptance. 

Greg did discourage Joan from pursuing the script-reading role by basically saying that she'll have to quit. "Joanie, you should be watching soap operas not reading them with a box of bonbons on your lap them, to soothe your cravings." After Greg found out that he wasn't going to be chief resident, he told Joan to get her old job back or get another one, but it was still an order to financially bail them out instead of Greg actually supporting Joan's career for herself. The fact that it was an order seems particularly clear when Joan had to get a job as a shopgirl, even though it felt demeaning to her, while Greg had the leisure time to look for his ideal job and actually continued to bitch about psychiatry was beneath him when Joan was helping him. Clearly, one career deserved to be carefully built to deliver ultimate prestige while the other wasn't a career so much as an emergency measure to put groceries on the table and it was very clear which was which. 

When Gail and Joan were discussing life when Greg came back, Gail put it as "Greg's not going to allow you to work" but I think Gail got that more from society and how doctor's wives live than from Greg himself. 

But I do get that Greg didn't explicitly command Joan to quit, against her wishes. Joan herself was walking around saying stuff like "If you really make the right moves, you'll be in the country and you won't have to come to work at all" or insulting Peggy for trying to make work-conversation while waiting for the elevator of "I can't wait until I'm out of here!" I think it's very likely that Joan even told Greg that she wanted to raise their children at home because Joan sure seemed to express those sentiments elsewhere. And it could be hard to tag Greg specifically with the societal position that women should stay at home if possible that everyone was internalizing, including Joan. However, I actually do think that there's a clearer animus from Greg to Joan having a career for herself compared to most of the guys on the show. 

Edited August 28, 2016 by Melancholy

[qtpye]

Yes, it was like Joan was supposed to support Greg in everything, including financially, just for the honor of being married to "a handsome doctor" on the outside.

I also thought it was interesting that Joan was the type of woman "who commanded attention" with her poise and beauty, but most of the men in her life took her for granted, because she was so efficient.

Roger can't stand to have Jane out of his life, so he proposes, when he has had an affair with Joan for years and never seemed to want to propose to her.  One could argue perhaps Joan is the one who did not want him to leave his wife, but it still makes her kind of look foolish.

I also thought it was interesting that Joan's mother raised her to be noticed.  Joan's mother seemed like such an ordinary woman and not the type of person you imagine raising someone like Joan.

[sistermagpie]

7 hours ago, Melancholy said:

It makes me wish that there was more time spent on Roger/Margaret after The Monolith when Margaret definitively rejected Roger and he felt it as a rejection of him personally instead of Margaret throwing another weird tantrum that he could dismiss or slough off

Yeah, the more I think about it the more sympathetic I am to Margaret here. Because Roger is Teflon. She spends the whole show trying different ways to get his attention or get to him (sort of like what Betty says to Don about how loving him is the worst way to get to him) and ultimately nothing works. She comes close when he's down in the mud realizing that she really isn't coming home, but I think afterwards he's able to put it all aside. He's just so good at keeping his cool and she's totally not able to really spar with him verbally.

7 hours ago, Melancholy said:

Don doesn't enjoy just being judged as his Don Draper self. He craves absolution for his past Dick Whitman self, forgiveness for his present acts when evaluated in the context of his past, a chance to voice the opinions that he came by the VERY hard way in the past and for people to get the context of those opinions, do-overs of what went wrong in the past- all of the benefits of history out in the open.

Yup, I agree. He says he wants a fresh start but he really wants that fresh start to include him as a whole new person which is never going to happen. Because he does want to be accepted for his actual self. He just keeps thinking he has to be somebody else for that to happen. And he's not right at all. It's like you said when you really look at his story it's not like it's that terrible. People do change their names, etc.

Of course, an even bigger example of Don needing to be accepted for himself is the Hershey Pitch. With Betty he just kept the info in the house. With Hershey he just announced it to the whole room after keeping a lid on it for so long. He got fired for it, but he was also able to work his way back with honest work, which on this show always seems to be the best thing for the characters' development.

7 hours ago, Melancholy said:

But I do get that Greg didn't explicitly command Joan to quit, against her wishes. Joan herself was walking around saying stuff like "If you really make the right moves, you'll be in the country and you won't have to come to work at all" or insulting Peggy for trying to make work-conversation while waiting for the elevator of "I can't wait until I'm out of here!"

Yes, Joan's not taking her own career seriously until late in the game. Even when Harry passes her over for the TV job she doesn't fight for the job, she agrees that she's happier just having her old job back. So it's not like they're fighting that battle openly. But while she's good at putting men first she doesn't really like it. Underneath she totally sees that Greg's career and life is being put above her own. And then Greg doesn't even hold up his end of the bargain. Joan does everything possible to let Greg have that career and then he messes up and isn't good enough and even makes it difficult for her to do so. So even if she's not yet admitting that she loved her job at SC and sacrificed it for Greg, she *can* be angry over the guy being a loser and a bad provider. I mean, Joan would be angry stuck in a house with a successful husband but Greg makes it even worse. And also maybe gives her at least a justification for being angry. She can imagine it's just about Greg messing up and keeping her from the housewife life she wants instead of feeling forced to want that life to begin with.

[sistermagpie]

Great little embryonic opening with Pete who hilariously complains the cocoa somebody bought him was instant. This is a boy who used to have a maid to these things for him. But at least he apologizes for it.

Pete tells Trudy he didn’t hear the details of Lane telling him he didn’t get the accounts job because he was only aware of Lane’s “frog mouth” flapping. When Pete and Lane fight in Signal 30, he’ll call him Mr. Toad for a call-back. MW said Pete really never forgave Lane for that.

After watching out more on this re-watch for Pete and Ken working for this job it really does seem not just like Pete worked harder to win (Ken basically announced he wasn’t competing at the start) but that Lane isn’t looking for the right qualities, ones that Don will spot. Maybe an accounts man who puts clients into a satisfied haze isn’t best for the company, after all. Don really wouldn’t want clients without needs.  They’re complacent.

LOL! “Duck’s not married.” “Then why are you with him?” (With the extra button of Pete walking by right then.)

LOL! “Just because she went to India doesn’t mean she’s not an idiot.” Mona the lioness.

God, I remember loving Roger’s predicament here the first time and it’s just as good now. Those parallel scenes of Mona dealing with Margaret and Roger dealing with Jane, with each other the only “grown-ups” in the equation (except Joan later) is so fantastic. It’s just so organically what he would be living with. Jane also honestly says everything Roger does is for Margaret which is...not true.

So starting the ep we have Jane and Margaret seeming very much like kids and Pete also having a lot of child imagery around him. But still, Pete’s talk with Trudy is a big contrast to Joan and Greg’s earlier conversation about his career crisis.

Paul’s great listening to Peggy’s phone call with Duck. I can’t help but watch her calls with Duck and think of Duck later with Pete. that is, that Pete comes out so much better with his relationship with Duck, obviously. He gets all the advantages of Duck and Peggy gets the disadvantages.

Love the newsbreak in the background of the Pete/Harry convo because Harry has to have the TV on but neither of them are watching it. The word “Dallas” means nothing to them but of course the audience is now totally focused on it.

The one secretary on the phone when Don walks into the office with everyone listening to the news has little sweat stains under her armpits because of the heat. Great touch. In fact, nice odd little touch having that whole little story with the office too cold and then too hot. I don’t know if it “means” anything, but I like it.

I also wonder about Margaret’s suggestion that this is all a sign she shouldn’t get married.  I mean, would she have been happier if she hadn’t? The obvious answer for me is yes, but then, to my 2016 eyes she’s just too young to get married given her maturity level. She’s living in a time when a girl that age was supposed to get married anyway even if she seemed like a child. But I’m just wondering if it was better for her to go through all those different phases of trying to grow up the old way (the wedding, the child, the therapy) before she went hippie, or if it would have been better if she’d experienced that stuff on her own.  Margaret’s 16 when the show starts, which means she’s 26 by the end. She’s still in the age range of the counter culture by 1970.

Don’s reaction to grief is to object to the kids watching the news and tell her to take a pill. He himself takes one later too. It’s really interesting how he’s not really prepared as a character to deal with this. I mean, in a meta way. Like that’s the point, that of all these characters Don *isn’t* one who’s created to react deeply to this big historical moment. This isn't the kind of crisis where people much look to Don--it's an echo of the end of the show that way. It seems like he himself feels like he's outside of the it.

Love that Pete’s suit is totally something he’d wear to a funeral even though he’s supposed to be going to a wedding. Trudy’s dress is a bit more festive, but the blue is totally in sympathy with the black.

The distinction Pete makes about not going to the wedding echoes his thoughts when MLK is assassinated—and the opposite of what a lot of people often argued were Pete’s priorities  He doesn’t have the beliefs he has because he thinks they’re better for business. When they’re in conflict the beliefs are more important. Harry Crane is taking the position he’ll take later too. Pete’s disgusted that Harry was looking at his paperwork to calculate the commercials that wouldn’t be aired. This ep has a surprising number of Pete beats that come up later. Don' too, in a way.

This wedding is so terrible but I’d kind of love having it as the story of my wedding if I was Margaret. Roger’s speech is fantastic. The guy really can smooth over any situation. His talking to Joan about the assassination is on the nose but it has to be. Jane’s just babbling about how he was handsome and she’s drunk, but she fit in more with the younger guys in the kitchen watching TV, just like old times. If Roger hadn’t derailed her with the marriage proposal she, like Margaret, might have had a very different trajectory. Emil’s later advice to Megan applies to her in a different way—she skipped to the end of her story.

The scenes with Don after the reveal of his ID now remind me of him at the end, the way there was a crisis and he wanted to be there for his family and the just said nope. He looks so scared and vulnerable throughout the ep and his “Don Draper” moments seem a lot more calculated. I mean, like he’s consciously trying to play the matinee idol role even though he’s not feeling it.

I always liked how when Henry asks Betty’s favorite movie she says Singin’ in the Rain because at the time this first aired people thought—as they did with every women character—that Betty was going to go full women’s lib. But Betty’s sticking with what she knows. She doesn’t want to blow up her life. And I like how Singin’ in the Rain is a movie from the recent past that was made about a time even further past. I think it was sort of a flop, even, when it came out because the era of that kind of musical was coming to an end. More importantly, it’s specifically about a transitional period in Hollywood and how the characters adjust. Betty actually does the smartest thing she could for herself. She makes her stand as a woman of the conservative establishment. She still evolves and doesn’t always totally fit in, but she’s got a secure marriage to do that in. When Henry says he can make her happy, by gum, he’s actually right.

Trudy really echoes where Betty is too when she says “You did everything they asked for...but you don’t owe them anything.” Then she starts planning Pete’s own lifeboat even though she started the episode thinking they had to go to the wedding and told him to just wait it out. I guess that’s why this ep shows them working well together the way they influence each other throughout the ep. It’s a nice subtle to nod to the message that the old rules no longer apply—people can just get shot on television.

From Don’s pov I can see how it probably really feels like Betty’s saying “I don’t love you anymore because I know who/what you really are—meaning Dick Whitman.”

Again Sally notices the tension between Don and Betty. And it might be reading to her as Betty just being cold since Don’s the one in the more vulnerable position in the end.

I love that Peggy’s making the connection between the Aquanet ad and the assassination.

Edited September 2, 2016 by sistermagpie

[Melancholy]

14 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

After watching out more on this re-watch for Pete and Ken working for this job it really does seem not just like Pete worked harder to win (Ken basically announced he wasn’t competing at the start) but that Lane isn’t looking for the right qualities, ones that Don will spot. Maybe an accounts man who puts clients into a satisfied haze isn’t best for the company, after all. Don really wouldn’t want clients without needs.  They’re complacent.

I think Ken was trying hard and his comment that he didn't see it as a competition was bullshit. However, I agree that Pete is the more talented account man. Ken did draw in new clients in John Deere and Patio, even though I don't think either signed and generated real revenue. Pete brought in Jai Lai, which did sign and generate revenues. On that crucial metric, I'd say that Pete won, if John Deere didn't ultimately sign. If John Deere signed, I guess it's a different story. As Don celebrated his ideal of business mentalities, "You're hungry even though you've just eaten." The Admiral meeting didn't go well because the execs were racists but Pete was trying to get them to spend money in a whole new arena, which between the new advertising and the expected profits would increase SC's commissions. Pete has that kind of strategy to him. Ken doesn't. It's like how in Dow, Ken complains to Harry in a fed-up, "don't even want to solve this problem" way because of the Nepalm issue. Harry, who has Pete's sense of hustle and strategy, made Dow's complaining into a selling point to pitch an expensive TV special.  

I also think Ken was trying in S3 because Ken had two waves of generating new business- Patio and John Deere coming in for meetings in S3 and when SCDP asked him to join in S4 because he was bringing Bird Eye and Mountain Dew. Those were times when Ken was trying to get jobs/promotions for himself. The rest of the time, Ken's new-business track record is pretty undistinguished. I guess there's Topaz where the lead came from Peggy's friend, Peggy did all of the talking in the pitch meeting, and the exec was notably cranky when Peggy left. "You didn't get a girl's opinion. I used to take that as a given around here." But Ken was...there and seemed proud of himself. LOL. 

Yup, MW very deliberately wrote that Pete never forgave Lane for picking Ken over him. Although, Pete did forgive Don for picking Duck over him even to the point of blackmail and Pete forgave Peggy for giving their kid away and picking her career over trying to be with him and their child.  I don't think it's just a matter that Lane picked Ken over Pete. Pete was particularly infuriated that Lane was a numbers bureaucrat who "can't close a car door"  who was wrongly given the power to evaluate account-men when he knows nothing about the business and Lane still made a choice that Pete disagreed with. The contempt behind that indignation, IMO, increased when Don essentially immediately reversed Lane's choice by bringing Pete as partner instead of Ken. To Pete, it just felt like Lane was really, really wrong and Pete has this almost unusual element where Don, the top dog in their business, contradicted Lane on a really dramatic level almost instantly so Lane must have been really, REALLY wrong in Pete's mind. 

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Paul’s great listening to Peggy’s phone call with Duck. I can’t help but watch her calls with Duck and think of Duck later with Pete. that is, that Pete comes out so much better with his relationship with Duck, obviously. He gets all the advantages of Duck and Peggy gets the disadvantages.

True. Duck approaches Pete with friendly professionalism at all times because they're not attracted to each other. With Peggy, Duck saw an opening for a younger girlfriend on her way up who'd be his emotional support and validate and comfort him even on his downward spiral. Duck craved lurching for that far more than another professionally friendly relationship. However, Peggy hung on longer than she would have otherwise because Duck approached her with equal-to-Pete levels of friendly professionalism. However, that's what Peggy was truly reaching for- I don't think Peggy remotely to have a romantic relationship with Duck. She wanted sex in a dry spell, a friendly business contact, and to stick it to Don in her own head- but that's it. 

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I also wonder about Margaret’s suggestion that this is all a sign she shouldn’t get married.  I mean, would she have been happier if she hadn’t? The obvious answer for me is yes, but then, to my 2016 eyes she’s just too young to get married given her maturity level. She’s living in a time when a girl that age was supposed to get married anyway even if she seemed like a child. But I’m just wondering if it was better for her to go through all those different phases of trying to grow up the old way (the wedding, the child, the therapy) before she went hippie, or if it would have been better if she’d experienced that stuff on her own.  Margaret’s 16 when the show starts, which means she’s 26 by the end. She’s still in the age range of the counter culture by 1970.

I think Margaret got married earlier than she even had to by the times. She got married at 19. In S1, Roger complained to Joan that Margaret wasn't interested in going to college, working, or doing charity work. The first two were marriage-delaying options for Margaret where she could have met a better suitor. I was notably surprised when Mona analyzed that she approved of Brooks because she thought he was okay for the time being in The Monolith- like she envisioned it as a starter-marriage. That seemed weird to me.

There's a vibe that Roger and Mona were so fed up with Margaret's bratty disinterest in anything and aggravated by how she couldn't get out of bed and needed to see a shrink that they were happy to go ahead and let her marry a guy below her station just to get her out of the house and make her another man's problem. Roger was the most problematically disinterested but I think Mona deserves some blame too. That "I was hoping it'd be a starter marriage" is a big-ass red flag. Don and Betty are harshly critiqued as parents but they both demonstrated FAR more interest in 16-year old Sally being successful in high school to lead to a successful adulthood than Roger and Mona did for Margaret.  Some of that is because Sally is more a 16-year old to be proud of but I don't think Margaret's disappointing personalty is much of an excuse for such bad parenting. I think that's partly what snowballed Margaret's unhappiness because she saw married life modeled as a life of luxury. That's what she was promised as a child but instead she felt shunted into a lower-middle class life. That's partly why interested, supportive but retro rich parents take an interest in their daughter also marrying wealthy so she can keep her standard of living. Like the Vogels did with Trudy. I think Margaret had more options as a Sterling to have a more fulfilling youth and find a better catch as a husband. The actress who played Margaret is also very pretty. It's not like she was born rich but she didn't have the looks to successfully date and marry. She really could have done better. And I think even average rich retro snooty parents would have told her not to jump at the first proposal like that from such a milquetoast non-prospect as Brooks. 

Roger also said The Monolith something like "I understand that everyone your age is running away and screwing off, but you can't. You're a mother."

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Don’s reaction to grief is to object to the kids watching the news and tell her to take a pill. He himself takes one later too. It’s really interesting how he’s not really prepared as a character to deal with this. I mean, in a meta way. Like that’s the point, that of all these characters Don *isn’t* one who’s created to react deeply to this big historical moment. This isn't the kind of crisis where people much look to Don--it's an echo of the end of the show that way. It seems like he himself feels like he's outside of the it.

That's a great point that it's a historical show but the main character really has trouble emotionally reacting to historical moments. I think that's one of the deliberate ironies of Mad Men, contrast to something like The Wonder Years where Kevin feels deeply on every historical moment that becomes a plot point. I think it may be worth, though, contrasting Don Draper with Mary Crawley in this regard. Downton Abbey and MM being, IMO, the main period piece dramas of this 2006-2016 time period. IMO, Mary Crawley is really the main character of Downton Abbey, even though it has more of these illusions that it's an ensemble than MM which is very clear-eyed about how Don is the main character. She also doesn't particularly deeply react to the history happening around her, compared to others like her sisters. Don and Mary have this Jim Cutler logic of "I choose not to care about events in which I have no participation or stake", speaking to their shared cynicism, selfishness, superior intelligence, pragmatism, and IMO, knowledge that Mary was born at the top of heap and Don clawed his way to the top of the heap so they're not really looking for game-changing history. Don is more keenly aware of his privilege probably because he had to actually work for it, even though he deliberately tries to ignore the reality that he is actually somewhat victimized by retro standards on mental health and masculinity so he does have more of a stake in 1960s social movements than he'll admit. Mary, by contrast, over-emphasizes the one area where she's victimized- the fact that she's a woman- to pretend like she's in more need of modern change than she really is as one of the most privileged women in England as the eldest daughter of a wealthy family whose father and husband confer on her additional freedoms and privileges to alleviate (even if not to eliminate) the institutional sexism.  Like even Pete despite all of his privileges still feels people ahead of him on the ladder and IMO, feels some guilt for being born on the well, not third base but maybe second base enough to be upset that JFK died because "it seemed like everything was going to change." 

IMO, Don's fear-emotion is his most dominant one. He has hard-core emotional reactions to the Cuban Missile Crisis and the general threat of nuclear war (see The Jet Set). However, his reaction on other historical events is mostly intellectual with some muted, drowned out, very faint emotional reaction. Like, I think Don does feel the indignation that the 1960 election was so crooked but only to the point of musing "It's not fair" a little out of turn engendering Cooper's patronizing "Fair? Very good". And I think Don is kind of sad at JFK or MLK dying but not THAT sad to the point that he's on the same level of most everyone in the country who was regarding it as a huge tragedy. I think it's deliberate the the Moon Landing is the first major historical event where Don was actually genuinely feeling what most people were feeling at that time. 

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I always liked how when Henry asks Betty’s favorite movie she says Singin’ in the Rain because at the time this first aired people thought—as they did with every women character—that Betty was going to go full women’s lib. But Betty’s sticking with what she knows. She doesn’t want to blow up her life. And I like how Singin’ in the Rain is a movie from the recent past that was made about a time even further past. I think it was sort of a flop, even, when it came out because the era of that kind of musical was coming to an end. More importantly, it’s specifically about a transitional period in Hollywood and how the characters adjust. Betty actually does the smartest thing she could for herself. She makes her stand as a woman of the conservative establishment. She still evolves and doesn’t always totally fit in, but she’s got a secure marriage to do that in. When Henry says he can make her happy, by gum, he’s actually right.

I don't think you're right about Singin' in the Rain. IMDB says:

The film rang up a final price tag of $2,540,800, $157,000 of which went to Walter Plunkett's costumes alone. Although the final price overshot MGM's budget by $665,000, the studio quickly realized the wisdom of its investment when the film returned a $7.7-million profit upon its initial release.

I think Singin' in the Rain was an immediate hit. Moreover, the 1950s was part of the heyday of big movie musicals and Singin' in the Rain came out in 1952. As much as I love it, 1969 Hello Dolly is more a symbol of a musical starting out as a flop because it came at the end of the big musical era. I think the true Hollywood musical era was the 1930s through the mid 1960s. I always thought the thing that stuck out was that Singin' in the Rain was such a happy movie. Betty was such a depressing, sad character, especially in S1-3, so it was a bit of a shock for her to pick such a bubbly big musical. It makes it clearer that Don must have really worn her down. Also, I wouldn't say that Jon Hamm looks like Gene Kelly but there's a similar athletic, dark, handsome, old movie, excellent sonorous voice appeal. Don's outfit in The Grownups (the casual pants and sweater over the white shirt) is how Gene Kelly is costumed through most of Singin' the Rain. Gene Kelly even plays a DON Lockwood in Singin' in the Rain. It gives some look into the Hollywood fantasies that Betty had when she married Don, but then how the marriage wore her down so she was far afield from even the girl who fangirled the movie, let alone an actual player in a real life version of the movie. 

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Again Sally notices the tension between Don and Betty. And it might be reading to her as Betty just being cold since Don’s the one in the more vulnerable position in the end.

Yup. "You made him sleep in Gene's room AND IT'S SCARY IN THERE."

Edited September 2, 2016 by Melancholy

[sistermagpie]

17 minutes ago, Melancholy said:

I think Ken was trying hard and his comment that he didn't see it as a competition was bullshit.

True--it's more that Ken didn't like to look like he was trying. His speech to Pete might have been trying to make Pete feel less pressure so he'd try less. I love that Ken's last scene is him being nakedly competitive at Dow over an industrial film. 

Pete has the advantage of being a major character so we see more what he's doing, but I think it's also that we see him actively looking for ways to be a better accounts man. Like, as you said, the Admiral thing. It backfired on him, but it backfired because he was looking to do something new to get more money and looking at things a different way. If Ken was truly just making clients feel like they didn't have any problems in that kind of situation then sure he would have convinced Admiral they shouldn't need new business, but it would be better to have somebody rising to the challenge when it seems impossible. 

21 minutes ago, Melancholy said:

To Pete, it just felt like Lane was really, really wrong and Pete has this almost unusual element where Don, the top dog in their business, contradicted Lane on a really dramatic level almost instantly so Lane must have been really, REALLY wrong in Pete's mind. 

Yes, it's interesting now to think about how Pete held that against him because as you pointed out, this isn't a guy who just holds grudges against anybody who ever told him no.  I also thought this time how Lane was kind of telling Pete to be more like him, accept that he wasn't going to be one of the winners. 

24 minutes ago, Melancholy said:

I think Margaret got married earlier than she even had to by the times. She got married at 19. In S1, Roger complained to Joan that Margaret wasn't interested in going to college, working, or doing charity work.

Oh yeah--It was all her idea. I just mean that at the time there was more of an attitude that a girl getting married would be getting a husband to take care of her instead of worrying she's not mature enough to really be a wife. I agree, though, that Roger and Mona do seem to both have a similar dismissive attitude about Margaret. Roger might be the star wit of the family but Mona's quick with a good line herself and it's hard to imagine Margaret really being able to break through with either of them. She isn't like either of her parents in her personality too much. She seems to keep trying all these different poses that are supposedly going to make her happy and then wanting something else.

Re: Don and historical events, I really do love that the show does that because it seems so right for Don. There's probably no time in his life he's really felt completely part of the world and he's always felt like his survival is at stake so he's not going to throw himself into someone else's tragedy. In some ways Don's never really lived in a world where things happen according to rules (he wouldn't be Don Draper if that was true) so he's not going to be asking "What's happening?" about the assassinations of Kennedy or Oswald. 

30 minutes ago, Melancholy said:

I don't think you're right about Singin' in the Rain. IMDB says:

Thank you! I got my idea that it was a flop and that it was old-fashioned literally from somebody once saying that to me and I never looked it up to see if it was true. It just stuck in my head, despite all those 50s musicals coming out! And also yes, I forgot to mention Don's outfit because I kept noticing that during the episode. That sweater/pants combo is very Don Lockwood and Don wears it really well. It is nice to think of Betty's favorite movie being so fluffy--it's not just a fantasy because it's got songs and romance but it's really funny. Having Don dressed so much like Lockwood couldn't have been a coincidence. He looks so sophisticated at the wedding and he even dances with Betty--there's even that moment where Betty is looking at Don and Henry back to back and Don looks much better. Then at home he's looking like the lead in her favorite movie, but it doesn't matter. The illusion's gone.

[Melancholy]

58 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

True--it's more that Ken didn't like to look like he was trying. His speech to Pete might have been trying to make Pete feel less pressure so he'd try less. I love that Ken's last scene is him being nakedly competitive at Dow over an industrial film. 

Agree that Ken doesn't want to look like he's trying. I think it's possible that Ken was trying to falsely relax Pete. Pete sure takes it that way IMO, pretty understandably even if "Why don't we just run and hold hands and skip" sounds petulant. Like, Pete, dude, you THINK that but you don't SAY it. I tend to think more that Ken isn't even in touch with his own ambition. He wants to think that he's just a friendly good guy focused on his own better inner world between his family and his writing. He tries to be that guy. However, when something comes along that reminds Ken of why he'd like to fight from obnoxious co-workers to some desirable position right in front of him to some grudge that he developed, Ken's competitive instincts emerge. As a result, Ken's ambition is a little off-putting to me. Ken's not steadily trying to build a fortune or build a business or make a legacy in advertising.  I get and appreciate THAT. Instead, Ken's competitive instincts mainly visibly kick into gear when it's about beating someone else. 

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Pete has the advantage of being a major character so we see more what he's doing, but I think it's also that we see him actively looking for ways to be a better accounts man.

Pete is a major character. However, I do think that the series does Ken a little favor and continues to the ratchet up the Ken v. Pete suspense by making S3 fairly low-key for Pete in terms of his professional arc. A lot of Pete's professional arc actually occurs a little off field from Ken within the "Duck recruiting Peggy/Pete story." S3 doesn't feature a huge Don/Pete story, compared to S1-2. I think it's something that I could think of about the same number of account-stories between Ken and Pete. They both have equally featured reactions to the potential British invasion. 

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I also thought this time how Lane was kind of telling Pete to be more like him, accept that he wasn't going to be one of the winners. 

I think Pete really hears that when Lane thought that he was actually definitively ending their tension by telling Pete that he's grown very fond of Pete in Waldorf Stories. I think Lane thought it was a nice enough leap of a thing to say that it should mean that they'll be friends now. To Pete, it sounded like Lane was emphasizing the career disrespect by picking a diminutive "fond of" term. I'm not so up on the British v. American nuances- but I think that played a lot in what "fond of" was supposed to be taken as. 

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I agree, though, that Roger and Mona do seem to both have a similar dismissive attitude about Margaret. Roger might be the star wit of the family but Mona's quick with a good line herself and it's hard to imagine Margaret really being able to break through with either of them. She isn't like either of her parents in her personality too much. She seems to keep trying all these different poses that are supposedly going to make her happy and then wanting something else.

Very good point that Margaret was really at sea coming up against her witty, sparkling, sharp-witted parents and that it's very difficult to break past Roger's and Mona's substantial front of ironic sarcastic detachment. IMO, there's a subconscious element in Roger's scenes with Peggy and Sally that Roger's almost proving that he's capable of having a good fatherly vibe with a girl who's not "defective" but instead, spunky and confident and bright and quick-witted and like the kid that he thought he'd have. Even though as Joan and Mona point out, Roger and Margaret are linked through their failings. 

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It is nice to think of Betty's favorite movie being so fluffy--it's not just a fantasy because it's got songs and romance but it's really funny.

Singin' in the Rain is a great movie. Yes, it's a really happy movie but it derives a lot of its comedy through sharp satire. A bunch of the MM characters have really good taste in the books/movies that they prefer- and I think Don and Betty are at the top of that heap. They have mid-20th century aesthetics down cold. You know, Megan was supposedly the artist hipster potential advertising genius actress wife while Betty was the whitebread housewife. However, I get a much stronger sense of Betty as a true devourer of pop culture and books. I don't think we ever saw Megan read a book, even though she did say that she wanted to at the receptionist desk. However, we saw Betty read a fair amount of books at home. Megan went to movies but I didn't see her reference with the same alacrity as Betty's "Somewhere, there's a pregnant girl floating in a lake" or "Do you remember what happened to the little girl in Gone with the Wind?" I mean, I bet Megan went to all of the movies and likes pop culture a lot but I think there's a very good chance that Betty is more literary and more mentally quick on finding and conversing in literary/film allusions. 

Edited September 2, 2016 by Melancholy

[Dev F]

So I'm sad to have missed out on some of the recent rewatch talk, but now that I'm done binging Bojack Horseman I've begun putting on random Mad Men episodes while I eat dinner. I recently rewatched "New Business," which I've always thought of as a hugely underrated episode, and I realized that it begins with some foreshadowing of the "Buy the World a Coke" ad in the finale.

Basically, the first scene shows Don in the Francis home in Rye, making his sons milkshakes. Betty and Henry come home, and Don is immediately ready to get the hell out of there. Then there's this exchange:

Henry: "Don't rush off. You can finish your milkshake."
Bobby: "Make Henry one."
Don: "You give him a sip of yours."

This is what Don's revelation in the finale is all about, right? That he can be the means by which people reach out to one another, share things which each other, whether it's a Coke or a milkshake or their lives, but he's never going to be able to share them with those people himself? It's interesting that in this episode he already seems to know that; he just regards the notion with melancholy rather than satisfaction. (It's something you see throughout the final run of episode -- like in "Lost Horizon," when Diana's abandoned daughter insists, "If she won something, I should get it," and Don replies, "Yes. That makes sense.")

Henry's reply in the "New Business" scene is also interesting: "Maybe I'll make my own." I wonder if it's meant to suggest that part of what Don still has yet to accept at this point is that getting people to reach out to one another is good and valuable, better than letting them make it on their own.

Finally, I can't believe that it's taken till now for me to realize the real significance of the fact that SCDP changes its name to SC&P. All along I've been thinking of it as just a sad commentary on Don's erasure, him being removed from his own agency just like his initial from the company logo. But I realize now that his initial isn't just erased -- it's replaced by an ampersand, a symbol that seems inconsequential in and of itself but actually unites his former partners grammatically. Which, again, is exactly like the role Don ends up accepting in the series finale.

Edited September 8, 2016 by Dev F

[VCRTracking]

I know this belongs in the other roles for cast members but I had to put it here, Huge spoilers for Last Man on Earth but if you're planning on not watching the show, just check out this clip from the season premiere.

[sistermagpie]

Re-watching Shut the Door, Have a Seat and remembering how much I enjoyed this ep the first time, not knowing where it was going but loving the whole heist angle.

It apparently took me until now to make the connection that Don remembers his father’s death here because Betty’s asked for a divorce and he sees that in a very real way he’s leaving his own children’s lives too. That’s more poignant knowing what’s to come, how Don’s going to struggle with being present, loving his kids but feeling like he’s not good enough without the societal role to make him a father.

I also like the way it pulls together the whole theme of the season with Connie, who Don accuses here of wanting to put him in him place while calling him son. So he’s also presumably thinking about his father’s death in those terms—with his father going off to undersell himself. Roger, too, has an echo of that when he admits that he’s acted as if he’s started a business his whole life, but really he’s only inherited it. In keeping with his delayed maturity, he’s only now really striking out on his own.

Peggy’s turndown of Don is so great. I like how it’s played as one of those scenes where Peggy’s realizing what to do in the moment. You can see her looking ahead and seeing that life before her, the life where she’s unappreciated, and turning it down. Of course you can’t not watch it now and remember the scene where she leaves Don in The Other Woman. And of course the whole ep is putting off the inevitable of...is it Time & Life? Where Don tries to pull this same sort of escape trip again and McCann’s just not having it. Of course that Other Woman scene will seem foreshadowed even more later when Don goes to her apartment.

In the scene with Pete Don lays out all the things Pete saw coming, including the McCann buyout, and that reminds me of “A Tale of Two Cities” where Pete again tells Don what’s coming and Don just doesn’t care. He describes Pete as always looking forward and that is pretty consistent. When Don goes into his Lavender Haze in S5 Pete’s dragging the company forward inch by inch, and even when one could most obviously see Pete as looking back—when he regrets ruining his marriage—he actually is moving forward and evolve. In his case it’s not just a nostalgia thing.

Also, the first people wants to call is Secor Laxatives, which is also the company he thinks to call when he’s at Trudy’s and Don’s trying to save the company again. But I guess it’s nice that in this scene Pete asks Trudy to call them and she’s just ready to assist him (just as she gives that great assist of “Peter, can I talk to you?” when Pete seems about to be snotty). In the later scene Pete gets the idea and goes off to do it himself having spent the morning assisting Trudy in her sphere at the school (and doing it for their shared focus on the child rather than the work). He tells her to “sound like a secretary” and at the school Pete’s there to basically sound like a husband.

It was in a bar that Don accidentally ended Roger’s marriage by talking about his own. Here Roger accidentally drops the boom about Henry Francis. Kinda nice for Don to get blindsided by this sort of thing, though, what with all his cheating.

Don’s confrontation with Betty is still really ugly—and I really like the January Jones plays it physically. Betty still seems like a little girl playing grown up, yet she believably stands up to him. What’s really interesting is the way Don goes after her, because it’s so all about his own issues rather than what’s really happening. It’s almost just going for the cliché—you’re a whore, you’ve always looked down on me. That’s...just not really the dynamic throughout their marriage, except from Don’s pov. Even when he calls her a whore and Betty sort of flinches, I assume it’s more because that’s what her mother called her. In both cases she was being called a whore not for actually even sleeping with anybody, but for being independent and trying to take care of herself. Don in an earlier scene was suggesting she see a doctor, that she “wasn’t herself” because she wanted a divorce. When she tells him he’s not good enough for her she probably is spitting back at his misogyny with some class bias, but it’s also a statement that she shouldn’t have had to put up with being treated the way she’s been treated. Henry does and will treat her better.

Also interesting that Don threatens to take the kids, saying they’ll be better off without her, since it’s not like he seems to ever see himself as a great father. It seems like again this is very much in keeping with societal attitudes. Betty is a bad mother because she’s proved herself an adult who might lie or have an affair. Yet even after he tells her the kids would be better with him, when the baby starts crying it’s Betty’s who’s expected to comfort him. Dads don’t take care of babies!

That’s probably the most lines Gene’s ever gotten in a scene!

Roger’s “Yes. Yes we are. Happy birthday.” Made me actually laugh out loud. And also reminds me of Don in Lady Lazarus telling Peggy, “Yes, we’re playing a hilarious joke on you.”

The McCann sale of course makes you think of the end. Harry will wind up pretty happy as a mid-level cog at McCann. Peggy will also be that, but only temporarily, it’s clear. Roger’s the one being put out to pasture the way Cooper was threatened in this ep—yet his personal life is fresh enough that it doesn’t feel like a death. Pete is saved from mid-level cog-dom by Duck Philips smacking him upside the head with the idea that he’s worth more. (I really liked how the end of the show had several characters needing other people to tell them they were selling themselves short.)

Sally is wearing some high high high-waisted pants in this divorce scene. But she’s so great in it. Love that she calls Don out on “living elsewhere” being the same as “going.” I also wonder if Don says the new situation is only temporary because he thinks it’ll comfort the kids now and then they’ll just get used to it and forget he said it was temporary, or if he really still thinks Betty will come to her senses. Or if he just spits out a lie in the moment because it’s what they would want to hear and doesn’t think beyond that.

Anyway, this is getting into the time when Sally’s a really interesting character to me. She’s always been somewhat interested in the adults, but here she’s just coming out with all of these theories about what’s going on based on her observations. She thinks Betty made Don leave, then thinks he’s leaving because Betty made him sleep in Gene’s room, and she’s noted already that Don says things that he doesn’t mean. Bobby’s just straightforward about wanting things secure.

Interesting that it’s that scene that then leads into Don going to see Peggy, a possibility that up until now had never been discussed. Though I don’t think he’s just throwing a curve ball here. He probably did tell Roger and Bert he was going to talk Peggy around. The blocking when he first starts talking is very much like that Other Woman scene with Peggy standing and Don sitting.

It really is interesting how Don seems to be able talk to Peggy the way he can’t to anyone else. Like she’s just the right combination of male and female where he can be vulnerable in ways he can’t be with Roger or Pete, but also isn’t in the manly role like he is with Betty or Sally.

Joan’s entrance here is so fantastic. That’s a moment I remember enjoying so much. Knew it was coming as soon as they didn’t know where to find everything, but it was so great seeing her walk in.

So when Pete hands Don his accounts he lists them all—but Don is the one who says Clearasil. So I guess Pete went to his father in law for an account and that’s why he wasn’t happy enough about that one to say it. It’s a nice little contrast to Don and Roger who are both partners with their names on the door who are fully stepping out of their father’s shadows here. Pete hasn’t quite been able to do it without Tom. But we now know he’ll get there, even if it’ll involve him losing almost everything and starting again.

Peggy will not get Roger coffee. Yay.  She and Pete are both very aware of being the junior employees here—they’ll even share a desk.

Not completely sure what to make of Don’s line when Roger asks how long it’ll take for them to be working in “a place like this” again and Don says he never saw himself working in “a place like this.” I like it, though.

Joan ends this ep answering the phone as SCDP—she’ll end the series on the phone too, only now it’s for HH and she’s the boss. Harry being on the other end this time is awesome.

Also love Kinsey immediately going to Peggy’s office and saying “Dammit.” This is one of the things I love so much in this show, the way they put so much care into the professional lives. Of course that’s exactly what Paul would do, and it’s a really powerful moment because you know just what this means to Paul. In a way, it’s so necessary for the episode because when Don first seems to accept Peggy’s rejection you kind of know she has to go with him because...who else is he going to take? It’s believable that a new company would go with Ken—after all we had a whole season of competition where PPL chose Ken. But Peggy’s the only copywriter at this point. Until Ginsberg.

Trudy’s outfit is freakin adorable. It’s interesting they decided to have her come in like this because she’s been working with Pete to advance him all year so this is her victory too. And again it’s really nice how after she and Pete break up and their working their way back to each other we see a mirror of this partnership. That is, where here they were working together to build Pete’s career, later they’ll be teaming up for their daughter. (Of course future work dinners are going to be in their future too, but the work Pete does to prove himself is all for the family.)

And Harry, a treasure as always. “There’s food.” “Thank god.”

Look at those huge airplane seats! So is Betty taking Gene to Reno for 6 weeks and leaving the kids at home with Carla??

This ep is so hopeful despite the divorce because Don sees his real “home” is at the office. Doesn’t mean he’s not the kids’ father. He’ll basically come to a similar conclusion at the end of the series-but I think he’s got even more self-knowledge then and his relationship to both the family and the job is different.

[oceanblue]

What makes no sense is that Don moves out while Betty's heading to Reno for 6 weeks.  If it were my kids, I'd want a parent in the house no matter how trustworthy Carla is.  And doesn't she have her own family?   Betty's establishing residency in NV so it's not like they need to prove separate domiciles.  

[VCRTracking]

I hope in the Mad Men universe Peggy is alive to see this:

[Inquisitionist]

5 hours ago, VCRTracking said:

I hope in the Mad Men universe Peggy is alive to see this:

Ha, I thought of her, too!

[mmecorday]

Thanks to Netflix and lots of rainy, wintry weekends, I've been re-watching the series from episode one. While binge watching this particular show, Don's epic philandering really starts to grate after a while. By the time he starts sleeping with Sally's former teacher, I'm thinking someone should have cut his dick off and boiled it in pig fat.

I just finished up season 4. Don and Megan's marriage was doomed from the very beginning. He just wanted a babysitter he could sleep with and she just wanted to get married. They hardly even knew each other.

Watching the series the first time, I was too blinded by my girl crush on Joan to realize what a horrible person she could be sometimes. My love for Lane Pryce still stands, but I cannot tolerate Duck Phillips and I can't comprehend why Peggy would want to sleep with him.

This is not a good show to watch if your New Year's resolution is to quit smoking.

[sistermagpie]

43 minutes ago, mmecorday said:

I just finished up season 4. Don and Megan's marriage was doomed from the very beginning. He just wanted a babysitter he could sleep with and she just wanted to get married. They hardly even knew each other.

Interesting that Don and Betty both got married to people they didn't know well after their divorce, but they still both seemed to be looking for very different things and Betty's marriage worked out wonderfully. Of course, one of the main reasons there was probably that Betty had proven herself willing and able to stick things out.

[TigerLynx]

Even though they didn't know each other for very long before they got married, I think Betty and Henry did see and understand each other better than Don or Megan ever did.  Also, Betty and Henry wanted the same things.  Don and Megan got married because they had fun in California for a few days when they were on vacation.

Don's a lousy husband and father.  The only thing he ever succeeded at was advertising.  However, Don did give Sally one good piece of advice, "You're a beautiful girl, Sally, but you need more than that."  Don and Betty were gorgeous, but that doesn't guarantee a happy marriage or a happy life.

[qtpye]

On 1/24/2017 at 1:51 PM, sistermagpie said:

Interesting that Don and Betty both got married to people they didn't know well after their divorce, but they still both seemed to be looking for very different things and Betty's marriage worked out wonderfully. Of course, one of the main reasons there was probably that Betty had proven herself willing and able to stick things out.

I have to say Betty was a much better wife, then Don was a husband.  She did not even bad mouth Don to the kids.  Until Sally walked in on Don and that Betty Rubble woman, she had no idea what a jerk her father had been to her mother.  She probably blamed everything on her mother being spoiled.

Betty was raised to be the wife of a politician from an established family.  It was a role that suited her well, even in her fat Betty days.

[sistermagpie]

1 minute ago, qtpye said:

I have to say Betty was a much better wife, then Don was a husband.  She did not even bad mouth Don to the kids.  Until Sally walked in on Don and that Betty Rubble woman, she had no idea what a jerk her father had been to her mother.  She probably blamed everything on her mother being spoiled.

Yes, I think that's really clear when you see both of them with their new partners. Neither knew the other people really well in terms of having spent a lot of time together and really having to deal with all the sides of each other. But Betty was going for a marriage while Don was basically hoping for a magic girl who would fix all his problems. Betty's views on marriage were far more practical and Henry was a smart choice for all of them. Then it also seemed that Henry was looking for the same--he wasn't horrified when Betty became bitter and unpleasant or fat. He was in it for the marriage. 

[TigerLynx]

6 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

Betty's views on marriage were far more practical and Henry was a smart choice for all of them. Then it also seemed that Henry was looking for the same--he wasn't horrified when Betty became bitter and unpleasant or fat. He was in it for the marriage. 

I think this made all the difference.  A lot of people who get involved with someone going through a divorce end up paying for the mistakes the soon to be ex-spouse made.  Betty and Henry worked through their rough spots and were happy for the most part.

Don's solution to his and Megan's problems was, "Let's move to California.  We were happy there."  Then after Megan quits her job, Don changes his mind, and Megan moves to California on her own.  Megan pulled the same kind of bait and switch with Don to, "I want to learn advertising.  I was wrong.  I want to be an actress again."

[qtpye]

Here is a question.  If Meagan had not given up on advertising, would the marriage have worked?  I actually like the episodes where Don and Megan waltz into the office late, like a king and queen gracing the kingdom with their presence.  The reason being, is that all my favorite Mad Men action centered around the workplace.  In fact, my favorite episode is "Shut the door, and have a seat".  I sometimes wish all of Mad Men were in the office and we did not have to focus on Don's messed up personal life.

It was so interesting to me how Don wanted to teach and guide Megan and she actually showed some aptitude for the business.  Think about when you were starting out in your field and you had the top person in that area as your own personal mentor.  Imagine what that would do for your career.  Don was handing Megan the keys to the castle...she was going to be his brilliant and beautiful protegee.   To him, she combined Peggy's earnestness with his own special brand of beauty and glamour.

This is why is was especially galling to him when she threw it away like toy she no longer wanted to play with.  She was rejecting his world and telling him that what he does is not important.  It is like, "Why the heck would I want to be the heir to your empire...your empire is advertising, which is unimportant."  She also rejected it for acting, something that he considers unworthy.

Of course Megan is allowed to have her own interests, but that is not something someone as self centered as Don can handle.

When I first watched these episodes, I rolled my eyes at how awesome Megan was supposed to be at advertising.  I first thought the show runner was trying to make her a Mary Sue.  Now, I realize she had to be good at it in order for the rejection to sting Don.  If she was bad Don could just say, "Kid, couldn't cut it" and move on.  He would be disappointed, but he could still bask in the glow of his own superiority.

In my opinion, Don married Megan, because he thought she was the kind mother figure, he never had and she had a passion for advertising.

She lost her virginal mother figure status by pursuing acting again (In Don's close minded black and white world, actresses are a little better then whores, I mean his wife gets paid for kissing other men).

So just like everyone else has pointed out, he never really knew her, just knew what he wanted her to be.

Edited February 2, 2017 by qtpye

[TigerLynx]

Don tried to force feed Megan orange sherbert, and then left her stranded at the restaurant when she wouldn't eat it.  Peggy told Megan Don wouldn't like a surprise birthday party, but Megan threw him one anyway.  Then Don was a complete and total jackass to Megan about it.  That was before Megan ever told Don she wanted to quit advertising and go back to acting.  Don and Megan never knew each other.

Ironically, by the end of the show, it seems like Roger and Marie know each other, flaws and all, and might actually last long term.

Edited February 2, 2017 by TigerLynx

[sistermagpie]

1 hour ago, TigerLynx said:

Ironically, by the end of the show, it seems like Roger and Marie know each other, flaws and all, and might actually last long term.

And if they didn't they were both prepared for that too--they didn't have the kind of unrealistic expectations Don and Megan did for their marriage.

I felt the same way about Megan, being annoyed at how perfect she was but also seeing why she had to walk away from advertising in a way that made it absolutely clear to Don that she was rejecting it and not the other way around. I wouldn't say that he was bothered by her doing it for acting, specifically. I think he probably does have a neutral feeling about acting--he likes movies and probably sees it as worthwhile as any other job, despite the time he called Megan a whore for being in a love scene (projecting). I think he was just resentful of it since Megan seemed to hold it above acting, even taking Don to what looked like a hilariously terrible 60s theater piece (which I know was real) that was anti-advertising. 

[qtpye]

15 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

I felt the same way about Megan, being annoyed at how perfect she was but also seeing why she had to walk away from advertising in a way that made it absolutely clear to Don that she was rejecting it and not the other way around. I wouldn't say that he was bothered by her doing it for acting, specifically. I think he probably does have a neutral feeling about acting--he likes movies and probably sees it as worthwhile as any other job, despite the time he called Megan a whore for being in a love scene (projecting). I think he was just resentful of it since Megan seemed to hold it above acting, even taking Don to what looked like a hilariously terrible 60s theater piece (which I know was real) that was anti-advertising. 

I agree that at first he seemed supportive of her acting career.  Then I think he started feeling annoyed because, he felt like she considered herself an artist and advertising a little hacky (even though it was the profession giving her the "lady of leisure" lifestyle.

He was disappointed when Megan strong armed him into casting her for the commercial.  He had told herself she was this pure artistic soul after she quit advertising and now she is using the medium she rejected for her big break.  The commercial got her the soap opera gig, which he did not seem to respect (it certainly was not high art and she was not very good at it). 

[Dev F]

On 2/2/2017 at 7:58 AM, qtpye said:

Here is a question.  If Meagan had not given up on advertising, would the marriage have worked?

To me, the most interesting thing about that question is that it's a catch-22. That is, Megan was supposedly perfect for Don because she embodied the notion that you didn't have to worry about your past or your emotional baggage, because you could just be whatever person you wanted to be. So I think it was inevitable that she would eventually decide, It doesn't matter that I tried and failed at acting, or that I might not be good enough at it, because that's what I want to be. The thing that Don loved about her is the same thing that ultimately led her away from him.

[sistermagpie]

On 2/2/2017 at 8:58 AM, qtpye said:

Here is a question.  If Meagan had not given up on advertising, would the marriage have worked? 

I'm gonna say no. Her abandoning advertising just sped up the process. The real problem was that Don needed Megan to be exactly what he wanted her to be, and those cracks were already showing early on. Even when Megan was giving advertising a try you could see all those little moments where she was frustrated because Don always expected her to match his own level of enthusiasm. So if he wanted to run off to HoJo's she had to do that too, even though what she really wanted was to be there for the pitch so she'd feel part of things with Peggy, Ginz and Stan. 

But at the same time, it was always pretty clear that Megan wasn't *that* upset about not being a regular jr. copywriter. If she was she wouldn't have taken advantage of Don's office to work or felt free to come and go as she pleased. Even so, I think the problem was always going to come down to Don not only forcing Megan to be whatever he wanted at any given time, but not even realizing he was doing that. So he felt honestly rejected when Megan didn't like orange sherbet, as if this was a flaw. Megan did that a bit too, of course, throwing a party that Don expressly said would make him unhappy and then being hurt when it makes Don unhappy, but Don usually had more power in the relationship.

They never really seemed to work together or compromise on anything. All they could do was trade back and forth with one person doing what the other person wanted while pretending to be thrilled about it when they weren't, or else being hurt when the other person wanted something they didn't. I always remember, also, that time when Megan announced to Don that if she got the play she was auditioning for she'd be gone for months. Some people saw Don's being upset at that as pure sexism, but I thought Megan was being ridiculous too. Not for considering taking the job, but for not thinking this was something you'd obviously talk to your husband about first, especially given the fact that when you got married the plan was you'd be joined at the hip. It's like there was never a time during their marriage where they really seemed to know the other person. Just times when they clicked by accident and all the other times.

Actually, the more I think about it, it seems like it's also that neither of them ever understood the other person beyond how they were making them feel in that moment. You never got the sense, the way you did with the relationships that worked on the show--or frankly, even the ones that didn't--of the two of them starting to understand what made the other person tick. Other couples you could see them gradually putting together a whole working understanding of the other person outside of themselves, whether that made them love each other more or not love each other. With Don and Megan the moments that could be mistaken for that were sort of superficially and performed. Like Don telling Megan about being Dick Whitman. She knew the secret, but she never really got it the way Betty or Faye or even Pete did. She came close to getting a clue a few times maybe, like when she noted that Don had so many past lovers he couldn't blame them ALL on Betty, but they basically went from polite strangers to distant strangers. They were never going to be able to stick it out past the beginning.

Edited February 3, 2017 by sistermagpie

[TigerLynx]

Betty summed up Don perfectly when they had sex in Betty's cabin at Bobby's summer camp.  Don was always drifting away shutting Betty out.  Don's an illusion, he's all smoke and mirrors, there is nothing substantial there.  Then the next morning the power shift in that relationship is underscored when Don wakes up alone, Betty is having breakfast with Henry and happily chatting away, not giving Don a second thought.  It doesn't matter how many times Don changes his name, or thinks about starting over, he'll always be the flake who is good at advertising, but lousy at relationships.  Betty moved on to something better with Henry, and was happy because whatever flaws Betty had, at least she was real.  Don was all surface charm with nothing underneath.

[sistermagpie]

2 hours ago, TigerLynx said:

It doesn't matter how many times Don changes his name, or thinks about starting over, he'll always be the flake who is good at advertising, but lousy at relationships.  Betty moved on to something better with Henry, and was happy because whatever flaws Betty had, at least she was real.  Don was all surface charm with nothing underneath.

Yes, I loved the way the show really all the way through kept examining the two things Don lived by: "This never happened" and "The next thing will be better. It always is." Over and over in different ways characters would say something about it and he was never able to break out. Even towards the end you had both Peggy and Pete doing things that specifically had the decide, consciously, to not do those things.

But still I think that's why Don, for all his life has fallen apart in later seasons, actually seems happier. He sees way sadder in the earlier seasons. By the end he has no romance, but there are people who get him and accept him for what he is. Megan just isn't one of them.

[small potatoes]

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. 

[TigerLynx]

It's amusing that Don, whose whole persona is an illusion, has a problem with someone that lacks substance themselves.  Although Don rarely broke character.  In Season One, when Don is going to leave Midge's apartment, and the hippie tells him he can't the police are outside, Don's response is, "You can't, but I can."  Then Don puts on his hat, put his coat over his arm, walks out the door and the policeman calls his sir when he walks by.  Apparently, Don is a better actor than Megan is an actress.  Of course, the few times Don was honest about who he was, he really screwed things up for everyone else.

[sistermagpie]

2 hours ago, TigerLynx said:

It's amusing that Don, whose whole persona is an illusion, has a problem with someone that lacks substance themselves. 

I guess it kind of makes sense. He keeps marrying people strictly because of what's on the outside--when the person is too real he kind of runs away. Like with Faye, whether or not you think they made a good couple, she definitely understood him far more than Megan. And the thing is, probably if Megan hadn't been a lot like Don in that respect, she wouldn't have married him. Like Rachel was smart enough to get that Don didn't want to run away with her, he just wanted to run away.

[Melancholy]

On February 3, 2017 at 7:02 PM, TigerLynx said:

Betty summed up Don perfectly when they had sex in Betty's cabin at Bobby's summer camp.  Don was always drifting away shutting Betty out.  Don's an illusion, he's all smoke and mirrors, there is nothing substantial there. 

I think Don was *very* substantial. There are a lot of genuine feelings and opinions there. The issue is that it's mostly feelings that don't play well in society- pain, bitterness, anger, id, fear. Don affects a smoke-and-mirrors manner to play well in society- but the deeper substance is always there both fueling and then, undermining the image.