Mad Men: "Seven Twenty Three" -- HuffPost Review
In history, the solar eclipse is an omen of things to come, frequently upsetting. And so it is with "Seven Twenty Three," an episode which caused some confusion in advance. And some after as well, with a major newspaper blog still failing to grasp what the title is about, mistakenly saying it's a time in the morning.
As always with these reviews, there be spoilers ahead, so if you've not yet seen this key episode, you've been warned.
Last week's episode, "Guy Walks Into An Advertising Agency," was quite consequential.
Since the previews on Mad Men, unlike most movie trailers, are structured in such a way that they really don't tell you anything about what's coming, and even actively mislead you, I noticed a lot of fan blogging speculation about the cryptic title of this episode. A prevalent theory had it that the title is related to David Ogilvy, the British advertising guru who published the classic "Confessions of An Ad Man" in 1963. But what did the number mean? One favored explanation was that Ogilvy's funeral was on July 23, 1963. Since he actually died in 1989, that was incorrect.
What "Seven Twenty Three" is is Don Draper's Waterloo. Or I should say, Dick Whitman's Waterloo. That's the day in 1963 on which Don Draper/Dick Whitman gets lassoed. Fitting, as it's his Westerner hotel magnate friend Connie Hilton who sets it in motion.
But before we get to that, let's go back to the beginning of the episode. Which was actually near the middle, per the Lost-style flash forward/flashback mode now in vogue.
A quick recap of Episode 5.
We see three principals in various forms of repose. Peggy Olsen is stirring in bed beside a man, as distinguished from the usual boy she is around when she's around a guy. Betty Draper, looking very sexy, is in a reverie, alone, on some sort of settee. And Don Draper is face down in a cheap-ass motel room.
The rest of the episode revolves around how they got there.
This is an episode about people hooking up, making connections, some of which may be disastrous. Except when it's about Don's attempts to flee connections. But try as he might, the master dissembler, with the walls closing in, proves unable to get out of anything. Except perhaps his friendship with Roger Sterling. And I doubt that.
Which is as good a place as any to begin, since this is not a blow-by-blow recap. (I must say that I'm surprised by the rise of the literal recap. I thought people watched TV, in part, to avoid reading. The recap is the new way to avoid spending an hour watching a TV show.)
So, Don and Roger, whose relationship was key to the first two seasons of the show. But not so key now, at least so far. Don resents the hell out of Roger for spoiling Sterling Cooper by causing it to be sold to the British conglomerate so he could pay for his divorce and afford his marriage to Don's foxy 20-year-old secretary. And Roger is so into being married to his now 21-year-old that he's not doing much at Sterling Coo other than being (self) important. Which is what he does in this episode, to impotent and near disastrous effect.
Don and Roger encounter one another, uneasily, in the ubiquitous elevator on their way to relatively late appearances at the office. Don's matters. Roger's, not so much.
Roger mentions that he's reading the galleys of David Ogilvy's classic, Confessions of An Ad Man. (Ogilvy, in addition to writing self-aggrandizing yet guru-like books -- including the one I first read many years ago, Ogilvy on Advertising -- came up with such advertising classics as "the man in the Hathaway shirt," "Commander Hathaway's" "Schweppervescence," and "The only sound you will hear in the new Rolls Royce at 60 miles per hour is that of the electric clock.")
Roger is a little jealous, and allows as how he has to come up with a blurb for the Ogilvy book even as he says that any one of a thousand ad guys could have written it. Later, he is more honest, when he declares Don "our David Ogilvy."
The essential milieu of Mad Men is not all that admirable.
Finally getting into his office at 9:30 AM, Don discovers his surprise buddy from Roger's horrible Derby Day party, Connie Hilton, already there. Sitting in his chair. This becomes a trope of the episode. Older, more powerful men sitting in the chair of this master of the universe.
Showing he will be a handful, Connie tosses a few curveballs at Don, including giving him crap for not having family photos or a bible on his desk, before giving him a piece of his business. Nothing special, just the New York hotels, including the Waldorf Astoria. As these are crown jewels of the Hilton empire, more is clearly to come. If Don works out.
But there is a problem with Don. Not that Connie cares, though his lawyers do -- which means that he does but he ain't saying 'cuz they're buddies -- Don doesn't have a contract. He believes, as a major Hollywood star told me years ago, that the best course is to work without a contract. Because that gives you the option on the relationship, and thus the power.
Which is generally true. Except that Connie, i.e., the Hilton empire, wants to be sure that Don is going to be around for the next three years.
A quick recap of Episode 4.
Which Sterling, Bert Cooper, and Lane Pryce run down for Don in an uncomfortable meeting in Cooper's office. In which Cooper -- who, lest we forget, is keeping the secret that Don Draper is really Dick Whitman -- impresses upon Don that he now must sign a contract. A very generous contract.
As Roger points out to a nonplussed Betty when he calls her at home to lobby after learning that Don has failed to send the contract to his lawyer for review, as promised, and after Don blows him off in a meeting in Don's office. Betty, of course, knows nothing about her, which is true of most of her relationship with her husband, so she is pissed off.
Especially so when she confronts Don about Roger's call.
Don goes into patented clam mode and leaves the house, drinking whiskey out of a glass, headed West in his snazzy blue Cadillac. When he decides to pick up a teenage couple hitchhiking.
Before he does this, he rips into Peggy when she comes into his office on the pretext of having him sign off on routine art work but actually to try to get onto the Hilton Hotels account. Already feeling cornered by Cooper, Pryce, and Sterling, not to mention Hilton himself, Don dresses her down, telling her that she's swiftly gone from being his secretary to a job "grown men would kill for" and she hasn't produced any work that he "can't live without." So get your hand out of my pocket. Ouch.
Here's a quick recap of Episode 3.
Which makes it easier for her to ignore Pete Campbell's rather good advice to return an expensive gift from Duck Phillips, who is out to recruit them from under Don's nose to join the Grey agency. Pete, in full neurosis mode, barges into Peggy's office to tell her who the gift is from and compare his own gift of Cuban cigars -- "I'm starting to think they're not so rare" (Doh!) -- to her new Hermes scarf. Which Peggy, naturally, loves, as it's perfect for her.
In the guise of "returning" the gift, she agrees to meet Duck in his suite at the Pierre Hotel. Where he proceeds to tell her what he has in mind for her professionally and personally.
Professionally, Peggy gets Hermes, Macy's and Revlon if she joins him at Grey. Personally, she gets to climb into his bed in the next room to have her clothes removed by his teeth and, well, you get the gist. As does she. Peggy opts for the latter, with an option on the former.
Which is how Peggy came to to be stirring in bed beside a man in the flash forward open of this episode.
Betty's journey to her sexual reverie in a settee comes via the route of politics. Not that she's been involved in politics before, mind you. Betty, incidentally, and this was covered in an earlier season, is not simply an emotionally blank Grace Kelly-lookalike mannequin who snaps at her kids. She graduated from Bryn Mawr, the sister school of Haverford, one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country.
Realizing that, much as she loves her new baby, named for her late dad, that a third child is not the solution to the problems in her life, she becomes in civic life. Namely, the Junior League in Westchester County. In her freshly redecorated home, another domestic project which did not fulfill. Great early scene with Don and the decorator in which Betty insists on his "professional eye." Move the end table and the lamp, he suggests, correctly. Betty has not yet discovered art collecting.
Speaking of which, Mad Men producers and writers, where is the seminal Pop Art work of Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, former ad men, which is breaking big all over New York now? Okay, I digress.
And a quick recap of Episode 2.
Citing Rachel Carson's new book, Silent Spring, these civic activists are big on conservation, the early term for environmentalism. In particular, they are upset about a big, unsightly water tank that will divert water from their beloved reservoir to new developments. Whether they are more concerned about the environment, property values, or keeping the wrong sort of people away is something left to your judgment, and to future episodes.
Because the issue is really a pretext for linking to a thread from what turns out to be the very consequential "Derby Day" party hosted by Roger and Jane Sterling. As it turns out that the Rockefeller family owns much of the open space land there in Westchester County and the governor of New York is, of course, one Nelson Rockefeller. Betty volunteers that she has met an aide to Rockefeller. That would be the suave politico Henry Francis. who had the great come-on line with Betty waiting for the loo and engaged in a brief reverie of his own holding his hand against her pregnant belly.
It's swiftly established that Henry is, yes, smooth article that he is, a big deal with Rocky and that babelicious Betty is best suited to call on him to intervene. So she does. And Henry calls back in, surprise, about 4.9 seconds.
They meet over the issue, naturally, sparring, though she is clearly interested in more than a water tank. Henry, though making himself immediately available for a Saturday afternoon ice cream social rather than the hike Betty clearly didn't dress for, actually plays it rather distantly, perhaps anticipating that she would do the same. As they part, he shows her a Victorian fainting couch, which, to distract from their sparring, he suggests could be just the thing for her.
Naturally, she gloms onto the thing, which is gigantic and godawful, and makes it the centerpiece of her newly redesigned living room, much to the displeasure of her decorator, who correctly points out that it absolutely destroys the symmetry they'd been going for. But that's okay, because it's the perfect piece on which Betty can daydream about another older, masterful man who can take her away from it all.
Which brings us back to the ur-masterful man of our show, Mr. Don Draper.
Don is having a rough episode. He's being pressured by his new super-rich client, who he'd thought was some nice old Westerner he bumped into at a party, Sterling and Copper, his protege Peggy, and Betty herself, who gives him crap for not telling her anything about his snazzy new contract he doesn't want to sign, or much of anything else. (Incidentally, I left out a wonderful little moment in which Betty, taking Henry's return call in Don's study, gives another furtive tug on Don's ever-locked desk drawer.)
Mad Men's season opener set the scene in striking new ways.
So Don jumps in the Caddy and heads out, drink in hand, for ... Who knows where? California?
And he picks up these two kids, a guy and a gal, who say they're headed for Niagara Falls to get married. Not that they're in love or anything. She's just helping the boy out to avoid the draft. Not that he was likely to be drafted in 1963. Don, this is what we call a "clue." They can't pay Don or anything, but they do have drugs, Phenobarbitol, so Don tosses his glass out the window and decides to partake.
Whereupon he ends up in a cheap motel dancing with the girl while the guy looks on, in a not especially friendly manner.
Don's old man, Archie Whitman, shows up again in Don's druggy vision to give Don crap about the seamy scene to come, Don's "bullshit" profession, and the fact that he is back on the bum again.
Fortunately, Don is saved from a relapse into Whitmanville by the enormity of his stupidity.
The kids are con artists who have drugged him. When he doesn't collapse fast enough to suit the boy, who is clearly a hothead as well as a hophead, the kid bashes Don on the head and mugs him. Which explains why he wakes up in classic face-plant mode on the motel floor.
After checking out his cleaned-out wallet and taking stock of his dented visage, Don cleans up and climbs into his fortunately still present Cadillac and makes his way into the office. Where he meets Peggy, in her day-before clothes following her lengthy tryst with Duck. They're both a bit abashed, and friendly enough. So far so good.
But more pain awaits Don when he walks into his very own office. For sitting in his own chair, once again, is a powerful older guy. In this case, that nice eccentric Bert Cooper. Who is not always all that nice, or all that eccentric.
The work of seminal Pop artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, taking images from advertising and comics, was exploding across New York in 1963, but we're not seeing it yet on Mad Men.
Having allowed Roger his ineffectual attempts at pressuring Don into signing the contract, Cooper finally drops the hammer. There are evidently a number of reasons why Cooper is a devotee of Japanese culture. And one of them is the Zen virtue of patience. Without ever specifically mentioning that he knows that Don Draper is really Dick Whitman, Cooper plays the imposter card he's held for the past two years and Don dutifully signs the contract.
With a notation of the date, 7/23/1963.
Don has surrendered. He is now who he has pretended to be.
Incidentally, there were a few odd, apparently anomalous, references in this episode. Henry Francis jokingly asks Betty if her son can be registered by November. But his boss, Nelson Rockefeller, was just elected to his second term as governor in November 1962. The only New York election in November 1963 is for an unopposed state judge and off-track betting.
Henry does tell Betty that he may be Rockefeller's campaign manager. But the next Rockefeller campaign -- he's twice been elected governor of New York at this point -- is not in 1963 but a second run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1964. Which turns out to be quite consequential, as it is the last gasp of the Northeastern liberal Republicans typified by Rockefeller against the ascending Sun Belt conservative wing of the party.
Then there was the Vietnam draft reference, used to con Don -- the ultimate sophisticated con man -- into falling for his hitchhikers' routine.
In July 1963, we are far away from the massive Vietnam build-up. There are only 16,000 Americans in Vietnam, mostly as advisers to the South Vietnamese Army. The big build-up doesn't start until after John F. Kennedy's assassination in November 1963, and Gulf of Tonkin incident -- perhaps better described as a pretext -- in August 1964.
This is either a writing error, or a drunken Don acting like he's knowledgeable to impress two kids who see him coming a mile away.
There is a major build-up underway, as Pete Campbell notes early in the episode when he, too, tries to inveigle Don in involving him with Hilton, but it's in terms of arms and materiel for the South Vietnamese Army.
These possible problems aside, it's a terrific episode.
You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.
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'Mad Men': 'Seven Twenty Three' | Show Tracker | Los Angeles Times
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BilI, think you are a little bit off in saying that Don's young assailant would not have been worried about the draft yet in the summer of 1963. I graduated college that June and knew many guys who graduated from the mid-1950s through the early ' 60s who avoided the draft by joining the navy, or the air force ,the national guard or the reserves, or by staying in school. As warlike a patriot as our future vice president, Dick Cheney, received his second of five draft deferments on July 23rd,1963, the very day Don signed his contract. What was a bit anachronistic was the young mugger trying to get married to avoid the draft. That didn't happen until August of 1963, when JFK issued an executive order exempting married guys. I had at least one friend who took advantage of this to become a "Kennedy husband".
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Well, this show is set well before my time. However, as a student of history, including military history, the kid saying, to Don's drunken assent, that he was afraid of the coming big build-up was either wrong on the writers' part or part of the kid's con.
There was no big build-up in Vietnam until after the Gulf of Tonkin pretext in August 1964, more than a year later.
The number of Americans in Vietnam was holding at 16,000, mostly advisors.
Of course some people did get drafted. But not because of the coming big build-up which was a fantasy at that point. And which I believe would never have happened but for what is to come on November 22, 1963.
Bill,
I too am a student of history, especially military history . (And a college history major). By July, 1963, things clearly were going badly for Diem, our hand picked dictator. Anyone who read David Halberstam in the New York times knew that Saigon was losing battle after battle and that Diem was opposed by most of his own people. Within a couple of months, JFK's envoy Henry Cabot Lodge and the CIA helped topple and kill Diem, and things just got worse. JFK repeatedly publicly declared that South Vietnam was key to winning the Cold War and protecting our freedom. A lot of us could see the handwriting on the wall by then. Don Draper probably could, although his young assailant likely could not. I agree using the "buildup" as a reason he feared the draft was anachronistic, as was getting married to remain a civilian, but trying to avoid the draft was not.
I'm not sure I agree that JFK would have gotten out of Vietnam. We'll never know.
Incidently, I was also active in Northeastern Liberal Republican politics in those days, and was in the room (called the Cow Palace) the night the yahoos shouted Rocky down and took over the GOP. You're right that Betsy's tummy patter wouldn't have chaired Rockefeller's gubernatorial campaign in 1963, but he may have been alluding to the 1964 doomed presidential run to come. That was why he told Betsy "these days I'm making most of the calls, not receiving them".
You noticed the missing art works too not just the Ogilvey reference that means Roger has to be privy to galleys of the upcoming yet unreleased book. The beat scene in the village was red hot too with Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary and Ginzburg and the Cafe Wha a daylight happening drawing tourists from all across the US.
The scene with the Brit with his foot cut off the timing was all wrong for Don's arrival at the hospital. In 1963 there was no 911 and no centralized dispatch for emergency services. If they didn't take him to the emergency room themselves he would have bled out, depending on the time of day and traffic, one had to actually call St. Vincents or Bellevue Hospital and they would dispatch an ambulance, usually manned by an intern in those days. It would have been interesting to have seen that anachronistic elements but then I'm a health professional.
He was only 15 minutes from the office at the Waldorf and Don would have gone back to the office to still find the guy there if they didn't take him to the hospital themselves in a taxi.
Great post as usual thank you! Quick thought. Many bloggers have not liked the disjunctured narrative of this episode, complaining its too formulaic or it just isn't working with the usual way the episodes unfold. I beg to differ, I think dates and times are key to this episode - hence the title.
The first three shots from my perspective were done to disconnect the characters from their daily regime, from their expected roles as patriarch, matriarch, and virgin. This is not where we would find them in the morning nor what we would typically find them doing. Rewind time, dashing Don prepping for work - expected routine. Perhaps Weiner and crew are deliberately disjointing time and place to suggest that this pristine picket fenced world that runs like clockwork is about to be mowed down by social political seachange.
Another clue - Duck said to Peggy something like meet me in room 600 at 4:30 and not the other way around; implying that she might confuse place with time. All this is to say that everyone remembered where they were and what they were doing at 12:30pm CST November 22, 1963 when Kennedy was assassinated, when the world changed.
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You're welcome. I think a number of entertainment bloggers are themselves stuck in formulaic thinking without knowing it.
My only criticism of the show this season is it's taken its time getting rolling. Though not to the point I found it boring. But it's definitely rolling now.
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Incidentally, the quality of comments here is very high!
Mad Men is a very novelistic series, and there is much to be seen and understood.
This makes your insights all the more valuable..
Thank you very much.
The quality of comments and discussion here reflects extremely well on you, Bill...and
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Thanks, Liz!
I'm just going to say "thanks."
You don't run into good old fashioned textual analysis these days; most professional critics are facing deadlines and are looking to be quoted.
Of course, most entertainments aren't worth the effort.
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You're very welcome. It's not really my field, but it is a fascinating show.
Sally's teacher Miss Farrell reminds me very much of Tony Soprano's girlfriend played by Annabelle Sciorro in a kick-ass role as a very unstable (and eventually suicidal) personality -- a luxury car sales person, no less.
I am afraid Miss Farrell is going to take Don on a very unpleasant trip.
Yes, I sense a lot of danger there, too, similar to Tony & Annabelle's characters. Remember when Bets had her retaliatory s.ex with a stranger? Once she senses another affair, she'll fly into Rocky's right hand man's arms. Lots of highly combustible characters are percolating. Maybe it's a good thing that Sing-Sing is down the road.
I'm in my 20s so come here to get the *beyond* behind the lines take on the Mad Men references. Most of them go flying over my head so fast I don't even notice. Some of you are so delightfully deliberate about the nuances of this tv show, it warms my heart.
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There's a lot of good participation here.
I would never have predicted a Peggy and Duck hookup, so I loved that MM caught me by surprise with that one. But I have to say I don't blame her. She's in limbo at work because the secretaries shun her and the boys who are her peers don't look at her as a peer. Don just chewed her out, so when Duck shows he wants both her brain and her body, she gives in to the pleasure. The opening scene of her arm draped over the edge of the bed was pure pleasure.
The problem is, knowing Duck, this is pure calculation, so I'm worried about poor Peg. That girl's screwd, so I hope she'll figure out how to maneuver both Duck and Don.
That's one thing about TV; twist & turn all you want, but at the end of the day (season) you KNOW the major stars are gonna end up back where they're supposed to be. Elizabeth Moss is, I believe, named right after Jon Hamm in the credits...
Their journeys will be fun, but Peggy & Joan both WILL be working @ S-C, this and/or next season. I'd even say it's inevitable Don & Roger get back to being friendly, or at least cordial.
Kinda like you knew Jim would be back in Scranton in "The Office" & Lloyd will be working with/for Ari in "Entourage
Dynamics certainly may change...D
I agree Elizabeth Moss isn't going anywhere, but she could very well leave to take on Macy's, Hermes and other "skirt" accounts for Grey's and get lured back to SC. It wouldn't surprise me if she finds Duck taking credit for all her ideas. She won't get raises because some man has to support his family and she doesn't. She'll be the prototype of all the working women issues of the '60s.
I'm also betting that either Joan or Betty will be used to show how difficult life was for a woman post-divorce. She won't be able to get a credit card without her husband signing off, he will be able to empty the bank account without her approval, etc.
You're right. They're not going to write the main characters out of the show.
A whole episode without a glimpse of Joan? Mad Men without Joan is like a day without sunshine. (Hey, that gives me a great idea for the Minute Maid campaign! Honey, get me some coffee, empty this ashtray, and see if we have Anita Bryant in the Rolodex.)
I think I read somewhere that her contract is to appear in 10 of 13 episodes.
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I believe that is correct.
I agree. Was that really her singing the French love song while playing the accordion?
I feel like this was a big "the times they are a changin'" type of episode. I truly feel like if those kids hadn't mugged Don then he would have driven them all the way to Niagara Falls. He thought he was going to escape, like he did in California, but he didn't get far enough. It was one of the death knells of the optimism of the sixties. You just can't pick up kids and take their drugs like you used to be in 1960...or 1962...
It's getting closer and closer to the end of Camelot. Though I must say that I was glad to see Don get some actual consequences to his actions.
Also, I am curious to see what people think about Peggy doing it with Duck after being completely torn down by Don. That is one of the most interesting parts of the show to me.
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Peggy was already intrigued by Duck. She absolutely loved the Hermes scarf. No one's ever given her a gift like that before. And Duck is an older, good-looking, sophisticated guy, an experienced lover which her previous flings have not been.
I viewed Peggy's encounter with Duck as an impulsive act. She seemed to be reacting to Don's poor treatment toward her. She's a bit like the female character in "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" ~ a Catholic girl looking to break free of her inhibitions and coming to terms with her sexuality. Hope she'll have a happier ending.
Regarding "a few odd, apparently anomalous, references".
1963 elections: Remember that at the Junior Club gathering we heard the Francis was the former Westchester Republican County Chairman. There were plenty of elections in Westchester in 1963 at the county, town and local levels. First, if the Drapers live within the Village of Ossining, it has elections of trustees every year. At the county level the District Attorney, County Clerk, and various judges would definitely have been up for election.
1964 Presidential Race: Nelson Rockefeller announced his candidacy on July 24.
Draft Reference: The writers blew this one because the marriage exemption from the draft was not reinstated by President Kennedy until the fall. On the other hand, the draft was a major concern for young men throughout the Cold War years. For example, the title character of the musical "Bye Bye Birdie", featured on Mad Men this season, was a rock star who has been drafted, as Elvis had been in real life. The draft calls had grown considerably since Kennedy took office. The Army increased in size by over 15% during his brief administration. As for Vietnam, there had been a steady escalation of the American involvement in the war throughout the Kennedy years as can be seen in the casualty numbers: 16 deaths in 1961; 52 in 1962; 118 in 1963. Some of the men who were drafted in the summer of 1963 found themselves in Vietnam in the summer of 1965.
Huge difference between Kennedy and Johnson on Vietnam. Man, if we had "only" 118 killed in a year in Afghanistan there'd be a lot less controversy.
Interestingly, in 2007 we had 117 American troops killed in Afghanistan. The number increased every year of the Bush administration (except 2006 when it declined by 1). I suppose that's why Obama ran on his escalate the war platform.
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I didn't sense that Henry Francis was very interested in local elections. The campaign manager post he's up for is in Rockefeller's 1964 presidential campaign.
As for Vietnam, there was simply no build-up in 1963.
As Tip O'Neil said (and titled his book) "All politics is local". Given that Henry Francis said he was from Mt. Pleasant, the town that adjoins Ossining, that his boss lived in that same town, and as I mentioned, he was the former chairman of the Westchester County Republican Committee, I'm sure he was interested in the local races. I have never met a politician who didn't suggest I get out and vote even in off-year primaries.
As for Vietnam, we can agree to disagree about whether a 1,678% increase in troops over 30 months was a build-up, but there was a certainly a rapid build-up of public awareness that the limited war was going badly that summer. David Halberstram was reporting that the centerpiece of the Kennedy plan, the Strategic Hamlet Program, was a failure. Pictures of Buddhist protests, including the self-immolation of a young monk that June, were in the papers and on television almost every day. The Kennedy administration was secretly plotting to overthrow the Diem government while publicly demanding the dismissal of Diem's brother Nhu. In some ways it was similar to the situation in Afghanistan today with a failing government, an increasingly poor security situation and record U.S. casualties. One big difference was that there was much more attention paid to international news back then and there were fewer other big stories.
I've been wondering if Don will become an anachronism in the upcoming years as the culture is about to lurch really hard beneath what these guys know. How long does it take for the target audience of the marketers to start laughing at the square marketing that continues up through the seventies?
I have the impression that this last episode shows us some pretty big chinks in Don's armor. He is beginning to be reactive rather than proactive. A guy like Don should have seen what was going to happen with his hitchhikers. It's like he went blind so he could try to be young and hip rather than facing the fact that 'the first one now will later be last'. It seems he was not very adept at avoiding being steamrolled into signing the contract. I know why he did it, but before that, he seemed to be too affected by the previous attempts to get him to sign. It's like he's becoming lost in this world where nearly everything has a place.
Maybe the whole era is merely tottering upon some kind of fulcrum just awaiting for the upcoming Kennedy assassination to knock it all over.
Has anybody thought about how badly these guys are going to dress in the next decade?
Not everyone jumped into wide lapels, double-knit polyester & bell bottoms.
Plenty of men/women remained classy, where only the tie-widths & hemlines changed.
Well, he was pretty drunk!
>>>> I have the impression that this last episode shows us some pretty big chinks in Don's armor. He is beginning to be reactive rather than proactive. A guy like Don should have seen what was going to happen with his hitchhikers.
I wouldn't be so sure that there wasn't a segment of people hip enough to know they'd be getting drafted in a year or more. From what I've read of ancient history, some young people saw it coming before it came to be.
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How would this JD see it coming?
He also saw the Kennedy assassination coming?
I don't know. I just read once where someone said Phil Ochs was singing about the war before it was even 'the war'. I'm not saying JD was a genius or anything. Just that he may have picked up on some of that 'we're going to war' talk that may have been around. Maybe he had an uncle in the pentagon who taught him how to carjack, but not very well as he left the car behind.
Yes. That's it. JD was trained by the CIA to kill innocent people, however, he was a failure at it and kept stealing their wallets instead. But he was privy to secret information from that guy who told Kennedy and Johnson that we needed a war. The guy's name was McNamara or something. McNamara would teach classes on how to use a garret on a waiter in order to avoid paying for a meal. JD was one of his students. McNamara wanted to a war with Vietnam because that nation dared to use the letters N, A, and M, which were a part of his own name. McNamara's secret desire was to change his name to Vietnamara. This is documented as fact. McNamara was a sick man.
I barely lived back then in those dark times before self flushing toilets and phones that tell you who is calling.
I'm sorry. I forgot to mention that no one knew Kennedy would be assassinated because the KGB, the Mafia, Oswald, Johnson, Mrs. Kennedy, the CIA, and that guy who did the voice of Deputy Dawg hadn't yet made the decision to do so.
(I'm just kidding and not trying to be a jerk or anything. My job is to make people laugh, or be confused)
Darn, I forgot Castro.
One thing that is odd is how the setting takes place in Ossining. Being that Matthew Weiner is such a perfectionist there must be a reason for this as suburbs such as Scarsdale or New Rochelle would have been more realistic for the ad men of 1963. Ossining - Sing Sing's hometown - why?
It is especially strange after Don's windfall from the sale of Sterling Cooper. The $500,000 adjusted for inflation would be the equivalent of more than $3.5 million today.
I checked the 1960 census and at that time the population of Ossining was overwhelmingly blue collar. Many of these residents would have been employed at the Chevrolet assembly plant in North Tarrytown. The Hudson River and the adjoining railroad in those days were still seen as industrial resources and its shore was lined with factories.
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In any event, the Drapers live in a decidedly upscale area.
Cooper knows that Don is really Dick Whitman? I could have missed it, but I don't think anyone at Sterling Cooper knows anything about Don's past. I think Cooper was just referring to their similarities when he claims that he "knows something" about Don.
Yeah, well, that is one of the biggest scenes in Season 1 ...
don't really remember that...
You did miss it. In an earlier episode Pete intercepted a pkg meant for Don that revealed his true identity. Pete then tried to use the secret to extort a promotion from Don by threatening to tell Bert Cooper. Don called Pete's bluff. Pete told Cooper in Don's presence. Cooper shamed Pete into feeling like the weasel that he is by saying he couldn't care less. But as this blog aptly points out, Cooper, it turns out, was holding the secret for it's optimal future value.
I remember that scene, however I think it's a stretch to say that Bert Cooper is "keeping the secret that Don Draper is really Dick Whitman." Bert Cooper has no idea who Don is, and neither does Pete who actually knows more than Cooper does.
Cooper knows Don's true identity and Don knows he does and is now stuck. Still, I have faith that Don will find his way through this. He is one wily fox.
I'd also like to see Don find a way out after selling his soul to the company store, as "Sixteen Tons" puts it. Cooper's knowledge that Don is not who he says he is (with personal and legal complications) can be used as leverage against Don over and over again.
Don's outburst at the end of the episode where he says that he no longer wants any contact with Roger Sterling is just emotional -- and bad business politics. Obviously, he has to continue to work with Roger in some capacitiy, and it's not Bert Cooper who would control such a thing. (How many of us work only with people we like or love?)Roger's in a weak position there at the company. The English didn't even put Roger on the org chart (he was written in as on staff to Bert Cooper, who's on staff). Don could manipulate Roger as he did in the episode where he got him sick on oysters, martinis, and cheesecake. Or Don could squeeze him out similar to the way he squeezed out Duck.
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Bert Cooper knows all about Don Draper being Dick Whitman.
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