tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post5301649528287481995..comments2024-03-19T05:50:19.572-04:00Comments on What's Alan Watching?: Mad Men, "The Color Blue": I can see clearly nowAlan Sepinwallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03388147774725646742noreply@blogger.comBlogger349125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-83150241806470483462012-08-16T06:47:18.962-04:002012-08-16T06:47:18.962-04:00Joseph here, reporting once again from the year 20...Joseph here, reporting once again from the year 2012, just to add one thing I don't think anyone else mentioned:<br /><br />Paul on the couch, triumphant and swigging from the bottle, with his right arm flung off to the side, opening credits style. "I am Don Draper cool right now."<br /><br />I thought it was a little much, but I guess it was subtle enough (or obvious enough?) that nobody mentioned it til now. It's totally something he'd do, even if it is heavy-handed.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-59219298719628312102009-10-25T11:20:45.319-04:002009-10-25T11:20:45.319-04:00Are there any lawyers around here?
I used to be o...Are there any lawyers around here?<br /><br />I used to be one, but retired from practice many years ago. I ask because of the "divorce decree" and the effect on the Betty/Don marriage.<br /><br />As I interpret it, even though the "real" Don Draper was [possibly]married at the time Dick and Betty got married, DICK was not.<br /><br />It was, after all, a person [Dick]who married Betty, not an "identity" [Don]. Thus whatever the state of the marriage of "Don Draper," the marriage between Betty and Dick, even though he was using an assumed name, is valid.<br /><br />I would think that if Betty confronts Don and asks "what's with this "divorce" and this deed to a house," he's trapped: as soon as he attempts to claim their marriage is valid[which is probably all Betty's worr4ied about], he has to basically say, "oh, that wasn't me[who got married and bought a house].<br /><br />The natural next question is, "well who ARE you???"<br /><br />As I recall, Don got the "divorce" to free up wife #1, as well as to make his own "identity trail" a little clearer.<br /><br />I don't think there were the type of "identity inquiries" then like there are today --certainly not the internet and other means accessible to those other than professionals/private detectives, etc.Mauimomnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-59822324482016712822009-10-25T10:46:59.719-04:002009-10-25T10:46:59.719-04:00PanAm said: you have expressed exactly what I have...PanAm said: <i>you have expressed exactly what I have been feeling about her. She does indeed have many great qualities, however something about her just seems a little off. I do think that maybe we are being falsely led to believe that, as we were falsely led to believe that Peggy's baby was being raised by her sister.</i> <br /><br />I'm not sure if we're being falsely led or if we're just seeing several facets of Suzanne's personality so we can decide for ourselves. But I understand what you're getting at, PanAm. There is something a little off about her. She's certainly different than most of the women we've seen on MM, although she does remind me of Midge. <br /><br />I originally did think she was a nutball. Now I'm not sure what to think about her. The thing that sticks in my mind is her responding "so what?" when Don says she's been flirting with him for months. I mean, was she testing him to see how he would respond? She appears to have a deep disdain for married men. I won't reduce it to her just being a tease, but it seemed a little too coy to me. And I'm more than a little bothered that neither Suzanne nor Don is considering how destructive their affair could be to both Betty and Sally. I can't say it's because I think they're soul mates. I don't believe in soul mates. Having a soul mate is one of the bigger crap ideas that's popped up on television and in movies of late.<br /><br />Despite my confusion about Suzanne and the affair, I think there's something powerful and true between her and Don. Her possibly being a little nutty doesn't negate how they feel about each other. I think they're completely separate things. <br /><br />As for her being a bunny-boiler, I'll be mighty disappointed if Weiner chooses the psycho-femme route for Suzanne. I wouldn't say it's impossible, but I expect more from MM than that.Maurahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17301288188119355801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-39787583052017381842009-10-24T23:42:44.228-04:002009-10-24T23:42:44.228-04:00Another re: Suzanne
For some reason, the 1967 Leo...Another re: Suzanne<br /><br />For some reason, the 1967 Leonard Cohen folk song sung by Judy Collins goes through my head whenever Suzanne Farrell is mentioned. I couldn't remember all the lyrics, so I looked it up. Found it interesting.<br /><br />Suzanne<br /><br />Suzanne<br />(Leonard Cohen)<br /><br />Suzanne takes you down<br />To the place by the river<br />You can hear the boats go by<br />You can spend the night forever<br />And you know that she's half crazy<br />And that's why you want to be there<br />And she feeds you tea and oranges<br />That come all the way from China<br />And just when you want to tell her<br />That you have no love to give her<br />She gets you on her wavelength<br />And she lets the river answer<br />That you've always been her lover<br /><br /> And you want to travel with her<br /> And you want to travel blind<br /> And you think maybe you'll trust her<br /> For she's touched your perfect body with her mind<br /><br />And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water<br />And He spent a long time watching<br />From a lonely wooden tower<br />And when he knew for certain<br />Only drowning men could see him<br />He said, all men shall be sailors, then,<br />Until the sea shall free them<br />But He, himself was broken<br />Long before the sky would open<br />Forsaken, almost human<br />He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone<br /><br />Suzanne takes you down<br />To the place by the river<br />You can hear the boats go by<br />You can spend the night forever<br />And the sun pours down like honey<br />On Our Lady of the Harbor<br />And she shows you where to look<br />Amidst the garbage and the flowers<br />There are heroes in the seaweed<br />There are children in the morning<br />They are leaning out for love<br />And they will lean that way forever<br />While Suzanne holds the mirrorPanAm53https://www.blogger.com/profile/13133526724573682036noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-62353682240288431602009-10-24T22:37:29.032-04:002009-10-24T22:37:29.032-04:00Jessamyn:
I've been away from the computer al...Jessamyn:<br /><br />I've been away from the computer all day, so I'm just now getting a chance to comment. You have such skill expressing your thoughts with words! Re Suzanne: you have expressed exactly what I have been feeling about her. She does indeed have many great qualities, however something about her just seems a little off. I do think that maybe we are being falsely led to believe that, as we were falsely led to believe that Peggy's baby was being raised by her sister.PanAm53https://www.blogger.com/profile/13133526724573682036noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-63224441469843881662009-10-24T22:26:22.557-04:002009-10-24T22:26:22.557-04:00Hmmm. Shame the direction this conversation turned...Hmmm. Shame the direction this conversation turned. I guess I'll think twice before agreeing with someone again and commending them.<br /><br />Anyway, there's no way to *know* what Weiner and the writers will do. We can only speculate. We can trust they'll be true to the characters, but they do like throwing in unexpected dingers in the plot - it's one of the biggest delights of the show.<br /><br />Having already seen Don stray from marrage and return to "try harder" at being a good husband, they're surely not going to simply repeat themselves. I think it's quite possible that the marriage will break up - permanently. Betty is already at combustion point, and there are a whole host of pressure points on Don, any one of which (incuding Suzanne's brother, a phone call from Connie ) - or something new we haven't seen yet - could set off the final conflagration. Decline and Fall of the Draper household has certainly been heralded.<br /><br />It's far too soon to know what would then happen to Don-Suzanne. It might well take until next season to resolve.<br /><br />My earlier speculation, straying somewhat nervously into dangerous territory, which is why I kept it so vague I may not have been clear, was into *why* so many people fear Suzanne's emotional nature, when it seems to be portrayed mostly positively onscreen, as warmth and life. It could of course be because people have a natural suspicion of where this emotionalism will lead when/if the affair unravels and Suzanne is rejected by Don. That's what many people have said, more or less. I was wondering whether maybe it could also be suspicion that the writers are setting us up: something good for Don just ready to turn bad.<br /><br />It could also be not wanting to imagine the possibility of the affair being one of the things actually ending the marriage. Such things don't usually happen in TV series whose premise has been set up. We'd then have to follow Betty into the demimonde of the divorced woman - that hell represented by Glen's mother Helen - though she could, by the end of the series a few years from now, come out of it much better than where she is now. And immense complications for Don and Sally, without knowing yet how long Suzanne would be involved. But I have a feeling we might be heading that way.<br /><br />Meanwhile, back at Sterling Cooper, there are a whole ton of possible shakeups brewing. This could get very, very interesting.berkowit28https://www.blogger.com/profile/08194317697552106140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-31596955082643200062009-10-24T20:35:39.772-04:002009-10-24T20:35:39.772-04:00Lawrence, lose the attitude, right now. As Miss Fa...Lawrence, lose the attitude, right now. As Miss Farrell would no doubt teach you herself, if you can't play nice with others, you don't get to play.Alan Sepinwallhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03388147774725646742noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-12660385783100325452009-10-24T19:53:17.012-04:002009-10-24T19:53:17.012-04:00Jessamyn,
sorry, but nothing and nobody in a piec...Jessamyn, <br />sorry, but nothing and nobody in a piece of fiction need have anything whatsoever to do with you, anyone you've ever met, any book you've ever read, or any dramatic production you've ever witnessed. It's an all new creation by someone you don't know, and therefore can only be judged objectively on the basis of what's shown or can be logically implied from what's shown. An "off quality" in her exchanges? That's not for you to say, it's up to the characters she's engaged with. All you have seen is Suzanne speaking one-on-one with exactly 3 people (Sally, Don, her brother), all of whom adore her at the current point in the story. (She's batting 3 for 3. What's your record with other people? Mine is dreadful.) Is she dangerous? When a spouse with young children falls in love with someone else it's always extremely dangerous, but "dangerous" refers to the generic situation, not the other person. She warns Don of the danger to him inherent in their situation, and it's his response of "I want you, I don't care" that tells her how serious he his and thereby finally closes the ad man's sale. We now know for certain that Don meant every word of his brief speech. As to the nature of the danger, Betty would not suffer too greatly shuffling off to Albany, free of the kids, to shack up with Francis and sip cocktails with Rocky, and if I were Don's father, I would be delighted if Suzanne took over the mothering of my grandchildren.<br /><br />berkowitz28 (does that mean there 27 other berkowitzes on this site, or have homages to Son of Sam gone viral?), <br />a "bad end" is of course a concern of both parties, but an expressed worry does not a signal of future events make, nor would it necessarily be "bad" (per my comments, above). I have stated hypotheses of the nature of Suzanne and of her relationship with Don. Where I come from, abstract hypotheses should be accompanied by predictions of functional outcomes. They are:<br />1. Suzanne will not deliberately reveal the affair to Betty, directly or indirectly. <br />2. Absent some unexpected dramatic event, Don will offer to leave Betty for Suzanne. I do not know if Suzanne would accept, given that being married to an inveterate philanderer is no picnic, especially when he often really does have to work late.Lawrencenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-19125421570650490822009-10-24T14:33:45.274-04:002009-10-24T14:33:45.274-04:00Lawrence,
I like your impassioned support and def...Lawrence,<br /><br />I like your impassioned support and defense of Suzanne. It *is* odd how so many people want to attack her, specifically her emotional qualities, when those are being shown as good qualities which Don is missing in his home life with Betty. And thanks for the pointers to AMC's "Inside Mad Men". (In particular, if you watch all of the videos, we get the definitive reading from Weiner on Sal, which resolves about 4 different debates here.)<br /><br />But, aside from the view that sees Suzanne as "crazy", maybe partly as a defense against her very emotional qualities (she will not be easy to "handle" when the breakup comes that she herself has predicted "cannot end well"), maybe there's also a suspicion that we're being set up by the writers for a fall: get too much involved with her, like Don is and as he was with Rachel earlier, and only bad will result. There may a desire not to be taken in, especially since the "bad end" has been signaled pretty strongly.berkowit28https://www.blogger.com/profile/08194317697552106140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-81783520818134681982009-10-24T09:02:23.786-04:002009-10-24T09:02:23.786-04:00JustMe, thank you. There has been so much repetiti...JustMe, thank you. There has been so much repetition and going over old ground in the (normally sterling) comments this week, but your observation was the Aha! moment I look for on these pages (aside from Sepinwall's incisive reviews themselves, of course).<br /><br />My only comment on the episode itself is that I saw the lengthening night of Betty waiting at home with the box for a Don who wasn't coming home because he was with another woman as truly tragic. The only way those two people can possibly be happy is if they talk about what's really going on. That in itself doesn't guarantee happiness, but NOT doing it guarantees unhappiness, and Don may have missed his chance. Betty's mother was very passive-aggressive, and I fear her anger will take itself out that way, now that the wind is gone from her sails.<br /><br />As to why the "continual denigration" of Suzanne: Yes, Suzanne has many sterling qualities. And calling her outright crazy is a somewhat ridiculous oversimplification. But I don't think one has to have any kind of hidden agenda to recognize a certain kind of "off" quality in some of her exchanges with others. I personally know, and I imagine some of the other posters do too, someone who is bright and funny and passionate and exciting to be around - and also trouble, because she is just a little bit disconnected from the way other people think, which makes her unpredictable and socially dangerous. The older she gets, the worse it gets. If we're wrong about that feeling, well, we're wrong, but it has nothing to do with whom we want to see Don with, or what we find threatening in otherwise admirable women.Jessamynnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-2768577295322310002009-10-24T02:51:39.598-04:002009-10-24T02:51:39.598-04:00Suzanne Farrell is NOT a hippie. She's a paid...Suzanne Farrell is NOT a hippie. She's a paid professional, a tenured teacher (which I have never been), and an extraordinarily good one at that. She doesn't just dance around the maypole, she teaches her students social history. She takes time during her summer vacation to gather her students to not just go to the park to look up at the eclipse, but to build cameras obscura. She knows enough about current political/social movements (and far more than Betty or any other MM character, except for Kinsey) to recognize that MLK's speech is worthy of presentation to her young students. In other words, she is the prototypical school district candidate for teacher-of-the-year in 1963 or any other year. (If she taught in a low-income school, state or even national honors would not be out of the question.) She is probably at least as educated, well-read, cultured, intelligent, etc., as Don, and equal or superior in those regards to all his other women (except possibly Rachel). Add her youth, beauty, sensuality, warmth, generosity and I guarantee that a very substantial percentage of the nation's straight male professoriate and Cheever suburban executives, single or (especially) married would fall for her in a heartbeat. <br /><br />So why her continual denigration, on this as on every other blog I have read? Loyalty to Betty? Disrespect for low-paid elementary school teachers? Assumption (hope?) that "Fatal Attraction" describes the just desserts for every no-good cheating film protagonist who can't keep his pants zipped? Given that Suzanne is only what Weiner shows her to be, the reaction by real people to this fictional character is perhaps the more interesting issue.<br /><br />This affair is long past mere infatuation and lust. We last see the couple standing, in each others arms, after Suzanne has denied sex to a lover who has just undertaken a long journey on her behalf. He makes no effort to change her mind (cf. Joan's Dr.), says "It's OK" and embraces her. This is as profound a love scene as I have ever seen. Suzanne can say "I don't want to, I don't" knowing she could be completely honest and open with Don, that she trusted him implicitly. Don understands and appreciates the significance of both what she has done and of his own easy acceptance of her needs. This is mutual love, as real and mature as it gets. <br /><br />For those who might like to know what Weiner and Hamm think of Suzanne, go to http://www.amctv.com/videos/mad-men/?bcpid=8803972001&bclid=27344898001&bctid=45086551001 and select the "Inside Season 3" tab.Lawrencenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-59396342463675733672009-10-23T22:26:23.647-04:002009-10-23T22:26:23.647-04:00Then there's Suzanne Farrell and her brother. ...Then there's Suzanne Farrell and her brother. I just don't know what to make of them...I get kind of weird vibes from both of them. 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 think she could be trouble...not boiling bunny murderous trouble, but still trouble. The brother, Danny, might not have any ulterior motives of his own, but he is in possession of Don's business card, which does not bode well. Then again, this may be what the writers want us to believe. Who knows?PanAm53https://www.blogger.com/profile/13133526724573682036noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-12180681859753909962009-10-23T22:03:40.092-04:002009-10-23T22:03:40.092-04:00Anticipating another great Mad Men episode in 48 h...Anticipating another great Mad Men episode in 48 hours. I have realized that one is better off not making predictions...thankfully, my predictions are never right, because I would really not want to be able to predict what the writers of a series such as Mad Men had in store for us. I would not, however, anticipate that Betty will be confronting Don about what she discovered in the shoe box inside the locked desk drawer. She waited up for him with the box in her lap, ready to confront him. But, as the hours passed by, she lost her momentum or her nerve, and put everything back just as it had been, including replacing the key in Don's bathrobe. Just like it never happened. Don would never suspect that Betty had viewed the contents of the box...his hidden past life. I admit that I don't know what to make of Betty's expressions at the party. Sooner or later, she may act on her discovery re: Don's previous marriage, but for now I do not believe she will confront Don with her newly acquired information about him.<br /><br />I am also posting because I would like to appeal to the many anonymous posters on this site. Please consider the use of a posting ID. You don't need to have a Google account, and you will still be anonymous. No one will know your true identity. There are just so many anonymous posters on this site, and it really would be nice if we could differentiate all of you.PanAm53https://www.blogger.com/profile/13133526724573682036noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-36356390116028277602009-10-23T18:23:29.915-04:002009-10-23T18:23:29.915-04:00JustMe: I agree with mmjoan, that is a good point ...JustMe: I agree with mmjoan, that is a good point you make! (Betty could interpret what she found--the divorce papers and date of, overlapping with her relationship with Don--as evidence that Don would leave a woman he was married to for one of his mistresses.)jenaehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17454223874257032929noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-65942612830193134872009-10-23T08:33:21.007-04:002009-10-23T08:33:21.007-04:00JustMe, that is a great point and one I never thou...JustMe, that is a great point and one I never thought of. Betty not only thinks Don was married and never told her, but she also believes he divorced another woman to be with her. No wonder Betty's reaction to the divorce decree was so strong!mmjoannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-68175514536043712332009-10-23T04:23:58.558-04:002009-10-23T04:23:58.558-04:00re: finding Don selling furs....
This goes back t...re: finding Don selling furs....<br /><br />This goes back to Season 1 (i think), around the time of the carousel episode, where don waxes about his first job in advertising, selling furs, when a mentor tells him about selling via 'nostalgia.' So that was his first job in advertising, and then he presumably works his way up SC from there. <br /><br />Here it might be noted that Don and Peggy are both leading 'aspirational' lives compared to some other characters, and maybe this gives them some insight into what people want, the 'stuff that dreams are made of,' how dreams get packaged kind of ideas.luckystuffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18061930831719705832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-45740882826034634492009-10-22T18:48:59.073-04:002009-10-22T18:48:59.073-04:00Just a quick one since I've been busy this wee...Just a quick one since I've been busy this week and just got to Sepinwall's commentary today, but the end with Don in the tux at the podium was very Citizen Kane. I was almost shocked that my word search of the comments didn't turn that up. The 'carousel' montage from Season 1 is very Rosebud, no? Unlike Yeats' Revolutionary Road, which Weiner notoriously had not read before starting Mad Men and is on the record as stating that he wouldn't have attempted the show if he'd known how well the territory had already been covered, I'd be very surprised indeed if Matt wasn't a Citizen Kane fan. (Alan?) A lot of Don's secretiveness and desire for his own imaginary Xanadu serve as good influence points. There's a grad school thesis here if anybody out there wants to pursue one. 'Charles Foster Kane, the original Mad Man' etc etc.<br /><br />SeanUnknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02373926845487764176noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-40802060971142828592009-10-22T14:52:46.901-04:002009-10-22T14:52:46.901-04:00My favorite Lois line is when she is letting the c...<i>My favorite Lois line is when she is letting the chipmunks bribe her and she tries to scare them by saying "...there will be...REDUNDANCIES!"</i><br /><br />LOL... I liked that moment, too. I assume that in 1963 (or perhaps even in 2009?) many Americans wouldn't know that "redundancies" are a common British euphamism for layoffs. So the look on the Chipmunks' faces -- I'm interpreting here -- might be one of a vague, slightly uncomprehending horror. <br /><br />As in, "I don't know what she means by 'redundancies,' but it can't be good. Perhaps some of us may become 'surplus to requirements.'"dcnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-54287952739397284782009-10-22T14:52:24.793-04:002009-10-22T14:52:24.793-04:00This may go without saying, the one thing the divo...This may go without saying, the one thing the divorce decree will say is the date of the divorce. Betty now knows that when she met Don, he was a married man. And she knows that Don left his wife for her. According to that piece of paper, she was the other woman.<br /><br />She now could reasonably believe that Don is more than willing to leave a wife for a newer, shinier model. While she knew that he was having affairs before, he still came back home. The decree was proof that under the right circumstances, he may decide to stay with the next "other woman."JustMenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-90746891403530739942009-10-22T13:09:51.762-04:002009-10-22T13:09:51.762-04:00One of the anonymous posters brings up a good poin...One of the anonymous posters brings up a good point that Dick Whitman did not take over Don Draper's life, just his name and ticket home. He earned everything else himself. I would also like to see how he was able to rise so high so quickly.<br /><br />Maura, only seeing what directly affected her was from a child's viewpoint, in my opinion. I think I did comment also that since she had the box sitting out for hours, she could have been processing the other stuff as well. I think emotionally Betty is a child. That being said, she is intelligent, educated, sophisticated in many ways as we saw when she was in Italy, and has mastered the art of conversation. Some of the childishness can be attributed to her upbringing (her dad even admitted that he over protected her) and to the type of life she lives. The best example of her being like a child, in my opinion, was her relationship with Glen. She was really comfortable with him.Susanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12705788002352470163noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-40280512028413270112009-10-22T11:38:08.507-04:002009-10-22T11:38:08.507-04:00Imamarilyn said...
Jack, like a child, Betty ...Imamarilyn said...<br /><br /> <i>Jack, like a child, Betty zeroed in on the things that directly affected her...the deed and divorce decree. She sat with the box out for many hours, so perhaps later when the initial shock wore off, she began to process the pictures and the dog tags.</i><br /><br />Imamarilyn, is that childish? (I admit it. I'm really stymied by the idea that Betty is *always* childish.) As was noted upthread, the deed and the divorce decree were the easiest things to make sense out of when she started looking through everything. Is there a woman alive who wouldn't be shocked and horrified if she found out her husband owned a home in another state, and had been married before. At first glance, the photos, and even the dog tags, wouldn't be alarming. We don't know what she pieced together after hours of going through everything, but I think the documents would immediately set off some alarms. <br /><br /> Anonymous @ 8:08 PM, October 21, 2009 said...<br /><br /> <i>Several posts have mentioned the piles of cash in Don's desk drawer, but I am surprised that more people have not commented on Betty's just ignoring all that money. Granted that Don grew up during the heart of the Depression and that people who grew up during that time often did not trust banks and kept money at home, but that was still a large amount of money to keep in a drawer in the study. Betty should have remembered the latter years of the Depression and may not have trusted banks either; she probably knew that Don kept cash at home, but I doubt that she knew how much money Don had stashed away. Betty's lack of knowledge about the family's savings was shown in Season 1 when she asked Don whether they had enough to buy a summer house, and I doubt that Don had started saring more details about the family finances with Betty in the intervening three years. When Betty finally opened the drawer and saw all that money, wouldn't she have been curious enough at least to have counted the number of bundles of cash? Instead she had no reation to or interest in the money.</i> <br /><br />There was a lot of money in that box, but it looked to me as though it didn't register to her at first. Her father probably kept a lot of cash around the house too. I imagine she eventually counted, and recounted, the money down to the last dollar. <br /><br /> <i>Why would Betty jump to the conclusion that her Don Draper was an imposter and really Dick Whitman?</i> <br /><br />Good question. I don't think she would. Not because she's stupid, but because... who the hell steals someone else's identity? It's too far fetched to occur anywhere other than a television show. :)Maurahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17301288188119355801noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-13873436165957837282009-10-22T10:06:07.042-04:002009-10-22T10:06:07.042-04:00I hope that the show explores the story behind Rog...I hope that the show explores the story behind Roger's comment that he discovered Don working at a fur company. The show has explained how Dick Whitman became Don Draper but it really hasn't addressed how Don became a Mad Man and creative director of (even a second or third tier) advertising agency so quickly. Why did Don go into advertising and not, say, become an engineer like the real Don Draper or go back to selling cars?From Roger's comment and the timeline of the show, Don couldn't have been at SC much more than five or six years during Season 1 in 1960. That's a fast rise. No wonder Pete snd Paul (Princeton 55) have always been so frustrated about their careers. Don may be older but he hasn't been at SC much longer than they have.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-87318108377366380952009-10-22T09:37:08.846-04:002009-10-22T09:37:08.846-04:00A Poster said:
"The typical housewife of that...A Poster said:<br />"The typical housewife of that era did not have maids and housekeepers taking care of her children. "<br /><br /><br />Define "typical." Typical for an upper middle class NYC suburb, circa 1963? It only matters, for the purposes of talking about MM, if we're talking about a place just like Ossining. <br /><br />Actually, people often did have (African-American and Latina) maids and housekeepers in upper middle class NY suburbs back then (such as where I grew up). <br /><br />I even had one friend who had a houseman/chauffeur. But they were unusually wealthy.<br /><br />We did not have the "mom threw you out in the morning and didn't see you except for meals until bedtime" kind of neighborhood. Not at all. Our time was structured, somewhat like kids today.<br /><br />We did have arranged playdates (though they weren't called that). <br /><br />In the summer we did wander around the neigbhorhood more, but not so much during the school year.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-86570961000503175372009-10-22T02:12:05.504-04:002009-10-22T02:12:05.504-04:00Wasn't Don Draper a college grad (he was an en...<i>Wasn't Don Draper a college grad (he was an engineer, right?). He wouldn't have needed night courses. Of course no one in NY knows anything about the real Don Draper, I guess (not even Pete -- if he did find out more about the real DD, he hasn't said).</i><br /><br />Dick didn't take over Don Draper's life. He took his name & his early ticket home, neither of which Original Don needed any more. He didn't put his degree on his resume or try to acquire any of his assets once he got back to the USA. And I doubt he applied for GI Bill benefits: Education & a Home Loan. <br /><br />Not that Our Don knew much about Original Don; they had just met. Presenting himself all over the place as Original Don would be too dangerous. He settled somewhere & started over. He didn't even know there was a Mrs Draper. <br /><br />--not BridgetAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17517257.post-42592338749442490952009-10-22T00:35:11.754-04:002009-10-22T00:35:11.754-04:00Re: play dates. They wasn't even around when...Re: play dates. They wasn't even around when my kids were growing up in the 70s. There were usually a lot of kids in your neighborhood. And neighbors felt free to tell you off and call your mom if you got into trouble. <br /><br />I remember being told to come home when the street lights go on. <br /><br />Lots of yelling for kids to come in for lunch by moms on the front or back porch. Wonder why Sally and Bobby aren't out playing at least sometimes. That's unusual. <br /><br />Heck, I went on the public bus to the library on my own when I was only 8 yrs old. It wasn't that dangerous - or the world wasn't perceived as dangerous back before the explosion of drugs and riots.Juliahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15025782058903139785noreply@blogger.com