Particularly long spoilers for tonight's "Mad Men" coming up just as soon as I alphabetize the secretaries... "Open this drawer." -BettyDamn.
Damn.
Damn damn damn damn damn damn damn.
Damn.
Back in the days before comic book fanboys got a little too obsessed with their favorite titles maintaining a uniform continuity, comic writers were fond of doing fantasy issues where Lois Lane would finally prove that Clark Kent and Superman were the same guy, or where Batman would get married and have seven Bat-sons, or Green Lantern's vulnerability to the color yellow was replaced with a vulnerability to the color fuschia. Eventually, these "imaginary stories" (because the others were, of course, very real in the minds of their readers) became so commonplace that, whenever a title experienced a genuine seismic change to the status quo, the cover would often have to be accompanied by a blurb declaring this, Not a hoax! Not a dream! Not an imaginary story!
You need to slap a blurb like that on "The Gypsy and the Hobo," in which Betty finally confronts Don (who could sure pass for Clark Kent if you gave him some spectacles) about his own secret identity, and in such a way where there's no room for him to run, or hide, or dissemble. He fudges one detail (that the Army "made a mistake" only because he switched the dog tags around) and leaves out the adultery, but beyond that, he tells Betty everything: Archie. The prostitute. Abigail. Uncle Mac. The switch in Korea. Anna. Even, much as it pained him to do so, Adam.
And Betty - who impressively backs her lying husband into a corner and makes it abundantly clear that he has no choice but full transparency - hears all of this. Early in his story, she sarcastically asks if she's supposed to feel sorry for Don because he doesn't feel capable of being loved, but by the time he finishes explaining how he drove his own brother to suicide, she does feel pity for him.
More importantly, it seems, she feels some relief - and, so, amazingly, does he. This has always been Don's nightmare scenario. The day Betty found out the truth about Dick Whitman was going to be the worst day of his life, as far as he was concerned, so he held himself apart from her, kept secrets, slept with other women, even treated her like a child. But Betty finds out, and Don's world doesn't end. She doesn't order him out of the house, doesn't call the cops, or a divorce lawyer. She offers him breakfast the next morning and, when he gives her an excuse to not have to go trick-or-treating with him, she declines the offer. She doesn't want to run, and doesn't want him to run, not yet. She actually wants to be with him. And as they stand on Francine and Carlton's porch, and Carlton jokingly asks the grown-up Drapers, "And who are you supposed to be?," Don looks... happy? At peace? Or simply surprised that his wife hasn't thrown him out yet in spite of knowing the truth about Dick Whitman?
After watching this one, I may need to retract my Hugh Laurie is a lock to win next year's Emmy column, because if Jon Hamm submits this one(*)... well, we have a horse race then, folks.
(*) Bryan Cranston would be tough to beat in any year - and lord knows what the "Breaking Bad" writers are going to give him to play in season three - but Hamm didn't help himself this past year by submitting "The Mountain King," which isn't an ideal awards showcase, in that he's playing Dick Whitman for virtually the whole hour, as opposed to shifting back and forth between the two personas, or else largely playing the more magnetic Don Draper personality.
By now, Hamm's made the switch from arrogant Don to cowardly Dick so often that the trick should feel less special, but it doesn't. He goes from defiant (when he thinks Betty hasn't been inside the drawer yet) to defeated (when she tells him she has) so perfectly. You can almost see all the air leave his body - not to mention all awareness that Miss Farrell is waiting outside in the Caddy (more on that in a bit) - once he learns that the jig is up. And while Betty suspects that Don will try to run again (and why wouldn't he, given what she knows?) or come up with a story, we can instead see Don not trying to manufacture a pitch, but Dick bracing himself to tell his wife as much of the truth as he can handle. And you can see that he was not in any way prepared to be hit with the thunderclap of Adam's name, even though he's precisely aware of what's in the box. Sending his brother away is, as far as Don's concerned, the worst thing he's ever done - worse than stealing the real Don Draper's name, worse than cheating on Betty - and so he's tried to bottle it down even further than Archie and Abigail and the rest. But as Betty tells him the name, his confession becomes the opposite of the advice he gave Peggy in "The New Girl" - "I guess when you try to forget something, you have to forget everything." - and so even though he doesn't want to tell her everything, he has to. And Hamm... has Hamm ever been better than he is throughout this whole sequence, playing a Don/Dick who's totally exposed, who can't run or hide, who has to confess all of his greatest shames to the woman who represents his dream life? And that look on his face in the end - there's just so much there, right? So many possibilities for what he's feeling, and for what his life might be now. 
And I don't want to slight January Jones in here. This is twice now that she's had to play Betty trying to cope with a devastating truth about her husband (first Bobbie Barrett, now this), and Jones was just as good at playing Betty's steely resolve here as she was at the broken doll quality of "A Night to Remember." Betty nibbles around the edges of the problem at the start of the show (asking Don if he has any cash handy, well aware of how much he has in that drawer), then gets frank but depressing advice from her father's lawyer Milton(**), then heads home early so she can have the element of surprise to aid her against her very slippery husband. And she does not give him an inch of breathing room, does she? I loved seeing the role reversal in the kitchen, with Don reduced to a child who's been caught doing something bad, and Betty as the maternal figure who's going to administer discipline but has to calm the little brat down first by getting him something to drink. (**) I'm sure Betty would be screwed-over to an extent if she wanted a divorce and couldn't prove adultery - though wouldn't Jimmy Barrett be happy to offer supporting testimony? - or the identity theft, but would she really be at risk of losing the kids? I thought it wasn't until after the "Kramer vs. Kramer" era that courts stopped routinely assigning primary custody to the mother in divorce cases.
And the genius part of the script, by Marti Noxon, Cathryn Humphris and Matthew Weiner, is the way that Miss Farrell's presence hangs over the proceedings like a ticking time bomb. Betty doesn't know she's out there, and Don may forget quickly, but we are acutely aware that she's still out there, and that she might be impulsive (if not outright cuckoo bananas) enough to knock on the door to find out what's taking so long, and then this delicate situation between husband and wife could just explode. I've watched the second half of the episode several times already, and each time I'm on edge, even though I know that Suzanne just waits for hours, then slinks off with her suitcase in the middle of the night, suspecting, but not knowing, what's to come.
Now, Weiner and Hamm have talked in the past about how one of the fundamental problems of the Draper marriage is that Betty doesn't know who Don really is, and Don therefore keeps her at a distance so she won't find out. Those walls are gone now, and in theory, their relationship could get healthier as a result. But there's another problem, perhaps an even bigger one, and it's that Betty still doesn't seem like Don's type. She's his idealized woman, but not the ideal woman for him. And maybe she could become his woman (as in their Italian role-playing), but for now it's clear that he's still drawn to the more independent, more in touch with their own emotions women like Midge or Rachel or Suzanne, and when he tells Suzanne he won't be seeing her again, he adds a "not right now" caveat. That could be just him trying to soften the blow, or it could mean that, for all that was exposed and potentially healed tonight, Don's wandering eye will still be an issue.
Even if it isn't, there's the fact that he never concretely told Suzanne that Betty doesn't know about the two of them, which could lead to something very awkward down the road should their paths cross again. Because whether Suzanne's crazy or just ahead of her time (and this episode lends more evidence to the latter theory), she seems exactly the type of person who would feel compelled to apologize to Betty should they ever come face to face, and that would be very, very bad for all involved.
Whether Miss Farrell surfaces again or not, whether Don and Betty manage to be more open with each other or not, this is a radical dynamic shift in their marriage. Don has always been not only the bread-winner, but the decision-maker. Not anymore. Betty knows too much about him now, can do too much damage to him now, can absolutely take away the kids and the money by getting him sent to jail as a deserter and an identity thief. So either he learns to share power with her, or she takes it from him. And we all know how little this man, whether he's calling himself Don or Dick, likes to be told what to do. If this isn't a solid partnership, then entirely new problems are going to arise.
And I see that I've now written over 1600 words about something that took up maybe a third of the running time of "The Gypsy and the Hobo," if that. I don't want to slight the rest of the episode, particularly since so much of it tied in thematically to the Don/Betty conflict.
In both Roger's story and Joan's, we see them dealing with romantic partners, past or present, discovering the truth about who they really are trying like hell to fight that, just as Don has for so long before potentially accepting his true identity at the end of this one.
Roger's old flame Annabelle has a crisis on her hands because her dog food company's name is poison in the marketplace, and she refuses to let Don (who knows a thing or twelve about the power of rebranding yourself) or anyone else change that name. And recently widowed, she's convinced herself that she was the love of Roger's life and can easily get him back, and is hurt and mystified to be both rejected in the present and dismissed about the past.
Dr. Greg, meanwhile, struggles with his psychiatric interview - and the man would be the world's least insightful shrink, based on his whining to Joan, "You don't know what it's like to want something your whole life, and to plan for it and count on it and not get it," which exactly sums up the story of Joan's life now that she's married to this loser - and is so fixated on keeping his surgical career going that he (as a bunch of you speculated on the last time we saw the jerk) enlists in the Army. The military is desperate enough for cutters that they'll even sign up his brain-less fingers, and I suspect (as so many of you did) that he's going to end up in Vietnam, either dead or gone for so long that Joan will wind up back at Sterling Cooper, under whomever the new ownership turns out to be. Now that Roger knows she's looking for work, so long as he has any kind of influence under the new structure, whom else would he call first? 
Cathartic as it may have been to see Joan bash her clueless rapist husband in the head with a vase - and irrationally excited as I am by the thought of Greg getting blown up in Vietnam - I found Roger's story the more interesting of the two subplots this week. John Slattery, as always, gets the best lines and knows how to deliver them - when Annabelle compares their relationship to Rick and Ilsa in "Casablanca," Roger replies, "That woman got on a plane with a man who was going to end World War II, not run her father's dog food company." - but there was something oddly tender and mature about how Roger carried himself in this one. Or, if not mature, then secure - as in, maybe he really does think Jane is The One, does love her enough to not cheat on her (as opposed to just being afraid of getting caught), and has genuinely been looking all his life for someone just as carefree as himself. Now, it's entirely possible that Roger is full of crap and just trying to hurt Annabelle the way she hurt him, and it's more than probable that should Jane start to feel the ticking of a biological clock and start talking about settling down and having kids, Roger would toss her aside like he did Mona and start looking for his next young thing. But if young Roger was really the man Annabelle described - "hoping to be a character in someone else's novel," boxing, not wanting to work at his father's ad agency - then maybe this is for real. Or maybe I'm feeling more kindly disposed towards Roger this week because of how charming he was during the phone conversation with Joan (who, even she no longer works at Sterling Cooper, knows the company's operations better than he does).
I spent some time with Slattery and his wife Talia Balsam (who plays Mona) at AMC's press tour party in late July, and we got to talking about whether Roger had settled - that he wanted Joan and wound up with Jane. And Slattery, who thinks about the character a lot more than I do, said he didn't believe so. He felt that when Roger, after his season one heart attack, told Joan, "You are the finest piece of ass I have ever had, and I don't care who knows it," that wasn't just Roger being crude, but Roger expressing the depth of his feelings for her. Joan was a great time for Roger, but she was also strong-willed and tough and more serious than Roger ever wanted to be, and despite his promises to leave Mona for her, perhaps he always knew this wouldn't work in the long-term.
But whatever's happening with Roger's marriage, with Joan's career, with the Draper marriage, the ownership of Sterling Cooper, things are going to happen soon and they're going to be tumultuous. We end this episode on Halloween. Margaret's wedding is 23 days away, which means JFK's assassination is only 22 days away. Again and again, I go back to Grampa Gene's line to Sally about their Roman Empire book: "Just wait. All hell's gonna break loose."
Some other thoughts:
• Great as so much of this episode was, "The Gypsy and the Hobo" also suffered from that occasional "Mad Men" tendency to be a little too on-the-nose, to spell things out too blatantly. So we get Bobby dressing up as the hobo his father truly is, and we got Greg's vase-inducing line so perfectly summing up Joan's life story, and Roger's line about the dog food company name ("Let it go! The name is done! It's unfair, but it's over!") so neatly echoing his feelings about Annabelle, and, of course, Carlton's closing line to Don.
• I had gotten the impression from Don's conversation with Adam back in "5G" that Mac was just as much of a sonuvabitch to Dick as Archie had been, and it seems to pain him to say Mac's name to Betty, yet he also tells her, "He was nice to me." Am I misremembering?
• For a half-second, I thought the episode's title might be an allusion to Cher's "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" (tramp is another word for hobo, and Don's an identity thief), but the song came out 8 years after the episode, so... ?
• The vanity mirror in the Draper master bathroom led to a memorable closing shot in "Maidenform," and here we see it used to show just how much Don hates himself for all the things he confessed to Betty. Guy can't stand to look a himself, from three different angles.• It's been a good season for "Mad Men" cigarette humor, from Pete's coughing fit in "Wee Small Hours" to Don unabashedly lighting up a half-second after Annabelle explains that her husband died of lung cancer.
• A lot of people were intrigued last week by Roger's comment to Bert Cooper about having discovered Don at a fur company and want some gaps filled in. I don't think there's a lot left to fill in. Don has said before - most memorably in his Kodak pitch in "The Wheel" - that he began his advertising career as an in-house copywriter for a fur company in the city. (This is also how he met Betty, as she was a model at the time.) I imagine Roger tried to acquire the company's business, was told they were very happy with their in-house whiz kid, and proceeded to poach the whiz kid. But check out the look on Roger's face when Don says he's eaten horse meat, which I'm guessing was an allusion to his dirt-poor upbringing. Everyone at that office has always speculated about Don's past (except Cooper and Pete, who know), and Roger tried to probe Don about it going back as far as the series' second episode, on a double date with Mona and Betty. Given how much he's grown to dislike Don, any chance he tries to probe further?
• Annabelle, by the way, was played by Mary Page Keller, who's had a long career in television but is probably still best-remembered for playing one of the leads in "Duet," one of the first sitcoms on the Fox network. • Loved William banging on the door to Gene's office, assuming Betty and Milton were conspiring against him. So cheap and petty, as always.
• Is this the first time we've seen Sterling Cooper's focus-testing suite since the secretaries tried out the Belle Jolie lipstick (and Joan obligingly gave the chipmunks a show through the two-way mirror) back in season one? That scene was funny, particularly Peggy's confusion about how to turn off something that's actually happening, but I thought the line, "When people are protesting, I'm on board!" was another instance of the episode aiming too directly at its target.
• Still trying to figure out how to equate 1963 travel times to 2009 ones. Google Maps puts Ossining to Norwich at only two hours, when Miss Farrell says they'll need four, where last week Don made what today would be a six-hour round trip from Ossining to Framingham well before dawn.
• The song playing over the end credits is "Where Is Love?" from "Oliver!" - which, don't forget, is the musical Joan got St. John and Harold Ford tickets for on the trip that led to the end of Guy's golfing career.
Once again, we're going to stick with the slightly modified version of the commenting rules for these posts, so let me repeat how it works. Until we get to 200 comments (i.e., until the comments are split into separate pages), the original rules apply (skim everything before posting to avoid annoying duplication). After 200, if you're going to ask a question, or if you're going to suggest a theory or observation that you don't think has come up yet (i.e., "I think that guy Connie from the country club bar might be Conrad Hilton" or "Do you think Joan's bloody dress was supposed to be a Jackie Kennedy analogue?"), or if you want to answer or correct something from a previous comment, I want you to do a word search (every web browser has one, usually listed as Find in the Edit menu) for some possible keywords you might be using. (In those cases, try "Hilton" or "Jackie" or "bloody.") If you don't see any of your keywords - and again remember that Blogger splits the comments into multiple pages once you get past 200, so check 'em both - then ask/opine away.
It may seem annoying or laborious for you to do this, but I want everybody to show respect for - and not waste - everyone else's time and effort, and this seems the best way to do that.
And given how close we are to the end of the season, let me again remind you of an even more important commenting rule: No Spoilers, which includes absolutely no reference to the previews for the next episode. Period.
What did everybody else think?
397 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 397 of 397Maybe this speaks to my general prediliction for "eccentric" women, but I never thought Miss Farrel was cuckoo-bananas, double-wide crazypants or a nutty-fudge sundae. Matter of fact, she seems to be one of the few characters in the whole damn series who's shown a real, unalloyed affection for another human being (the only other I can think of is Kitty, who is equally doomed). I think she's much better for Don, emotionally and spiritually: the only bit of quasi-good Betty has driven Don to do was to lay some smack down on his petty brother-in-law.
Betty, IMHO, is a pretty hollow shell. Beautiful, yes, the mother of his children, but not capable of much genuine sympathy. When Don was breaking down crying about the death of his brother and Betty gave him the awkward-guidance-counselor-shoulder-pat, it made me realize just how many leaps it's going to take for Betty to open up to Don in any remotely similar way. This revelation may have brought them momentarily closer, but these two are so solipsistic they practically have screens over their eyes. The more I watch it, the more I really believe that their relationship cannot possibly work.
I can't express how much I have enjoyed this season, and what has become habit to watch the episode, then run to the computer, get on the blog and watch the comments come in. Thanks to all.
That being said, the vulnerability in Don this week was memorizing. Dropping the cigarette, I caught my breath. When had we ever seen that? Maybe with Rachel, begging her to leave town with him. Then, lighting one cigarette with the other before the first was finished. I can remember my dad, a chain smoker, doing that.
The next two weeks are going to be great. How many weeks till Lost starts?
Joan and Greg's relationship is something else. We've only seen such tiny (though important) snippets of it. And each in isolation could give such a different impression. One thing's for sure--it's majorly screwed up. First we see him fetch takeout for their dinner. Then we see him rape her. Then she coldly shuts him down when he whines about place settings. Then he bullies her into playing the accordion for everyone. Then she smashes a vase over his head! Then he comes home with flowers and apologizes. WTF. But...what can I say. I relate to Joan, flaws and all. So I'm rooting for her to come out on top and Greg to suffer for his actions. I'm only human.
For a second there I thought she might kill him for real. Wow.
All I can say about Don and Betty is that from now on, anyone who says that January Jones can't act or that Betty isn't smart clearly will not have seen this episode yet. I ate that whole thing up with a spoon.
Anonymous said...
"Am I the only one to see a physical similarity between Annabelle and Jane?"
No! Throughout her scenes, especially with Roger, I couldn't stop thinking about how she looked just like how I'd imagine Jane would look, once she's Roger's age. Something about the shape of her face.
I definitely think there was an implication that Roger might have been talking about Joan when he mentioned "the one," but I'm not sure. One thing to remember about Joan and Roger's relationship is that it was HIM who wanted to get more serious...I believe he offered to set her up in her own apartment...and she preferred sticking with her current life because she was on her way to finding the real husband deal. On the other hand, Joan clearly has more affection and respect for Roger than for Paul, with whom she also had a fling. And Roger seems to at least still return those feelings. Not sure where they're going (if anywhere) with them getting back in touch just when Greg decides to join the army.
Insightful analysis, as always.
During Betty's confrontation with Don about his past, you said Betty played the maternal role, including pouring a drink for the "brat." I didn't see that. Instead, I saw an enraged wife who didn't realize how shaken up her husband was until she saw him drop his pack of cigarettes by the kitchen sink. That gave her pause, and made her see how completely undone he was in that moment. She then suggested he sit down and she would pour him a drink.
Anonymous said...
The most amazing scene for me was when Betty left Don sitting at the table after leaving to tend to the baby. You could just feel the look on Hamm's face like when you get punched in the head by some shocking news...eyes glaze over, your temp instananeously seems to go up to 110 degrees, your skin gets all prickly, your salivary glands completely dry up, and you can practically hear your blood pumping in your ears even over the ringing of your eardrums. He really did an incredible job of showing a peron in mental shock in that moment without even moving a muscle.
Jann
Geez, yes. And how does one turn white as a sheet on command? Hamm has always done these rapid transformation so well. And how is it the only other thing I've seen him do is a Gilmore Girls episode? He should have been a huge star years ago.
PanAm53 said...
I am now even more convinced that MW wanted us to believe that Suzanne was a little off in order to create the suspense regarding her possible actions after Don entered his house. A bit of a Hitchcock touch...the surprise of Don coming home to a dark house to find that his family was there, in contrast to his previously expecting that Suzanne was already at her apartment because the lights were on. Then the suspense of wondering whether Suzanne would show up at the Drapers' door.
I disagreed with you on this last week, PanAm, but after this episode, I think it's quite possible that MW totally set us up. Damn you, Weiner!
I was so worried Suzanne was going to show up at the door. Not because she's crazy and wanted to cause a scene, but because she was concerned that Don was alone and something had happened to him.
I've always felt that she's dangerous for Don because she doesn't have many boundaries, so I agree that she could inadvertently cause problems for Don down the road. If it comes in the form of her apologizing to Betty, it would be because she doesn't have the sense to realize what a very bad move that is.
Even so - crazy, delusional, disingenuous, homewrecker, innocent, in over her head, or ahead of her time - I felt bad for Suzanne. She stepped into something thinking she had everything under control, when she most certainly did not. Now her heart is crushed in a way it's probably never been before. Maybe I should feel like she deserves it, but I don't. She was just too sad.
Anonymous @ 2:24 PM, October 26, 2009 said... When was the last time we've seen Betty eating?And happily. And she shared. Don had turned down food but took her last bite gratefully. It was the most intimate gesture we've seen (while being themselves = not in Rome.
I loved that little scene between them, for exactly the reason you stated. It was such a spouse-like thing to do. I want to say Betty had something resembling a smile on her face, but it was more like both of them had a look of acceptance and, if not immediate forgiveness on Betty's part, perhaps the promise of it. It really got to me.
Abused, neglected children as Don was many times have difficulty ever believing someone could love them for who they really are - and, Don has taken this insecurity to a whole new level by simply creating a persona that cloaks the real Dick (sorry, no other way to say it given that is his name) beneath the surface.
Hence, I can see him not believing Betty could really love him or him being somewhat taken by surprise that Suzanne asked how he was doing.
A lot of times - again, not always - people seek others outside of an unfullfilling marriage because they feel empty and are always looking to fill that need to be loved, in some way but don't know how to deal with it when someone really does love them since they believe themselves unworthy.
Not sure that makes sense - did to me in my head.
Miss Farrell left the lights on in her apartment when she wasn't home, so when Don showed up he wouldn't have to turn on lights and arouse suspicion with her landlords. She would not have gone up to the Draper house just because it was dark inside. Miss Farrell understands these things; she has done this before.
Uncle Mack was probably not as bad as the stepmother, so in Don's mind he was being nice to him. I had an abusive mother and anyone nicer than her seemed nice to me. Not sure if that makes sense; just my own thoughts based on my experience. The statement "he was nice to me" had a childlike ring to it.
Or, if not mature, then secure - as in, maybe he really does think Jane is The One, does love her enough to not cheat on her (as opposed to just being afraid of getting caught), and has genuinely been looking all his life for someone just as carefree as himself.
"This woman is important to me."
I think that quote says it all. Roger references Jane as an easy excuse to disentangle him from Annabelle's clutches, essentially hiding behind his marriage, but in other interactions, we see him lighting up at Joan's call, resurrecting his nickname "Joanie" for her, devoting his time and delighting in being able to help her. Just as she is "important to [him]", he's happy to know that she thinks of him and that he can be important to her. It's rare for Roger to feel needed and we see how much he's come to value being needed recently (Guy's appearance threatening to make him irrelevant was the nightmare vision of his future that reawakened his need for relevance).
He was talking about Joan being the love of his life, loved and lost, not Jane. I think the significance can be shown in the way Roger treats Annabelle in the first meeting, before Joan calls him asking for help, and then when he meets up with her again. When he set the dinner "meeting," he seemed eager to stroll down memory lane with Annabelle and perhaps have some fun. Yet after Joan, he acts caustic to Annabelle, resentful of the way she ended things. Before Joan's call, he was the carefree playboy looking for fun. After Joan, he'd leveled out to this moment of honesty with his emotions and his history with this old flame. Then you have the lines, "this woman is important to me," and that he likes being on Joan's mind. The setting of the late-night call is also special - after the failed dinner, does Roger go home to his wife who he loves so dearly? No, he goes to the office and works (works), calling buddies to line up a job for Joanie.
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(continued from above)
When Roger uses Jane as an excuse to untangle himself from Annabelle (happily married, this girl is different, the newlywed stage) and you hear him say "this girl is different," does anyone honestly believe that he means Jane? Would anyone call Jane different? We've seen Roger telling people it's different this time, desperate to convince them and himself, but that's just an illusion he's clinging to because he so desperately wants to be happy. Roger's good at spinning lines too but we see through his humor and sense of irony that he's able to call a spade a spade, that he's very perceptive of the differences between reality and the face one presents to the world - he might say Jane is different, but he knows Joan is different. Just as we, the audience, know Joan is different, that she's special. I think it's always been clear that Roger views Joan as "different," a cut above the rest, special because he never has been able to control her and when she defies him, that seems to only make him more fond and admiring of her. She sets the tune and he likes that, the way she plays the game and, in fact, makes it him play her game. I think his disappointment in her settling down and marrying the doctor was very much rooted in seeing her giving up the game, kowtowing to society's demand that a woman marry and settle down - he loved the way she defied convention, that she was her own person. It was seeing the quality he most admired in her tossed aside.
Roger/Jane/Joan/Annabelle seemed to also be paralleling Don/Betty/Suzanne/Anna. Both Roger and Don have hard-to-define emotional attachments to their wives that revolve around her being their ideal notion of a partner. Both men have women (Joan for Roger, Suzanne or Midge or other affairs Don has had) with whom they share more passionate encounters that reflect equality; these relationships are less about illusions of ideals than they are about people connecting and genuinely enjoying each other's company. Finally, both men have women in their pasts who've shaped who they are today (both Roger and Don have adopted personas, the Playboy vs. the Mountain King, covering who they are emotionally underneath, though of course Don's is the more pervasive illusion). Annabelle was the birth of Playboy Roger, while Anna helped resurrect and solidify Don's borrowed identity (she gave him the divorce, her acknowledgment of him as Don removed the greatest obstacle to his facade). When both women are revealed, the men are forced into a place of honesty - Roger acknowledging his history with Annabelle, that she was never "the one" for him. Instead of reigniting their affair as any good playboy would do without a second thought, he devotes his time and energies to Joan who is "important to [him]," who needs his help and he likes being needed by her, more so than he likes being needed by Annabelle to rescue her company. When Anna is revealed, her discovery forces the Betty/Don confrontation and the real man underneath the Don Draper facade comes to light. Both women helped build the facade and when the women behind the men are revealed, the facade topples like a house of cards. The reveal of Annabelle added another layer that brings Roger and Don closer together as brothers, mirrors of each other - and considering how similar they are in how they approach the world, it only makes the divide between them more layered.
Day Late iTunes Girl:
Best Episode To Date. Awards all around.
I just started weeping when Betty said Adam's name out loud.
Miss Farrell not being cukoo bananas is now my vote (changed!) THe schizo brother she has to take care of financially at times along with the "Do I need to worry about my job?" line makes me think she'll be cool.
ROGER STERLING! Doing the right thing on two fronts! Not cheating on Jane and trying to get Joanie a good job...
Jon Hamm and January Jones just BROUGHT IT. These are the two to beat next awards season.
( F you Ashton Kutcher! Miss Jones is the real deal)
(applause applause applause)
Detail:
Betty didn't pour Don a drink. She got the bottle and a glass and put them down on the table in front of him. He poured his own drink.
I liked that detail a lot. It showed that, while she was aware of his state of mind and was willing to accommodate up to a point, she wasn't softening. She was not going to mother him by pouring him his own drink.
Anon1
ok, ok, i think you all may have changed my mind regarding joan's thoughts while greg was berating her yet again....perhaps she was thinking about her lot in life and not about roger. but i think too, roger's part of her lot in life....she waited and waited for him to leave his wife and it never happened. i guess i wasn't thinking that she was thinking about the fact that she didn't get roger (as a person) but more that she dedicated herself to him and he never went through with leaving his wife. then jane comes along and bam! like that, he's divorced and married to HER. it wasn't that she lost him, it was that she didn't get what she was expecting from him.
i still, though, cannot get on the "betty's a hollow shell" or "betty's childlike" bandwagon. i mean, what do you expect when don has treated her like a child for so long? how is she SUPPOSED to act? don has repeatedly cheated on her...some she knows about, others she doesn't. he's never opened himself up to her. how could she act any differently? she married him, but how was she supposed to know that she wasn't "his type" when they got married? she never knew about the don/dick thing until this past episode. i think some judge her based on the viewer's knowledge, not necessarily the things she would even know about. regarding her only putting her hand on don's shoulder like a "guidance counselor" - was she supposed to embrace him and say "oh, honey - it's ok that you've lied to me this whole time about who you are.....it's ok that you went out to california and bought a house for some other woman but can't give me more than $40 to get the kids some other costumes...." i mean, in all honesty, how was betty supposed to react to all this??
she's definitely not shallow or hollow or stupid. last night's ep sure proved that.
jamfan said...
Oh, and I also loved the callback, when Don fumbled and dropped his cigarette in the kitchen with Betty, to the scene where he fumbled and dropped the lighter, causing the fire and explosion that killed the real Don Draper.
_____Ooooooh Good One..I was so tensed up over knowing Miss Farrell was in the car that I totally missed that connection to the previous episode..
Correct me if I am wrong, but I am pretty sure Adam sent the box to Don right before he committed suicide. It was the box that Pete found that exposed Don to him and then Pete exposed Don to Bert. So the box has really brought on a lot of trouble for Don. But I think Don kept the box because he felt guilty for Adam's death. Also, there was earlier discussion as to how Don had Dick's dog tags. Remembering the box came from Adam, my new guess is that Adam had them and included them in the box. My understanding is that tradition is that the family gets the dog tags. And Adam was Don's last surviving blood relative when Dick supposedly died. I need to rewatch 5G now.
I guess it's up to me to mention this: I hope Dick Whitman finally being introduced to Betty means they can start having an affair.
You know 'Don Draper' has been either a stuffed shirt -- worshiping the wife and mother of his family, instead of engaging with her as a woman -- or a lazy replicator of techniques he's used with his affairs. The biggest problem with couples sexually is intimacy, and that's based on trust. If Don can't begin that process of giving Betty what she needs, sexually -- which means being dead honest about his past affairs, and for the love of God burying his affair with Suzanne, if he can -- then the walls will go back up.
I bet Betty never asked for full disclosure as a condition to taking Don back, the last time. Both of them were great at papering things over, and that has to stop.
I think she has the right to ask whether she should start The Pill, so they have no more surprises and can catch their breath with all the changes they've been through. This window they've got to change things is closing; here's hoping she asks for everything she needs.
One final thought. Is the title "The Gypsy and the Hobo" meant to only reference Don? Or could it also be about the facade that Roger sheds here - both gypsy and hobo connote the image of the wanderer, but gypsy also includes the idea of a freer type of love and sexuality. The wandering eye as well as the wandering spirit. That's something both Roger and Don share - affairs outside their marriage - and it's something both men reject in this episode when they drop their facades, instead returning to their homes. Interesting to note that for Roger, his "home" is the office of Sterling Cooper.
The title does seem to reference two people and this episode followed two main storylines - Roger's and Don's. Joan's story, while important, seems to fit in more closely with Roger's than Don's, more of a subplot of the episode. Where as Roger's development more closely mirrors Don's and by this virtue makes it closer to the main action.
ugh, I couldn't c&p the comment about Roger trying to get more serious with Joan and how she passed because she had her sights set on getting the "ideal" husband... that parallels nicely what happened between Roger & Annabelle. Once she left him for the guy who eventually died of lung cancer, Roger did all the "right" things -- again the played by the rules theme: he went to work at his father's firm, married Mona, went to war... and was left unfulfilled. Obviously it doesn't excuse his horrible behavior, but it adds some depth to a character that has often seemed so frivolous and selfish. I also see the resemblance between Annabelle, the "party girl" Roger hired that one time, and Jane. I agree with the person who stated the phone conversations Roger had were very telling WRT his feelings towards Joan. Slattery slays me when he's being rakish but, like Hamm, he can act the heck out of a subtle facial expression in a tender or dramatic scene. Watching him turn Annabelle down was for me almost as painful as Don & Betty's confession scene. And the line "people were falling out of windows while we were on vacation" was pretty brutal.
I'm so glad someone brought up that we haven't seen Betty eat in forever. When people were protesting her 2mo post-partum body in Rome, I meant to comment about the fact that we never see her eat, only smoke and drink. Then in this ep at the end, the truth is out, her husband's fate is kind of in her hands, and we see her eat in a way that seems so natural/relaxed (having a snack in the family room with the kids before heading out to trick or treat). Not only that but sharing her food with her husband, which is a small act of kindness and generosity, acceptance. This is not what a wrathful, vengeful, bitter woman does. (of course, she doesn't know about Suzanne) He offers to split up so they don't have to be together during T&T and she just gives him that look... they both nailed the looks and non-verbal communication that goes on between people in a long-term relationship who have just had the most scary thing happen to their relationship. Again, WOW.
As soon as I saw the sewing machine on the kitchen table, I figured Betty was making the costumes and that the kids would not be Minnie & an astronaut.
I too wondered how Miss Farrell was taking off work in the middle of a schoolweek, though I didn't even think about the Draper kids missing school. And I've suspected for a while that there was one episode I must've missed, but now with all the references to Mack, Adam's birth and Dick falling down the stairs, I'm convinced. Can anyone tell me what season & episode number this all happened in?
Emmie and laurav, your thoughts on Joan and Roger are interesting.
It never seemed to me Joan was waiting for Roger to leave his wife for her. Maybe some women who have sex with married men are hoping for that conclusion, but I don't think that was the case with Joan. Roger genuinely loves his young wife and is happy with her, I believe. There is a great deal of warmth and affection between Joan and Roger, but I don't think he is the love of her life nor she his.
Just a hunch, but I suspect that something terrible is in store for Ms. Farrell--possibly something that will get Don in trouble with the police. Portents include:
1)Don's repeated insistence that Miss Farrell is "pure" and "innocent."
2)Her warning to Don at the outset that it was dangerous to get involved with someone so nearby.
3)Her penchant for early morning jogs and her status as an object of forbidden desire among the fathers of Ossining.
4)Don's odd interaction with the prison guard, which never seemed to have had a narrative purpose.
5)Don's gift of the business card to her epileptic brother, who presumably has kept it, along with the knowledge of Don's habit of turning up at her apartment late at night.
And, about Annabelle; oh, she's Jane. I'm old enough to remember how adorable and perky she was in DUET; in fact, Ms. Keller could have won in a cute-off with Elizabeth Moss. Her kawaii-fu was most strong -- and that's exactly what Roger wanted Jane for, to replicate that. Annabelle would have had absolutely no question about why Roger married Jane, if she saw her picture.
That's why Jane is The One -- not because of any true love, but because of Roger's borderline pedophile pathology. Alice said it -- he wants to die under a teenage girl. He'll always go after those women of that age he used to woo as a young boxer stud, even though after WWII he had to rely on cash. I think Roger stopped passionately loving women after Annabelle; I'm surprised we even got an explanation involving him truly loving anyone, in the first place.
As for Mona, she was duty, like Don and Betty. I always suspected Don's anger at Roger was more that Roger revealed the marriage game was easy for adulterers to play, just when he didn't want Betty to know. Don and Roger covered for each other. If Betty were more assertive, she would have contacted Mona to ask her what *her* private investigator dug up.
You know Don, Roger and some girls didn't just happen that one time in the office -- Don whored around with Roger. In fact, the only times Don has been angry with Roger was when Roger's callous vices touched Don's marriage -- hitting on Betty, giving Betty ideas about what they did at 'client meetings'. The corruption Roger represents is completely separate from the trouble Dick Whitman has made for himself, but it's still trouble Don has to face, eventually.
Whiskey, it's Season 1, Episode 6 "Babylon," where Don falls down the stairs and we flash back to him falling down and Adam's birth. I don't know where we have seen Uncle Mack before.
America - land of illusions. Oh so fitting to have the costumes and Halloween, pre-figuring our current day Botox-injecting, plastic surgeried narcissism, much of which Betty represents.
Betty as villain?
The truth comes out and Don/Dick gets his deserved comeuppance but as well-earned as Bets' self-righteousness is, she becomes despicable with the line "I knew you were poor...I see how you are with money, you don't understand it."
This is the absolute essence of America's class war. People who were born ensconced in wealth and comfort from an early age thinking of money as a means to power and comfort as opposed to a utilitarian way to make one's way in the world.
It is non incidental then that war and imperialism loom so large over the procedures with Roger referencing Casablanca and his military service, Dick/Don confronting his war past, and Joan's husband enlisting.
Vietnam/the turbulent 'classic 1960s' will bring this class conflict home, the battle between those who view money as 'power to' vs. those who view money as 'power over'.
Also, I couldn't help but be reminded of Tony Soprano in therapy saying, with self-excoriation: "Oh, Jesus, fuck. Now he's gonna cry" as I watched Don devolve into a weepy post-psych era sap.
There was something empowering about a person allowed to have secrets, someone not succumbing to the psychosis that is marriage, as I am reminded of Krzysztof Kieslowski's great line "The whole notion of love is antithetical to liberty."
Watching Don sign away his liberty was bad enough and this is even worse. To refer to a lighter yet equally revealing TV moment, it's like how George Costanza from Seinfeld doesn't want to reveal his secret ATM code to his wife. George's line is: 'Why does everything have to be 'us'? Is there no 'me' left? Why can't there be some things just for me?'
Part of the enjoyment of Mad Men is witnessing a time when people held things a little closer to the vest and 'sharing' wasn't the solve-it-all salve that it is today.
Too traditional?
Despite all the wondefulness this week, I agree there's an on-the-nose quality amidst the great writing and acting. Enough with the cigarettes are bad/60s people were so ignorant stuff. I'm also a big Peggy fan and disappointed to see her and Pete so marginalized as this season is much more linear and Don/Betty-centric.
January Jones's acting chops aren't quite up to Hamm's here. She lacks Moss's quixotic complexities and tumultuous, conflicted quiddity and though I think that's part of the reason she's cast as Betty (because she's so blandly but spectacularly pretty - see the airbrushed Esquire cover - and therefore contrasts SO well with Don's much more complex and interesting brunettes), here she struggles a bit in keeping up.
Oh, and one last positive thing, I loved Smitty's deprecating line about pathetic pet owners.
Sean
Yes, I don't remember anything about Joan wanting Roger to leave Mona. There may have been an implication, once Roger had his heart attack, that she realized she cared about him. But that was the end of the affair, and before that, she seemed intent not to be tied down by him. Remember the whole canary metaphor?
But I love what you're saying about it, Whiskey. Kind of like...he called the friend for Joan right after the "the one" talk, not because Joan is "the one," but because his conversation with Annabelle made him realize how much of his life he wasted going through the motions of doing what he "should" do, and now that he's decided to go for what he wants instead, he wants the same for Joan. He sees himself in Joan, not his true love.
If Joan were Roger, then Roger would be Joan's Annabelle, and Greg would be Joan's Mona. We're all hoping that Joan moves on from Greg a little sooner than Roger moved on from Mona. And Joan having lucrative work is a necessary step in that direction.
laurav said:
i still, though, cannot get on the "betty's a hollow shell" or "betty's childlike" bandwagon.
Oh I think that wagon's left the station, and the majority of people here have disembarked. grin
Sean, I didn't sense any malice when Betty made the comment about money. I took it to mean she had simply been trying to figure him out, and now that she had an explanation, deciding what rang true to her. She believed the part about growing up poor because that seemed authentic. Betty certainly can be mean, but I didn't think she was there.
The question of Betty's being pregnant when she and Don were married was addressed clearly in this episode. Betty said Don's divorce from Anna Draper, dated Feb. 14, 1953 was exactly three months before Don's & Betty's wedding -- May 1953. We know from "The Marriage of Figaro" episode in the first season (taking place in 1960) that Sally's sixth birthday was in April or early May. Betty served mint juleps at the party, saying something about the season (Kentucky Derby Day) coming up. Doing the math, Sally was born 11 or 12 months after Betty & Don's wedding. Doesn't appear to be a rushed marriage.
The question of Betty's being pregnant when she and Don were married was addressed clearly in this episode. Betty said Don's divorce from Anna Draper, dated Feb. 14, 1953 was exactly three months before Don's & Betty's wedding -- May 1953. We know from "The Marriage of Figaro" episode in the first season (taking place in 1960) that Sally's sixth birthday was in April or early May. Betty served mint juleps at the party, saying something about the season (Kentucky Derby Day) coming up. Doing the math, Sally was born 11 or 12 months after Betty & Don's wedding. Doesn't appear to be a rushed marriage.
I was surprised how emotional I got during the confrontation scene--i was crying along with Don. I think it's all the build-up of the past 3 seasons, knowing who Don has made himself up to be, and then just...disintegrating. Very emotional.
And Betty--I thought Jones's acting was terrific. But hot damn, even when he's telling her about Adam, I know she's in shock, but she just EXUDES ice.
i loved seeing more of Roger (and Joanie!), but my big issue with him turning down his ex (who is just so gorgeous) is that I can't see Jane as his big LOVE. I can understand he doesn't want to cheat on her because they're newlyweds, or she's so young, or he doesn't want to look like a jerk, or whatever, but for him to make her sound like she's The One, I just don't buy it. If he left Mona for Joan, I'd get it, but Jane has just been painted as an insecure, beautiful flake. So that emotional bit didn't ring true for me.
But other than that, LOVED LOVED LOOOOVED the episode.
Know what stinks about living on the West Coast? By the time I finish watching Mad Men there are already 150 comments to wade through...
What I am surprised about after reading 225 posts (every time I take a break, 20 more people reply) is that no one seems to think of Roger's comments with Annabelle as being vengeful. Obviously, when she says that he was "The One" and he so coldly says "you weren't," he phrased in such a way as to inflict the most damage, but his whole rejection of her seems so out of character considering he could almost certainly get away with sleeping with her.
From his reaction when he first saw her to their every interaction before they got their coats at the restaurant, you could see how infatuated Roger still was with her. But at the same time, the way he cut at her with every line about Casablanca and living in Paris and the like, he wanted to hurt her.
Roger may very well believe that Jane is love of his life, but I think a better interpretation is that he WANTS to believe it. He gave up everything (his wife, his kids, his reputation) for her. But we haven't seen anything to suggest that Roger is a different man than the one that slept with Joan or Jane while married to Mona (or the Doublemint twins and who knows how many others).
When Roger said Annabelle wasn't The One, he wasn't thinking of Joan. Nothing from the episode suggests that she was on his mind until she called him. When he said it, he was thinking of the 20 year old girl in Paris who chose someone else. Of the women we have seen Roger with, I think Annabelle was the love of his life, or at least the most idealized relationship at the time. But when she picked another man over him, he believes that she chose wrong. And thirty years later, she has realized it and he is going to finally get the chance to punish her for it.
By the same token, I don't think Joan thinks of Roger as the love of her life, either. Of course, she doesn't think of her husband that way either. Joan has always been too smart and too practical for that. There is certainly a kind of love between them, but when Greg starts talking about the spoiled promise he had been chasing, I don't think she was thinking "I chose you over Roger" when she cracked him on the skull (great moment in TV history right there...).
I see there is a lot of debate on how unstable Ms. Farrell is. I don't think she is quite as crazy as some people are making her out to be, but at the same time I don't think she is quite as sane as others seem to think. Her expolanation about leaving the lights on when she went out shopping shows that she has no illusions about what she is doing with Don, as does her asking about him and then wondering about her job security towards the end. She isn't asking "What about us?" or arguing that promises were made. She knew that this relationship wasn't going to end well but she enjoyed it while she could.
(continued from above) That said, I also don't think she was just a mature, ahead of her time woman. Her actions, and the sadness that seemed behind everything she said and did once she and Don began the affair, don't suggest some sort of hippie free-love attitude the way Don's beatnik mistress did in season 1. And I can't think of time in the last 45 years where her attitudes towards adultery were the norm. She is not an innocent girl seduced by a handsome, powerful man. As she says repeatedly, she went into this relationship with her eyes open. She had Don Draper sussed from the moment she met him at the eclipse. She knew from that first conversation what would happen if they got together and how it would end, and that is exactly what happened. What generation of women does she belong to with her attitudes? What times is she ahead of? Because even today we would think a woman who sets down a path for ruin like that has some issues.
I don't know what more can be said about the scenes between Don and Betty. Just a stunner... The look on his face when she asked about Adam absolutly wrecked me. When he got up from the table after Betty went to check on the baby, I was terrified that he was going to grab the money from the desk and take off.
Here is a question that may have been discussed in previous weeks, but I am curious to know what others might think: Given Don's desire to be untethered from his life (no contract, able to dissapear for weeks at a time, a safety net of cash), how do you think he decided to marry Betty? After his struggle to avoid signing a contract, I couldn't help wonder what the situation was that got him to commit to her. Thoughts?
When you've been gaslighted* and lied to your whole "marriage," you don't melt with pity and understanding when you finally find out what's inside your husband's Pandora's box. You maintain, if not strengthen, your steely self-protection.
BTDT myself.
We have no idea what Betty would look like if she trusted her husband.
Anon1
Julia said...
"I still wonder why the story line is that he can be a surgeon or a psychiatrist. What? Are internists, gastroenterologists, neurologists, radiologists, pediatricians, etc. chopped liver?"
Because of a shortage of psychiatrists after WWII, doctors were recruited to be trained (or re-trained if they had other specialties) by getting paid 'real money' while training in psychiatry; training in other specialties paid very little.
Does anyone else foresee big problems for Joan when she finds a new job thanks to Roger, but Dr.McRapey demands she quit? Afterall, she won't NEED to work as an army officer's wife. But she knows how flaky Greg is. I'm betting she won't give up a job ever again for this sorry loser. Besides, he'll probably go AWOL because he can't hack the push-ups at boot camp.
As for Suzanne, I thought she was cuckoo bananas at first too, and now I'm sure it's because Matt Weiner wanted us to question what she'd do while parked in front of the Draper house. She does, however, strike me as a hypocrite for loving kids but being willing to break up a home (even if the marriage is unhappy). However, I certainly don't think she's consciously trying to hurt the kids with the affair. I think she just doesn't want to think about it because she's in love (haven't we all been there?).
I'm with those who believe Roger doesn't have a real "the One" in mind when he's talking to Annabelle. He's just loving the fact that he can tell her SHE wasn't it. Perfect delivery. I know he can be an ass, but Slattery plays him so well that I have to love Roger anyway.
P.S. I love the way they're using Allison the secretary more and more, for those subtle gags.
oops -- forgot to define "gaslighting"
comes from the 1944 movie "Gaslight," in which Joseph Cotten tries to make his wife Ingrid Bergmann crazy so he can leave her for another woman
In the world of infidelity, loosely taken to mean when a husband or wife uses headgames on his or her spouse, then when the spouse reacts badly to such treatment, cheater/headgamer blames the spouse for being inadequate, crazy, immature, etc.
Anon1
Day Late iTunes Girl:
Sean said:
"..Don devolve into a weepy post-psych era sap."
It will be interesting to see what happens in the future of the series,but I don't think that's what happened here.
The weight of the secrets was great,but the guilt over Adam's death was enormous
How could Don NOT cry when the woman he sought to keep by rejecting his brother speaks his name?
Betty found out ANYWAY..so Adam's death is all the more needless now that the truth is out.
We'll see,but I don't think Matt W. is going to use this episode to turn Dick/Don into some horrible Alan Alda stereotype. God I hope not.
As for Betty telling Don "You don't understand money"
HELLO?
BETTY doesn't understand money. She was indulged by her father and went almost straight into marriage where Don is extremely generous with her. The riding,the clothes, employing Carla..
She asked Don about buying their own summer house in S1 and he said "Now is not a good time Bets..etc" indicating that she had no clue about the family finances.
This season when they are redecorating the house,Don had to reign her in..
She didn't turn a hair when Don was in CA and she signed his pay check. The figures were impressive for the era and I saw a disconnection in her as if it meant nothing. Just random numbers.
I think Betty either wanted to establish some sort of "I knew more than you think" superiority over Don or she doesn't get that the money in the drawer is Don't escape plan. Growing up wealthy, she thinks it should be invested to earn more $.
Betty may not understand finances, but she understands that "money" means the group of people in the world who have it, and what they are like, and where she fits into the scheme.
Don has no idea how to read the subtleties or interact with people who have money, or what background assumptions you can reasonably make about them, and what it is safe/risky/appropriate to discuss with them. Connie Hilton has money but had to learn the hard way about Money, and I think he believed that Don had learned the lesson as well as Connie had.
Remember that dinner many, many episodes ago with Roger and Don and Mona and Betty? Don really didn't know what to say about their childhoods (like Roger had his nanny and Betty had her sympathetic housekeeper) because he didn't come from Money. In fact, he didn't even engage with people who were Money. I'm surprised he pulled off Officer as well as he did, but of course as people here said last week he never actually tried to step into Don Draper 1's life. He just needed a name and his paperwork.
By the end of the episode I was fairly certain that the gypsy and the hobo of the title were Roger and Don respectively, as others have said. But I did enjoy the callbacks to two people in Don's life who have given Dick/Don a bit of kind perspective on his circumstances: Miss Farrell in her gypsy mien, dancing around the Maypole, and the hobo from 1.8 ("The Hobo Code").
Since MW doesn't seem to do a lot of omniscient-narrator stuff in Don's flashbacks, I have to assume that young Dick found the symbol and understood that his father had been judged by outside observers and found to be a miserable piece of work. To a kid in his isolated, wretched circumstances at the time the symbol could have been a powerful statement -- "no, it's not your imagination, your dad's an ass." That observation must have felt like a lifeline for young Dick, even if he didn't have a plan for acting on it until much later.
As for Miss Farrell, I'm not one of the haters; in an milieu where these affairs seem practically normative -- and where, for all the reasons Betty heard from her lawyer and more, Miss Farrell would know that a mere affair with Don wouldn't be likely to upset his domestic applecart everyone remained discreet -- she seems not particularly crazypants. (She may one day have her Evita "Another Suitcase Another Hall" moment, but I'd guess that's a few affairs down the road if ever.) In any case, the arc from the warm, responsive, dancing Miss Farrell to the Miss Farrell who eschewed a tantrum about being left in the car to ask instead if Don was okay -- well, a gypsy's got to seem like a figure of kindness to the man in the fedora right now.
Day Late iTunes Girl:
KarenX,that is a really interesting way to look at the word "money",thanks. While I don't discount your theory entirely,I think it's important to note that Don is not exactly a rube.
He handled meeting Count Montefiore
(??) in California. He was much more at ease than Pete was. Pete gave his middle name and then tried to let his background be known with "..did we meet at Newport?" etc.
During the intermission of FIORELLO! Don and Mrs. Ad Exec went off to get drinks he showed matter of fact ease. Don has known how to handle himself in better restaurants,hotels...
I don't know if it was caddying at
the golf club or if he swallowed an etiquette book when he assumed Don Draper's name,but he seems very at ease in "that world" to me.
But I am willing to have my mind changed...what am I not recalling about Don/Betty and wealthy folks?
Anon1 -- Charles Boyer was the husband in "Gaslight;" Joseph Cotten was the hero! Otherwise, point well taken: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
Anyone ever notice that the actress who plays Suzanne appears in this Twix commercial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQJ2SegGWyc&feature=player_embedded
This season when they are redecorating the house,Don had to reign her in..
He didn't have to reign her in - he wanted to reign her in. There have been a number of bonuses, etc. where he gave the money away to people outside the family. The money is there; he just doesn't want her to spend it.
Some people who grow up living paycheck to paycheck like the touch of real money; carrying a roll of bills. I know some folks like that. My financial planner son likes to talk about the magic of "compound interest". (He includes investments in that term.) Put it away early to grow. That's how people get wealthy. Don doesn't get that - he stuffs it in a drawer - like putting it under the mattress or in a can buried in the yard.
Betty is recognizing why he has seemed not to know about how to manage money. I don't think she was being mean. She doesn't appear to be looking down on him for not understanding money.
If you think about it - Don is a "creative" at work and gets upset with the bean counters.
Daylate iTunes girl said:
Don has known how to handle himself in better restaurants,hotels...
One of the ways this series resonates for me is that my father worked as a "sales executive" in the packaging industry (an advertising vendor/marketing vendor) and had to wine/dine clients (even to the extent of finding accomodating ladies for the out of town buyers).
He wasn't a drinker but had to take them to the Copacabana nightclub, Toots Shor's, etc. and show them the town. My mother sometimes had to go along, which she disliked, but held up her end of things as the loyal corporate wife she was.
He came from nothing -- a terrible brokendown neighborhood in Brooklyn. Had only a HS education and his WWII military service behind him.
But (somewhat like Don) he was tall and nice-looking and capable of charm/humor. As a child I was impressed by how he knew how to handle nice restaurants, hotels, cabbies and waiters, cops, bellboys, etc.
So apparently anyone can learn that stuff. But like Don, my dad was uncomfortable around well-educated, old-time money and privilege.
Sometiems it just amazes me how well MW understands something HE NEVER EVEN SAW. It's like he sat down with my father and took notes on what it's like to be a poor schmuck from Brooklyn with an Amex Card in 1962.
Anon1
@Day Late iTunes Girl:
Oh, Pete! Pete's just awkward everywhere.
Don is not a rube, no way. In fact, you'd have to have a certain innate knack for mimicry for his crazy plan to work, and he comports himself very, very well. He's always known, even as a child, I think, when to step up and ask for information and when to step aside and let your attitude answer questions other people might have. He is smart and good-looking and always careful, and a good study.
He can slide into any crowd and even impress people there, but I am sure he does peculiar things to (Money) people who are used to a certain kind of (Money) behavior. Now I am going to start making up a theory as I go along about Don, whereas I only brought up in the first place the difference between finance and money to justify Betty's behavior and comment about it. Here goes nothing:
Don got along with the California Money because he was aloof and mysterious, and because they were also out of their element and kind of (I interpreted) on a downward slide. They can travel, but they can't maintain an estate anymore. They are permanently on the move because they can no longer keep up with their old life. Or else they are bored with it and turned their backs on it, but Don doesn't meet them at home--he meets them when they are all far away from home, himself included.
Don getting along with hotel staff and fine restaurant employees to me says that he understands them as business people and what they are trying to do and the image they are trying to maintain and what is required of him in this setting. It's an application of his gift that has gotten him as far as it has in advertising. But when we see him socially, in society (in the things I remember without prompting) he withdraws. He doesn't make chitchat or have the same expectations and assumptions that Betty and the people she grew around with do.
When she made that remark, it was just putting her finger on what it was that signaled to her he had been poor. She was thinking of interpersonal, social relationship things more than actual cash and how and what to spend it on.
I'm not particularly committed to this theory, either.
Here late as usual!
I was watching this in shock - couldn't look away. I felt my blood run a little cld for Don and felt triumphant for Betty and scared that Suzanne would walk in. I echo much of what has been written about the acting and choice of storylines. To weigh in on some of the emerging board discussions this week:
1) I agree Roger was not speaking about Joan, but was motivated in his comment by a wish to hurt Annabelle and buy into his own created concept of being a newlywed in the honeymoon period married to young Jane against wide criticism and derision by his peers. He probably does believe he loves Jane - that morning they showed us in bed of her reading poetry to him reminds me of this.
2) Uncle Mac - I may have to rewatch but there was something of a pause or break in Don's voice when he described him as nice. Was he being wry... as in "compared to my father he was nice, but he was still pretty mean" or does he mean something more sinister that is too deep to name? It wouldn't be unheard of for Dick to have been abused by his 'Uncle' and would explain Dick running away (even though Archie had been dead for some years). It's true, emotional abuse and neglect would be enough to explain Dick's issues with intimacy, trust and attachment. This was just a passing thought.
3) The dynamics between Don and Betty were fascinating. We've seen a gradual turn of the tide for 2 seasons. Betty's comments about his contract a few episodes ago, but the way she staged the drawer opening was remarkable. The comment about money was dismissive of a man feeling small (the power shift), but the hand on the shoulder, the passing of leftovers the next day, Don asking if she'd have breakfast - little things that mean so much.
4) When Don was in the kitchen - I felt like saying - "you know you can't run, you signed your contract" I think it's a good thing as it made him resigned to stay and face the music. I'm hoping that true intimacy has been borne between them. Their marriage is still only very young. Don signed himself into a contract (marriage with Betts), went to the trouble of leaving his best friend the old Mrs Draper because he loved Betty.
Cannot wait for next episode. I'm feeling hopeful for some reason...
Now if we could only get Joan, Sal, Peggy and Duck... I'll be jumping over the moon!
(PS I'm a psychiatrist and Greg moving from surgery to Psychiatry - made me baulk)
While they both grew up in families that had money, Betty comes from an upper middle class background. I think Roger comes from an upper class background, more like Pete (though maybe Pete is really old NY money, in the Edith Wharton sense). Betty's family had money in the sense that her father earned a good enough living and had saved enough so that everyone was "taken care of" and they could be comfortable while being careful about what they spent. Roger had the kind of inherited wealth where people could afford to be decadent with their money. They came from different classes and view the world differently.
There was something wistful about Roger when he talked to and about Joan - maybe the snob in him prevented him from ever getting really serious about her.
PPS I also was scared when Joan smashed the vase at Greg that he would lose control and go after her. He seemed so on edge anyway and I was frightened. I'm glad quite a few others here were worried too. Funny isn't it, that Greg went away and came up with a solution and apologised for being too wrapped up in his own concerns - that is NOT how I would have expected him to react.
Whenever I watch them, I know Greg is a self-absorbed little man but it annoys me how much time Joan gives him. She is tender and encouraging - I keep thinking "she must love this guy" or maybe it's just a Joan-attribute; do everything to the best of her considerable ability and make the best of her lot.
Imamarilyn said...
Whiskey, it's Season 1, Episode 6 "Babylon," where Don falls down the stairs and we flash back to him falling down and Adam's birth. I don't know where we have seen Uncle Mack before.
To clarify, it IS Uncle Mack in the flashback at the beginning of Babylon (Don falls down the stairs, flashes back to Adam's birth scene, Uncle Mack encourages him to meet his new brother). Not to be confused with Don's father Archie who is in the flashback scenes of The Hobo Code.
Whiskey - Seek out the episode, it's terrific.
LA, thanks for the clarification. So Uncle Mack and Abigail are the biological parents of Adam?
Imamarilyn,
Archie Whitman fathered Adam - he and Dick are half brother's through Archie - but Archie died while Abigail was pregnant with him, and she took up with Uncle Mack in time for his birth.
BTW, I'm a Marilyn, too. :)
LA, thanks for clearing up the confusion for me. Uramarilyn2? Sweeet!
We know Hamm will get his emmy nom again for sure(and maybe a win, but it's a tough, tough category especially when BB rolls around again), but what I really want is for Jones to finally get her nom. They really work very well together.
A very satisfying episode indeed. Just keeps getting better and better, and I LOVE that Betty's showdown happened now and not at the finale of the season. Well played.
What I found most interesting about Sunday night was seeing for the first time Don Draper and Dexter Morgan as kindred spirits.
@dez-I thought the object on the kitchen table while Betty was interrogating Don was an old tabletop sewing machine. I may be wrong, but it would fit with the children's home-made costumes.
Oops! Thanks for that. Guess I can quit thinking about it now :-)
@Jane: Also, I only associate "Where Is Love" with Swan Brooner, the star of HBO's Living Dolls documentary about child beauty pageants.
Thank goodness for this blog. All day long, it's been driving me crazy, trying to remember what it was I associate that song with. Swan. That's it!
That was the most mindblowing, unexpected episode of the series for me. My heart was pounding out of my skin through 90% of it.
Just so I can say 'I told you so' later -- and maybe this has been predicted by others -- but I see Suzanne taking her own life and her brother blackmailing Don.
Alan, to your point about Mad Men being too on the nose sometimes, I would add Greg's reference to Vietnam, "if that's still going on."
Personally, I find it ironic that the writers may use Vietnam to get Joan out of a quagmire.
Coincidence that Annabelle was also the name of the twin Roger was "riding" when he suffered his first heart attack? And remember him moaning her name before Don slapped the words out of his mouth, reminding him "Mona. Your wife's name is Mona."
My prediction...I really think this is a temporary peace between Don and Betty, brought on by this battle of wills/outpouring of (semi)truths. It won't last, and Don will be back with Suzanne (count me as another member of the she's-not-crazy team.) Some marriages are never meant to be, no matter how hard you try, and they aren't that vested in this marriage. Suzanne seems to be the sort of woman who will wait for Don and be ready to take care of the kids. Betty will be relieved to get them off her hands and figure out her new life, unfettered by the restrictions of society(marriage, house in the burbs, kids.)
Yo Allen. Why no Curb recap? The ep was hilarious.
It continues to astound me when Don turns into Dick...damn Jon Hamm is good! And January Jones was perfect in this -- that confessional scene! And the "open this drawer!" Wow!
Oy...poor Joan (I so want an episode where I can say Yea Joan! OK...she did his Dr. Death with a vase...that was pretty cool...)
"Suzanne still thinks of herself as a fuzzy kitten looking for a home. You show me a Suzanne fully taking on the consequences of her actions and being honest about the damage she does to the kids she supposedly loves, then I'll acknowledge her as a 'modern' woman. Till then, suspect."
cgeye, you hit it right on the nose. My distaste for Miss Farrell has nothing to do with her being assertive. She's not assertive. Assertive is Bobbi, the wife of the crude comedian Jimmy.
Miss Farrell is needy and unstable, and her character doesn't even make sense. She supposedly called Sally's parents in for a conference because she was concerned about her, then starts throwing herself at the little girl's father? And her hypocritical judging (in the solar eclipse scene where she tells Don she "knows all about the philandering" that the men in the town do) -- then why is she a willing party to that philandering?
I will never understand Don's attraction to her, and I am so relieved he kicked her to the curb.
Bob Loblaw -- it was Mirabelle, not Annabelle...close though...I wonder if that was on purpose?
I just saw the beginning of the movie Halloween (1978 version) on AMC, and realized that the Myers house (where the little kid stabs his sister to death in 1963)looks very similar to the Draper residence. Both the front of the house and the layout is much the same. Think they might be reusing the set? Anybody else want to weigh in?
I was a gypsy on Halloween, and saw many hobos in my day. I agree though, that they could have made Bobby a cowboy so our heads would hurt a bit less from being hit with the comparisons between Don and his son.
My guess is that Betty will stay, and will protect Don from any future threats to reveal his identity. His standing reflects on her, and vice versa. She in no way will want the world to know she married someone who committed fraud, and wouldn't do that to her kids either. Reputation is all, or close to all, anyway.
I just had to laugh though, when I thought back to last week, when most of us thought the big reveal wouldn't happen this season, or maybe ever. We think we know, but we don't.
I really liked when Don advised Annabelle to "change the name" of the product. I didn't think much of it at first, even after he qualified it with "it's still the same product" - and a good one at that. But the name doesn't work. It needs to be changed - and bam, problem solved. Quick, as Alan pointed out, "rebranding" - but it's essentially the same thing, same concept.
Sort of echoes Don's nonchalance about using someone else's name. "People change their names all the time," he tells Betty. In the end - it's only a name, so it's not a big deal, right? But it allows for a product (or person) to be seen in a completely different light. Allows to fool the people into thinking it's something else.
A little too on the nose, perhaps - but I didn't see too many comments about that.
Another point that I'm thinking about a lot (and Alan - if this is too political, feel free to delete).. Is what tax bracket does Don fall into? This is the '60s, mind you all. Wonder how much of his money he actually gets to keep.
Lastly - I'm just confused about where this show is heading. These last season 3 episodes may well prove to be the peak of the series - but where do we go from there? In the second season Don has revealed much about his past and Betty found out that he was a cheater. This season she finds out he's not who he is, and he bares open his entire life in front of her. So where's the mystery? Unless Weiner hits our temporals with a baseball bat in the season finale / cliffhanger, I'm just confused as to whether he can base the show on something else other than the mystery of Don Draper - in the long-term. I guess this season can be effectively titled up as the "Downfall of Don Draper", sort of echoing the opening sequence of a man falling from a building, I feel like the tone of the next season will be set with another life-changing shocker in this season's finale - or else I don't think the writers have anywhere to go from here.
@ Joysong:
"She supposedly called Sally's parents in for a conference because she was concerned about her, "
Supposedly? She *did* call Sally's parents in for a conference because she was concerned about her. You think she had ulterior motive before she even met the parents? What was it, in your opinion?
I wonder if we'll see Don open up a bit and take more risks now that Dick Whitman has been given new life. Don really did not like being bossed around at work but expended very little effort to stop it. Dick, however, is a huge risk-taker. I'm not expecting to see Don undergo some radical transformation or do anything rash, but I'd enjoy watching him learn things about himself that he'd forgotten or didn't know.
A Don who acknowledges the boldness and guts of Dick Whitman might look at characters like Pete more sympathetically. Pete is sort of a square peg, and has tried to bring a new perspective to Don all this time and Don has been prejudiced against it. Maybe now he'll be open to something new. Pete and Don make a very good professional team, I think. They could transform the company if they were able to work together without Don being crabby about Pete's ideas. Add a newfound respect for what Peggy has actually accomplished and the three of them would be shockingly good. Maybe we'd see Betty do something new, too, and Don help her, cheer her up a bit.
We also see Joan not that excited about being a secretary anymore and being talked up in NYC as a professional worth having on your staff. She could change. I think there are a lot of places to go with the next few seasons. I'd get just as excited by Don approaching Pete with an idea as I would with a shocking dramatic cliffhanger, and I would wait as eagerly until next year to see how the relationships change.
Don has to feel better now. Has to. Dick will be a real asset to him. I hope now that he's said the names aloud he believes in them truly, just like Betty had to say the names aloud to her lawyer to believe them, too.
I was very impressed with the acting in this epi, especially between the principals.
As Alan pointed out, John Hamm's change in the drawer scene was excellent, but I thought he was better in the kitchen scene. He has classic good looks, granite face and all, but suddenly his face just dissolved and you could see the muscles in his face loosen, not a cliched jaw-dropping but more subtle. Don/Dick looked more vulnerable then we have ever seen him. Great work.
Puff
God bless Mary Page Keller! I've missed her for so long. Such fond memories of Duet. She gave such a lovely performance here. And yes, it was quite nice to see such a mature Roger.
Loved the open of the write-up with the reference to the fanfic-based comic one-offs.
Money: Betty is mistaken why Don keep money in his desk drawer. It is "Mad Money", this is the money he gave to Adam.
Joan: Correctly predicts in Babylon 1.6 that she will find a "suitable husband" and Roger will trade Mona in for a "new model"... "I hear the new 61 models have larger fins". That old adage comes to mind "Be careful of what you ask for because you just may get it." Both Joan and Roger got what they wanted and are extremely unhappy, I can only imagine that Roger's household is as depressing as Joan's. Jane has no gravitas beyond her looks (even Betty has her upbringing to fall back on) so much so that Roger has to drag his demented mother to the anniversary celebrations; two half women to make up a whole... Joan even with a lower class background (accordion) could hold her own at such events.
Betty: I think the biggest shift in Betty was her eating at home. We have seen her eating quite voraciously in restaurants and at events but never at home. She is finally at peace in her own home and she even breaks bread with Don (forgiveness???)
Predictions:
Carlton: I think he is the one that had Suzanne frustrated about married men when she meets Don. We already know that he had an affair Francine admitted it to Betty and decided to accept it. Carlton mentions "bumping into" the teacher as he goes jogging in the morning. Suzanne says she is worried about the homeowners seeing Don come and go but I think she is more worried about someone else nearby watching. I was alarmed to see when trick or treating the proximity of Carlton and Francine's house to Don and Betty's. Was Suzanne really jogging all morning...she must have also been late to work???
Question:
(Babylon:1.6) Uncle Mack says that Don and Adam have the same father???? How can Archibald be Adams father too??
Alan: Absolutely love your thoughts on all the shows you do: my first thing to read on Mondays especially. Check out November's The Atlantic, for "The Devil's in the Details" re Mad Men. Interesting views and a dig or two at January Jones ("clumsily performed by model-turned-actress January Jones").
Regarding Don's ability to handle money: I agree completely with the idea of Betty's simply identifying old money vs. nouveau riche attitudes, particularly in terms of how they handle it (not spending unless necessary, but then buy the best, etc. - see thousands of British prewar novels for more on this).
Someone mentioned how well Don held his end up with the upper class in California. But one of his few missteps there was at the dinner, when he said something to the effect of, "You must be very well off," and there was silence as everyone just looked at him. Um, Dick, you don't talk about how much money people make. Betty herself told their daughter (in response to "Mommy, are we rich?" at the picnic) that it's not polite to talk about! This is exactly the sort of thing she's putting her finger on with her remark in this episode.
Re: the Dr. heading off to Vietnam: one poster noted my fear, that he will get blown up only enough to cripple him and Joan will be saddled with a needy, bitter, dependent husband she won't be able to leave. But I so hope not!
Re: Roger's call: I wish I could rewatch this scene. I probably got the completely wrong end of the stick, but I got the vague impression that maybe Roger wasn't calling about an office job for Joan at all, but maybe something else, like a one-off interior decorating gig? She did do wonders with her shabby apartment, after all, and knows all the best stores. That would be an interesting path to independence for her, and keep her in storytelling orbit. Interior decorating was one of the few professions women could move into that didn't compete with men and didn't necessarily require much training. Like I said, I'm not sure what gave me that idea, and it's probably not right, but it would be interesting.
Oh, one more thing: Various posters have taken little nibbles at the gypsy and hobo references, but to focus that, what was striking to me was the idea that the gypsy and the hobo are opposite sides of the same coin - freewheeling outsiders with no ties and a hint of a threatening quality because of it, but the gypsy has glamour and romance, while the hobo is dirty and broken-down.
There have been suggestions that Don is the hobo and Roger the gypsy...or Suzanne the gypsy - but I would argue that Dick is the hobo and Don the gypsy, the glamorous and unglamorous sides of the same untrustworthy, peripatetic outsider united, finally, in one person. This is perhaps supported by the fact that it is Don's own children who wear both faces.
Alan, you think that "Don and Betty could get closer." I believe they *will* get closer now that she knows who her husband is. As soon as Betty found the box in the previous episode, I felt hopeful about their train wreck of a marriage.
Someone mentioned Betty wearing pants (taking charge) during the confrontation. She was also wearing pants (shorts actually) when she found Glen hiding in the playhouse when Don was in California. Another great reprise of that Glen episode was when Don came home for trick-or-treating and Betty (who never eats!) offers Don her sandwich just as Glen had offered Betty his sandwich in that previous episode.
One other sutbtle aspect of the Caldecott Farms sub-plot. Don really seemed averse to trying to get this client. Could he (on some level) be concerned about horsewoman Betty's reaction?
Jessamyn, great thought that Don is both the hobo and the gypsy. He is both Dick and Don.
Were the plastic costumes with the masks something new in 1963?
Over at "Inside Mad Men"
http://www.amctv.com/videos/mad-men/
Weiner and Jones both explain that Betty had originally decided to leave Don rather than confront him, and took the kids down to her father's house with the idea of living there. It was just the lawyer's explanation of how difficult or impossible to be able to do that (divorce Don) that made her decide to go back home. That (the first part, that she had planned to leave then and there) hadn't been quite so clear to me.
Re: Don's tax bracket
According to Wikipedia, US income tax in 1963 was still governed by the 1954 code:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_Revenue_Code_of_1954
which had a top marginal rate of 91%. But that didn't kick in until income over $7.5M a year. Don got a huge capital gain when SC was sold, but I think his salary is still in the $50-100K range. The 1954 code has a 22% bracket going up to $150K. Do we have a canonical source for Don's salary?
The Beatles had reason to complain about the 95% top marginal rate in Britain a few years later, but it didn't directly affect too many more people from that. Arguments about the effect of high marginal rates on the overall economy are out of scope here, but I note that the USA in 1963 was about to drop the top marginal rate to 77%.
Over at "Inside Mad Men"
http://www.amctv.com/videos/mad-men/
Weiner and Jones both explain that Betty had originally decided to leave Don rather than confront him, and took the kids down to her father's house with the idea of living there. It was just the lawyer's explanation of how difficult or impossible to be able to do that (divorce Don) that made her decide to go back home.
Well, at least one thing I was thinking about during the show was right! I didn't think she'd come back, and it would have been interesting, to say the least, to see what Don would have done if she'd left him. Of course, what we got was pretty good, too.
I was hoping someone would recognize the sewing machine model. My research indicates it may have been an Elna manufactured between 1956-1958. They were light green zig zag machines. I found the information here:
http://test.ismacs.net/elna/zz.html
I though it more likely that Carla, the maid, rather than Betty had used the machine. Perhaps the machine was out so Betty could add a few touches to the costumes.
berkowit28, it never occurred to me that Betty was leaving Don at that point. Very interesting. Thanks for sharing the link.
LOVED the point about Don/Dick being both sides of the coin - the hobo AND the gypsy.
Regarding Inside Mad Men over on AMC, I do enjoy hearing the viewpoints from Weiner and others. On the other hand, I find it disappointing sometimes, getting the "answers." When I studied literature in college, we were taught that the author's intention doesn't matter. If YOU see something in the work or interpret it a certain way, that's just as valid as what the writer may have intended.
That's what makes art such a rich experience. And once it's out there, it no longer "belongs" to the author -- it's everybody's.
Elena, interesting note on the houses. I don't know if it's the same one, but it could be. The studios do keep a block(s) of houses that are reused for movies and TV. I once found online a bird's-eye-shot of the studio circle drive that contained the church and houses used and reused for I Dream Of Jeanie, Bewitched, Leave It To Beaver, and many other TV shows and movies. Unfortunately I don't remember where that site was. :-(
Good point about the Carlton and Suzanne possiblity Anon. And I too am confused about her criticism of the philandering and then jumping right into it. I also see her as more needy than assertive, right or wrong. The minute she said that she didn't care about his family (in whatever way she meant that) it clinched my opinion of her possible neediness in the way of, she'd be clingy no matter what. Ick.
Great comments everyone!
Jann
PanAm53, you posted lyrics to the Cohen song, "Suzanne" in the comments section of the "The Color Blue." I just read an interview with Abigail Spencer, who plays Miss Farrell, on amctv.com and she says Matthew Weiner told her to read those lyrics.
Misfits -- no one commented on the Misfits -- Last movie for Monroe and Gable -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Misfits_(film). Might also be the last for Montgomery Cliff as well even though he didn’t die for years, but I don’t think he did another film after his car accident? A depressing film with all the major players being finished!
Given the Joan - Marilyn comparisons ... I just thought someone would see something I didn't...
Personally, I may have to give up the show -- I don't want to see Don's downward spiral – though I would like to see Peggy success. I want more of a Hollywood ending – where there is some happy or at least not tragic ending….
I didn't get that Betty was planning to stay at her Dad's and not go back, unlike so many of their cultural 60s comments this was quite understated. Made sense to me that she'd consult a lawyer though when she had a chance.
On Joan, I always had a feeling she did want more from Roger, but knew that to keep his interest, she had to keep part of herself from him, and appear to be happy with the way things were. If he had fallen for her like he did Jane, I've a feeling Joan would have gone for it.
And an interesting question the episode raises and doesn't answer that I haven't seen addressed yet is Betty's comment to Don "You must have wanted me to find out, you left all this in my house." I know last week we all were like -Don what's up with leaving it in a drawer, what's wrong with a safety deposit box. Well here Betty asks the same thing, and Don doesn't answer. Perhaps he was subconsciously leaving open the possibility of being exposed.
And in thinking back, I can't now think why Betty didn't call a locksmith last season when she was desperately looking for evidence of his infidelity. All that time he was at the hotel, or MIA in California, and you never called someone to open the drawer? Really? Doesn't make sense to me.
"Elena, interesting note on the houses. I don't know if it's the same one, but it could be. The studios do keep a block(s) of houses that are reused for movies and TV. I once found online a bird's-eye-shot of the studio circle drive that contained the church and houses used and reused for I Dream Of Jeanie, Bewitched, Leave It To Beaver, and many other TV shows and movies. Unfortunately I don't remember where that site was. :-( "
Thanks Anon, very interesting. It was jarring last night, to say the least, watching the beginning of the movie (Halloween) and having the (at the time) unknown stalker approaching the house, looking through the windows, coming in the back and walking through the 1st floor -- I kept thinking -- a psycho in the Draper residence! That type of convergence I don't need.
Jed, I don't necessarily think Don is in a downward spiral. I know that's been mentioned a number of times in the comments throughout this season, but I don't see it.
Jessamyn,great catch on the hobo, gypsy comparisons.
For those wondering where the series can go with the reveal coming so early. There have been several mentions of Sterling-Cooper getting defense company contracts, if this does happen Don would possilbly have background checks done thereby having his past called into question.
Any thoughts on this happening?
Imamarilyn:
Thanks for letting me know about that. I actually did wonder if maybe Mad Men's Suzanne was inspired by the lyrics of Cohen's song Suzanne. I guess Abigail really nailed it!
Wow, the sense I got was one of relief. I could feel and share Don's relief that the secret was finally out in the open.
He slept well that night, and upon waking the next morning, was able to look a the box of pictures on the mantle with no sense of remorse and foreboding.
He realized that his life wasn't over, he still might have a chance at happiness with his wife and there is no more hiding things from her.
The look on Don's face as the last scence was great. Who is he now? Can he finally be a husband? A father?
Final thought - I can compare it to someone who has a drinking or addiction problem who gets it out in the open with his loved ones. No more hiding of bottles, or lying about where he's been or what he's doing. The sense of relief that it's now OK to talk about it and it's no longer a secret. . . .
On Best Week Ever, someone pointed out the obvious:
Should Roger expect the 'you people' talk from Don, because he lost an account by not sleeping with the client?
"I though it more likely that Carla, the maid, rather than Betty had used the machine. Perhaps the machine was out so Betty could add a few touches to the costumes."
Since patterns were still pinned to fabric that night, Mrs. Draper not only took out the trash in her marriage, she fixed breakfast, got her family on its way, sewed up and fit the costumes on the kids after school, and even had time for an evening snack before Trick or Treat. As an alien from another franchise would say of his own domestic goddess, "Magnificent".
FWIW Elena, I did manage to find another site with aerial shots of the Warner Brothers Ranch that contains Morning Glory Circle, et.al. Check it out and click around on the tabs at the top for more photos to see if you can find the Halloween house. These pix were taken long before Mad Men happened of course.
MovieTVHomes
Wow, interesting point about "you people" Cgeye.
Jann
(from the album 'SONGS OF LEONARD COHEN')
"Lyrics to the song the character is based on"
Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she's half crazy
But that's why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.
And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you'll trust him
For he's touched your perfect body with his mind.
Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that you can trust her
For she's touched your perfect body with her mind.
I'm just confused as to whether he can base the show on something else other than the mystery of Don Draper -
hmmm The show's theme is how a set of adults deals with the changes of the '60s. We've just seen a huge adjustment - Don & Betty opened up the bag of worms and are dealing with it. How very progressive. Pehaps he's shedding the grey flannel suit and its uniformity and facades. Maybe the theme of Don's secret past and how he deals with it is no longer needed.
Connie came up from nothing, but in an era when very few men did that. Don has been making his way post-war when many men were first
enabled to do so by the GI bill. A lot of men with modest backgrounds and the first college degree in their family were trying to fit in to the business world and were intimidated if they married women used to living the middle class life. This was still a time when it was mostly family contacts that got you in to places like Harvard and Yale. School loans were not plentiful.
Against all odds, Don has made it in the business world and now knows that his wife accepts him. Maybe now he can relax about that.
[I can't help but think about "Tom Jones" getting the blond dream girl at last]
Now the cast is going to be confronted with JFK's assasination, the coming protests and riots - the end of the Post-War era has arrived. A different set of conflicts to deal with.
I was a war baby in college in 1963. I saw the baby boomers start pouring in in about 1964-5. They weren't like Don or Roger - they were tons of middle-class kids whose fathers (like Don) had made it, who had cars, went to Florida on spring break and were full of themselves.
How will Don and the others deal with the next generation (including his kids) who will take it all for granted and even mock their striving parents for the compromises they made to succeed?
And they will blame their parents for minorities' inability to succeed like the parents.
Not to mention devaluing the service of their fathers who fought in World War II and Korea.
Don's secret past is just more dramatic than the blue collar background that Paul tries to hide with a cool cat veneer. The people coming up aren't going to pretend to gentility and white collardom; they're going to wear declasse blue jeans and let it all hang out. Maybe Don's past as a plot device has served it purpose and will recede in importance.
Are we sure that Betty put the money back in the drawer? I rather think that she took it and hid it and the money will be her "out" in case she doesn't like what Don had to say. She may have heeded the lawyer's warning that if she divorces she will be left with nothing. Am I giving her too much credit?
Thanks Jann for sharing the website, it was super cool. I didn't find a perfect fit, but what is called the "Griswald House" came closest. There is a page with movies, TV shows known to have utilized the area, and Halloween wasn't on it. But the list is admittedly incomplete. Neatest useless trivia I gained from clicking around is that the Gilmore Girls lived in the Walton's house.
Day Late iTunes Girl:
DaveMB - There was an episode (was it Jet Set?) where we see Betty in Don's office signing his paycheck. he flips it over and you can see his year to date,SS taxes,etc. I paused so that I could read it and it was impressive given that Peggy was making 35 dollars a week and Harry Crane was making 200.00..
..it escapes me now,but the figure $77,000 comes to mind..??
KarenX - Interesting! I thought the point of The Jet Set was though that they were part of a new group that traveled where they wanted when they wanted. Joy says to Don "My father will take care of you" so I didn't see them on a downward slide so much as just being bored,bored,bored..
Anon -
My Mom came from a very wealthy family and she sewed our Halloween costumes and school pageant stuff.. I think it's just something Betty knew how to do and probably wanted to do.
One thing that hasn't been discussed is why Don didn't pick up the money and leave during the confrontation? Betty was upstairs, he had clothes and money on had, all he had to do was run away. So why not?
Was it love for Betty? He was tired of running and wanted to finally face the truth and get it over with? Or my personal favorite, he didn't really like Miss Farrell that much?
He could have left. He didn't. Why not?
Julia, I agree that's what the show is about, not Don and his secret. There are so many great characters with so many stories.
Here's some 1963 costume patterns.
Just about all women learned to sew back then. I made my oldest son a Prince Valiant outfit in '68.
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=32856652
Andrew L said...
What I am surprised about after reading 225 posts (every time I take a break, 20 more people reply) is that no one seems to think of Roger's comments with Annabelle as being vengeful. Obviously, when she says that he was "The One" and he so coldly says "you weren't," he phrased in such a way as to inflict the most damage, but his whole rejection of her seems so out of character considering he could almost certainly get away with sleeping with her.
From his reaction when he first saw her to their every interaction before they got their coats at the restaurant, you could see how infatuated Roger still was with her. But at the same time, the way he cut at her with every line about Casablanca and living in Paris and the like, he wanted to hurt her.
Roger was out for blood. Holy cats, that man can hold a grudge.
Roger functions on two levels - anger and cynicism; both were in play when he was with Annabelle. His more-than-20-year-old rage overtook any good feelings he had about her. He was vicious, and I think he was protesting too much.
Emmie said: "This woman is important to me."
I think that quote says it all. Roger references Jane as an easy excuse to disentangle him from Annabelle's clutches, essentially hiding behind his marriage, but in other interactions, we see him lighting up at Joan's call, resurrecting his nickname "Joanie" for her, devoting his time and delighting in being able to help her. Just as she is "important to [him]", he's happy to know that she thinks of him and that he can be important to her. It's rare for Roger to feel needed and we see how much he's come to value being needed recently (Guy's appearance threatening to make him irrelevant was the nightmare vision of his future that reawakened his need for relevance).
I believe that Joan is important to Roger. She's one of the few people he's ever shown any affection for. But I stick by my assertion that there is no "The One" for him. I just don't think he has it in him.
If Roger loved Joan that much, he wouldn't have tried to cage her by setting her up in an apartment, alone, at his beck and call. I think he knows her well enough to have known she wouldn't go for it. Joan was smart to turn him down.
The thought of her being with Roger for the rest of her life is almost as bad as her being married to Greg.
I love Roger, but he's shallow and amoral.
Imamarilyn said...
Julia, I agree that's what the show is about, not Don and his secret. There are so many great characters with so many stories.
Peggy alone could carry a major storyline, as could Joan. I wouldn't want MW to take the focus off Don, but I would love to see more of both of these women.
Neat Elena! I'll have to walk around that site in detail.
I agree Anon, et.al., about women who even were well-off still sewing. It was popular and part of the creative home process to do that then, and Don could have been referring to the store bought costumes as being less well-made than ones that are made with care at home. Still would be the case today I suppose, if sewing was still as popular. Thanks for the pattern site Julia!
I'd tend to agree that Roger may not be the type of person who can truly have a "The One" without some reformation of his gigantic ego. :-)
I hate Betty Draper. She's a moody, whiny, judgmental witch who gets accolades because she's a beautiful blonde.
For me a major theme of this series is foreshadowing the womens' liberation movement by showing the formless discontent of suburban married women like Betty. It's interesting that she's always unhappy, even right after Don takes her to Italy. But what a horrible fate it would be in real life to spend time with such a negative person.
Betty's a stuffy self-important airhead (telling the governor's aide "I have thoughts," or telling the servant that civil rights should be postponed.) To me, she is the villain in this series.
I'm surprised that I never see any other posters expressing this opinion. It's not about the actress -- January Jones is fine. I just really hate Betty Draper the character, and I've never hated her more than this week. How is this snooping justifiable?
In a sense, being stuck with Betty is the punishment Don gets for living a made-up life. Whenever he has gotten away from her, he's happy. But Don, for all of his bluster about independence, doesn't have the cojones to go back to being Dick Whitman.
To add to comments about what the show is about:
It definitely explores Don's home or personal life and identity, as well as his work life and life outside the home. It's interesting to see how different someone's personal life behavior can be from office life behavior. In large part, this was the basis of Tony Soprano's story, as well. But as a previous poster pointed out, MM is also about larger social and societal changes that occurred as America underwent a massive transformation from being a 50s culture to being a 60's culture. For example, the first season we saw a lot of the drinking, smoking, and especially rampant sexism in the office that was common in those days and almost nonexistent now. There's been the show's exploration of changing attidtudes about race, women in the workplace, etc. From the minute attention to set detail, to an exploration of men's and women's varying roles and identities in the home and office at that time, to the reminders about what was happening in the world at large via tv news, I think the show does a brilliant job of recreating both inner and out worlds of men and women in that era.
I wonder if Matthew Weiner majored in American Studies at Wesleyan!
There is a Norwich in every state - including Vermont, where I grew up, which is roughly 4 hours' drive from NYC. I wondered if that's the one they meant, because of the time. Just a thought.
I have always believed that "Mad Men" was primarily about how people evolve and change over time. However, the show isn't a documentary of the early 60's. How people react to only the events of the times would not make compelling drama. To make compelling drama, you need a dramatic story that keeps people coming back to see what will happen next. There are several other characters with interesting story lines, however Mad Men's focus is on Don Draper's world. Any of the other characters are expendable. Don Draper is essential. I believe that we are not done with the Dick Whitman story just yet. We are still missing the events that led up to his entering the service. There will be more flashbacks. All those flashbacks are leading up to something much bigger than that which we already know.
To an anonymous poster re: Norwich
They were headed to CT...Mystic Seaport, CT was their destination.
As I grew up in the 60's I can attest that Moms sewed back then. My mom not only made costumes, but many of our regular clothes, and hers, as well. When we became teens, we started clamoring for "label" clothing, looking back, its too bad the ad industry is so good at making us want things we don't need.
I think there's a lot they can do still with Don/Dick, it just won't have the overwhelming quality to it that the locked drawer had, or the sense of possible doom we had when Pete was running around with the shoebox. I don't want it to devolve into simply being about "the 60's", we've had too many of those movies and TV shows. And I trust MW will not do that.
The writers can now turn MM into a murder mystery. It has been established that Miss Farrell jogs in the dark and that a background radio story mentioned women being harmed. DD will likely be accused since, no doubt, the "McKennas" saw him go in and out of Miss Farrell's apartment. The real murderer is Carlton, since he also was a jogger, had the hots for Mis Farrell and even recently lost weight likely to make himself more presentable. Just a thought!
Roger's "You weren't" was not cruel. Tragic, perhaps, but not cruel. It was delivered in the same manner as the reprise of "Send In The Clowns" in "A Little Night Music" - "Don't bother, they're here." Remember, it was Annabelle who dumped Roger, Annabelle who manipulates her way back into Roger's life (knowing he's married), Annabelle who want to go further than Roger. It's interesting that when a man tells the truth and says no, it's considered cruel.
Posting so comments will go to my in-box--I want to hear everyone's thoughts on these amazing developements.
P.S. Was reviewing last week's S. F. controversies--it seems clear to me that Suzanne does have an edge (see the look in her eye: "You've been flirting with me for months" "So what?" That's an edge!,)and yet she has great qualities, and I do think she's a protohippie of sorts, even though she is a competent professional. Not all hippies were drop outs 9some were "inside the system"0 being an actually hippie barely existed as an option, but S.F. has some of those values and a boldness about being different, an idealism about being more emotional and open and enlightened.
Interesting that when the end did come for her with don, she was remarkably easy. She made no trouble. i don't think she's gonna return angry. I think she senses that this isn't an idle break-up, maybe she's intellegent enough to realize he may have a conplex marriage worth struggle thru that she knows little or nothing about...
Oh, and I think it makes perfect sense to judge a fictional character on the basis of real life people who resemble him or her. Psychology is, at least in theory, consistent, and such comparisons are one tool for trying to figure a person or character out. imo.
Liam, I agree with you about Roger and Annabelle's interaction. In fact, under the circumstances I think he was gentle with her. He was stating facts and sometimes the truth hurts.
Jenae, I believe you're right that Suzanne won't come back angry. She knows the score, so to speak.
I agree that Don's not out of the picture, but his secret won't be quite the same - unless some horrible consequences come of his using Don's ID. There's no DNA studies yet, but there were dental records that identified people. Maybe he's in an accident and it turns out he's got the wrong blood type for Don Draper and the docs call the cops. But it looks like the split within himself and the big secret he was keeping from Betty is no longer the big deal.
The deceased ad man in Chicago that is supposed to be the model for Don had a woman partner who he eventually married. She wrote an article about the real Draper for a Chicago newspaper recently that I think was linked in this thread. Perhaps Annabelle is going to buy out the company. That would certainly advance the feminist storyline.
W. Blake Gray, each episode this season (I've only been here that long) in the comments I have seen plenty of criticism of Betty. (Done it myself.) The remarks about her this episode seem to be more positive, probably because for once we saw her act like an adult. You said she is always unhappy, and you are spot on about that.
It just occurred to me that Carlton said "And who are you supposed to be?" because maybe he spotted Miss Farrell in or coming out of Don's car...?
I loved two subtle things: how Don looked directly into Baby Gene's eyes right before he kissed him; how he paused slightly and gazed at his name on the door when he went into the office the next morning.
I'm not sure whether it's been mentioned before, but I've got the impression Don/Dick has some sort of problem with Bobby - part from the moment in which he tells his son he'll never lie to him, he seems to avoid this kid more than Eugene Jr. Or is it just me?
Even with all the revelations in the Draper household, I keep thinking about Roger, as his cynicism makes so much more sense now. It seems like the only thing that ever motivated Roger to do anything good was a sense of duty, whereas most of the other male characters were at least in some part motivated by some kind of ambition. Cooper is a Rand acolyte, Draper wanted to escape his past, Pete wants to prove himself without his family (kind of), etc. Of course, they do things out of social duty as well. But they seem to have at least to some degree wanted the things that society wants for them. On the other hand, everything even semi-useful that Roger has done in his life -- get married, raise a daughter, fight in the war, work at SC -- he's done purely out of social duty it seems. Given how much of a theme social duties and constraints are in this series, it's striking to me that Roger of all the men is the one whose life would have been most different if these social duties did not exist.
And regarding the Drapers in this episode, I keep thinking of Bert Cooper's words to Don when Pete tried to rat him out: "One never knows how loyalty is born."
RM
Of course there were plastic masks in the early '60s. Remember "Breakfast at Tiffany's"? Holly and Fred Baby steal Halloween masks from a five and dime. 1961.
Jenae, I totally agree with you about Suzanne.
On "The Color Blue" I posted: While I don't believe that Suzanne is "Fatal Attraction" cuckoo bananas, I also do not get the feeling that she's just a pure, idealistic free spirit hippie. I thought that this post conveyed that I had a positive attitude about "hippie types" and was puzzled by the negative reaction to this reference.
I also do not believe that Suzanne will try to cause any trouble for Don. However, she might inadvertently cause trouble for him because of her openness.
I probably should not have used the term "hippie" since this time in history was pre-hippie. I was actually thinking of me and my circle of friends in high school during the early 60's. We were the "folkies" and not the "rockers". We were very idealistic, and fought for all just causes. We thought we were intellectuals, at any rate we were in the college prep Academic Program instead of the Commercial Program which prepared you for office work, or the General Program which was kind of like a GED.
Yes, it was very different then. You basically chose your life's path upon graduation from 8th grade.
Imamarilyn said:
In fact, under the circumstances I think he [Roger] was gentle with her [Annabelle]. He was stating facts and sometimes the truth hurts.
I dunno, I thought "You weren't" was meant to be unkind. He could have simply looked away awkwardly. That would have implied, "I can't say the same about you" just as effectively, but w/o the bite.
But Don's more of a carefully-placed meaningful silences guy than Roger. Roger is the master of killer one-liners.
Anon1
I would also like to talk about Joan.
From the comments that I read here and on other sites, it seems as though Joan might be the most beloved of all the Mad Men characters.
I just don't get it. Yes, I agree that she is indeed a very interesting character. However, I don't get why she has such a cheering squad.
In Season 1 she was a real witch to Peggy and the other girls in the office.
Her goal in life was to marry a good provider, so that she could quit work and be taken care of.
In Season 2, she found her man, an up and coming thoracic surgeon. She became engaged to this "good catch" and brought him to SC in order to show off her "prize". This "prize" then proceeds to have sex with her on the floor of her boss's office. Today, that would be called rape. At that time, it was called a "bad date". No matter what you call it, it was inconsiderate and disrespectful. I certainly would not have married a man who showed so little respect for me as Greg showed for Joan. However, she did marry him anyway. It did not matter to her that she was so disrespected, she would have everything she ever wanted in life.
Then, she found out that things were not as good as she thought they would be. This "good catch" was really not that good after all. She would just have to settle for less than she had hoped for. Greg is disappointed that he was unable to achieve his dreams, and Joan is disappointed that her dreams will not be fulfilled by marrying Greg. She throws a vase at him, and everyone cheers for her? I really just do not get it.
Joan made her bed, and she has chosen to lie in it. As I stated last season, no one forced her into this marriage. Joan went into this marriage with her eyes wide open for her own selfish reasons.
Greg is not the villain and Joan is not the hero. They are co-dependent.
PanAm, I think Joan is the most entertaining and flamboyant character on Mad Men. I love the descriptive language she uses (always be a supplicant, you're going to be gangbusters) and the way she can put someone in their place with very few words. (I assume you'll continue to handle this beautifully while I administer psychotherapy to the girls in the secretarial pool.) She actually thought she was helping Peggy by treating her that way. That's how deluded Joan was.
She seemed to become a real heroine on the various message boards after the rape. I think we saw a woman who had a lot going for her, very beautiful, lorded over the other women, who was very full of herself, who had a very sharp tongue, become totally humiliated. I think this vulnerability caused people to rally around her. Maybe it's not so much a love for Joan as it is a hatred for Greg. I'm not sure.
I agree, Imamarilyn. Joan is the most entertaining and flamboyant character on Mad Men. However, to me she represents the antithesis of the women's movement. That is why I do not understand her cheering squad. She was, indeed, humiliated by Greg. However, she went ahead and married him anyway. That is so sad. She was making a good living on her own. She didn't need a man to take care of her.
That's it! That is why it is so sad. She didn't need a man to take care of her, she was just a victim of the times. She was led to believe that she needed a man to take care of her. Now I do understand. Poor Joan.
Betty was not being ice cold or lacking sympathy, rather she was shocked by the extent of suffering Don went through in his younger days. It never entered her mind that Don drove Adam to suicide and when she heard it, she doesn't know how to react. In a way, she held back sympathy (which was brilliantly played) cos she's angry at Don (she blurted "should I feel sorry for you? during Don's confession).
Also, I think she is angrier with Don's infidelity than his lying about his identity. In their 10 years of marriage, knowing that he has been unfaithful all along took a toll on her senses. In the Golden Violin, she tried to find evidence of Don's adultery but failed. Thus the contents of the box were her only ammunition for confronting Don and cracking him from his shell and prying some info about his past flings.
At that moment, she's not sure if she loved him, hates him or felt sorry for him thus the pat on the shoulder. A couple in a loving & trusting relationship would have hugged and cried together, but they were dysfunctional and distant and I don't blame her for holding back.
No, you aren't the only one - I wince whenever he pays attention to the kids and Sally get 90% and Bobby gets 10%.
And to the poster upthread - I can't stand Betty, either. I did respect her actions in this episode - facing hard facts instead of pouting because someone hadn't fixed everything for her. But dear lord, she's unhappy, humorless, and has the inner resources of golf ball. I honestly hope Don ends up with Suzanne.
I think that the problem is partly the actress - JJ isn't skilled enough to pull off the less dramatic scenes. She looks like she doesn't know what to do with her face and she sounds like she's just THIS short of a whine whenever she speaks.
Also - Betty's not upper class, as marianne upthread pointed out - she's just umcra - upper middle class, recent arrival. So, no, she's unlikely to delegate all house- and child- and Halloween-related work to Carla, who is "help," not a complete household staff.
I just re-watched the episode for the second time. I was thinking to myself how I would react to what Don is confessing about his real self, particularly his brother. The real story is so stunning and unexpected that I think Betty is just shocked. A huge gulf has just opened up - hugs and kisses would have been a movie scenario, not real life. This guy has been lying to her for 10 years - that's going to take some time for both of them to adjust.
Sometimes people need to cry - Betty was there for him but didn't take over. She didn't scream and yell; she didn't storm out; she didn't pack up and leave. She sat quietly and listened. Sometimes being Stoic is not such a bad thing. We used to say that still waters run deep or some such thing. Some events and feelings are so deep that a little touch on the shoulder is truly significant.
Sharing a sandwich after such an eventful previous evening is significant.
Switch Suzanne and Betty. What if it was Suzanne just finding out that Don was actually somebody else, that he's guilty of a felony, that he drove his brother to suicide, that he's been living a lie their whole time together. And all this on top of knowing about the constant philandering. Would she just immediately and quitely hug and kiss him. I'm not so sure. Seems with her habit of wearing her feelings on her sleeve that there would be some major Sturn und Drang. Maybe somebody dead on the floor.
In talking about switching Betty and Suzanne - I should been clear that the proposed scenario would involve the same 10 years together before finding out all this stuff.
You got to check out the Mad Men Guide to a Manly Haircut. Instructions on what to tell your barber to get the look of each of the major male characters with the input of the woman who does the hairstyles on the show. Learn how to use Brylcream or not.
http://artofmanliness.com/2009/10/27/the-mad-men-guide-to-a-manly-haircut/
Didn't Roger "dump" Joan after his heart attack? Seems to me she cried, or maybe this was because they both knew their affair was doomed. Blogger Dtor said, "So [Roger] believes his 'one' is Jane (at least for now he believes this), but in reality it's no one." My sentiments EXACTLY! I think Roger is too rich and spoiled to have a truly meaningful relationship with a woman. Remember in season 1 someone said "What do women want?” and Roger replied, “Who cares!”
I liked the way Suzanne got all flustered talking to Don in the eclipse scene, a few episodes back. This was realistic. I think she's in cuckoo-bananas in love with Don enough to lose all dignity and do something crazy. Most women can relate to this – we all have one unhealthy, insane infatuation in our young lives.
Re: someone mentioned "dumbing the show down." Part of the joy of the show is figuring out things; symbolism, etc. I, too, feel like this season is slightly less artsy than seasons 1 and 2. But I agree with blogger sonnybobiche, I certainly plan to buy the season 3 DVD anyway!
When watching the show for the third time (yes), I noticed people walking on the sidewalk near the Draper home when Don first left Suzanne in the car. I feel like somebody saw her, but I feel even more strongly that nothing will come of this. I'm getting used to situations left hanging, but still have great faith and we'll have more wonderful surprises when situations do get tied up. I, too, think we're going to get fireworks in the final 2 episodes.
Blogger John J’s comment -- "Betty's not taking Don/Dick's confession with calm maturity, it's just her people are Nordic." –- loved it!!
Re: Jackies vs. Marilyns: Peggy generally rejects anything silly/sexist, like the Bye-Bye Birdie routine. And when Marilyn died, she took great delight in mentioning to Don that it was good how the Jackie/Marilyn ad never went through.
The Beatles were introduced to most of us, including 9-year-old me, in Feb. 1964, on the Ed Sullivan show. I hope this earth-shaking event shows up during Season 4.
When watching the show for the third time (yes)
Doesn't everyone? [g]
PanAm53 said...
To an anonymous poster re: Norwich
They were headed to CT...Mystic Seaport, CT was their destination.
No, they weren’t. Don first suggests Mystic, but Suzanne vetoes that and suggests Norwich (whichever one).
I also watched this episode three times, but did not catch the people walking on the sidewalk. I just went back and looked at that scene again and I did see the people fayerdale was referring to. Suzanne probably noticed those people before she ducked down and giggled until they passed by.
I feel very strongly that the switching of identities is just the tip of the iceberg and that their are deeper, darker secrets in Dick Whitman's past. However, anything I think of seems so much like a soap opera.
I do not have a good feeling about Uncle Mack: There was something about the way that Don/Dick said "he was nice to me" that gave me the creeps. I think he may have sexually abused young Dick. Young children sometimes misinterpret the sexual attention of an adult.
I also think that young Dick was probably right when he said that Adam was not his brother. I believe that Abigail was raped by Uncle Mack. I also believe that young Dick witnessed this rape. That said, I don't think that was the reason young Dick said that Adam was not his brother. Uncle Mack was very careful to correct him, saying they have the same father.
And yes, it does sound like a soap opera. But, then again, doesn't the switching of the dog tags? It reminds me of a Bette Davis movie that I watched recently. I told my husband that I enjoyed the movie, but the plot was kind of hokey. Bette Davis plays identical twins. Evil Twin marries the one true love of Good Twin's life. Twins are in boating accident. Good Twin tries to save Evil Twin. Good Twin accidentally pulls off Evil Twin's wedding ring. Evil Twin dies. Good Twin wakes up following a concussion. Everyone thinks Good Twin is Evil Twin. Good Twin lets them all believe she is Evil Twin because Evil Twin is married to Good Twin's "only one". The only difference between this story and Dick/Don's story is that Dick deliberately switched the dog tags. Otherwise, very similar.
The Beatles? Sally may be too young for The Beatles. If mentioned at all, I think it will be a reference such as Sally made to wanting a pencil case.
Orion7: Thanks for pointing that out. Even though I watch each episode three times, I still miss alot. Our TV's audio is not good, and I find closed captioning distracting. In addition, our picture quality on AMC is poor.
We had a great LCD flat screen TV where we were staying on Sept. 20th, but the closed captioning was on and I wound up seeing less than I normally do on my sad TV at home. With closed captioning, I read instead of watch.
YAAC, I was thinking back throughout these three seasons about Don's relationship with Bobby, and I don't think he has a problem with him. Maybe men in the Mad Men era were more comfortable being openly affectionate with their daughters and an infant than with their sons. I recall Duck Philips saying goodbye to his children, both of whom were older than the Draper children, and he kissed his daughter on the cheek and shook hands with his son. When Betty was in labor, the other man in the waiting room asked Don if he threw the ball around with his son and Don said "not enough." In the very sweet scene where Bobby tells Don "we need to get you another daddy," Don hugged him, but he seems more reserved toward Bobby.
I couldn't remember the name of the Bette Davis movie to which I was referring in an earlier post: It is "A Stolen Life" (1946).
I was reminded of this movie when Don told Betty that the military thought he was someone else, and he let them believe it. That is what Bette Davis did in the movie.
Was Don lying to Betty? I read that it was military protocol to remove the dog tags of casualties of war. FWIW, Don looked surprised when he awakened from his concussion and was addressed as Draper. When Bette Davis awakened from her concussion after the boating accident that killed her sister she too was surprised to be called by her sister's name. It was assumed by the medical personnel that she was her sister because she was accidentally in possession of her sister's wedding ring. Like Don/Dick, she let them believe that she was someone else.
Was Matthew Weiner inspired by an old Bette Davis movie? I think he was, even if Dick did purposefully switch the dog tags.
Yes, men in the Mad Men era were not openly affectionate with their sons. Also, once they were out of Kindergarten, little boys didn't even want their mothers to kiss them. They thought it was babyish.
In my previous post, I was referring to American born Caucasians. Immigrants were criticized for the manner in which they brought up their children...too much affection and not enough discipline!
@ berkowit28:
Sorry, misplaced modifier on my post "She supposedly called Sally's parents..." I should have said "She called Sally's parents in for a conference because she SUPPOSEDLY was concerned about her, then starts throwing herself at the little girl's father?" I was commenting on the fact that her character doesn't make sense, not that she had an ulterior motive in asking Sally's parents in.
Yes, I believe the writers wanted to portray her as a sensitive teacher in the parent conference. But then they turn her into a seductress who judges those she seduces; and by the way is also pathetically clingy. As Jann said, "The minute she said that she didn't care about his family (in whatever way she meant that) it clinched my opinion of her possible neediness in the way of, she'd be clingy no matter what." Ick, ick, and ick.
@ Joysong:
I think I knew what you meant. I do not find it in any way impossible or inconsistent, in real life or in a fictional drama, that a character could simultaneously be concerned about one of her pupils and then also attracted to the pupil's father when he turned up. She didn't even expect both parents to turn up, as you'll recall: she was surprised that the father was there as well as the mother. Nothing "inappropriate" happened between them that day, anyway: they talked a bit about Sally and her grandfather.
Attraction works that way - it doesn't have to be consistent. Yes, following through to the very end on the mutual attraction is going to hurt Sally if it breaks up the family, but that's a very long way down the line at that point.
It was Don who "made the moves", not Suzanne. The one "outlier" is that Suzanne started it off, so to speak, by presuming he was coming on to her at the eclipse, evidently from previous experience with other fathers. That's the one "edgy" bit people have commented on a lot. That brought the subject up. Again, that's hardly a character inconsistency that she should have cared about Sally in her class and now thinks (whether right or wrong) that Sally's father may be interested in her.
Later, when Don did indeed make overtures and she accepted them, sure, that put her own desires above Sally's interests. Life can be like that.
It's the complexity of life that this show is so good at. It's not all black or white. Suzanne is a complex character, too. Many people are.
PamAm53 said:
The Beatles? Sally may be too young for The Beatles. If mentioned at all, I think it will be a reference such as Sally made to wanting a pencil case.
One of my friends was taken (by her babysitter, with parental permission) to see them at Shea Stadium -- during second grade! She LOVED the show, the experience and the moptops.
Anon1
I'm thinking Suzanne is pregnant. She is acting very clingy and emotional. She was acting worried about something at the beginning of the episode when she was in bed with Don, but said "it will pass. In fact I know it will." Like maybe she is late or already knows she is pregnant and is plananing on an abortion (or has a history of miscarriages). I'm going pretty far afield her, but does anyone else get that feeling?
@berkowi28:
Suzanne was beyond attracted to her pupil's father, and beyond "thinking" or "presuming" that the father was interested in her. She clearly suggested he was like all those other philadering fathers (who she was indirectly condemning).
And she did makes moves on him. She called the Draper house right after the parent conference, just to talk to Don.
She even admitted as much when Don confronted her with "you've been flirting with me for months." Her "So what?"
Life may be like that, but I don't buy her "sensitivity" and "love" for her pupils when seduces their fathers.
I'm wondering too if Suzanne is pregnant.
Something is bugging me, and I hope this won't be considered "off topic." I'm away from home for 12 more days, so I can't re-watch old episodes to resolve this.
I thought that the woman in California whom Don/Dick visited -- the "real" Mrs. Don Draper -- was married to the "real" Don Draper whose identity Dick stole.
It never was clear to me, in that episode when he visits her [and goes into the ocean] HOW he contacted her -- did he go confess he's stolen her husband's identity?
Anyway, I assumed he'd gotten a "divorce" from her to allow her to live her own life. If the truth were known, she could live it as "Don Draper's widow," but since Dick has taken Don's identity, she can't. Thus the only way to free her up is for them to "divorce." [In other words, I don't think she was ever married to whichever character Jon Hamm was playing. She was married to "the dead guy."
I can't figure out why "Dick" would keep both the divorce decree and the deed to the house among his papers. They relate to the "real" Don Draper, not to him.
I posted in the comments related to a prior episode that folks' concerns about Don committing bigamy, and/or Don & Betty not really being married were without substance, since it was someone else ["real" Don] who was previously married and got divorced.
Anyway, does anyone follow/agree with me on this, or am I, like Don in that episode, in La-La land?
Betty has many reasons to be unhappy, and she's surviving the best she can. I'm grateful for the other posters who understand her since it's so easy to criticize her character.
I imagine Suzanne has had inappropriate relationships with unavailable men before (her comments during the eclipse and telling Don she knows for a fact her feelings will pass are strong indicators). As many bloggers have noted, it's possible she's gotten involved with other fathers, and Carlton in particular. Either way, I think she's gotten in deeper with Don than either of them had planned.
Because Don has had several mistresses, I don't think he really wants to leave Betty. Remember last season before they separated? He was sleeping on the couch and she asked him if he hated her. He told her he would never want to lose her or their kids. Don likes what he feels while having an affair, and those feelings are only temporary. If Don ended up with Suzanne, the relationship would fail. But because this affair didn't run its own course (Betty's ambush brought it to a premature halt) I'm afraid Don will remain attached to Suzanne.
Suzanne also gets something she construes as positive from these affairs. But legitimizing her relationship with Don would end all of that. I think Suzanne would eventually regret getting into this relationship if Don actually left Betty for her. The "benefits" she's reaping from Don would disappear if he were available.
This week's comments have been particularly thought-provoking. Thank you all for that!
Mauimom:
I have absolutely no legal knowledge, but I have always believed that your legal identity is your legal name and any legal documents that are in that name. Dick Whitman assumed the identity of Don Draper. Don Draper was legally married, and in order to marry another woman, he had to divorce the woman to whom he was already married. Don Draper then legally married Betty. Dick Whitman is legally dead and buried.
I don't remember the whole scenario, but I believe that Don's wife discovered him at the car dealership where he worked in CA. I really need to go back and review S1 and S2 and try to put all the pieces of the puzzle together...at least all the pieces we have been given thus far. I'm sure that their will be many more pieces of the puzzle to come.
A note to correct an error I made:
I reviewed the episode in S1 featuring the flashback to Korea. There is no doubt about it...Dick definitely switched dog tags, he did not just remove Don's.
I don't know why he lied to Betty about that one detail when he was so honest about everything else.
berkowit28, great post. You said it better than I could have.
I don't think Suzanne is pregnant. She is not naive and this is not her first relationship with a married man. She would be extremely careful. She has also expressed concern about her job. I tend to think her comment about the "philandering" was a way of fishing to get Don's reaction, and not a condemnation.
PanAm53: Don lied about the dog tags because that's the one part that really reflects most poorly on him. Basically, switching the dog tags made him (in a way) a draft-dodger. At least, we can say he avoided combat. Everything else in his story is kind of commendable, actually, as it can be construed as a guy doing what he has to do to make his way in the world. Well, everything except 1) the adulteries, but they weren't the topic of discussion, and 2) Adam's suicide, which can be viewed as something that Don couldn't possibly have anticipated.
RM
Julia, While I do not think that there would be any likelihood that Don would get busted due to his blood type, I do think that it would be possible for Don to get busted if he were to need security clearance for his job.
Joysong said...
And she did makes moves on him. She called the Draper house right after the parent conference, just to talk to Don.
No, she didn't. She called the Drapers household to apologize for getting a bit emotional during the meeting (with both Betty AND Don - she put her hand on Betty's knee when she heard that Betty's father had died). Don just happened to answer the phone; I believe if Betty had answered she would have offered her the same apology.
Mark Madel, I agree with you about Suzanne calling the Draper residence.
Don is really good at adapting to any situation. Even at his worst fear moment - Betty's discovery of his real identity - he managed to tell his story in a glossy version, one which, apparently, got her to go from being really angry with him to feeling sorry for him.
I think writers take a big risk when they remove the central problem in a drama (similar to letting two character sleep together instead of building the show around their sexual tension).
There was something wholesome, even utopian, at risk of seeming Pollyanna-ish in the choice that Weiner et. at. made to have Don finally disclose his secrets to Betty. I’m all in favor of such stories—the attempt to show characters behaving in a healthy, humanizing way—-but I felt the risk they were taking. Could they pull it off? Drama is based on problems, conflict. Can they show Don giving up his central conflict without the air seeping out of the show itself? Can dialogue in such a situation be dramatically compelling? As Judd Apitow recently said, what you want in your real life is nice, healthy people, but that’s not dramatic, so that’s not what he shows in his movies (or not 'til the last frame: Now they’ve grownup! Roll credits. We like to see people become healthy, but we don’t enjoy watching healthy people being healthy. We like watching screwed up people struggle to change.)
So, I’m impressed that the creators took this route. On a second viewing, I had less trepidation that maybe they hadn’t pulled it off. I think it works. I think this choice shows how much heart this show has. The creators care about the destiny of these characters. Maybe they even care about what sort of fable they are creating for us, the audience.
The family lawyer gave Betty rather oppressive feedback. (My husband chuckled each time--both viewings--he saw her motion to him to close the door; what an upper-class girl she is!) But she followed his advice in her own way. If I’m supposed to stay with him, he’s damn well gonna come clean with me.
For the first time Betty was unequivocally more powerful than Don. Don has always dealt with conflict by trying to dominate Betty. (If not always then often; as the creators have pointed out on the commentaries, when she’s being reasonable, he tells he how unreasonable she’s being; he doesn’t fight fair with her. As Alan says, he’s treated her like a child.) Suddenly she was dominant; he was as striped of power and authority as we’ve never seen him. The beginning of sharing his true self with her.
I was so glad to see him finally tell someone about the death of Adam. Again I was asking: Are they pulling this off? Surely his culpability in Adam’s suicide must be Don’s most painful secret. (As Alan says, the worst thing he has done.) I’m not sure any scene could contain all that anguish, but the scene does work.
I should comment on J. Hamm and January Jones’s acting: during Don’s confession scene, during the breakfast scene. If the story does work, it is their acting that is selling it. I’m no great critic of acting but they clearly played the complex emotions on the page. Don’s face was transformed (some here would say to the face of Dick) from the moment he knew that Betty knew.
So they make it through as a couple, they arrive some place new. I loved that moment when he touches her neck after she offers him breakfast. Definitely tender. A little erotic even (slightly). I think she is beginning to love him in a way she never did, a way that includes tenderness for what he’s been through and what they have been through. And though it must be strange for Don to switch from the threshold of love for Suzanne to a new love for Betty, I think his deep surprise (shock really), relief, and gratitude are the beginning of what could be a deep love for her if they can keep it together. Are Betty and Don totally right for each other? Right enough for each other? At least now they will have a chance to find out.
(more thoughts:)
Thanks Alan for pointing out the “out” that Don gives Betty re: trick or treating together, and that she doesn’t take it.
A great moment when Don wakes and realizes his life is transformed. I’ve heard my father and others facing fatal disease say there’s a moment when they wake and don’t remember, then they realize. And I think I’ve had transformations in my own life that you forget when you sleep, they suddenly you realize: everything has changed. That’s a great nuance the writers captured.
I think Betty’s smoldering discontent was mirroring and maybe augmenting my own tendency, active of late, to be very distressed when my relationship doesn’t live up to my aspirations. I / we had already decided to take the bull by the horns and work proactively to make things better. It’s interesting to see the characters on the scene enacting the same (a similar) process, engaging with each other more deeply and discovering that they care for each other.
Perhaps only the Sopranos has similarly shown a couple struggling with the challenges of marriage (maybe “6 Feet under”, too?); this version feels more relatable to me. (I did relate to Carmella's renewed love for Tony—the scene where they make love—after he was shot, but couldn't relate at all to her cynical uses of the marriage to shore up her personal finances. Chase seemed to take the show in dispiriting directions the final years. Not a nurturing fable.)
And Don’s farewell with Suzanne showed how complex it all is: he finds her kindness compelling, they (also) care about each other, but they have to part, so that he can deal with the business he’s been running away from since the series began (rather than keep on doing shoddy, or Betty might say tawdry, things that, no matter what feelings he had for Suzanne, he would be ashamed of, adding to his already vast reservoir of shame), so that Don can make a genuine attempt to live his life with integrity and coherence rather than splintering off into fragments.
What is that final look on Don’s face? “Who are you supposed to be?” is a bit like Rachel’s question: “What kind of man are you?” but now Don begins to have an answer he can feel proud of, though for the moment he looks stunned, or maybe dazzled, by the transformation. It’s a look of someone trying to take in almost more than they can encompass.
Suzanne would have spoken to Betty on the phone, sure, but when she got Don, her flirtatious instincts, a flirtatious agenda behind the call I would say, came to the fore. Remember the drink in her hand, the dangling bra strap, the "I...don't know why I called" flirtatiousness?
One can like Suzanne (I'm not sure I like her that much, but I respect her good qualities, her uniqueness) without overlooking how she operates, the good and the maybe not so. The unusually honest and the run-of-the-mill devious.
marianne, I didn't see Don telling his story in a glossy way. Betty did say that he was really good at telling a story and he could have embellished it or changed it or just told her part of the truth. I was surprised he was as honest with her as he was. I didn't think he was manipulating her into feeling sorry for him. Betty is cold, but she is a human being and as such of course she felt sorry for him. Especially the part about Adam.
Suzanne perhaps reminds me of a great poem I read once--I'll look for the title and author--about a woman who was drawn over and over to married men.
Not that Suzanne for sure has that pattern, just that sometimes beautiful (she's not my type but obviously beautiful to others) and talented, smart, basically good women can have self-defeating patterns.
(The author of the poem used a great image of the man who seems to be drawning, but under the surface he's actually being held up by his wife, his mother and mother-in-law, all the women in his life whom he doesn't honor. The narrator discovers her pity for him was misplaced. It seemed an auto-biographical poem; very candid and self aware.)
S.F. deserves better than to be the mistress waiting for hours hiding in the car. I hope she gets better down the line.
sorry for typos;
I meant to say in the poem there is an image of a man drowning, but under the surface of the water, the narrator realizes he's actaully being held up by his wife (etc).
The man rests on the shoulders of the very woman he is betraying, and it is the woman who has to live under water, has to risk drowning.
It's a poem about a woman realizing that the married men she is sleeping with aren't poor misunderstood souls so much as men who take sustenance from their wives, then betray them.
Which is not to say i can't empathize with why a man might feel misunderstood or undermined, might cheat.
compexity complexity
(I may be the only person besides D. Denby who felt sorry for Saarsgard's chaaracter in ...hmmm, never mind, that might be a movie spoiler...?)
Imamarilyn:
I thought he glossed how he came to have his Don Draper identity (like other posters pointed out), and saying Uncle Mack was nice was a bit of gloss - he didn't really describe how abusive and bleak his childhood really was, that might have been too intense for well brought up "nice girl" Betty to understand. I didn't mean to suggest that he consciously manipulated Betty. It's that he's a bit of a chamelean - he manages to adapt enough to his environment so that it starts to work for him. Thus, she began to feel sorry for him pretty quickly, even though it would have been understandable if she'd been angry with him for a lot longer.
imamarilyn wrote:
"I tend to think (Suzanne's) comment about the "philandering" was a way of fishing to get Don's reaction, and not a condemnation."
Yeah, and what if Sally had gone home and said; Miss farrell was talking to daddy about "philandering", what's that mommy?
She was taking a risk. I believe she loves children, is a dedicated, creative educator, but that wasn't a shining moment for her as a teacher.
Usually, my friend and I download this show on Monday afternoons to watch during our TA office hours mainly because we find its aesthetic hilarious. Unfortunately students showed up this week (mid-terms coming up) so late to the party.
Well. I suppose if you have an emotional investment in these loathsome characters there might be some sort of payoff here for the clichéd, soap-operatic stolen-identity device but I didn't get any. Nothing appears to have changed. Poor Betty can only muster an (originally, as filmed) disembodied hand on shoulder as sympathy. She found out. She confronted him. Empathy still seems beyond her. And Don, having debauched himself with establishment "sophisticates", wealthy bohemians, and that odd preview of the flower children is back again to reluctant fidelity. All his wrongheaded attempts to find happiness have only tightened the grip over him of both the emptiness and absurdity of capitalism's version of the American Dream and his abominable career as a rhetorician for Capital.
Beyond having fun with the pretentious aesthetic, I remain curious about and totally unsure as to the meaning Weiner is giving to the impending social cataclysm. We are looking in at the precipice of that cataclysm from the perspective of characters who have achieved and are living capitalism's then version of the American Dream (Capital won't again make the mistake of offering an achievable endgame) and are finding it wanting yet still embracing its imperatives, its definitions of success and prescriptions for happiness, its life-evaluative tropes. We've watched their attempts to try to find the meaning of and solution to their alienation through self-discovery/fulfillment and interpersonal relationships rather than in a critique of the determining social context and their roles within it. (It is rather like someone with a systemic infection suffering an uncomfortable fever ripping of her clothes, running out in to the winter cold, and rolling about in the snow obtaining some temporary relief but at the expense of weakening the body further and allowing the infection to progress to the point that it becomes possibly incurable and maybe even fatal. Indeed it might be said that the liberation movement of the '60s as a whole followed such a path, the "revolution" through lifestyle addressed the symptoms not the disease and in doing so provided Capital a model for accessing, exploiting, and controlling the entirety of human existence. That would be pretty much the argument of Frank's The conquest of cool.) But I have no clue where Weiner is going with this. I continue to hope he will not take the classic liberal escape route (if he can find his way through the legions of critics who reside on that route to Political Quietism, spotting flawed characters with good sides and bad sides through glasses tinted shades of grey that reveal to them untheorized, instinctively knowable, apolitical, ahistorical, socio-economic-context-free truths of the nature of human existence).
Anonymous @ 4:26pm
Your ballad of dissatisfaction regarding Mad Men precisely describes what makes it such a good show, rather than some piece of didactic dreck. Dick Whitman stealing Don Draper’s identity and then making his way in the world isn’t soap opera. Don Draper having been Bert Cooper’s lovechild that he’s never known about would have been soap opera. As it is, what we have is an un-empathetic wife wondering who her husband really is. Apparently, real-life women think thoughts like this far more often than I thought they did – for example, after Elliott Spitzer got caught, I remember a couple articles in the New York Times written by women looking across the pillows at their husbands of 20 years and wondering how well they really knew that man. (I was really surprised by those editorials.) As for the lack of empathy, I can see by comments on this board that women are as bad at understanding men’s feelings as we are at understanding theirs. All this is to point out that the show is relevant in a far more trenchant way than it ever would have been had it gone for the low-hanging fruit of criticizing capitalism’s flaws and America’s social inequalities. What better way to get past tired litanies of socio-economic complaints than to make everyone a member of the same socio-economic milieu, thus allowing the story to get to the real personal, interpersonal, and existential questions we all face? If Matt Weiner follows your suggestion from here on out and allows a criticism of capitalism to substitute for the apolitical and ahistorical truths the show is so correctly aiming for, I for one will be sorely disappointed. As it is, with Don’s confession Weiner has just thrown out his writers’ biggest crutch of a plot device. So the show is free to get even more (inter-)personal, and get even further away from some TV version of Anti-Capitalist Theater.
RM
Anon above: I don't mean to ignore your sweeping critique, but I gotta say: Every Marxist (or Anarchist, Wendal Barry follower, etc.) person I know has a life that is a *total soap opera*. I don't think capitalism is to blame for the fact that life is painfully complicated, though, yeah, excessive focus on personal dilemmas is politically dubious.
It suits me of late to be writing here, because it answers certain needs I have to engage with the opinions of others and share my perspective, and also provides a way to *consciously* take a break from the demands of my real life.
That said:
Regulars here probably know I’ve been on the edge of my seat ever since Roger and Jane became a couple. The creators are skating awfully close to some of the most over-used clichés with this story line. I’m married to someone older than myself (bare with me, if possible, those who know this) and over the last 15 years have gradually become very (ok, extremely) sensitized to those clichés, sometimes enacted in unbelievably nasty ways. (Has anyone seen the ending of “Bringing Down the House"? The “skank” who always dates older men tugging at her come-soaked panties under her too short little dress as she teeters on her skanky high heels? Even “Barbarians at the Gate” ended on more or less the same note. Once you start to notice, you see it everywhere.)
So: I feel about Jane and Roger much the way many Jewish viewers seem to feel about the Coen bothers' “A Serious Man,” hypervigilent and paranoid, like “What kind of mud are you gonna drag my identify thru this time?" I feel forced to identify with a girl I have nothing in common with and a man I wouldn’t trust for 2 seconds (though he’d probably be fun to talk to, tricky but fun)—let alone marry.
(Peggy and Duck would be much more the kind of older-younger combo I’d enjoy watching. He’s already divorced, no shoddy, clichéd dumping-the-wife behavior, and she’s a thoughtful and seasoned young woman, not callow and conspicuously pretty. That kind of idiosyncratic story I’d like to see. That I could identify with.)
But circumstances kinda force me to care what the writers do with R & J, apparently enough that I had this really odd dream about them:
It was kind of like “Last Year in Marianbod” (but in color) meets Jane Eyre, with Dickensian elements. A huge mansion that is Roger’s ancestral home, Jane the new, scandalous wife. Lots of strum and drang, huge cavernous rooms and deep Gothic shadows. Jane is both a former secretary and some sort of former servant. (Like Jane Eyre was Rochester’s employee, but in the dream Jane’s a pretty lowly servant, one of a bunch of underlings gathered to sing carols. Weird.) The first Mrs. Roger (not really Mona in the dream) is so determined to keep Roger from bedding Jane she forces Jane to sleep with her and tries to seduce her herself (!!)
In the end, Jane’s body is found half concealed in a corner, lifeless, dead.
Then a flashback to a more gothic Sterling Cooper at night, Jane was still a secretary, and was up late with two others being wild. The other two, playful but also jealous and somewhat malicious, convince her she has such a great body, she ought to make Xeroxes of her body parts with the new copier. They coax her to climb up and Xerox her whole torso (those great breast!)—and I as the viewer infer Jane must have died of cancer from the radiation.
So I guess I’m identifying with Jane (who really would interest me hardly at all were it not the May –Dec angle and my investment in / sensitivity to that subject), and am not only wondering, “What kind of mud are you gonna drag me thru?” but imagining myself as dead as road kill by the end of it.
Was the whole Roger-Jane story just a way to create a financial crisis and introduce the British Invasion of Sterling Cooper? Are they gonna do anything unique with these characters?
I’m watchin’ you Weiner et. al.
I see now, there were two Anons, both dealing with the issue of capitalism and soap opera or not. Sorry I conflated you two, since actually Anon 2 was more or less refuting Anon 1, correct? (Think I agree with anon 2.)
having now read *carefully*--Yes,
I agree with Anonynmous 2 (the person I'm calling anonymous 2), that Mad Men does well to focus on, dare I say it, universal interpersonal and existential delimmas. Sorry I conflated you with the person you were reacting to.
(Having many Anons is a problem, as someone said earlier)
dilemmas :)
jenae said...Having many Anons is a problem, as someone said earlier.
I mentioned this on last weeks thread. We have too many posters on this site to allow posters to post as "Anonymous". You do not have to register and post on a Google account. Just pick a unique name so we can distinguish one "Anonymous" from all the others. Pick a name that your friends, family and co-workers won't guess is you. You will still be anonymous.
Re: Roger and Joan and Jane. I don't think (IMHO) that Roger meant jane. Think about the meeting in the office (and all conversations between Joan and Jane) and know that Joan would be loathe to "go back " to roger after Jane has had him. She can trust Rogers, Joan Knows, and it's safe to say that Roger is "devoted" to Jane but will not ever marry her...except maybe in the very last episode as they take off for Woodstock...then the Bahamas forever.
PanAm53:
I liked hearing about your days with the idealistic, intellectual folkies. :)
officeboy: "Roger is devoted to Jane but will never marry her" ?????? Roger *is* married to Jane. (Did you mean Joan???)
(ha! the word verification for this post is "patio". that horrible song!)
Re: Roger and Joan, I think his actions were pretty straightforward, not cues to ulterior motives or a future liaison. I sometimes speak of Roger as though he has no good side, but he does and he showed it to both Joan and Annabelle.
Joan is his former lover, his ex-mistress. He’s very fond of her. (She’s an extremely sexy and impressive woman.) He wants to help her. When he said, “She’s important to me; I want to help her,” he was being sophisticated as usual, but also noble, which is not so usual for him.
And with Annabelle, he was a bit pissed about the past but mostly quite kind. He let her know that she broke his heart (that was a compliment he could have withheld, he was willing to be vulnerable and give her that flattering information), he admitted he’s still turned on by her (being with a 20, or is it now 21? year old bride hasn’t dulled him to the charms of a woman his own age, and a very good looking one at that)—he gave her lots of positive response (she was feeling insecure “Do I look like a widow?”), but he drew a line: he won’t be messing around while he’s “newlywed” and “honey-mooning.” Both story lines were grace notes for Roger.
(Much better than when he told Betty, what was it, “You're hot in your pants for me”? That was bad. Embarrassing. Not even suave.)
Annabelle, who spent her whole life with the wrong man she now says, introduced the idea of “the one” but I don’t think the idea is applicable. I don’t get the sense the writers are suggesting that either Joan or Annabelle were “the one.” We fall in love at different times with different people for different reasons, and the person we’re with at 20 might be perfect for us then but disastrous to still be with 10 years later.
That moment when you’re ready and you find someone whose personality hooks into yours deeply enough that you can go on together--building a mini-verse of shared experiences--comes whenever it does. (I know one couple who married in college and were highschool sweethearts before that, and still seem head-over-heels for each other ~20 years later; go figure. They were ready early;) I don’t think the show is promoting a “the one” theory of love relationships.
I get no hint from this episode what will happen next with Roger and Jane, but I enjoy seeing him be a good guy to his two former lovers.
jenae, yes, we saw another facet of Roger in this episode. That's one of the things I love about Mad Men, how we get to see the various aspects of each character's personality. No one dimensional heros or villains in this series.
I have yet another analogy and possible influence for the character of Suzanne. There was discussion on another talk forum re: why doesn't Suzanne live and work in the city, where she would be more likely to meet eligible men? A poster stated that perhaps Suzanne does frequent bars in the city and might meet her demise there like the character in Looking for Mr. Goodbar.
Looking for Mr. Goodbar, a 1975 novel by Judith Rossner, is based on the events surrounding the brutal 1973 murder of Roseanne Quinn, a 28-year-old New York City schoolteacher.
Roseanne was afflicted with a birth defect that she did not want to pass on to future generations. Suzanne's brother was afflicted with a birth defect that she also did not want to pass on. Both women sought out the company of unavailable men and helped satisfy their maternal instincts by becoming schoolteachers.
News of “the career girl” slayings was being broadcast the night that Don picked up the jogging Suzanne. Perhaps this was foreshadowing the future demise of Suzanne. Perhaps she is picked up by the wrong guy next time, and winds up murdered like Roseanne.
Suzanne was concerned about losing her job, so I doubt she will move away. And she cannot quietly disappear if she is living in the same small town as the Drapers and teaching at the same school that the Draper children attend.
It would be a way to get Suzanne out of the picture once and for all.
PanAm53:
interesting Mr Goodbar connection! sounds like that may be deliberate on the part of the creators
Jenae: I understand what you are saying. I always feel that we are being manipulated by the creators to think a certain way, only to be surprised. For example: Peggy's baby, Suzanne's mental status.
jenae here:
i wasn't thinking manipulation but that's true too. they never allude to that intension in the commentaries, but there are misleads. i still find it very odd miss farrell has the same name as a girl who will be balancine's prima ballerina in, '65 i think. is that as one Anonymous poster suggested a cue that she is a muse to Don? I found the name thing distracting for the first fiew weeks. And the Peggy's baby thing--raised her her sister or not?--*was* confusing.
I also think that it is odd that Mad Men's Suzanne Farrell has the same name as a ballerina who lived at the same time.
Here's an article showing that - at least to begin with - Conrad Hilton's character was a result of product placement. (Well, it was pitched by Hilton Hotels, and Weiner became intrigued.)
http://bit.ly/Jx2kf
I seem to recall that Roger and Mona's daughter is not marrying on the very day Kennedy was shot (which was a FRIDAY) but the day after, which was a SATURDAY....am I in error? I thought the invitations said the 23rd of November (Kennedy was murdered the day before).
If she married on the day, she might have gotten through the ceremony and even a chunk of the reception (if it was a day wedding) before the bullets flew. An evening wedding would have been ruined, of course...but a wedding the day after? Even worse. The entire nation had gotten the news by then, and the official mourning had begun.
Of course, there was a pall on the nation that lasted through Christmas, palpably, after the assassination...and beyond. That event colored everything for some time. There was no way you could schedule ANYTHING on/around the date of the assassination for years to come.
jenae said...
Re: Roger and Joan, I think his actions were pretty straightforward, not cues to ulterior motives or a future liaison. I sometimes speak of Roger as though he has no good side, but he does and he showed it to both Joan and Annabelle.
Re: Roger and Joan, I agree, jenae. I too can be very hard on Roger, but his motivation seemed pure in regard to his helping Joan. He does care about her and sees her as special.
But I'm still not convinced that he was being kind to Annabelle. I think he enjoyed crushing her illusions about their former relationship.
Anonymous @ 4:26 PM, October 30, 2009 said: Beyond having fun with the pretentious aesthetic, I remain curious about and totally unsure as to the meaning Weiner is giving to the impending social cataclysm. We are looking in at the precipice of that cataclysm from the perspective of characters who have achieved and are living capitalism's then version of the American Dream (Capital won't again make the mistake of offering an achievable endgame) and are finding it wanting yet still embracing its imperatives, its definitions of success and prescriptions for happiness, its life-evaluative tropes. We've watched their attempts to try to find the meaning of and solution to their alienation through self-discovery/fulfillment and interpersonal relationships rather than in a critique of the determining social context and their roles within it.
I would feel like I'm constantly being beaten with a hammer if Weiner turned this show into a critique of/statement about the determining social context and their roles within it. Weiner allows the characters to speak for themselves, and the viewers can make their own decisions about the characters' actions and motivations. Turning it into his personal soapbox would feel like a Very Special Episode of Mad Men, every single week.
Less than 7 hours to go... (on HD, anyway, for those not on east coast).
I also want to see what happens with comment no. 387 from Maura. Very peculiar - every second time I refresh it disappears, every other time it comes back. Even if I backtrack to the main Mad Men post and click Hobo and Gypsy episode again. I can't tell if it's been removed - which would be a shame, it's an excellent post - but lurking in my cache, or it's just some sort of funny business with the website and/or Firefox. This comment should make it clear...
(Glad to see Maura's post stayed up. Well, now *both* hers *and* mine disappear every second refresh, then reappear every other refresh. Must be some sort of funny business with my Firefox cache, I'm guessing. Anyone else see this, or if you post?)
Apologies for the meta-comment, but it's very odd.
Maura, you thought Roger got pleasure out of hurting Annabelle; maybe there was more of that than I saw. Not sure.
--She clearly dumped him. He was perturbed to see her again. Kind of outrageous, really, she expects him to dump his new wife and give himself to her. Only a "you were the one" narrative could justify trying to insert yourself into someone's less-than-one-year new marriage. Plus she wrote Jane off as inconsequential.--
I definitley agree he was being a good guy, old school style, with Joan.
You pulled out a good selection of the anti-capitalist critique from Anon. My reaction is still that having a sophicated critical framework doesn't protect one from the existential torments the show deals with--how to create a self and find fulfilling connections to other selves. Political awareness is part but only part of the answer. These characters in that moment did what they did, and we sort of live in the world powerful men like Don created. (And Cooper, Roger, Putnam--or whatever the British guy who used to be on the Nanny and Days of Our Lives's name is-- and the captains of industry and sometimes politicians they work for.) Weiner has said that's a big part of his inspiration for the show. The private lives of the men who shaped and sometimes--now in their 80's and 90's--still run our world today.
to berkowitz28, on my screen your comment and Maura's are there :)
berkowit28, sorry for typo of your name (and sorry to all for other typos)
"Anonymous 2" here. Part of the reason to my reaction to the analysis of Anonymous 1 is that there really is no analysis or critique there. All there is is a claim that capitalism is largely responsible for the characters' malaise. Or maybe that reforming capitalism is a necessary but not sufficient action that needs to be done before the Mad Men characters can be happy. In either case, I don't think there's a good argument for that. At least no such argument was presented.
Regarding Roger: I don't think there is any way Roger could have said "yes" to Annabelle and not hated himself in the morning. And I also think him responding "you weren't" to her "you were the one" had to be done. It's one of those things that has to be said: She's coming back after 20+ years, still thinking of him, and even after he turns her down the night before the subject of them getting together resurfaces. I can believe it if Roger took some pleasure in turning her down, but I also think the only decent thing to do was be direct about it.
DTor wrote:
...(if Joan had recognized the new rules sooner) maybe she would have been the one running the tv dept. at Sterling-Cooper (as we all know she should be, in place of the bumbling Harry Crane). Instead, she married a good-looking doctor… which-- according to the old rules-- was supposed to guarantee her a life of complete happiness and fulfillment. She’s learning otherwise, much to her (and the viewer’s) dismay.
I totally agree.
(I don't think Peggy knew she was playing by new rules; she seems to have lucked into a life as the new woman of the age. *Not that isn't been easy.*)
RM:
I agree! Glad to be able to address you by name.
I so enjoyed reading Alan's commentary and everyones posts! I have nothing new to add (no big surprise). I thought this episode was excellent. The actors, the writing, the whole darn thing!
But Courtney, You asked if your first (out of 2) posts made sense. Ie; about abused people, looking for love to fill the void. And then not knowing what to do when someone does give love back, because they feel unworthy. Just wanted to say your explanation really clicked for me.
There was another moment that would be easy to forget when compared to the rest, but I thought it was a great one. That is the final zinger when Roger talking with Annabelle in the break room. She says something like 'you were the one,'
He replies, "you weren't."
Much harsher and almost as memorable as Han Solo in Star Wars
Leia: "I love you."
Solo: "I know."
Ben M.
Nice observation! Fun to be reminded of Solo and Leia.
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