Mad Men - General Discussion

sistermagpie · August 16, 2015

But your weekends with your parents are completely irrelevant since you yourself said they were ever present helicopter types. Their attentiveness and stability isn't just like Don's inattentiveness and instability. I think I said it had zero to do with whether you are taking your kid to any particular activity.or whatever. Tammy might not always be at the orchard but she probably wouldn't be talking all week about visits where Pete's attention was elsewhere. Just sitting and talking is as good as apple picking (which is kind of an excuse to do that.)

My point was not that Don was an unfit parent or a bad parent. I said the opposite, that he was not bad. If there was no Henry and no uncle and the kids were with him at the end my opinion is that they would be fine. They'd have a much better upbringing than Don himself did. And frankly a better upbringing probably than Pete as well, since his parents were also wealthy. Don's attitude toward his kids is loving and kind, which is far better than what Pete got.

So nobody's claiming Don's kids need to be protected from him. He's not toxic.

But whatever MW's feelings about Don as a father in general he still wrote an ep where his daughter and the kids' mother thought other people would be the more obvious choice and nobody's confused about why that is, much less MW. So obviously he didn't think he was writing Don as good Dad who was obviously just as stable and responsible as everybody else. I'm not talking about Don's lifetime potential as a parent. He can establish a much bigger part in their life just as Roger did with his kid. When he first wanted in Joan said no based on his previous patterns and she was right. But Roger went away and had some other experiences, and came back with other expectations and Joan gave him a chance and he worked his way up to being a real, trusted presence. (Same with Pete after he disappeared to LA.)

Nothing's stopping Don from doing the same thing, even more so. That would be working on in the future. This ep is about what he's done up until then and Sally's and Betty's feelings don't come out of nowhere. They're not being unfair to Don with their opinions or just watching the wrong episodes or failing to justify everything they might think is problematic about Don. They're not calling Don a bad father.

I don't think it's impossible that Don could work his way up to being the custodial parent and give the kids a good life, but I'm not giving him credit for having done it all along, or for having done it already. Why should Don not have to deal with the consequences of his choices just like everybody else does? Why shouldn't he have to prove himself like everybody else--especially with his track record with the beginnings of things. It seems like you're giving Don more of a handicap than everyone else.(Bobby expressing anxiety about losing Henry's just the political connection, but Sally saying the kids need to keep living with Henry to keep their whole life stable shows that Henry's such a cold fish he's not very close to the boys despite raising them for 7 years--it's like living with the butler.) If that was just to counter the idea that Don would be a terrible parent then I'm sorry I gave that impression, because I don't think he's ever been that and the show's never suggested he was. Neither do Betty and Sally in this ep or elsewhere.

So yeah, Don could become the custodial parent and be fine at it. Or maybe he won't. Maybe he doesn't want to. Or realizes he wants to for the wrong reasons.

Edited August 16, 2015 by sistermagpie

sistermagpie · August 27, 2015

Maybe Pete did feel rejected- but I also don't recall much evidence of Pete feeling rejected. I think he was a little spooked at how much he got what he wanted in The Phantom and then, went haywire with his freedom but then quickly, regretted it when he stepped over Trudy's line and she actually *did* reject him in Collaborators.

I thought Pete looked completely dejected at the end of The Phantom when she gave him the apartment, like the final ironic punch. The actor also read it that way--but that's just his opinion so it might not have been the idea. But for me the first scene of them in S6 seemed to follow directly from that. After the guests leave Pete and Trudy seem irritated with each other. He does then go haywire with the freedom he's been given, I agree. But I didn't get the impression it had made him all that happy before that. It seemed more like a self-destructive reaction to that "permanent wound" revelation.

I didn't mean to imply that Trudy was trying to get rid of him forever in The Phantom. It just seemed like she was telling him to take his messiness elsewhere--but in reality the messiness wasn't him wanting to sleep with other women, it was a whole life thing. But just as he can't say he wants an apartment without implying he wants to be away from her, I don't think she can say he should have an apartment without implying the same thing. Pete had even grumped earlier about barely being part of the household in Cos Cob. (In a way this sort of thing is echoed until 7A after which Pete seems to get that if he wants to be more of a presence in the life of his family he has to do something about it, not feel like he isn't one.)

I think giving him the apartment seemed very practical and Smart Wife 101 to Trudy and was, as you say, a good faith effort. But it was an idea based on I think a more early Mad Men view of marriage that neither of them really wanted. I think when she yells at him about the neighbor she's getting out anger that's been building before that because really, when did either of them want that kind of marriage, where both of them have a place where the other doesn't feel at home? It was like the apartment was just a terrible way to avoid a lot of difficult conversations.

I don't want to give Pete props for being an asshole here or anything, but I do think in the end Pete's in-your-face "this is how the sausage is made" personality makes things better than they would have been had they continued with the apartment route. Because if Trudy's hurt and humiliated by him sleeping with a neighbor she's hurt and humiliated by the infidelity on some level, period. They hadn't become Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf by S6 or anything, but I don't think they were going down a good path even then.

Which was all just a roundabout way of saying I think it went beyond giving in to Pete's demands. And while there is a parallel to Don/Megan (in both cases it seems like it's breaking something in the marriage to let the other person go or be let go) I think there's differences too. Of the four people in the two situations it seems like Megan is he only person who doesn't realize that something bigger than her just getting what she wants right now is happening.

Edited August 27, 2015 by sistermagpie

Melancholy · August 27, 2015

I thought Pete looked completely dejected at the end of The Phantom when she gave him the apartment, like the final ironic punch. The actor also read it that way--but that's just his opinion so it might not have been the idea. But for me the first scene of them in S6 seemed to follow directly from that. After the guests leave Pete and Trudy seem irritated with each other. He does then go haywire with the freedom he's been given, I agree. But I didn't get the impression it had made him all that happy before that. It seemed more like a self-destructive reaction to that "permanent wound" revelation.

I thought Pete was sad because he felt guilty. He was cheating on Trudy with Beth Dawes and then, got into a fist-fight with her husband and somehow lied about that effectively so he got exactly what asked for- an apartment. Pete felt guilty about making Trudy into a chump where Trudy was rendered gullible because of her love for him. Pete's look of guilt/sadness reminded me a little on Don when Don so effectively lied about his drunk-driving accident with Bobbi that all he got was a "Daddy can't have salt, because we love him."

I agree that Pete's S6 infidelity was self-destructive behavior. However, I thought that was a continuation of his self-destructive affair with Beth Dawes, an affair with a mentally disturbed fellow denizen of Cos Cob who was undergoing electroshock treatment and couldn't remember him. It was all self-destructive, but symptomatic of Pete's issues rather than stemming from Trudy's actions.

But just as he can't say he wants an apartment without implying he wants to be away from her, I don't think she can say he should have an apartment without implying the same thing.

No, I think Pete absolutely can request an apartment, implying he wants to be away from Trudy but Trudy can grant the request even though she wants him in the suburbs. The whole point of the apartment was that Pete could use it entirely as he sees fit. From The Phantom to Collaborators, Pete had two residences that would have him entirely on his terms, on his schedule. Trudy didn't have that- the apartment wasn't for her, her job was to maintain the Cos Cob house for Pete. The set-up is entirely for Pete- he can screw around in the city whenever he wants while Trudy was lonely and waiting him for him back home, craving his adult company and intimacy.

I think giving him the apartment seemed very practical and Smart Wife 101 to Trudy and was, as you say, a good faith effort. But it was an idea based on I think a more early Mad Men view of marriage that neither of them really wanted. I think when she yells at him about the neighbor she's getting out anger that's been building before that because really, when did either of them want that kind of marriage, where both of them have a place where the other doesn't feel at home? It was like the apartment was just a terrible way to avoid a lot of difficult conversations.

I agree that it was ultimately a bad idea. I mean, in some ways. I think Pete almost NEEDED to crash and burn by overdoing the affairs and Trudy needed solid evidence to confront Pete in order to force the issue. If Trudy didn't give in on the apartment but still continued chugging along suspicious but without any evidence of wrongdoing enough for a confrontation, Pete likely would have continued to have affairs and resentfully stumbled back home and the marriage would have limped along. Pete was rampantly cheating on Trudy in S5- and I saw no definitive signs that Pete learned enough to stop or that Trudy felt ready to confront him because she only had barely circumstantial evidence.

Meanwhile, I think Pete, in his heart of hearts, wanted to be a better husband and stop cheating. However, all of his outward actions, indicated that he wanted to be an urbane philanderer- requesting the apartment, having the affairs, insulting the suburbs compared to Manhattan non-stop, being a kill-joy on Trudy's suburban plans. I don't see how it was Trudy to somehow divine a different Pete than the one that she saw every day in S5.

Which was all just a roundabout way of saying I think it went beyond giving in to Pete's demands. And while there is a parallel to Don/Megan (in both cases it seems like it's breaking something in the marriage to let the other person go or be let go) I think there's differences too. Of the four people in the two situations it seems like Megan is he only person who doesn't realize that something bigger than her just getting what she wants right now is happening.

I agree that Megan is the most obtuse of the Don/Megan and Pete/Trudy parallel and there are differences and similarities. The biggest similarities are the way that they're blended. Don/Trudy were the favor-grantors, giving their spouses special privileges beyond their comfort levels. Don/Pete were the male philanderers who believed that their wives were inadequate bandage for their wounds, so they needed to self-soothe with other women. The biggest difference was that Trudy, as the favor-grantor, knew a little something about her role as cuckolded spouse because her power comes with knowledge but Megan had no idea that Don was walking away into a James Bond montage because she was so distracted at the pretty bauble favors she was receiving and would remain so until, I think To Have and to Hold.

Edited August 27, 2015 by Melancholy

sistermagpie · August 27, 2015

I agree that Pete's S6 infidelity was self-destructive behavior. However, I thought that was a continuation of his self-destructive affair with Beth Dawes, an affair with a mentally disturbed fellow denizen of Cos Cob who was undergoing electroshock treatment and couldn't remember him. It was all self-destructive, but symptomatic of Pete's issues rather than stemming from Trudy's actions.

I agree it's coming from Pete rather than him just reacting to Trudy, but throughout S5 he doesn't want freedom, he wants love. He doesn't feel like he's getting it and then imagines he's getting or could get it it from Beth Dawes who then erases it. So it's hard for me to see him reacting to Trudy saying "Yeah, maybe you should have another place" as him getting what he wants and making her a chump. I'm sure he does feel guilty, but if your wife says she's been thinking about it and you should have an apartment I think it's reasonable to view yourself as all that more expendable.

No, I think Pete absolutely can request an apartment, implying he wants to be away from Trudy but Trudy can grant the request even though she wants him in the suburbs. The whole point of the apartment was that Pete could use it entirely as he sees fit. From The Phantom to Collaborators, Pete had two residences that would have him entirely on his terms, on his schedule. Trudy didn't have that- the apartment wasn't for her, her job was to maintain the Cos Cob house for Pete. The set-up is entirely for Pete- he can screw around in the city whenever he wants while Trudy was lonely and waiting him for him back home, craving his adult company and intimacy.

It could be like that, yes, but that's not the way I would have read it if I was Pete. There's a lot of scenes in S5 where Pete starts to talk about things and Trudy shuts him up because she doesn't want to hear it. From his pov, the Cos Cob house is not for him at all--he wanted them both to live in the city.

So I don't think he saw Trudy as being lonely or craving adult intimacy.(She actually doesn't seem to be missing the latter that much at all to me.) On the contrary, he saw Trudy ready for bed when he got home--iow, her world had turned completely to Cos Cob and she was no longer interested in Pete as much, which was I think his point in always noting that he only ever saw her in her pajamas, practically.I don't think Pete's view of the situation is the objective one, of course, but I don't think Trudy's just waiting home like a saint for Pete either. I think she was annoyed and hurt by his continued moping and was totally kidding herself about giving him the apartment out of generosity. It's not just about Pete having tons of affairs, after all. For most of season 5 he's depressed. The three times he has sex it's when a situation unexpectedly presents itself and he does it. But the overall "gloom and doom" that Trudy says that she's sick of is depression, not a wandering eye.

Meanwhile, I think Pete, in his heart of hearts, wanted to be a better husband and stop cheating. However, all of his outward actions, indicated that he wanted to be an urbane philanderer- requesting the apartment, having the affairs, insulting the suburbs compared to Manhattan non-stop, being a kill-joy on Trudy's suburban plans. I don't see how it was Trudy to somehow divine a different Pete than the one that she saw every day in S5.

I don't blame Trudy for jumping to sometimes wrong conclusions given Pete's behavior (especially given the policy of not sitting down and hashing out how they both actually feel ever)--but in the same way, I don't see think it's unreasonable that Pete also has the wrong ideas about Trudy's feelings either. Saying Pete's being a "kill-joy" about Trudy's suburban plans is a good example. He's unhappy. If he's a killjoy--and she does pretty much act like she considers him exactly that--why would she want him around and be lonely for him? It seems like exactly the same thing that you're describing with Pete to me--in her heart of hearts she wants him to be happy at home with them, but her outward actions give him plenty to continue the self-pity, imo.

Edited August 27, 2015 by sistermagpie

Melancholy · August 27, 2015

I agree it's coming from Pete rather than him just reacting to Trudy, but throughout S5 he doesn't want freedom, he wants love. He doesn't feel like he's getting it and then imagines he's getting or could get it it from Beth Dawes who then erases it. So it's hard for me to see him reacting to Trudy saying "Yeah, maybe you should have another place" as him getting what he wants and making her a chump. I'm sure he does feel guilty, but if your wife says she's been thinking about it and you should have an apartment I think it's reasonable to view yourself as all that more expendable.

Pete wanted a lot of things in S5- freedom, love, validation as a man, admiration from women, to project strength and masculinity. This was all tied into his affairs and flirtations. He wanted to be Beth Dawes's White Knight and he wanted You're My King from the prostitute and he wanted to feel young and handsome from the girl in driver's ed. He wasn't just looking for love. The apartment was the freedom component and masculinity component of all of Pete's various longings in S5. Pete *asked* for the apartment and he went and got one. It wasn't good for him and it wouldn't satisfy him deep down, but he wanted it and all of his conduct certainly indicated that he wanted it.

I mean, Don never got an apartment in NYC in S1-3. However, Betty placidly accepted Don staying in Manhattan overnight as one of his habits in S1. But just because Betty buried her head in the sand and was conciliatory on one of Don's unfaithful signs doesn't mean that Don had any cause to view himself as expendable to her or that Betty was regarding Don as expendable. Ditto for Trudy. Pete demanded and whined for an apartment. Trudy gave him one under the graceful cover of "I'm afraid of you driving at night" and Trudy continued to leave her home and her bed open to Pete until he crossed the line and went for a neighbor. Pete got what he asked for. He absolutely could have said "no" to the apartment, but he took it and had affairs in it.

It could be like that, yes, but that's not the way I would have read it if I was Pete. There's a lot of scenes in S5 where Pete starts to talk about things and Trudy shuts him up because she doesn't want to hear it. From his pov, the Cos Cob house is not for him at all--he wanted them both to live in the city.

I can think of a few occasions where Trudy interrupted Pete- but it never seemed unnatural or like she was being a bad wife. Trudy just has this pushy, vivacious personality that she uses on everyone, from how she immediately cuts Don's excuses off at the pass and pushes him into coming over for dinner to how she forcibly grabs Betty at the Sterling Derby Day Party and monopolizes the conversation to how she cancels Pete's directions to the cab driver with an authoritative "Hush." I actually think it was part of why Pete was attracted to Trudy- she's a dynamo. Best wife in the series- because her pushiness always seemed like a facet of her passion for Pete and being his partner even when she directed her pushiness at him.

I agree that Pete didn't like the suburbs. Although, it's not really clear how much he fought Trudy on it. Trudy argued that Tammy needed a yard to play in and Pete said Central Park was good enough for him- in the context of Pete needing to use their savings to put up his partnership capital contribution. Soon after, Pete moved to the suburbs. IMO, Pete did feel stifled in the suburbs but he did go along with it because he thought it was the logical next step for an executive partner with a young family. I mean, ditto for Don. Don didn't like the suburbs or suburban chit-chat but you could tell that he winded up there because that was the logical next step in the American Dream. But still when you get down to it- "But Saturday night in the suburbs? That's when you really want to blow your brains out."

So I don't think he saw Trudy as being lonely or craving adult intimacy. On the contrary, he saw Trudy ready for bed when he got home--iow, her world had turned completely to Cos Cob and she was no longer interested in Pete as much, which was I think his point in always noting that he only ever saw her in her pajamas, practically.I don't think Pete's view of the situation is the objective one, of course, but I don't think Trudy's just waiting home like a saint for Pete either.

I think Trudy waited for Pete- like most housewives in the upper middle class suburbs. She wasn't a saint- but she was a perfectly fine wife. She waited for Pete like Betty, although Betty dressed up more frequently as Betty perpetually did when she was slim because Betty was more vain and Betty had a maid and nanny and Trudy didn't.

From what I could see, Trudy was a devoted mother to Tammy, she prepared the meals, maintained the home as best she could. On a bunch of occasions in S5, she was happy to see Pete when he walked in the door. Trudy was thoroughly moved and happy when she observed things like Pete reading to Tammy or she relished a chance to have a dinner party for Pete's work colleagues and wives or she was very agreeable about going to functions like Megan's birthday party despite the short notice or she was quick to try to comfort Pete through his blues even if she didn't have the Perfect Thing to Say ("Dissatisfaction is a symptom of ambition- it's the coal that fuels the fire. You know that"). Pete was annoyed at stuff like Trudy going to bed with her curlers in- which was part of Trudy maintaining a good appearance for Pete even though he has to be around for the less glamorous parts because they live together.

For most of season 5 he's depressed. The three times he has sex it's when a situation unexpectedly presents itself and he does it. But the overall "gloom and doom" that Trudy says that she's sick of is depression, not a wandering eye.

Pete called Beth looking for a redux on sex and waited in a hotel room for hours for her and that humiliation cooled his ardentness until Beth called him for a second time. Then, Pete went to her hospital room with the hope to continue their affair, until he realized it was mindwiped out of her and he was too disturbed to continue the affair. Pete tried to flirt with the girl in driver's ed for them to tour the Dikeman- funded gardens and I'm sure it wasn't just to look at flowers. Pete *did* have a wandering eye in S5. Just because Beth first proposed sex on the two occasions when they did it or because the client proposed visiting a whorehouse doesn't mean that Pete didn't have a wandering eye.

I agree that Pete was depressed in S5-6. However, one thing that this show does really well with Don throughout, Pete off and on, Lane throughout, Betty throughout, S7 Ted, S2 Peggy is that these characters are all depressed. However, their nearest and dearest really don't get it or they can't handle it well at all even when it shows up in obvious symptoms like Betty's shaking hands or rapid weight gain and weight loss or Don, at his lowest points, still drinking when he's just woken up hung-over or just vomited. Pete was depressed, but he was particularly good at hiding it under petulance and bravado. The audience had a much better understanding of the full spectrum of Pete's issues by getting to see his dreams or the "permanent wound" speech than Trudy ever got. Trudy loved Pete a lot and I think she was vigilant about his issues. However, Pete didn't present obviously as depressed enough to Trudy so she could figure out his problems. Some of this is Trudy's "What's happening that's bad?" obliviousness to racial riots. She's a forced cockeyed optimist. However, that's the flaw rather than a refusal to help Pete or take an interest in Pete.

It's not just Trudy misreading Pete. There's a twisted logic that IMO, Pete was absolutely more unhappy than Roger in Signal 30. Don wrongly read Roger as miserable and didn't think Pete was (until the end of the ep and even then, I think Don didn't quite trust Pete's "I have nothing" as genuine so much as an OTT melodramatic reaction to the humiliation of Lane beating him up). However, Roger gets a lot of venom out of his system by freely complaining about everything that bothers him, including Jane and his work position in early S5. It's both a release for Roger and Roger makes everyone aware of why he could conceivably be unhappy, even though Roger wasn't even depressed. Pete doesn't get that rope- partly because Trudy is just so damn likable to anyone who crosses her path, unlike say, Jane Sterling, and Pete was at the top of his business game and always energetic about it. However, it's also because Pete mainly forces happiness and then, voices his unhappiness as a pout that he didn't get his way in some specific event.

I don't blame Trudy for jumping to sometimes wrong conclusions given Pete's behavior (especially given the policy of not sitting down and hashing out how they both actually feel ever)--but in the same way, I don't see think it's unreasonable that Pete also has the wrong ideas about Trudy's feelings either. Saying Pete's being a "kill-joy" about Trudy's suburban plans is a good example. He's unhappy. If he's a killjoy--and she does pretty much act like she considers him exactly that--why would she want him around and be lonely for him?

I can completely believe how Trudy would consider Pete a kill-joy but still want him around. She loved him- they were meant to be like no other couple. Even when Pete didn't want a child or was throwing her dinner out the window or being rude to her about stopping by his office to inaugurate their apartment, she loved him. Trudy may have gotten angry at some of those specific events. Trudy have gotten angry that they had plans to build a pool for all of S5, and then towards the end of the season, Pete looked at the finalized plans for the pool that they agreed on and tried stopping them with "Tammy could drown." However, it was always obvious that Trudy could get angry at Pete or tired for Pete but still always loved him and always wanted him around.

Edited August 27, 2015 by Melancholy

sistermagpie · September 8, 2015

I think this is the one. That's more or less what I meant when I said Pete was worried about getting stuck in the middle of a Don/Duck rivalry. It's Peggy who thinks Pete is concerned about Don holding a grudge, but then Pete clarifies that he knows Don has moved on and it's the other party he's worried about: "True, but Duck would love to hit Don where it hurts."

Reading this in the episode thread, it made me think again about not just how Duck was a great, useful character but how it's interesting how he was used with both Peggy and Pete even after this. Peggy has an affair with him and then cut ties completely. While I don't think she ever really pinned any big dreams on Duck, she was willing to take a chance on an affair with the guy, thinking there was no harm in seeing him on the side. One that later has her cringing when he calls her in The Suitcase and cringing even more when he shows up in The Suitcase. The last reminder of their affair is in M&HR where Duck criticizes Pete for setting Peggy up with a different headhunter--which I totally believe Pete did without his suggesting Duck and Peggy having to turn him down (not that I know for sure that's what happened).

Pete's the main person on the show who continues to keep a relationship going with this guy, one that's usually very useful for him. Sometimes Duck definitely seems to be another "don't let this happen to you" character for Pete--his divorce was a big part of his downfall. But mostly Pete seems very aware of Duck's weaknesses, but still goes to him for things he'd be good at and they seem to be on good terms. And then in the end it's Duck who becomes Pete's unlikely good fairy, not only pushing him into a better job, but letting Pete take the job without burning bridges at McCann and giving Pete the inspiration to follow the advice Duck gave him years earlier in begging Trudy to take him back.

I don't know what all that says specifically about Duck or Duck's role or Peggy or Pete, but it's neat remembering their earlier reactions to his manipulations and seeing how they foreshadow how things go with him later.

txhorns79 · September 8, 2015

I think Trudy waited for Pete- like most housewives in the upper middle class suburbs. She wasn't a saint- but she was a perfectly fine wife. She waited for Pete like Betty, although Betty dressed up more frequently as Betty perpetually did when she was slim because Betty was more vain and Betty had a maid and nanny and Trudy didn't.

I know Trudy had a maid and/or nanny similar to Carla during the last two seasons. Trudy also mentions having a maid when she and Pete were living in Manhattan (when Trudy returns from her trip with her parents in the episode where Pete has his interaction with the neighbor's nanny, she asks him if the maid had come to clean). I would think she probably had a maid during the the fifth season too, she just wasn't mentioned.

Now once they were in Cos Cob, I think Trudy waited for Pete in the sense that she got up from bed to greet him when he came home, but she didn't sit down to eat with him, or otherwise cook dinner for him. She was a good wife (and obviously did not deserve to be cheated on), but I also understood Pete's complaint about regularly coming home to find her dressed to go to sleep.

Sometimes Duck definitely seems to be another "don't let this happen to you" character for Pete--his divorce was a big part of his downfall.

I see Pete taking that message away from Duck, but not as to divorce (also Pete was around other people who were divorced, and he would see their lives hadn't been destroyed by it). Rather, I'd think he would see Duck as a warning regarding the dangers of drinking and over-indulgence generally.

Melancholy · September 8, 2015

I know Trudy had a maid and/or nanny similar to Carla during the last two seasons. Trudy also mentions having a maid when she and Pete were living in Manhattan (when Trudy returns from her trip with her parents in the episode where Pete has his interaction with the neighbor's nanny, she asks him if the maid had come to clean). I would think she probably had a maid during the the fifth season too, she just wasn't mentioned.

IMO, we first saw a Carla/Loretta-type maid in the last two seasons because S6 marked the first seasons that Pete was really in the money from his job. (I actually don't even remember a maid of reference to a maid in S6. Can you refresh my recollection? I remember just seeing the maid/nanny in The Strategy.)

In S1-3, Pete wasn't a particularly high-paid salaried employee and in S4-5, Pete was a partner in a start-up agency or an agency with financial problems or stagnation. It was a big expense for Pete and Trudy to get the Cos Cob house alone- it'd make sense for them to delay on a maid in S5 and possibly S6. SCDP really started delivering big partnership profits with the acquisition of Jaguar and especially, Dow.

In Manhattan, it sounded like Trudy had a one-a-week cleaning lady, much like Megan and Don. That's all you need for an apartment. Maybe Trudy's was even once-every-two-weeks. And apparently, it started in S3 since Trudy said they'd be getting by without a maid in S1, since they went beyond their budget for the apartment.

Now once they were in Cos Cob, I think Trudy waited for Pete in the sense that she got up from bed to greet him when he came home, but she didn't sit down to eat with him, or otherwise cook dinner for him. She was a good wife (and obviously did not deserve to be cheated on), but I also understood Pete's complaint about regularly coming home to find her dressed to go to sleep.

We didn't see a lot of Pete/Trudy night scenes. I have to believe that she cooked dinner for him. I think he'd complain about being home and having nothing to eat. That was one of the key jobs of any 1950s style housewife- to have dinner waiting for her husband on the table. I think that was the rule for all housewives of any stripe- it's just the over-achiever One Percenter wives who were always in a cute dress and kitten heels and pearls like they were living a 1950s-1960s TV show. I don't think Trudy was renegging on the dinner part of their marital contract. In fact, Pete said, "You're dressed for bed at dinner" which makes me believe that Trudy did have a dinner waiting for Pete and would sit with him during it, but in her housecoat and pajamas. Trudy was enthusiastic whenever she greeted Pete, and said that when he comes into the door, the house becomes a home. Maybe she kept some more restrictive sleeping hours when Tammy was an infant who required constant night feedings, as Tammy was in early S5, but that's another thing that's not a failure on Trudy's part or a legitimate grievance for Pete.

Pete was really coming up with minutiae to justify stepping out on Trudy. In fact, Pete really had to go for the minutiae of "wearing PJs at dinner" because Trudy was such a beautiful, warm, engaging, loving wife.

The last reminder of their affair is in M&HR where Duck criticizes Pete for setting Peggy up with a different headhunter--which I totally believe Pete did without his suggesting Duck and Peggy having to turn him down (not that I know for sure that's what happened).

See, it's not clear. But, IMO, Pete didn't set up Peggy with a head-hunter. Peggy decided to see a head-hunter and engaged one all on her own. We see the entire scene where Pete informed Peggy that McCann was taking over entirely. Then, we see Peggy meeting discreetly with a head-hunter at her apartment. It seems weird that Pete and Peggy would meet again in the intervening period- after Pete already breached protocol by telling Peggy about how they were losing their independence. Pete told Peggy the news as in, "I'm just giving you a few day head-start leg up. *You* need to decided on your own how to deal with that information, but I'm sure you'll use your savvy and wisdom to make a good choice all on your own." Pete gave her the crucial need-to-know information, with the insinuation that it was all up to Peggy on how to use that information to situate herself the best.

I think Duck assumed Pete and Peggy still had their alliance that he found so fascinating and unheard of in the advertising business. Gerald must have told Duck that he scouted options for Peggy before news of SC&P vacating the Time & Life building spread. Duck intuited that an in-the-know partner must have told Peggy before it happened and hooked her up with a head-hunter and that partner had to have been Pete. However, this is all conjecture. Yes, Pete didn't argue with Duck that he didn't send Peggy to any such head-hunter but instead said "I've paid you at some point" but, IMO, Pete just didn't want to engage to lie or admit whether he breached McCann protocol by telling Peggy about the merger earlier just to get down with and response to Duck's bellicose, pouty accusations.

But also, I actually do think Pete may have hooked Peggy up with Duck if he was in charge of setting her up with a head-hunter. I mean, Pete went to Duck and took his advice. What was good enough for the gander should be good enough for the goose. Although, of course, there's a lot of head-hunters in NYC and Gerald could have been just as good as Duck. Plus, Pete went to Duck for advice just after the merger; maybe he lost some faith in Duck after he saddled SC&P with Lou. I know I'd resent Duck partly for that poor placement.

However, Peggy absolutely has a clear reason for not going to Duck for her head-hunting needs. It could just stop with, "I guess when screwing me couldn't get you anything, you had to go back to Draper..No. That's right. We were in love. Turns out she's just another whore." Without some external reason on why Peggy had to continue to deal with Duck or make peace with what he said, that's enough to just write him off.

sistermagpie · September 8, 2015

Pete was really coming up with minutiae to justify stepping out on Trudy. In fact, Pete really had to go for the minutiae of "wearing PJs at dinner" because Trudy was such a beautiful, warm, engaging, loving wife.

I couldn't disagree more. Pete was certainly looking for things to justify his own feelings but watching S5 I completely understood his "pajamas at dinner" line to be describing his actually feeling like he no longer had as much of a place in the house. He wasn't complaining about the diet he was getting, whether she cooked it or not, he was correctly seeing that Trudy's day was over before he got home, whether or not she warmed up a pork chop for him. Sometimes he got home too late for that--like in A Little Kiss when he has his first dinner of Raisin Bran. She got dressed after he left and got undressed before he came home, and on a night when he was there he was interfering with the normal schedule. He's pretty consistent about what it feels like the problem is to him. He's not necessarily objective about it or being completely accurate, but I wouldn't dismiss it as just meaningless excuses.

I don't think Pete was objectively right in the way he viewed the situation in S5 but I also don't think he was just making up fake pretend changes and projecting them onto his perfect wife whose life revolved around him. The pajamas comment was not minutia at all.

See, it's not clear. But, IMO, Pete didn't set up Peggy with a head-hunter. Peggy decided to see a head-hunter and engaged one all on her own. We see the entire scene where Pete informed Peggy that McCann was taking over entirely. Then, we see Peggy meeting discreetly with a head-hunter at her apartment. It seems weird that Pete and Peggy would meet again in the intervening period- after Pete already breached protocol by telling Peggy about how they were losing their independence.

Yeah, I have no idea how it happened either. But I don't think there's any reason why the two wouldn't have met again. They work together and it would take nothing for Pete to suggest a head hunter. He talked to one about Harry. I don't think as a partner he considered it a huge breach of protocol to give her the heads up. Makes perfect sense to me that Peggy, upon thinking about what she might do, would ask Pete about a head hunter if she didn't know one. If she did know one there's no need. But regardless, Duck is under the impression that Pete sent her to somebody, and that's a reminder of the Peggy/Duck romance. And I think Pete would have avoided sending Peggy to Duck if she had asked him, because he sees Duck as unstable, even without knowing about their affair. That's more the important point.

Edited September 8, 2015 by sistermagpie

Melancholy · September 8, 2015

I couldn't disagree more. Pete was certainly looking for things to justify his own feelings but watching S5 I completely understood his "pajamas at dinner" line to be describing his actually feeling like he no longer had as much of a place in the house. He wasn't complaining about the diet he was getting, whether she cooked it or not, he was correctly seeing that Trudy's day was over before he got home, whether or not she warmed up a pork chop for him. Sometimes he got home too late for that--like in A Little Kiss when he has his first dinner of Raisin Bran. She got dressed after he left and got undressed before he came home, and on a night when he was there he was interfering with the normal schedule.

I agree that Trudy was consistently in her PJs when Pete got there, indicating her day was over. Pete was not making that up and I never said he did. I'm merely arguing that a wife getting in her PJs after 6 PM or wearing her curlers to sleep to aid her day-time hairstyle is so unbelievably non-consequential. I think it's a really silly reason to be unhappy with a spouse, much less to cheat. And a wife has even more of reason to get into her PJ after 6 PM when her infant still doesn't sleep through the night and she needs to catch up on her zzzs and relaxation so she can nurse and attend to her child at night and maintain the household during the day. That was the case for Trudy and Tammy in early S5, at least. It's on the husband and father of the child to be sensitive to that, at least, since the 1960s mode doesn't expect the father to get up for nighttime feedings and diaper changes.

Pete was genuinely dissatisfied with his suburban life with his family in S5/early S6 and he was looking at everything through that lens so yes, he really did feel that he was being terribly wronged by the fact that Trudy got into her PJs after dark or wore curlers to bed. However, I don't think he was and it was a minutiae issue. I always had the impression that Trudy loved Pete and was an excellent wife to Pete- but for just a short time, she was overwhelmed and exhausted by the new house and new baby so she couldn't perform the perfectly perky, immaculately attired housewife at all hours when Pete was home, including sleep.

Everyone has their complaints about their SO- some are important issues and some aren't. Still doesn't change my impression that Trudy was the most likable wife of the bunch or up there with Mona. However even with Mona, Roger could also have his battery of complaints that Mona doesn't cook anymore and Mona's obsessed with dieting and the Mona v. Margaret wars are annoying and Mona just started "judging people." I do grant Pete more compassion than Roger since, IMO, Roger set bad marital patterns with Mona for decades that mostly produced a lot of the family vibes that were bothering him in S1 through early S2. The thing with Trudy felt like more of a blip, if we assume that Trudy and Pete lived happily ever after. However, along with the blip, it really does not speak well of Pete that he just couldn't deal with Trudy being a tired new mother who wasn't always "on" for him, even though she remained interested in his life, tried to support him, maintained a lovely home, was a brilliant conversationalist, was happily available on short notice to go to Megan's party or would host dinner parties and harangue Don into attending. Given Trudy's stress and everything that she did do, even with a new baby, she remained a fantastic wife. Not a perfect wife- no one is perfect. However, pretty damn fantastic.

They work together and it would take nothing for Pete to suggest a head hunter. He talked to one about Harry. I don't think as a partner he considered it a huge breach of protocol to give her the heads up. Makes perfect sense to me that Peggy, upon thinking about what she might do, would ask Pete about a head hunter if she didn't know one. If she did know one there's no need. But regardless, Duck is under the impression that Pete sent her to somebody, and that's a reminder of the Peggy/Duck romance. And I think Pete would have avoided sending Peggy to Duck if she had asked him, because he sees Duck as unstable. That's more the important point.

I don't really have a Chancey in this fight, LOL. It's just that the Pete/Peggy conversation in Time & Life felt pretty final to me and like, the ball was entirely in Peggy's court to use Pete's information and Peggy chose, on her own, to consult with a head-hunter and a head-hunter who never called her a whore, at that. I know that my impression of events is head-canon and maybe even more head-canon than just taking Duck's statement that Pete recommended a different head-hunter to Peggy on face value. I could go either way.

Although, I think Pete read Duck as unstable, but smart and connected for a drunken, washed up Madison Avenue-type. Pete did go to Duck for advice in The Better Half and IMO, Duck actually did well in that meeting after Pete already approached him to head-hunt. Duck voiced Pete's inner thoughts about feeling adrift and insecure without a family and actually correctly intuited that SCDP/CGC wasn't entirely the 1927 Yankees, Perfect Intimidating Agency because there was no clear management structure and it wasn't clear who was in charge and Pete was vulnerable because he had no clear place in the management structure. Pete totally ran with all of that advice- and that was part of his concerns about a Cutler-run agency in the next ep in A Tale of Two Cities. So, I dunno, Pete reached out to Duck as the right head-hunter for him and then Duck did Pete one better in the meeting by offering even better advice than just "tickling his balls" as Harry so elegantly put it and I think Pete understood that.

I don't know why Pete used Duck and really took his advice to heart- but didn't refer Peggy. You can fanwank a lot of reasons. Pete may have needed Duck's seasoned advice on how to move laterally as a partner, but felt copywriter Peggy just needed some straight-forward, non-crazy basic advice and felt a more stable, if less seasoned and "spent some time on top of the world" head-hunter was the way to go. Pete may have been turned off by Duck suggesting a job in Wichita in that meeting, without knowing how his life would change to the point that he'd go chase a job in Wichita. Maybe Pete gave Peggy a list of head-hunter options with Duck and Gilbert on the list, and Peggy picked the one who didn't call her a whore. Pete could have lost respect for Duck since The Better Half/A Tale of Two Cities, after Duck brought back Lou to be their Manhattan Creative Director.

I think Duck's almost a manic depressive personality who oscillates between OTT excitability and sad seriousness, usually connected to his drinking levels but I think there's other factors. Perhaps even some "killed 17 men in Okinawa" factors, to lend some plausible sympathy. In S6, Duck was sadly serious in his The Better Half appearance and vindictively but still, victoriously business-like in his In Care Of appearance. Then, Duck was off-the-chain bellicose in his The Milk and Honey route appearance, but ultimately correct even though it was hard for Pete to sift through the scotch/desperate excitability and great opportunity excitability. I wouldn't be surprised if Pete was plugged into Madison Avenue gossip on whether Duck was currently making a spectacle of himself or placing people in pretty good positions. Or, as I sort of believe, Peggy just picked her own head-hunter and Duck made some wrong assumptions because Gerald said that he helped Peggy before the press-release on SC&P leaving Time & Life to work at McCann came out. However, again, I'm not wedded to anything.

BTW, *I* don't think it was a huge breach of protocol for Pete to tell Peggy. He's a partner, Peggy's been with versions of their agency for a decade (but for a blip with CGC), and even more, these company protocols to hold back important merger type information from the worker bees are pretty undemocratic and jeopardize the worker's security because information is just released on the higher-up's time-table so they can control who to retain and who to fire. I mean, I get that there's a reason for the protocols and deals would fall through if everyone knew everything at all stages. However telling Peggy ahead of time, given her many years with the company, feels like a very just and fair exception and an emotionally resonant one for Pete, since he was inspired to tell Peggy as she interacted with the children there for the commercial and he was reminded of their connection.

However, *Pete* usually doesn't breach protocol on his own, ever since he was badly burned for doing so twice in S1. Pete usually doesn't go and break a superior's rules, without a vote and support of colleagues. It's a pretty big step for him to go off on his own to tell Peggy. That's why the meeting felt like Pete was doing something huge for Peggy and Peggy understood that. It's why the Pete/Peggy meeting had a feeling of finality.

Edited September 8, 2015 by Melancholy

txhorns79 · September 9, 2015

I'm merely arguing that a wife getting in her PJs after 6 PM or wearing her curlers to sleep to aid her day-time hairstyle is so unbelievably non-consequential. I think it's a really silly reason to be unhappy with a spouse, much less to cheat.

I think it is consequential, because it speaks to a larger issue. I honestly thought both Pete and Trudy were generally depressed during that period. Trudy showed it by giving up a little on things she used to care about, like her appearance, and Pete just was melancholy.

(I actually don't even remember a maid of reference to a maid in S6. Can you refresh my recollection? I remember just seeing the maid/nanny in The Strategy.)

When Trudy kicks Pete out, I thought Pete had asked where Tammy was, and Trudy made a comment about her being at the park with the maid.

Melancholy · September 9, 2015

I think it is consequential, because it speaks to a larger issue. I honestly thought both Pete and Trudy were generally depressed during that period. Trudy showed it by giving up a little on things she used to care about, like her appearance, and Pete just was melancholy.

I agree that Pete was depressed/melancholy. (Although, I mainly get this from his affect at home and in his affairs. For some reason, Pete never really seems depressed at work as opposed to say, Don, who can seem consistently depressed even when he's winning everything at work. I'm not sure if this is a Doylist reason- Don is the tortured lead and Pete isn't. Or because the Watsonian reason that Don can have an artistic melancholy while Pete's depression at work shows up in EVEN MORE feverish gladhanding. I think it's a little bit of both.)

However, I think Trudy was fine and emotionally healthy, except for how Pete was hurting her to the point that she *did* become depressed in S6. I just think that new mothers tend to become tired and get into their PJs earlier, especially when they can't count on their infants sleeping through the night as Trudy said in A Little Kiss and Signal 30. Actually, I think most people get into their PJs in the evening hours after their chores are done and many people feel after the newlywed years are finished, they can dress comfortably in their own house instead of having to parade around in a shirtwaist dress, kitten heels, pearls, and perfectly set hair that gets attended to so frequently at the beauty parlor that nighttime curlers are unnecessary. Trudy had every right to get just a little more comfortable instead of parading around like a perfect housewife mannequin, because she and Pete had deeper things bonding them together than the blush of first attraction.

To note, Trudy was in a bathrobe and her PJs when she and Pete reconciled in The Milk and Honey Route- a further symbol that Trudy's night-time dress really wasn't the problem in their marriage.

When Trudy kicks Pete out, I thought Pete had asked where Tammy was, and Trudy made a comment about her being at the park with the maid.

Thank you.

Edited September 9, 2015 by Melancholy

sistermagpie · September 9, 2015

To note, Trudy was in a bathrobe and her PJs when she and Pete reconciled in The Milk and Honey Route- a further symbol that Trudy's night-time dress really wasn't the problem in their marriage.

Yes, that's the point. When Pete mentioned only seeing her in her pajamas multiple times he wasn't criticizing her wardrobe. He was focusing on it as a symbol of how he felt he fit into her life and Cos Cob in S5. Things are different in S7.

Melancholy · September 9, 2015

Yes, that's the point. When Pete mentioned only seeing her in her pajamas multiple times he wasn't criticizing her wardrobe. He was focusing on it as a symbol of how he felt he fit into her life and Cos Cob in S5. Things are different in S7.

I do think Pete was criticizing Trudy's wardrobe in S5. He was buying into the sexist ideal that a housewife is failing in her duties if she doesn't look fantastic at all times, no matter what else was happening in her life, and Pete was partly buying into that to justify how he was, "Always looking for something better. Always looking for something else." This series captures a truth that men (and women sometimes) grab harder onto sexist mores because they promise some kind of structure or elegance or entitlement to make sense of and soothe chaotic and unhappy existences. And Pete was partly "looking for something better, looking for something else" because he was just melancholy and depressed about this sense that he was doomed out to live in the suburbs, just grinding out every day as he marches onto middle age while still feeling not-validated as a man or made whole from his loveless childhood because, at this point, he was just regarding Trudy's "love" as part of their dull obligations and something to be taken for granted. It's a whole collected circle of negative emotions, some of which are more sympathetic than others, but Pete was criticizing Trudy's wardrobe because, while Trudy was a great wife, she failed at being this perfect all-things-to-him wife that could make Pete feel like a king and a handsome high school boy and a broken woman's one last grasp at sanity and wholeness who she prefers to her own husband. And that's because no one could satisfy Pete's vaguely understood, depressive demands.

Pete became better and seemed to have recovered from his depression but also figured out that you can lose what's truly important if you're constantly preoccupied by getting the next new, better thing. He realized that a Trudy in her bathrobe and PJs or a Trudy in a likely suburban house in Witchita actually is plenty for him.

Edited September 9, 2015 by Melancholy

txhorns79 · September 9, 2015

I do think Pete was criticizing Trudy's wardrobe in S5. He was buying into the sexist ideal that a housewife is failing in her duties if she doesn't look fantastic at all times, no matter what else was happening in her life,

I didn't think Pete viewed it as Trudy failing in her duties, so much as he viewed it as her just giving up, and it played into the overall theme of decline that set in during the fifth and sixth seasons of the show. The formerly glamorous Manhattanites of 1960 were now slightly out of date, older suburbanites in 1966.

sistermagpie · September 9, 2015

I didn't think Pete viewed it as Trudy failing in her duties, so much as he viewed it as her just giving up, and it played into the overall theme of decline that set in during the fifth and sixth seasons of the show. The formerly glamorous Manhattanites of 1960 were now slightly out of date, older suburbanites in 1966.

Yes, the season hits Pete's issues of aging and the "graveyard" of the suburbs pretty hard--and he's completely isolated in his experience about it with Trudy often either asleep or interested in very different things in their scenes. He himself doesn't equate her pajamas to being unattractive. Reducing it to Pete having some silly idea of the woman needing to be dressed in heels and full make-up when he comes home in the middle of the night just seems cartoonish and having little to do with their relationship before that.

Edited September 9, 2015 by sistermagpie

Melancholy · September 9, 2015

I didn't think Pete viewed it as Trudy failing in her duties, so much as he viewed it as her just giving up, and it played into the overall theme of decline that set in during the fifth and sixth seasons of the show. The formerly glamorous Manhattanites of 1960 were now slightly out of date, older suburbanites in 1966.

I'm not sure what the meaningful distinction is between "he viewed it as her just giving up" and "failing in her duties". Pete found fault with Trudy because of how she was dressed- he up and said so. I already said that it was emblematic of Pete's larger dissatisfaction with a wife who was newly preoccupied with their child and maintaining their larger home and grounds instead of just focused on Pete and maintaining a small apartment, but also Pete's general depressive ennui rising to the surface. I *am* taking their prior relationship into account. Pete and Trudy had a problematic marriage in S1-2. Pete's negative upbringing, parentally-passed-down-values to disrespect women, and his own yearning, dissatisfied nature influenced him to treat Trudy poorly in S1-2 and part of S3. However Pete fell so much in love with Trudy in their early years of marriage and she made him so happy as his urbane, witty, attentive partner that he did much better by her in later S3-4.

However, the negative values that Pete internalized from his dad as a child and from his broader world and profession as a young man and his own, depressive desires for a woman to make him feel like every masculine ideal from king to handsome young man to rescuer didn't evaporate from S1-2. They were still lurking there in Pete's personality. However, S5 removed the soothing effects of the devoted, young beautiful childless wife and S6 removed the soothing effects of the ever-improving career on the rise. As a result, Pete reacted very poorly to basic life events that people deal with every day- newborns distract their mothers, wives age and start to dress down, if you agree to live in the suburbs, you have to maintain the house and commute there. So, Pete gravitated to more selfish impulses to get angry at Trudy for having her own routine centered around their child and home instead of being completely focused on him and to look for validation out of the marriage.

(Pete actually reacted to his flailing S6 and even early S7 career with a lot of grace and frankly, I think he was almost being too hard on himself to characterize himself as unimportant or not-successful just because, like, Vicks left and Don fired Jaguar and the management became more top-heavy all for reasons beyond his control but that still ultimately enriched the agency and thus, him as a partner. I don't even find any fault with him there.)

However in S6-7 when Pete internally confronted his failings that led to his dissatisfaction with life and thus, Trudy, he was left with the continuing thread of the earlier seasons- Pete did really fall in love with Trudy.

Edited September 9, 2015 by Melancholy

Dev F · October 5, 2015

From the episode thread for "The Crash":

However, I'd amend this S4 arc by saying that Don came to this conclusion in The Summer Man. However, then, Don, through a mixture of insecurity, superficial silliness, and unusual circumstances, decided that he can't hold onto the parts of his life that he realized he cares about without some magical fix.

Well, I'd argue that "The Summer Man" was about Don almost finding peace with a life in which he could let go of the person he was and become someone completely new, whereas by "Tomorrowland" he'd decided that there were parts of himself he wasn't ready to let go of. It's a regression in the sense that he ends up in a less impressive place than if his personal program in "The Summer Man" had succeeded, but I don't think he ends up farther back than he began the season, or anything like that.

But then on a separate track, he severely regressed on one of his better traits in S1-3 and undoubtedly pre-series: self-reliance by making Megan his magical fix, providing a tragi-comedy sourness to seeing Don as an allegedly emotionally available, doting husband in S5.

I guess I don't think of this as a regression because I see his form of self-reliance as a negative trait that he had, in fact, been trying to move beyond for several years. It was an element of his initial denial ("You're born alone and you die alone, and this world just drops a bunch of rules on you to make you forget those facts, but I never forget"). Anna identified it as the root of his dysfunction ("The only thing keeping you from being happy is the belief that you are alone"). And by season 3 he's trying to improve on how he connects to people, making multiple comments along the line of "I can't do this by myself." And the reason he survives the dissolution of his marriage and the destruction of his business is because he has succeeded in building relationships that keep him afloat when everything in his life is falling apart.

Obviously, the way he approaches his relationship with Megan is unhealthy, but it's a more specific dysfunction than simply not being self-reliant -- a new dysfunction.

It was even worse than the end of S4. The firm's new financial success felt incredibly dirty to Don, with Lane's suicide and Joan's prostitution. They swam the English channel and drowned in champagne. What's more, late S5 deliberately triggered a bunch of his Dick Whitman issues making way for the obsession with suicide and prostitution and his whorehouse years in S6.

Again, I think it's more specific than that. Lane's downfall hit Don particularly hard because he represented the catastrophic failure of the kind of life Don himself was living in season 5, in which he was coasting numbly on some sad approximation of success. In the same way, Lane was mild and undemanding, and the world still took everything from him. Hence, Don's initial confrontation with Lane over his embezzlement leads directly into his rant about not wanting to settle anymore: "I don't want Jaguar, I want Chevy. I don't want Mohawk, I want American." He realizes that you can't just nail down one part of your life and call it a day. "I won't settle for 50 percent of anything. I want 100 percent."

And then in the season 5 finale, when Don realizes that he'll always be haunted by his brother's death as he contemplates helping Megan's career and possibly losing her to it, he realizes that while people may be alone in their successes, they are bound together in their struggles and failures. For the first few years of SCDP, Don and his partners were united in their struggle to get their agency off the ground. But once success became a foregone conclusion, they started to get complacent, to take one another for granted.

The solution to that problem is not to regress or to numb himself; it's to keep fighting, to keep working on the parts of his life he previously convinced himself he didn't need to worry about. That, I think, is where we find him when season 6 kicks off.

However, he's not confronting his depression. It's just slipping up on him.

Don: Does that make you think of suicide?
Stan: Of course. That's what's so great about it.

Does the fact that it's slipping up on him necessarily mean that he's not confronting it? An attitude of nonconfrontation would be if someone suggested that his ad reminded him of death and he was adamant that that was ridiculous. (The way, say, he shuts down Betty's accurate accusations that he's being unfaithful back in season 2.) Here Don tells the client, I assume honestly, that he didn't intend that association, but when they press him, he's actually open to it: "Maybe he did [die] and he went to heaven. Maybe that's what this feels like." When Stan says that of course the pitch is about suicide, Don is contemplative, not dismissive.

That's how confronting your demons works, it seems to me. You don't immediately take them all in with comprehensive understanding. You explore them. You follow the implications and see where they lead: "If that is about death, maybe this is what it means . . ."

It's actually Roger who suggests a program of nonconfrontation: "You know, we sold actual death for twenty-five years with Lucky Strike. You know how we did it? We ignored it." The implication is that Don is doing exactly the opposite -- confronting the unpleasant truths that polite society would have him ignore.

But the fact that other people balk at such things is why, going forward, Don will embrace a strategy of avoidance -- of confronting his demons only in private, for fear of what other people would think of him if they knew. When Sylvia feels guilty about their affair, he tells her "This didn't happen" -- but he's not talking about the sort of self-delusion he once preached, because then he taps his temple: "Just in here." It's no longer about shocking yourself with how much something didn't happen; it's about letting something happen just for you.

Or, as he puts it in the next episode, "I only did it because no one else was supposed to know." After he presents an ad for Heinz Ketchup that doesn't show any ketchup, arguing that it's more powerful if the product appears only in the mind of the consumer. There are similar symbols of Don's avoidance strategy all over the early episodes of the season.

Megan: Because who knows what you're feeling? I didn't know what to say to her except, "I'd tell you to ask your father, but he's at the movies." I should have said, "He's just drunk."

Don: You're better with them.

It's interesting that you quote this particular line, because this is the exact moment that confirmed for me that my till-then-tentative reading of Don's emotional state for season 6 was correct. This is exactly the response you'd expect from someone who's mired in avoidance. He's no longer repressing his anxieties; he can discuss them with Megan with surprising candor. He just can't bear to deal with them in an open and productive way. He's fully conscious that he's failing his children, but he's still going to let them go off with Megan, because, ugh, she's better with them anyway.

Edited October 5, 2015 by Dev F

Melancholy · October 5, 2015

I brought your comment from The Crash thread to this thread to keep everything "under one roof."

Well, I'd argue that "The Summer Man" was about Don almost finding peace with a life in which he could let go of the person he was and become someone completely new, whereas by "Tomorrowland" he'd decided that there were parts of himself he wasn't ready to let go of. It's a regression in the sense that he ends up in a less impressive place than if his personal program in "The Summer Man" had succeeded, but I don't think he ends up farther back than he began the season, or anything like that.

I disagree. The Summer Man wasn't Don letting go of his past life and becoming someone entirely new. In The Summer Man, Don was actively holding onto the important parts of his life. Showing up for Gene's party instead of just letting Henry be his father. Being engaged in his business, including as a mentor (giving Peggy pretty sage advice that she needs to decide and do any firing or yelling to have respect as a supervisor). Faye Miller is a....thinking ad man's girlfriend and they talked the art of persuasion at dinner. He was even honoring Anna's memory by taking her advice and using swimming to clear his head. In The Summer Man, Don resolved to be a more active father and he was committed to his business- and he was striving for sobriety, purpose, and control over his emotions/worst impulses to fill those roles.

What Don "realized" in Tomorrowland is that he was a number of weeks post-The Summer Man resolution and just a vacation and a quickie on the couch with Megan seemed to be providing an easier, more fun route to everything Don wanted in The Summer Man. Don didn't learn anything in Tomorrowland.

I guess I don't think of this as a regression because I see his form of self-reliance as a negative trait that he had, in fact, been trying to move beyond for several years. It was an element of his initial denial ("You're born alone and you die alone, and this world just drops a bunch of rules on you to make you forget those facts, but I never forget"). Anna identified it as the root of his dysfunction ("The only thing keeping you from being happy is the belief that you are alone"). And by season 3 he's trying to improve on how he connects to people, making multiple comments along the line of "I can't do this by myself." And the reason he survives the dissolution of his marriage and the destruction of his business is because he has succeeded in building relationships that keep him afloat when everything in his life is falling apart.

See, I tend to find virtues in some of Don's darker, more cynical traits. They're a mix of good and bad results. Don's self-reliance isolates him as much as it's the reason why he's a self-made man and to some extent, what saves him at the end of the series where he can survive and thrive living out of a Sears bag on his own trip (even though at the very end, it's about connecting to others). If Don and Adam were extremes at inter-dependence, Don's self-reliance is problematic because he turned away his brother but positive because Don doesn't require one person's acceptance to make life worth living but instead, finds other reasons to keep going and trying.

I think this is partially why I argue Don's arc is verrrrrry imperfectly linear where his general movement through the series is to have a reckoning with himself, but there's backsliding and running in place and moving forward and disavowing past virtues and good coping mechanisms.

Again, I think it's more specific than that. Lane's downfall hit Don particularly hard because he represented the catastrophic failure of the kind of life Don himself was living in season 5, in which he was coasting numbly on some sad approximation of success. In the same way, Lane was mild and undemanding, and the world still took everything from him. Hence, Don's initial confrontation with Lane over his embezzlement leads directly into his rant about not wanting to settle anymore: "I don't want Jaguar, I want Chevy. I don't want Mohawk, I want American." He realizes that you can't just nail down one part of your life and call it a day. "I won't settle for 50 percent of anything. I want 100 percent.

And then in the season 5 finale, when Don realizes that he'll always be haunted by his brother's death as he contemplates helping Megan's career and possibly losing her to it, he realizes that while people may be alone in their successes, they are bound together in their struggles and failures. For the first few years of SCDP, Don and his partners were united in their struggle to get their agency off the ground. But once success became a foregone conclusion, they started to get complacent, to take one another for granted.

Don already figured out that he was tired of just coasting on a facsimile of success and that he'd been taking people for granted by Christmas Waltz. He realized that just focusing on Megan wasn't making him happy and it was actually guilting and bothering Megan after Megan reminded Don that he loved his work before she started and then, quit copywriting. Don's speech in Christmas Waltz drove everyone, including himself, to become motivated. The speech also reminded everyone to NOT take each other for granted. Last year at this time, whether you knew it or not, the survival of this company was on the line. I look at the faces in this room who have given their all to this tenuous recovery and I say 'Prepare to take a great leap forward'. He, then, DID take Peggy for granted in The Other Woman because Jaguar was sucking his focus and patience, but at the end of The Other Woman, he was interested in re-connecting BEFORE Peggy said she was going to CGC and he even said, "I know I've been taking you for granted."

I don't think Lane's death or even Don firing Lane motivated Don to try to chase his own success to lead a more connected, assertive life for himself. I think Don was motored by guilt and insecurity and even some pettiness and defensiveness. Don was on a more positive trajectory where he decided he wanted to re-engage more with his business and employees in Christmas Waltz/The Other Woman. However, then, Peggy left, foiling plans to re-engage with her because it was too late. Then, Don felt defensive and insecure that the other ad exec in the barbershop was crediting the Jaguar success to Pete and still referring to them as a "little agency". Then Don fired Lane, and then, walked into Roger's office saying, "I'm tired of living in this delusion that we're going somewhere when we can't even give Christmas bonuses" with some subtle guilt and self-hatred with JH's delivery. Then after Lane's suicide, Don tried being the mensch who visited Rebecca Pryce with money out of his own pocket and she told him he was full of shit.

I think all of that darkened Don's previous positive aspirations to re-engage in Christmas Waltz/The Other Woman. In late S5, Don was stuck on defensively proving that he's not as ineffective or bad as people "say" or more to the point, Don *believes* they're saying through the lens of his own insecurity- Don's the draw for the company, not Pete, Don's not the poisonous opportunist who's too dirty for respectable blue-chip companies (and he'll fire Ken if Ken isn't in line with that goal), Don can enrich the company enough that it doesn't produce tragic Lanes who walked out blaming Don for not compensating him properly for his contributions to the company and accusing him of lining his pockets with the PPL sale while Lane operated on a loss for three years.

Don's prior efforts to just commit to his company and friends were darkened and rendered unstable by Don's desperate desire for some external "proof" that he's good and for someone to deliver on that fast. However, everywhere he turned, he just felt confirmation that it's not just his tooth that's rotten.

Within this, I agree that Don realized he's tragically flawed at the end of S5. However, it was an unproductive realization where Don mainly decided that he couldn't do better, so he should mainly just chase whatever relieves that pain.

The solution to that problem is not to regress or to numb himself; it's to keep fighting, to keep working on the parts of his life he previously convinced himself he didn't need to worry about. That, I think, is where we find him when season 6 kicks off.

I disagree. As stated above, Don felt it was open and shut that he was rotten...so he pointedly STOPPED working on being a good husband in The Phantom and also where we find him in The Doorway where he makes no effort to connect with Megan on vacation, doesn't modify his drinking to support Roger at the funeral, etc. I think when we find Don in S6, he's pretty convinced that there's no point in trying to do better and he's just chasing whatever will make him feel good, although this time convinced that he's totally failing.

Sylvia: What do you want for this year?

Don: I want to stop doing this.

Although, of course, he doesn't stop. Don opens S6 saying that he wants to stop sleeping with Sylvia- and then, Don lets his affair with Sylvia define S6.

Does the fact that it's slipping up on him necessarily mean that he's not confronting it? An attitude of nonconfrontation would be if someone suggested that his ad reminded him of death and he was adamant that that was ridiculous. (The way, say, he shuts down Betty's accurate accusations that he's being unfaithful back in season 2.) Here Don tells the client, I assume honestly, that he didn't intend that association, but when they press him, he's actually open to it: "Maybe he did [die] and he went to heaven. Maybe that's what this feels like." When Stan says that of course the pitch is about suicide, Don is contemplative, not dismissive.

As I read it, Don was fighting his hardest to make that ad seem totally normal and universally appealing. First, Don argued that the Sheraton guy was just associating it with the suicide in A Star is Born because of his personal association. But then, the other Sheraton exec had a problem with the ad. Then, Don tried feverishly arguing that this went to HEAAAAVEN, IT'S ALL GOOD. Then, one of the execs said that's morbid. Then, Don really doubled down on his claims of normalcy. Well, heaven's a little morbid. How do you get to heaven? Something terrible has to happen. Don was arguing, "I'm not the weird one. *Everyone* regards dying and going to heaven as a good thing." Roger and Pete eventually accepted this meeting's failure, while Don was still tap-dancing to prove that he just picked a provocative ad because he's a canny ad man who knows how to play consumers instead of because he glorifies suicide. A picture of a hotel, even yours, is easy to ignore. This, or some version of this, demands your attention.

Then, Don made one last ditch effort to find SOMEONE who agrees that Don just draws totally normal, universally appealing ads and there's nothing sick about them or him after Roger's "What, you didn't get all of your vomiting out of the way at my mother's funeral?" and turned to Stan. When Stan said the ad reminded him of suicide, Don mainly looked depressed rather than contemplative. I don't think it's a coincidence that the next time we hear about the execs from Sheraton coming to see another campaign, it's in In Care Of when Don missed the meeting because he was in the bar. Don didn't even want to resolve things enough with Sheraton enough to figure out the right ad.

It's actually Roger who suggests a program of nonconfrontation: "You know, we sold actual death for twenty-five years with Lucky Strike. You know how we did it? We ignored it." The implication is that Don is doing exactly the opposite -- confronting the unpleasant truths that polite society would have him ignore.

Actually, I see Roger as the one confronting things instead of Don at this point. It's a pretty big step forward in terms of honesty for Roger to admit that they sold death with Lucky Strike and how they coped with doing it. I think it's of a kind with Roger confronting Don about being so drunk that he vomited at Roger's mother's funeral- because apparently, Roger really does have a propriety limit and there's not an infinite amount of bro-ing it up tolerance.

I don't think Roger deliberately telling Don to ignore death in his next ad. How many ads for a Hawaiin resort include death? I think Roger was certain Don would stay away from anything death-like in his next pitch to Sheraton. The "vacation or suicide" was a one-off idea if I ever heard one. (That's what's so great about it! LOL. I really, really mean that.) Roger wasn't really *suggesting* anything. Roger was just contemplative about how they financed the agency in years past with Lucky Strike, and how death shapes perceptions of business, because, at this point, Roger was in a thoughtful mode- in therapy, as he considered that Margaret was his only heir, as he considered the loss of his mother.

It's interesting that you quote this particular line, because this is the exact moment that confirmed for me that my till-then-tentative reading of Don's emotional state for season 6 was correct. This is exactly the response you'd expect from someone who's mired in avoidance. He's no longer repressing his anxieties; he can discuss them with Megan with surprising candor. He just can't bear to deal with them in an open and productive way. He's fully conscious that he's failing his children, but he's still going to let them go off with Megan, because, ugh, she's better with them anyway.

Meanwhile, I see it as emblematic of my reading of S6. Don was always insecure, and was always anxious that he didn't know how to not fail his kids. It's hardly the first time that Don openly admitted it. See The Mountain King, The Chrysanthenum and the Sword, The Summer Man.

However while this was always a problem, at least, S1-5 Don made different efforts to try to get over his issues or even "fake it till he makes it" with parenting. Which, actually, I think most parents do since the goal is actually, "Then, you're just stuck trying to be a person like the rest of us." Granted, Don has deep-seated psychological issues which have to be confronted and dealt with so Don could even get to a more typical person's parental anxieties. However, I didn't see Don confront any of that in S6 until In Care Of. He was just admitting failure- but without even the effort to admit failure to get an expert opinion on how to help Sally (The Chrysanthenum and the Sword) or try to talk out-loud his problems to figure out how to get his family back (The Mountain King).

But he's not persuading Ted of anything. He makes a unilateral decision and leaves the room.

Stomping out of a room after you've said your piece before the other person can respond back is a time honored persuasion tactic, and one that Don's employed successfully (Meditations on an Emergency). Don intended that through the power of his declarations and through his shaming tactic to compare the agency to a whorehouse, Ted and Jim would be so wrong-footed and intimidated that they wouldn't challenge Don's sudden assertion to stop working for their biggest and most demanding client.

Don was looking to "persuade" Ted- to do all of the work for Chevy and leave Don out of it. Just because Don wasn't arguing the *merits* of that plan didn't mean that Don wasn't staging his unilateral decision to motivate Ted's conduct from then on re: Chevy and their split of creative work.

And the next episode frames Don's actions very specifically to avoid suggesting that he's following the same program he rejects in this one. For instance, where this episode has Don desperately trying to persuade Sylvia to open her door so they can resume their relationship, The Better Half" has him banter in a low-key way with Betty and avoid making any move on her until she literallyleaves her door open for him. "What are you doing?" Betty asks, and he responds, "Waiting for you to tell me to stop."It's the exact opposite of the hard sell he attempts so desperately here.

I can't even begin to compare Don/Sylvia and Don/Betty enough to draw a psychological trend. With Sylvia, Don was trying to get back a lately-important sexual and "romantic" component of his life who just dumped him last week but had been enthusiastically sleeping with him for months. It makes twisted sense that a Don who was just suddenly dumped by a mistress would try to win her back, especially after she said she was ashamed of what they've been doing and Don had his own hang-ups to prove that Don/Sylvia means that Don can be the moral equivalent of Dr. Rosen.

Meanwhile with Betty, Don was used to not being romantically involved with her for five years. They were both pretty used to their acrimonious divorce. Don was used to seeing Betty as fat and unattractive for the last two years and change. Betty fell into the category of, "Why try to seduce her? She's an Untouchable. Untouchably ugly, untouchably too pissed off at me than any seduction effort would get a slap in the face." Plus while I actually don't think Don was particularly *authentically* angry at Betty for divorcing him post Shut the Door, Have a Seat, he often really tried to convince himself he was angry at Betty, "Morticia of the Mortica and Lurch" so he could also have the dignity of post-divorce-anger.

Basically, Betty had to force herself into the "touchable" category, by looking hot at camp but even more, by flirting pretty hard with Don. Betty had to force the issue that she'd like to put the acrimony aside to flirt and then, sleep with him. Oh, and of course, Betty drew a line in their marriage that she believes infidelity is a horrible, divorceable sin. They both know that Don is a cheater who will sleep with married women i.e. Bobbi Barrett. Betty was the one who had to signal that she could be as morally flexible as Sylvia and Bobbi for that night.

Don/Betty and Don/Sylvia are too different to say that Don made a resolution that he was done with working hard at seducing women out of his marriage since Betty wouldn't have even been in Don's persuasive zone if she didn't actually start persuading him that she wanted to sleep with him, and she could still turn him on. BTW, the end of The Better Half, features Don actually really trying his best to convince Megan that he was re-focusing on the marriage. However while Don was using his persuasive powers, I do think Don was saying the truth IN THE MOMENT and wasn't saying it to get anything specific out of Megan so much as to truly re-connect.

Edited October 5, 2015 by Melancholy

Dev F · October 8, 2015

I disagree. The Summer Man wasn't Don letting go of his past life and becoming someone entirely new. In The Summer Man, Don was actively holding onto the important parts of his life. Showing up for Gene's party instead of just letting Henry be his father. Being engaged in his business, including as a mentor (giving Peggy pretty sage advice that she needs to decide and do any firing or yelling to have respect as a supervisor). Faye Miller is a....thinking ad man's girlfriend and they talked the art of persuasion at dinner. He was even honoring Anna's memory by taking her advice and using swimming to clear his head.

Well, clearly Don is still committed to engaging with his colleagues and his loved ones, and I certainly didn't mean to suggest otherwise. "Letting go of the person he was" doesn't mean completely abandoning his family and his career, or anything like that. It just means that he's trying to make peace with the loss of all the social touchstones that used to guide those interactions. That's what I'm arguing "The Summer Man" is about.

It's about figuring out how to be a father to a little boy who already has another live-in father figure. About letting your protegee know that she can act on her own initiative instead of running to you for mentorship. About rejecting an all-too-familiar romantic partnership with Betty 2.0 in favor of an altogether different relationship with a more mature woman who's going to challenge you in new ways. The end result is a life with some of the same supporting characters, sure, but it's a distinctly different life nonetheless.

And it's another place where the specific symbolism is so, so important. I would be extremely reluctant to interpret "The Summer Man" as an episode about Don embracing all the elements of his old life when its main emotional climax is a sequence in which Don picks up boxes and boxes of his old stuff from his ex-wife's house and immediately throws them, unopened, into the garbage. If that's not meant to represent Don's resolve to give up his old life and embrace something new, I don't know what is.

What Don "realized" in Tomorrowland is that he was a number of weeks post-The Summer Man resolution and just a vacation and a quickie on the couch with Megan seemed to be providing an easier, more fun route to everything Don wanted in The Summer Man. Don didn't learn anything in Tomorrowland.

Definitely disagree. "Tomorrowland" is about Don reclaiming many of the touchstones he'd tried so hard to do without in "The Summer Man." Where the earlier episode had him finding an awkward new place in his children's lives outside the nuclear family headed by Betty and Henry, this one has him envisioning a new nuclear family with himself and Megan at the head. Where the summer Don was pushing Peggy to blossom outside of his supervision, here he imagines replacing her with his new fiancee/protegee who's "got the same spark." Where he was exploring a more challenging relationship with Dr. Faye, here he takes a shortcut right back to being a married man.

And while it's unfortunate that he couldn't make do with a less structured life, it's ultimately important for Don to discover what aspects of his life he wants to hold on to. It's those same three elements -- father, husband, mentor -- that we'll see him struggling with for the rest of the series, and that he will literally call on one by one in the series finale as he searches for some core truth to hold onto as his life crumbles around him. And in those final minutes he'll finally get to where he was going in "The Summer Man," making peace with the notion that he will be father to kids who are more comfortable with another father, husband only to a dying ex-wife who no longer needs him to tell her everything will be OK, and mentor to a former protegee who hasn't fallen apart without him and may now have more to teach him than he has to teach her.

Don already figured out that he was tired of just coasting on a facsimile of success and that he'd been taking people for granted by Christmas Waltz. He realized that just focusing on Megan wasn't making him happy and it was actually guilting and bothering Megan after Megan reminded Don that he loved his work before she started and then, quit copywriting.

That's a step on the way toward Don deciding he wants it all, but it's certainly not all the way there. Because all he's really done is trade one half measure for another: a marriage where he's numb and coasting for a job where he's numb and coasting. Even winning Jaguar is framed as a mediocre endeavor -- "They're lemons. They never start" -- that Don is desperately trying to talk up as the agency's one great hope for the future. To wit:

The speech also reminded everyone to NOT take each other for granted. Last year at this time, whether you knew it or not, the survival of this company was on the line. I look at the faces in this room who have given their all to this tenuous recovery and I say 'Prepare to take a great leap forward'. He, then, DID take Peggy for granted in The Other Woman because Jaguar was sucking his focus and patience, but at the end of The Other Woman, he was interested in re-connecting BEFORE Peggy said she was going to CGC and he even said, "I know I've been taking you for granted."

That's exactly the point, though. Letting one account suck all his focus and patience because he thinks it holds the answer to all his problems is the same thing he was doing with Megan all along. It's not until Peggy leaves and Lane kills himself that he realizes that's not good enough -- that he needs to fight for every aspect of his life, not one bare corner after another, or he's going to lose more of the people he cares about.

Indeed, when Don makes that realization he explicitly renounces his earlier rah-rah-best-thing-ever speechifying: "I don't want Jaguar -- I want Chevy."

I think when we find Don in S6, he's pretty convinced that there's no point in trying to do better and he's just chasing whatever will make him feel good, although this time convinced that he's totally failing.

It's not like he becomes some sort of wild hedonist, though. While he's lying on a beach in Hawaii, he's reading Dante's Inferno; when he gets embarrassingly drunk, he pesters his doorman about his near-death experience. These are not the actions of someone who's trying to push the pain to the back of his mind. They're the actions of someone who's dwelling on his pain, who's searching desperately, finally, for a way to relieve it.

As I read it, Don was fighting his hardest to make that ad seem totally normal and universally appealing.

No, that's what he was supposed to be doing. That's how he starts off, and Pete quickly backs him up: "We looked at this. None of us thought of that." Where Don goes wrong -- what Roger ultimately upbraids him for -- is engaging with the client's "This is about death" idea. That's literally what Roger says to him: You talked about death; you shouldn't have done that.

Don was looking to "persuade" Ted- to do all of the work for Chevy and leave Don out of it. Just because Don wasn't arguing the *merits* of that plan didn't mean that Don wasn't staging his unilateral decision to motivate Ted's conduct from then on re: Chevy and their split of creative work.

By that logic, any action that provokes a reaction is an attempt at persuasion. It's so broad as to render the concept meaningless. If I lock someone out of my apartment, I'm not using my powers of persuasion to dissuade them from trying to get in; I'm just straightforwardly barring their entry. In the same way, if Don makes a unilateral decision, he's not trying to persuade Ted to accept his decision, he's just rendering Ted's feelings on the subject moot, because that's what "unilateral" means.

But I feel like we're quibbling over semantics at this point and getting pretty far away from the point of all this "persuasion" talk. I'll try to get back to it in this last part. . . .

Don/Betty and Don/Sylvia are too different to say that Don made a resolution that he was done with working hard at seducing women out of his marriage since Betty wouldn't have even been in Don's persuasive zone if she didn't actually start persuading him that she wanted to sleep with him, and she could still turn him on.

But my entire point is that Betty and Sylvia are altogether different -- that Don was turning to the women with whom he already had relationships instead of trying to form substitute relationships with outsiders like Sylvia.

Don's whole revelation in "The Crash" is about the power of those sorts of surrogate relationships. Because Dick looked to Aimee as a surrogate mother figure, it gave their relationship a weight, and Aimee a power, that their actual relationship didn't warrant. It's a power Don is eager to deploy against Sylvia, for whom he's previously served as a sort of surrogate husband, providing for her in a material way when Arnold refuses to do so. But then he sees how Grandma Ida used the same technique on Sally, holding out the promise of a long-desired family relationship to gain her trust. And that's when he realizes how destructive such surrogacy can be, and resolves to avoid it going forward. That's more specifically what I mean when I suggest that he abdicates his "powers of persuasion."

And that's why "The Better Half" has him earnestly pursuing non-surrogate relationships -- looking for validation from the actual people with whom he has an emotional history. And that's where his strategy of avoidance starts to break down, because it's easier to deal with your problems in secret when you don't have to involve all the people who actually know you, all the people whose love you're afraid of losing.

Edited October 8, 2015 by Dev F

kdufty · March 3, 2016

I need help finding a specific scene, and would love all of your help if possible. I do remember a scene where a woman hid in a guy’s office during an office party in either the final or second to last season (or maybe an earlier one)… Pete Campbell’s office, I think —

She ran down the hall and was being chased…

Any recollections?

Thank you!!

sistermagpie · March 3, 2016

Do you mean this scene from "Nixon vs. Kennedy?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQtbOqxIYas

Edited March 3, 2016 by sistermagpie

kdufty · March 3, 2016

I did find that scene, and to be honest, I'm not sure that's the one. Thank you though!

Any other possibilities?

sistermagpie · March 3, 2016

I remember Peggy sneaking down the hall in "Mystery Date" and finding Dawn sleeping in Don's office. Not really the same thing, but could that be it?

Also there was all the stuff going on in The Crash. You might remember that as a party with people in different offices.

Domestic Assassin · March 4, 2016

The only office party I can think of in the SCDP office is the Christmas party in Season 4 (episode 2, Christmas Comes But Once A Year). Faye went into Don's office to get away from Bert and her boss and their rather offensive conversation. I don't remember any running down the halls in that episode though.

sistermagpie · June 1, 2016

Watching the early eps again it's so fun how many little things are foreshadowed. I don't know if it was on purpose, but there's a real symmetry to it that pops out when you've seen the whole thing.

There was a lot more concrete info about Don and Adam than I first remembered, like Adam saying he was a 8 when he last saw Dick. Though that still makes no sense with Don's age.

Also Betty's talk about her mother dying and wanting to just disappear young is pretty much what she got. Also her awful psychiatrist tells Don she's got the mentality of a child (which he then repeats to her when blaming him for Roger's harassment) and now we know she eventually went to a child psychologist.

In New Amsterdam when the Vogels' bring in the neighbors Trudy tells the story of Pete's ancestor to the neighbors at the new place to impress them. Pete's standing alone while the Vogels and neighbors talk about it. Watching it now it immediately reminded me of the scene in Time & Life (I think)--the famous fight with the headmaster at Tammy's would-be school. There Pete's pedigree has the opposite effect, it's his father's side, and Trudy is completely confused about what's going on. But Pete gets pulled right into it, telling the guy he's crazy but defending the family name anyway.

I can't remember which ep it was that had the men coming up with the private account at the bank but when Don's explaining it Pete says "discretion!" like it's exactly what it is and that's great. Immediately I thought of in Milk and Honey Route where he tells the story of his father refusing to buy the jewelry for his mistress from a guy because he wasn't "discreet" and Pete went home and looked up the word, basically learning that being an adult male meant having affairs.

When Ken gets his story published Paul immediately starts talking about his story about finding himself in a roomful of black people and they all got along, like he's already writing the Negron Complex. (Of course, Paul's whole life was kind of that.)

Then in Red in the Face when Pete's showing off his gun to the guys (Harry, Ken, Paul) we know the gun never went off as everyone expected but when he playfully points it at everyone and Ken throws his hand up in front of his face and jumps out of the chair in a moment of real panic for a second. Now you can't watch it without knowing Ken is totally going to get shot in the face.

txhorns79 · June 1, 2016

Quote

Also her awful psychiatrist tells Don she's got the mentality of a child (which he then repeats to her when blaming him for Roger's harassment) and now we know she eventually went to a child psychologist.

I kind of loved Dr. Edna. She didn't have a large number of scenes, but watching her face when she and Betty have their "session," ostensibly to discuss Sally, but really just a therapy session for Betty, and her general handling of Betty was so fun to watch.

Heck, Season 4 overall was really a good season.

Sigh. I miss the show!

sistermagpie · June 1, 2016

Rewatching S1 it also strikes me just how hard the bad marriage ideas are hit in that season. You've got Roger and Don, the two old married guys, then the junior execs, some of whom are still single and then two who are fairly recently married, Pete and Harry.

It's interesting just how much you see the men encouraging other men to be terrible husbands. You've got Don and Roger as role models, two guys who don't even think about cheating on their wives. In Red in the Face Roger comes on to Betty aggressively, she fends him off in the way women are supposed to do, laughing, not getting angry, turning him down without directly rejecting him. Then Don has the nerve to accuse her of throwing herself at him. The next evening he's *still* mad at her when she's trying to be nice even though she did nothing wrong--in fact Don and Roger were inconsiderate jerks the whole evening.

The next day Roger apologizes...to Don. Not for doing anything to Betty but for "parking in the wrong driveway." And Don gets his famous revenge on Roger, of course.

In the same ep Pete returns his gun and there too I'd forgotten just how much everything there rests on Pete being immasculated according to the rules of his time. He starts out saying he likes doing things for Trudy, then on line at the store he's got women in line gently mocking him for being there when he's a man. His college friend flirts with the saleswoman who makes a point of being disinterested in Pete when he tries to flirt too. (There's also the moment where Pete says "Why would you do that?" when he learns Trudy is registered under Vogel and not Campbell.) This interaction seems to inspire him to buy the gun, which gets him yelled at by his wife, which leads to his hyper-masculine hunting fantasy where the woman watches him eat, which leads to his later encounter with Peggy.

There's just so many times where you see the men getting instructed--by both women and men--to be even more inconsiderate. Harry and Pete have a conversation about not wanting to cheat where they both seem to be sort of unsure whether they're lying about it or if so exactly why they are. Part of it seems to be about working their way up to cheating regardless. Single guys like Ken make ball and chain jokes.

There's even another little scene I loved where I can't remember the set up but Don comments on Pete's wedding ring by saying "I was raised to believe a man doesn't wear jewelry." One one hand that's just a thing--my father didn't wear a wedding ring either probably for the same reason. But it's also very symbolic. The woman is the one who needs to show that she's taken (elsewhere someone refers to Pete's ring as "catnip," again saying cheating is normal) and Pete's being immasculated by even this show of equality with his wife.

And of course there's also the running theme of men not giving women the same freedom as they have. Don basically calls Betty a slut for Roger flirting with her. Roger buys Joan a bird to symbolize who he'd rather she spend her time with when not with him. Trudy makes reference to Pete being angry when he learned Charlie Fidditch was her first--yet Pete himself doesn't even remember it and is only focused on what he wants Trudy to get from the guy...who also proposes an affair.

Trudy, btw, is really caught between a jerk and a jerk face there. It's like she keeps trying to create a narrative where the guy really cherishes her and can't. Like her line about Pete being angry about her sleeping with CF seems at least a bit related to her wanting him to be jealous, but Pete doesn't care about it that way (though he will later when he has come to cherish her and be jealous). When Charlie proposes an affair Trudy comes up with a romantic fantasy of them getting together when they're old and she's a widow or something, and he just says "I don't want you when you're old. I want you now." Like of course he won't be interested in her when she's no longer hot.

It's like finding a guy who actually cares about a woman as a person in this first season universe would be like seeing a dog play the piano.

Melancholy · June 5, 2016

On June 1, 2016 at 0:35 PM, sistermagpie said:

There's even another little scene I loved where I can't remember the set up but Don comments on Pete's wedding ring by saying "I was raised to believe a man doesn't wear jewelry." One one hand that's just a thing--my father didn't wear a wedding ring either probably for the same reason. But it's also very symbolic. The woman is the one who needs to show that she's taken (elsewhere someone refers to Pete's ring as "catnip," again saying cheating is normal) and Pete's being immasculated by even this show of equality with his wife.

Don didn't comment on Pete's ring. Don's cufflink was faulty and fell out of his sleeve (hence, why Rachel replaced it) so Don excused his shirt falling apart that way. Pete, then, made an analogy to his enjoying wearing his wedding ring. But you know, I don't look for rings but I think Don didn't wear it when married to either wife. I know it was a plot point in the first ep where Don looked, for all intents and purposes, like a single guy for the surprise at the end of the ep. We'll never know Don's full state of mind when he married Betty but he started out intending to be faithful to Megan but he gave up on his resolution.

I agree that there was a general culture of misogyny that encouraged men regard their wives as possessions more than people. However, I never thought Don and Roger were role models of infidelity to the other guys in the office. Pete and Harry noticed Don and Rachel vibing but couldn't figure out if it was infidelity or it was allowed-businesslike-flirting and their attitude was analytical more than aspirational either which way. In the early seasons, Don and Roger seemed to keep their affairs under wraps among the non-secretary underlings right until it blew up and became unflattering breaking news- Roger leaving Mona for Joan, Don's marriage falling apart. There was a bad influence vibe but I always thought guys were bad influences for the guys on their level- and they internalized values from their homes. Like, I think Pete learned from his dad to be unfaithful and Pete didn't really intend on being faithful to Trudy at the start of his marriage because he thought was allowed and wouldn't ruin an marriage because his mother stuck with his dad. But per the workplace, Roger encouraged Don to cheat or to regard his marriage callously and Don accidentally encouraged Roger to have an attitude of just "It's your life. You have to move forward" which ended being a bad influence. When Lane moved up to the partner level, Don basically indoctrinated him into infidelity. Pete/Harry and then, the single guys Ken/Kinsey egged each other on to sexually harass secretaries or party hard even when married. However, IMO, the lower guys were more motivated by their imagination that "success = tons of women on the side" and may have gossiped about (correctly) projecting that on Roger and Don more than Don and Roger actually instructing the lower guys in the way of infidelity or even modeling it as a desirable way to be a man.

Edited June 5, 2016 by Melancholy

sistermagpie · June 5, 2016

1 minute ago, Melancholy said:

Don didn't comment on Pete's ring. Don's cufflink was faulty and fell out of his sleeve (hence, why Rachel replaced it) so Don excused his shirt falling apart that way. Pete, then, made an analogy to his enjoying wearing his wedding ring.

Thanks! I didn't remember the context at all but I think looking at the episode it fits with everything else, with this whole subtext conversation about how men and women are supposed to relate. "Men don't wear jewelry" is a statement about how men are supposed to be (jewelry is masculine) and Pete relating it to a wedding ring gives it even another layer, especially with comments elsewhere about the ring being catnip. One comment suggests it's not masculine to wear a ring (because you shouldn't wear any jewelry--even cufflinks are too fussy) and the other turns the ring into some other masculine thing by suggesting it's there to get women. With all the conversations and exchanges going on in the episode or in S1 there seems to me to be a lot less societal support for spouses being faithful than the understanding that they won't be. The "ball and chain" idea seems widely agreed upon to me.

I did always get the impression Don didn't wear a ring and I figured it was for the reason he said. He just didn't grow up with the idea that the man wore a ring or that they really wore jewelry in general, which would fit from where and when he's from. Plus it fits with Don's whole thing of not wanting to be tied down.

7 minutes ago, Melancholy said:

However, I never thought Don and Roger were role models of infidelity to the other guys in the office.

I gave the wrong impression putting it that way. I didn't mean that the guys were literally looking at Don and Roger and modeling themselves on them or getting the idea to cheat from them. I meant that Don and Roger are the two elder married guys and we know they're living that kind of marriage, while Pete and Harry are young married guys who are already considering that kind of marriage. In fact, that kind of marriage is laid out in S1 as how marriage is supposed to be by pretty much everyone. When Don catches his neighbors kissing tenderly they look more like the strange ones than everyone else who is seeing cheating as a potential part of marriage. So I don't mean that Pete and Harry know that Don's with Rachel, but that the conversation they have about marriage and affairs is happening in the context of Don and Roger having affairs.

11 minutes ago, Melancholy said:

There was a bad influence vibe but I always thought guys were bad influences for the guys on their level- and they internalized values from their homes.

I agree--Pete, we know for sure, was aware of his father living this way, and we the audience know that Don and Roger are doing the same. All those guys are obvious role models for Pete in general since his father is his father, Roger is his boss in accounts and Don is Don. I actually think Pete and Harry both do assume that Roger and Don are cheating, actually. Or at least have at times. Pete we know for sure didn't consider marriage to really be a barrier to cheating from the start.

It's funny I was just watching The Hobo Code and there's the whole ad campaign where Don says the woman marks her man and talks about possession and of course you can't help but think that of course none of these women can possess a man that way--it comes down to whether he wants to be possessed, not whether other girls get the message that he's off limits to them.

Melancholy · June 6, 2016

2 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

Thanks! I didn't remember the context at all but I think looking at the episode it fits with everything else, with this whole subtext conversation about how men and women are supposed to relate. "Men don't wear jewelry" is a statement about how men are supposed to be (jewelry is masculine) and Pete relating it to a wedding ring gives it even another layer, especially with comments elsewhere about the ring being catnip. One comment suggests it's not masculine to wear a ring (because you shouldn't wear any jewelry--even cufflinks are too fussy) and the other turns the ring into some other masculine thing by suggesting it's there to get women. With all the conversations and exchanges going on in the episode or in S1 there seems to me to be a lot less societal support for spouses being faithful than the understanding that they won't be. The "ball and chain" idea seems widely agreed upon to me.

I did always get the impression Don didn't wear a ring and I figured it was for the reason he said. He just didn't grow up with the idea that the man wore a ring or that they really wore jewelry in general, which would fit from where and when he's from. Plus it fits with Don's whole thing of not wanting to be tied down

I agree with all of this. The camera lingers on the store clerk smirking after Rachel picks out new cufflinks for Don and put them on it in a flirtatious way. Like the store clerk, recognizes that it's a bid at Marking Her Man (which it was!). It's just very hard to do in 1960 to the point that the very concept is a revolutionary concept that'd only occur to Peggy even though it's implied that the ad will be successful because women, internally, feel that struggle that they're Marked but their men aren't. Menkens is Rachel's store and she's basically owns all of the jewelry in the counter but she needs to lean on the MEDIEVAL KNIGHT cufflinks to make it both effective as flirtation (i.e. enticing and endearing to Don) as well as Marking.

We don't know either which way but I'd wager that while Don started out his marriage with Megan intending to be faithful at first, he didn't originally intend to be faithful to Betty. I think he was in love (which I think he always was) and focused on making her happy (which he lost interest in by S1)- but I'd be that he thought cheating was still his prerogative and part of the deal of the marriage. Even aside from the '60s, it's an element of being a salesman. And I think that Dick saw a lot of husbands patronizing the whorehouse and knew that he was the product of infidelity but Abigail didn't exactly make herself the sympathetic party in his eyes.

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I actually think Pete and Harry both do assume that Roger and Don are cheating, actually. Or at least have at times. Pete we know for sure didn't consider marriage to really be a barrier to cheating from the start.

I think Pete/Harry believed Don and Roger were screwing up- but really had no proof but instead their own imaginations of how Top Dogs get away with shit. Harry and the rest of the guys speculated that Don knocked Peggy up- and Pete has his own reasons to believe that Peggy just went to a fat farm. It's implied that there was some gossip that Joan and Roger were an item. I think in the early seasons, it was speculation with none of the guys really having proof or solid visuals of anything. But then, when Betty actually left Don (which SO unusual for the time period, as a woman with three kids, to the bystanders leaving someone as apparently awesome as *Don*), Peter transferred his imaginative speculations of how Don must be having great affairs into a narrative "man who just pulled his pants up on the world" because Don really HAD to be unbelievably and incredibly indiscreetly promiscuous to explain the divorce. Which has a lot of truth to it. However, Betty leaving Don made speculations on his infidelity far more solid.

Edited June 6, 2016 by Melancholy

sistermagpie · June 6, 2016

12 hours ago, Melancholy said:

We don't know either which way but I'd wager that while Don started out his marriage with Megan intending to be faithful at first, he didn't originally intend to be faithful to Betty.

Yes, if anything I think he wanted to imagine that he would just be faithful because he wanted to be. Like he was maybe idealistic enough that he didn't actually say to himself that marriage=cheating, but he hoped he wouldn't want or need to do that. (As opposed to Pete who's clearly ambivalent from the beginning and is sleeping with Peggy the night before his wedding and then turns to her again soon after.) But I think when he found he did want that he saw it as part of marriage as long as he was discreet. (Ironically later his discretion is something that drives Betty crazy when she can't find proof of what she knows he's doing.) With Megan I think he definitely intended to be faithful. There's such a clear moment where he seems to think that the marriage isn't going to save him and only then does he sort of give up the dream and start cheating at the same time.

12 hours ago, Melancholy said:

I think Pete/Harry believed Don and Roger were screwing up- but really had no proof but instead their own imaginations of how Top Dogs get away with shit.

Right, it seems like there's no surprise at either of them cheating--just surprise when their marriages blow up. They're both top of the food chain--handsome, wealthy, charming men--so everybody seems to talk as if of course women are going to be attracted to them and they can take whatever they want. Bobbie Barrett, iirc, refers to getting the full Don Draper treatment as if he's got a reputation some places at least. But it's all in a plausible denial area where as long as it isn't showing it's not happening.

Another thing I hadn't remembered was that Helen Bishop tells Betty why she got divorced and it's basically exactly this--her husband was having affairs all the time while pretending he was in the city with friends or playing golf etc. We, the audience, know that Betty's husband is too, and Francine's as well, since he comes on to Helen and is eventually caught cheating. Helen's really ahead of her time on the show that she's the first person who said out loud what was going on with her husband and divorced him for it instead of looking the other way. She's more the face of things to come that way than I remembered.

NutMeg · June 8, 2016

I think that Don was more smitten with Betty initially than he was with Megan later on. There was that scene when he talked about Betty to Anna, and he was positively giddy. Now maybe he was more ecstatic about the idea that such a catch would be interested in him than really in love, but the difference is thin on screeen, and also he never showed, as I see it, this crazy in-love feeling with Megan (to me, it looked more like crazy-in-dreams than crazy-in-love, but I understand that we all have different interpretations). The Don who met Betty was still mostly Dick, not yet cynical, still aspiring to a better life and hoping against his inner self-deprecation that it was within reach to have it all, and she was the symbol of everything he had previously thought was out of his reach. The Don who met Megan was a Mad Man, cynical, who may have wanted to believe in love but really didn't, or maybe didn't really think he was worth it, had a failed marriage behind him at a time when it was rare, and on top of that had been left by his wife, that I still think he cared about. These was much more tenderness in some of Don/Betty scenes post breakup and divorce, whereas tenderness is not the first word that would come to mind in describing even the most harmonious Don/Megan scenes. Which in a way makes sense: Betty would have been the one who loved him when he was nobody, Megan fell in love with the boss (and used him to advance her hypothetical career).

txhorns79 · June 8, 2016

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These was much more tenderness in some of Don/Betty scenes post breakup and divorce, whereas tenderness is not the first word that would come to mind in describing even the most harmonious Don/Megan scenes. Which in a way makes sense: Betty would have been the one who loved him when he was nobody, Megan fell in love with the boss (and used him to advance her hypothetical career).

I think part of that is because we barely saw Megan and Don post-break up, while there was nearly seven years time that passed between Don and Betty's divorce and the end of the series. I remember during the season immediately after the divorce, Betty and Don were very hostile with each other. We just got to see them gradually move beyond that. I would agree that I don't know if Megan and Don would ever get to the same place, as they have nothing that requires they keep in regular contact (i.e. no kids) and they don't live on the same coast.

Melancholy · June 9, 2016

16 hours ago, NutMeg said:

I think that Don was more smitten with Betty initially than he was with Megan later on. There was that scene when he talked about Betty to Anna, and he was positively giddy. Now maybe he was more ecstatic about the idea that such a catch would be interested in him than really in love, but the difference is thin on screeen, and also he never showed, as I see it, this crazy in-love feeling with Megan (to me, it looked more like crazy-in-dreams than crazy-in-love, but I understand that we all have different interpretations). The Don who met Betty was still mostly Dick, not yet cynical, still aspiring to a better life and hoping against his inner self-deprecation that it was within reach to have it all, and she was the symbol of everything he had previously thought was out of his reach. The Don who met Megan was a Mad Man, cynical, who may have wanted to believe in love but really didn't, or maybe didn't really think he was worth it, had a failed marriage behind him at a time when it was rare, and on top of that had been left by his wife, that I still think he cared about. These was much more tenderness in some of Don/Betty scenes post breakup and divorce, whereas tenderness is not the first word that would come to mind in describing even the most harmonious Don/Megan scenes. Which in a way makes sense: Betty would have been the one who loved him when he was nobody, Megan fell in love with the boss (and used him to advance her hypothetical career).

I agree with all of this completely. At the same time, I think it co-exists with my opinion that Don intended on being faithful to Megan at first while he didn't really have those intentions when he married Betty. (I don't think you're disagreeing, I'm just saying....) I do think, as smitten as Don was with Betty, a key part of her appeal for him was that she'd occupy this pure, domestic, untouched aspirational place in his life unconnected to anything else in his life and just sit on her pedestal smiling down at him being perfect. That's how Don was conceiving of "better life"- it was in having a perfect wife, untouched by any of the stresses of his daily life or the filth of his past. I think it took the failed marriage with Betty- both the fact that it enraged Betty enough to divorce him and Don was pretty miserable through it- to try for a more closer marriage with Megan, even though Don loved Megan less and felt less affinity with Megan's values than he even did with Main Line Betty. ("The teenagers in the world are in revolt <both take a shot>")

The series is deliberately *very* subtle on how much Don feels that Megan's love for him isn't authentic and just based tit-for-tat favors. There are tiny moments where *I'd* argue that a part of Don is cynically (honestly) regarding that Megan is using him but they're scattershot and *heavily* dependent on interpretations. He far more directly says that Betty was a whore who used his wealth and then, moved onto a better horse in Shut the Door, Have a Seat, when Betty is the one that went against her Main Line family when he was just selling fur because she was really in love. I think Don can go there with Betty partly *because* it's just so plainly wrong that Don can try to summon some unearned righteous indignation that he was conned. However, Don really can't go there with Megan, as angry and hurt as he gets, because Don knew in the back of his mind that this was always a possibility in their marriage and something making him like a ridiculous older sugar daddy fooling himself that a twenty something just wanted him for him. When Don cuts off Peggy's concern in Tomorrowland, he knows that in the next room there could be conversations like Joan saying "That's how it works for some girls!"

sistermagpie · June 9, 2016

9 minutes ago, Melancholy said:

I do think, as smitten as Don was with Betty, a key part of her appeal for him was that she'd occupy this pure, domestic, untouched aspirational place in his life unconnected to anything else in his life and just sit on her pedestal smiling down at him being perfect.

Very good point. I think you're totally right that Don saw Betty as being in the domestic sphere--he took her away from modeling and work and gave her a beautiful house with those kids. He didn’t yet have the experience of how he was going to act, that he was going to cheat so much. By the time he was with Megan he did have that experience and was setting up the marriage trying to correct it. One of those things was that Megan was always with him, at work and at home. He could talk to her about work, it would have been hard to cheat on her with her always there. So much of how he is with Megan is doing the opposite as with Betty but of course that wasn’t the problem.

14 minutes ago, Melancholy said:

However, Don really can't go there with Megan, as angry and hurt as he gets, because Don knew in the back of his mind that this was always a possibility in their marriage and something making him like a ridiculous older sugar daddy fooling himself that a twenty something just wanted him for him.

I hadn’t thought about that but yeah, it’s almost so obvious he can’t ignore. He himself told Roger he looked foolish, not happy, and Roger never let him forget it. Peggy obvious had the thought, as did Joan. As did everybody—even that Heinz woman suggests it in the bathroom to Megan. They even play with the idea when they’re going to have sex.

But then, that’s also not really Don’s big insecurity. To him being a guy that women only want because he’s giving them money isn’t really his big shame.

Dev F · June 9, 2016

16 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

But then, that’s also not really Don’s big insecurity. To him being a guy that women only want because he’s giving them money isn’t really his big shame.

I think it becomes his big shame, though, once his relationship with Megan starts to break down and he realizes how unreliable that kind of tit-for-tat relationship truly is. That's why he starts being plagued by memories of the whorehouse in season 6 -- because he realizes, oh, this isn't how people relate when they're in love, it's how they interact when they're buying love. Cue "Just a Gigolo" as Don curls up against the wall, unable to bring himself to enter his apartment.

sistermagpie · June 13, 2016

More interesting notes on rewatch of season one...funny how Harry confidently announces that Don likes him in season one when Don *not* liking Harry will become such a given down the road. I don't think Harry's personality is fundamentally so different later on as some people think, but he certainly is a more interesting, thoughtful and less crude guy early on. There's still a constant beat of him being into women and sometimes he is even then crude, but his stuff about the cave paintings is great and he’s funny and self-deprecating about his photography.

I’d forgotten that Betty specifically asks Glen to tell her she’s going to be okay, just as she’ll ask Don to do when she has her cancer scare. She just needs somebody else to say it to her, even if it’s not Don. Glen can’t tell her, though, he just says he doesn’t know. Don of course just says it. In the end she doesn’t need anyone to tell her anything.

Betty says her mother didn’t cook last Thanksgiving because she was so sick. Betty and her mother are probably dying around the same time of year. She won’t be cooking for Thanksgiving 1970. She also really gets Don, noting that his treatment of the children really show that he’s kind inside. I know there’s a scene coming where she encourages him to spank Bobby, but that’s obviously coming out of Betty’s own desire to spank Don—and probably anger that other people get to experience the kindness while she feels mistreated by him.

Trudy really puts up with a lot. Ironically this probably makes their marriage better, since can’t have too many illusions about her husband’s flaws.

txhorns79 · June 13, 2016

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Betty says her mother didn’t cook last Thanksgiving because she was so sick. Betty and her mother are probably dying around the same time of year. She won’t be cooking for Thanksgiving 1970.

That's an excellent catch. I think in March 1960 (or maybe April/May), Betty says her mother has been dead for three months? So you are right, Betty is likely to be gone by February or March 1971, if not sooner.

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More interesting notes on rewatch of season one...funny how Harry confidently announces that Don likes him in season one when Don *not* liking Harry will become such a given down the road. I don't think Harry's personality is fundamentally so different later on as some people think, but he certainly is a more interesting, thoughtful and less crude guy early on. There's still a constant beat of him being into women and sometimes he is even then crude, but his stuff about the cave paintings is great and he’s funny and self-deprecating about his photography.

I think Harry is less confident in the early seasons, but as he starts hobnobbing with movie/tv stars and gets to jet off to meet with network execs, his ego grows and he believes his own hype. Then, as his ego grows, his obnoxiousness grows with it.

Edited June 13, 2016 by txhorns79

Melancholy · June 13, 2016

17 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

More interesting notes on rewatch of season one...funny how Harry confidently announces that Don likes him in season one when Don *not* liking Harry will become such a given down the road. I don't think Harry's personality is fundamentally so different later on as some people think, but he certainly is a more interesting, thoughtful and less crude guy early on. There's still a constant beat of him being into women and sometimes he is even then crude, but his stuff about the cave paintings is great and he’s funny and self-deprecating about his photography..

Although, everyone hates Harry in the later seasons, but Pete and Don somewhat stick out as being capable of having some congenial, friendly conversations with Harry. With Lane, Joan, Megan, Roger there's only dislike of Harry from S4/5 on and sometimes it's just apropos of NOTHING. On top of being good for business, I think Don found Harry almost too socially hapless to really hate on. I feel like Don is nicer about Harry signing the Tradewinds instead of the Rolling Stones and then, gobbling up twenty burgers in the car and making the most inane, waste-of-time conversation because he doesn't want to go home than he'd be to say, Ted or Pete or Peggy making the same mistake and wasting his time like that. Don makes impatient remarks throughout but he doesn't yell or tear down Harry's competence or lol, refuse to pull over at the White Castle for Harry even though he was driving and not eating anything. IMO, it's because Harry is socially pathetic but also because Harry is unusual for the office in how he instantly took, responsibility for the failure and apologized instead of turning it into some thematic crusade of how it's Don's fault. Ahem, starts with a "P" and rhymes with "shmeggy". And then, Harry scored big points with Don for warning him about the Commander Cigarettes meeting.

That said, I bet that Harry inferred that Don liked him in S1 because Don didn't outwardly find him as objectionable and annoying as Kinsey or Pete or even Ken. Not because Don showed any sign of definitively "liking" Harry- until The Wheel when the audience can tell that it's Don taking an "any port in the storm" attitude to human company. IMO, I thought Don absolutely *liked* Freddy and Sal in in the early seasons, including Season 1; Don ranged from indifference to contempt for the younger guys in S1 until they proved themselves or didn't prove themselves to varying degrees.

sistermagpie · June 13, 2016

2 minutes ago, Melancholy said:

hat said, I bet that Harry inferred that Don liked him in S1 because Don didn't outwardly find him as objectionable and annoying as Kinsey or Pete or even Ken. Not because Don showed any sign of definitively "liking" Harry- until The Wheel when the audience can tell that it's Don taking an "any port in the storm" attitude to human company.

Yes, that's how I read it too. And I also totally agree with the Don/Harry dynamic as you described it. Don/Harry is really just funny--there's no real dislike on Don's part, like in terms of hostility the way Don reacts to Pete in S1 for instance. At least not that I ever remember. Harry comes across to me more like somebody that if they were on a sitcom would be the character everyone thought was awful but was still there friend--like Ken says about Harry later, he doesn't expect much from him.

But I can't believe that Don has real animosity for the guy when he says "You finally found a hooker who takes traveler's checks?" to him. I think he rolls his eyes at him and he doesn't give him the respect he wants, but it's not like he has a big grudge against him, even though he makes some seriously stupid moves around Megan. (In fact Don might expect Megan to react the same way to Harry, finding him kind of an idiot rather than really disliking him--maybe she's just projecting when, iirc, she says Don hates Harry.) There's moments where Harry makes people truly angry, but most of them get over it.

I can't remember the cigarette scene clearly now, but doesn't Harry actually tell Don or at least show him that all he has to do is give him the slightest bit of respect and Harry will help him out? I didn't feel like Don had to really suck it up to be nice to him there. More like he just didn't see why he'd have to, but once Harry pointed it out to him he was fine with doing it.

I also was just watching the eps where Duck is introduced and those are interesting too since he's so on the ball when he arrives. It's interesting to think how of all the characters Pete's the one that winds up tied to Duck the most. He and Peggy have the affair that pretty much ends their relationship (thought Duck starts off saying "Who is she?" when Don's pitching her for Clearasil) but Duck winds up being Pete's drunken fairy godfather in the end. So Pete was right to keep up that tie.

Melancholy · June 13, 2016

2 hours ago, sistermagpie said:

Yes, that's how I read it too. And I also totally agree with the Don/Harry dynamic as you described it. Don/Harry is really just funny--there's no real dislike on Don's part, like in terms of hostility the way Don reacts to Pete in S1 for instance. At least not that I ever remember. Harry comes across to me more like somebody that if they were on a sitcom would be the character everyone thought was awful but was still there friend--like Ken says about Harry later, he doesn't expect much from him.

But I can't believe that Don has real animosity for the guy when he says "You finally found a hooker who takes traveler's checks?" to him. I think he rolls his eyes at him and he doesn't give him the respect he wants, but it's not like he has a big grudge against him, even though he makes some seriously stupid moves around Megan. (In fact Don might expect Megan to react the same way to Harry, finding him kind of an idiot rather than really disliking him--maybe she's just projecting when, iirc, she says Don hates Harry.) There's moments where Harry makes people truly angry, but most of them get over it.

Joan really hated Harry- especially after he loudly discussed how she earned her partnership. I think Roger hated Harry too from S5/6 on- Roger and Joan were the only two who didn't vote for Harry to make partner. Earlier, Roger thought Cutler didn't like Harry so Roger said "Ok, he's gone!" and he made that venomous speech about how Harry's this lame-ass annoying person on the bus to summer camp or whatever when Harry was friendly to Roger on packing up to McCann. It's possible that Roger didn't forgive Harry as much as Joan didn't for attacking Joan's honor so publicly, even though that's very generous to Roger when the defining aspect of the Joan/Roger in the Herb mess is that Roger didn't stand up for Joan's honor at all. Megan really hated Harry. However, yup, Pete/Peggy/Don/Ken/Bert/arguably Lane had some contempt but they weren't outright hostile and the S7 partners in that list voted for Harry to make partner.

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I can't remember the cigarette scene clearly now, but doesn't Harry actually tell Don or at least show him that all he has to do is give him the slightest bit of respect and Harry will help him out? I didn't feel like Don had to really suck it up to be nice to him there. More like he just didn't see why he'd have to, but once Harry pointed it out to him he was fine with doing it.

Nothing is really said like that. However, Harry does go on and on that he respect Don and wants to help Don and thinks Don should be the CD in California instead of useless, broken Ted and whatever and Don mostly silently and mopily hears it. With an embarrassing-to-Harry assumption that Harry is only flattering Don because Don caught him with a young wannabe starlet in Hollywood. "...I'm not going to tell your wife." "You wouldn't do that." Harry starts telling most of the Commander Cigarettes plot. Don's participation in the conversation is demonstrably sparked at getting concrete information and he starts asking questions like whether there's already work in place. Harry starts blanching at telling secret information- "Don't make me sorry I told you." I think Don just appreciates this gift of information that Cutler/Lou are planning to pursue Commander Cigarettes to force a conversation about kicking Don out so he companionably puts his arm around Harry and thanks him. At that point, Harry makes a clear choice to tell Don the entire story and tells him about the work in place. So yeah...there's some indication that Harry was already mostly in Don's corner but even a little friendliness makes Harry feel like setting up permanent residence in Don's corner.

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I also was just watching the eps where Duck is introduced and those are interesting too since he's so on the ball when he arrives. It's interesting to think how of all the characters Pete's the one that winds up tied to Duck the most. He and Peggy have the affair that pretty much ends their relationship (thought Duck starts off saying "Who is she?" when Don's pitching her for Clearasil) but Duck winds up being Pete's drunken fairy godfather in the end. So Pete was right to keep up that tie.

Duck was more benign to Pete than he was to Peggy. Pete got Duck's best side. I always wonder if Peggy ever figured out that Duck unplugged the TV on the Kennedy assassination so they could bang. IMO, a totally break-up worthy offense- like cause for a MANDATORY break-up because LADIES, THAT'S A DEAL-BREAKER </30 Rock>. I think that she didn't figure it out because she was sympathetically entertaining his drunken phone calls in S4 and even rather flirtatiously accepted his call at first until she figured out just how booze-and-failure-soaked the whole thing was. However, the time that Duck came up to their offices to try to take a shit in Don's chair and then, called her a whore in front of Don and then the two of them getting into a fist-fight and Duck acting like he owned Peggy because he won the fist fight seemed to definitively end any kind of friendship, let alone love affair, between him and Peggy.

sistermagpie · June 14, 2016

Oh, another thing that surprised me watching it again was the situation with Joan's roommate. I'd remembered it as the roommate revealing that she loved her and Joan then made a point of having them go out with guys to say "No." Joan seemed pretty cold to me there.

But watching it again, the roommate basically admits that she's been stalking Joan since college--well, not stalking in the sense that she's keeping Joan from being with anyone else. But she says she came to New York to be with her, became her roommate to be with her. That's damn creepy and deceitful. That's a dealbreaker too!

Melancholy · June 14, 2016

LOL, but Carol's thing isn't exactly a dealbreaker to me! I think it's with all of this empathy that comes with watching homosexual stores in the '60s with 2010s eyes. But the thing with Carol is that it's not like now where Carol could feel far more comfortable telling Joan that she's gay and attracted to Joan before rooming with her. That kind of a confession was impossible. I think Carol may have even had trouble admitting to herself because the difference between friendship and romance is hard enough to sort out on a best day, but doubly so when society was telling Carol that her romantic feelings were wrong and she should instead cling to the friendship aspect. Besides risking imprisonment and social stigmatization and possibly violence, Carol has no choice but to live a lie, including with any female roommate she'd need to have a single woman living in NY and then with any man she'd marry to get out of the whole roommate situation. I don't believe the lie comes with more menace because Carol lived the lie with Joan, who she has friendship and romantic feelings towards because they know each other, as opposed to some random roommate.

MM points out that 1960s society created creepy moral greyness to and collateral damage its gay characters because that was how to survive/thrive, making a self-fulfilling prophecy of the nastiest homophobic dirt that gays are sex-obsessed, pervy liars. I wonder how Carol did after the confession because Carol actually showed some super-integrity and bravery and class in how Carol asks for a bona fide relationship with Joan, which if Joan was interested, would have been started with real, long-term commitment on Carol's part. By contrast, I think Sal was fatalistically dooming himself to a mostly faithful empty marriage with Kitty other than that ONE TIME that he couldn't help himself when the air conditioning repair guy grabbed him and kissed him in his room which, like, the most excusable act of cheating in the whole show. Until Don fired him and we can guess that he fell off the gay-wagon if he was going to be fired over it anyway. Bob declares himself to Pete a little like Carol- but it doesn't seem as classy and real as Carol's declaration of love because Bob is such a generally suspicious character and while his crush on Pete is real, it's more based in also wanting be a boss-man blue blood wealthy guy than any real connection and friendship which Joan and Carol actually did share.

Dev F · June 14, 2016

59 minutes ago, sistermagpie said:

Oh, another thing that surprised me watching it again was the situation with Joan's roommate. I'd remembered it as the roommate revealing that she loved her and Joan then made a point of having them go out with guys to say "No." Joan seemed pretty cold to me there.

But watching it again, the roommate basically admits that she's been stalking Joan since college--well, not stalking in the sense that she's keeping Joan from being with anyone else. But she says she came to New York to be with her, became her roommate to be with her. That's damn creepy and deceitful. That's a dealbreaker too!

Speaking of that scene, it's actually my least favorite in the entire series. In fact, it's the only scene in the series that I think is just hopelessly miscalculated.

Sure, there are other moments I'm not fond of, but usually it's because I question the creative choice behind it -- for instance, the African American characters tend to get the short shrift, and the series' view of Don's potential for building healthy relationships is more pessimistic than I think it needs to be. But the series is almost always a sharply written and coherent expression of those creative choices, whether I always agree with them or not.

This is the one scene that just makes a hash of whatever creative intentions were behind it. In a series that is so scrupulous about using incident to illuminate character, this is the one time in which character is reduced to incident. It would be different if the scene established that Joan knew about Carol's interest all along, that it was something that informed their relationship and Joan's behavior in general. Instead, it's played as if Joan is just finding out her secret for the first time -- so mostly it's about her reacting to this shocking thing that happened, and only tangentially about her character more broadly.

And because Carol's secret has been revealed in this shockingly inappropriate way, it immediately burns out the character, and we never see her again. Which renders Joan's reaction to the incident even more pointless.

sistermagpie · June 14, 2016

1 hour ago, Melancholy said:

LOL, but Carol's thing isn't exactly a dealbreaker to me! I think it's with all of this empathy that comes with watching homosexual stores in the '60s with 2010s eyes.

Oh, I get that too. But having her announce that she's literally arranged her whole life to be near Joan I think does, as Dev F say, burn the character. Even giving her the understanding that she can't be expected to just express interest the way a man would, or the way a woman would today, it would just be so impossible to really share an apartment with someone who'd announced themselves to be that obsessed.

To be fair, I think it's actually written with that in mind. When Carol tells this to Joan I assume she knows that it's all or nothing. She's just lost her job and seems to have a family to go back to who'll support her, so I assume she's basically laying it on the line in a moment of desperation knowing she's going to either be in a relationship after this or no longer be in New York. It does make her a bit of a female version of Sal compared to Peggy's more openly lesbian friend or the Mimi Rogers bisexual character. But we can't see much about her.

Melancholy · June 14, 2016

I'm not wild about the Carol scene either, although it's elevated by the actress's performance and how it prompted a Holly Golightly performance of heterosexuality of Joan's that fits in with her more interesting and relevant storyline about picking up the older guy to perform socially adept fun contrasted to her affair with Roger. THAT part was interesting so it paid the freight of the awkwardly shoe-horned in Carol scene a little. I feel a little guilty because I do tend to blame Joan for how she reacted to Carol even though she was really as nice as she could be for the times- in part because it's more interesting to reach for the night of compulsory heterosexuality with the old guy because that's closer to Joan's long-term storyline in S1.

I think Joan gets a few odd scenes/storylines to make her seem very relevant to social climate of the 1960s and even more, part of the more tolerant set in kind of a fan-servicey bone to throw at Joan-fans than an actual storyline to characterize her. My least favorite example of that was Joan promoting Dawn to office manager to solve the secretary ruckus in A Day's Work- but it ultimately served to end Dawn as a somewhat meaningful tertiary character and cut her off at the knees in a climb for even secondary character relevance as she was notably Don's ally at his lowest point-career wise. It just felt like Joan fan-service, especially since there was no storyline deliberately showing growth from her earlier racist positions in the very early '60s. It was narrative White Feminism. Bob Benson's darker relationship with Pete and role in the office in S6 was always interesting and well-played. His story as "Joan's gay" seemed like a waste of scenes, to lead up to Joan rejecting being a beard for him, although that ONE scene actually was important to Joan's arc but it didn't quite feel worth the previous Joan/Bob scenes. I'd trade the Joan/Bob stuff in later S6/S7 for more Bob/Pete stuff, especially with some resolution on Bob's role in Dot Campbell's death.

Edited June 14, 2016 by Melancholy

txhorns79 · June 14, 2016

Quote

I'd trade the Joan/Bob stuff in later S6/S7 for more Bob/Pete stuff, especially with some resolution on Bob's role in Dot Campbell's death.

I didn't get the impression that Bob was in on the con, but was more of an unwitting pawn for his friend to get at Pete's mother. For example, Bob may have lied to help his friend get the job (i.e. telling Pete that Manny had cared for his father), but there was no other ulterior motive, except maybe for Bob to ingratiate himself with Pete. I mean, for everything we saw, Bob had every intention of staying put at SCP, which wouldn't make sense if he was plotting with Manny to put one over on Pete and his mother.

Melancholy · June 14, 2016

10 minutes ago, txhorns79 said:

I didn't get the impression that Bob was in on the con, but was more of an unwitting pawn for his friend to get at Pete's mother. For example, Bob may have lied to help his friend get the job (i.e. telling Pete that Manny had cared for his father), but there was no other ulterior motive, except maybe for Bob to ingratiate himself with Pete. I mean, for everything we saw, Bob had every intention of staying put at SCP, which wouldn't make sense if he was plotting with Manny to put one over on Pete and his mother.

No, I don't think Bob was in on the con either. The role was more that Bob had unsavory acquaintances from his past that he still kept up with even though he wanted to climb higher, in contrast to Don who jettisoned or hid everyone from his past when he was social climbing. I'd wager it was partly because Bob's sexuality was societally ordered to be back-ally sleazy in a sense so Bob still has artificial unfair limits from joining the respectable class fully even more than Don does- but there's also other Bob-specific reasons that were just intimated at but never clarified. Then moreover even though Bob wasn't in on the con and thought he was just setting up Dot a caretaker that she'd like, there's something in him that doesn't react with apology or seriousness that he played any role at all in his big crush and former mentor's mother's death (and it's entirely probable that Bob was negligent and showed poor judgment by picking Mahnolo) but instead, wants to react to the accusation by humiliating Pete in front of Chevy. This was under-discussed and far more interesting than Bob as a kindly visitor to Casa de Joan, which is what we got until it acquired a more relevant edge in The Strategy which was Bob's last scene.

Edited June 14, 2016 by Melancholy

sistermagpie · June 14, 2016

17 minutes ago, txhorns79 said:

I didn't get the impression that Bob was in on the con, but was more of an unwitting pawn for his friend to get at Pete's mother. For example, Bob may have lied to help his friend get the job (i.e. telling Pete that Manny had cared for his father), but there was no other ulterior motive, except maybe for Bob to ingratiate himself with Pete. I mean, for everything we saw, Bob had every intention of staying put at SCP, which wouldn't make sense if he was plotting with Manny to put one over on Pete and his mother.

I wouldn't say he was a pawn, though. He connected Dot with Manolo to advance himself and get himself into Pete's good graces, not to get Dot killed or married to Manolo, true. But once Pete rejects him and seems poised to out him, he tells Manolo to use Dot to try to put pressure on Pete. That isn't any sort of go-ahead for what Manolo actually did, but I don't think he was shocked that Manolo would do such a thing. He set him up with Dot knowing that this wasn't totally outside his character and I don't think much cared what happened to Dot in general--or Pete once he became a threat either. He was so guilt-free about his direct role in getting this woman conned and murdered he punished Pete for being furious about it.

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