Sunday's episode of "Mad Men" continued the season-five trend of highlighting real-life tragedies for narrative sport.
Spoiler Alert: This article reveals minor plot details from "Mad Men" Season 5 Episode 5. If you don't wish to know what happened in the episode, please stop reading now.
At the onset of the episode -- directed by series regular John Slattery -- Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) is shown in a driver's education class watching a black-and-white film about the dangers of operating an automobile. The film was called "Signal 30," a scared-straight short produced in conjunction with the Ohio State Highway Patrol that was shown in school's around the country during the '60s and '70s. Not coincidentally, the "Mad Men" episode was also titled "Signal 30."
The original video is available online (unearthed by the website Badass Digest), and you can watch it above, but be warned: it contains some shocking images of mutilated bodies, as well as a fairly inappropriately hilarious montone voiceover. "The car was literally shoveled to the junkyard."
"Signal 30" wasn't the only real-life event referenced in "Signal 30"; the episode also featured mention of Charles Whitman, a former Marine and University of Texas student who shot and killed ten people from the observation tower on top of the campus' administration building. Overall, Whitman murdered 15 people, including his wife and mother; he was killed by police after the sniper shootings on Aug. 1, 1966. An autopsy on Whitman later revealed that he had a massive brain tumor, which may have caused his actions.
"Mad Men" airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on AMC
[via Badass Digest]
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