Agree on many points.

And I loved the scene with Joan “coaching” her husband for his interview where once again it was revealed that she was better at the job of psychologist than her husband would have been, but she doesn’t have the education or the gender to be taken seriously back then.

And the speech of her husband was also about playing by the lying rules of the 1960s success myth and her violent reaction to how women of the times ended up finding out they were giant traps to lives of suck where you end up just being highly decorative house slaves.

And I think on the Betty/Don thing. It’s interesting how much he was afraid of the truth and how stark Betty’s lack of options are in the era before no-fault divorce, but I found it interesting that their first real connection in a long time was when he finally broke down over Adam to give her a glimpse of something absolutely true.

Back… and to the left.

Back… and to the left.

http://i34.tinypic.com/15x094o.jpg

Joan’s hard work and dues-paying was mainly in the department of being attractive.

Hey!  Wait a second!  She was also quite good at reading those scripts ... only to have the job taken from her and given to some guy.  I don’t think Joan did the vase-to-head bit because she felt she’d paid her dues as well; I think she knows perfectly well that she’s got talents (scriptreading, shredded-foot triage, interview coaching, accordion-playing) that seriously outstrip her husband’s but that have no outlet, and she just couldn’t stand listening to Mr. Privilege whine about the unfairness of it all.

We are reminded that Don doesn’t give Betty much money—-their joint checking account has $200 in it, even though they are sitting on over half a million from the sale of Sterling Cooper alone, and Don’s got $5,000 stashed in his desk.  Faced with these realities, the truth about Dick Whitman is a joke.  Don Draper, particularly the image of the faithful husband, is an illusion, but it’s the one that obscures the fact that her reality is that she doesn’t have a lot of options.

Also Don did grow up in the 30s… the era of not trusting banks and stashing cash in the house.
I was for a minute thinking that it might be a holdover from that but I’m pretty sure it’s about 75% Don being the way he is and 25% that. OK less.
Just how much the old “Don” affects the new Don doesn’t seem to be that much on the surface but I’m willing to give that a bit more weight. I think it might be a large part of why Connie Hilton likes Don.

Also -Hilton sidenote - he was mentioned as sponsoring and giving the main address of the first 15 National Prayer Breakfasts a few times in the book that I’m reading now , Jeff Sharlet’s The Family The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. Hmm…. I’m wondering if that will surface. Probably not. But Hilton’s life is a rich vein.

Where WAS Connie?  I guess he’s still pouting about the moon.

Joan only good at being attractive and sexy? Which show have you been watching for three years?

Joan managed that advertising agency so it ran like a finely tuned watch. If you didn’t see that (even before she aced the scriptreading job), you were given several examples of the toad Hooker fouling up and falling short before Joan even ankled out of the building.

The firing freak out—as Joanie pointed out, if she’d been informed of the cut, she would have had Burt Peterson’s hat, coat and rolodex ready to hand him as she walked him to the elevator.

Hooker slackly gave Peterson the opportunity to go back to his office and go gorilla on the steno pool.

It was Joanie who not only knew where the first aid kit was, but apparently had made sure she had Red Cross First Aid training, and moved fast enough with that tourniquet to save Guy’s life, if not his foot. All while Hooker stood about gape jawed.

(And I doubt that a Joan in charge would have allowed a secretary to pivot a lawnmower around the agency desks—if you recall, she fired Jane for merely sneaking into Burt Cooper’s office after hours.)

Joanie made the job of office manager look easy, but it obviously took skills and smarts and hard work, that her male counterpart, Moneypenny, doesn’t have the cojones for.

Roger is recommending her not only for affection’s sake—it’s obvious he knows the value of her work, and that’s why Joan is “expensive.”

Everyone seems to be forgetting what really set Joan off in the vase-to-the-head scene: Dr. Whiney said, “You don’t know what it’s like having planned and worked for something only to have it not work out!” I’m paraphrasing the second part of the sentence from memory, but I remember very clearly that the vase was her version of “Fuck you, I know exactly what it’s like, ‘Dr.’ McRapey Thumblethumbs!”

Did I say that was all she was good at?  Let me reread that…...

No, I did not.  Because I would not.

I’m saying that from Joan’s perspective, she’s put a lot of hard work into being attractive, capable, sexy, and vivacious, and she was *explicitly* husband-hunting.  That she has all these other skills and capabilities have always been, in her mind, nice, but secondary to the main goal of getting a husband and quitting her job.  Which is what she did.  What she set out to do.

The reading job only confirmed to Joan that no one would give her a break in any other way, so husband-hunting was it. 

Don’t put down the sexy, vivacious thing.  That’s *hard work*.  And like all other things, Joan put her mind to it and achieved it.  The show was clever to grasp this, and how a man like her husband can’t see that.

I’m rereading it one more time, and yes, I did NOT say that it was ALL Joan was good at.  I did say she put in her hard work and her dues at projecting a very marriageable image, and it is not working out for her.

I did NOT, I repeat, NOT say that.

Or, put another way, if Greg was a really great fisherman, I doubt we’d assume that’s what he’s saying when he says he’s done his work, paid his dues.  Joan was great at her job, and should have had an even better job.  But in her eyes, her formidable talents at the office were like being a good fisherman—-enjoyable, but not going to get you anywhere in life.  She placed her money on marrying well.  We don’t have to like it, but there it is.

Now, she’s likely realizing fishing was where it was at, but in order to get back into professional fishing, as it were, she’s going to have to use her man-charming skills.  If her phone call back to Sterling Cooper was *just* about her competence, she would have called Don.  But she bet on Roger.

I think what Amanda meant by Joan’s dues paying is that she was only allowed to be attractive, but not really achieve in the way that she very clearly can.

Joan is not just intelligent, she is an auto-didact.  She teaches herself whatever it is she needs to learn in order to get what she wants, in order to move herself closer to achieving this or that goal.  This is a woman who knows exactly how to dress herself for maximum effect—not only that, she can spell out the steps to arranging oneself thus to other, less worldly or aware women (i.e. Peggy, at the beginning of Season I).  She got that way by observing, analyzing what she saw, and breaking it down into components, such as which dress silhouette and color seems to enhance the stride of a woman built like her; she also taught herself to modulate her voice and inflections depending on whom she is addressing.  Indeed, an enormous clue (that Joan is a keen observer and autodidact) was her profound grief at learning of Marilyn Monroe’s death: I think Joan had long studied Marilyn’s style and voice, having witnessed their effect on men, and not only did she identify with her, she decided those things—the look, the walk, the voice—were something she could easily teach herself to carry off.

Joan also made a point of studying etiquette, social protocol (i.e who sits where at a dinner party), and even foreign idiosyncrasies—to the point where she can even make a joke out of the British synonyms for various American objects and customs.

All this, and she is an astute student of psychology—an early (if unwitting) practitioner of cognitive therapy, even.  She has figured out how to re-frame things so as to diminish any negative affect while simultaneously polishing her bona fides: she hasn’t fallen on hard times to the point of having to work as a sales clerk at Bonwits—no!  She’s just filling in, she’s running the whole department, in fact.  Thus, the impression she gives is not only one of Joan being an incredibly good sort for helping out (whom was she filling in for?  She cleverly doesn’t let on), but also one wherein she’s a quick study, an indispensable ally who was just doing a favor for Bonwits or something.

I would bet that Joan is a first-born child.  And that she can cook, dance, write, paint walls, wire appliances, and speak a foreign language or two—all things she taught herself.  If she had to learn how to sail, play tennis, or drive a racecar, you know she’d be better at it than 99% of the women on the first day of class—that’s how her brain is wired.

Thing is, as others have pointed out, being a Multi-talented Autodidact While Also Female didn’t mean a whole lot back then, in terms of having power, or even just a few options other than Wife and Mommy.  I’m not sure it’s all that different today, sadly.

So while I agree with Lauren Bans that last night’s episode was about people getting smacked over the head with reality (literally, when it comes to Joan’s husband), I think it was ultimately still about the larger show’s theme about creating reality through perception.

And with the season’s theme about how people cope with different kinds of change. In this episode, particularly, the change that comes with having our illusions about the past and ourselves, about all the bad or mistaken decisions we’ve made, shattered or exposed or re-visited. It’s not surprising that the topic of psychology (and personae/masks) plays a part in this episode.

Is it easier to just stay who you are, or start over? Don’s too old to indulge in Oliver Twist’s (or Suzanne’s, or his impatient kids’) optimism about change in the future, and he’s too young with too many responsibilities to seriously consider “reviewing the situation” and trying to do a Fagin-like bug-out with his little hoard.

And yes, women had far fewer options than men at the time when it comes to redressing those changes—still. I love how they show Betty slowly refusing to accept that situation and taking charge: from peeking in Gene’s desk drawer; to talking with Milton LowBar, esq.; to putting Don in his place regarding his privacy, “his” name (which she took); getting him a drink but not fixing him one; telling him he never understood money; talking about bringing his secrets into “her house.” (the acting, especially Hamm’s but also Jones’, was top-notch in conveying this subtle power shift)

Interesting, too, to see that they begin their detente by sitting on what used to be “his” side of the bed, and is now hers.

And I loved the scene with Joan “coaching” her husband for his interview where once again it was revealed that she was better at the job of psychologist than her husband would have been, but she doesn’t have the education or the gender to be taken seriously back then.

In the spirit of the coaching, here’s another little aptitude question to be pondered from the current corporate world:

Office manager + psychologist = ?

I’ll just bet she’s seen executives fall apart—you have to be one of the last people standing in an office undergoing layoffs to see that, and there’s always one department that survives whole and intact (I like how they keep the various arcs about the changing social compact going in a low key when another takes centre stage—really fine writing and show-running).

Also, here’s a question—when Don said, re: horseflesh, “I’ve eaten it,” Roger (I think) gave him a Significant Glance.  At first I assumed Don meant that he had eaten horse during the war, but Roger is a vet too, right?  So if that were the case, I’d expect him not to be shocked about that.  Is eating horse a sign that Don grew up poor?  Was it common for poor rural Americans to eat their horses during the Depression?

Roger spent the 1930s bumming around Paris, where horse is a delicacy. He’s surprised that Don had eaten horse not because he’s shocked that Don was so poor that he had to (as probably was), but because he’s surprised that someone of Don’s class might have such refined tastes that he’d have had the opportunity to have chosen to do so. That kind of poverty is alien to Roger.

I found the Roger sub-plot interesting ... of all the characters, he seemed to swallow the regrets of the past with the most grace. As always with Roger, though, it seems more due to class privilege than to inherent good character. He enjoys the rare option of being a “character in someone else’s novel,” and to re-invent himself—what Don’s always wanted.

I suspect Jane is going to find out and she’s going to perceive Joan as a massive threat.  All Roger’s proclamations this week sound weird, but once Jane gets pissed about this, oh irony.

I think it’s just as likely that Jane was complaining about Roger’s daughter in the preview.

Here’s a lovely version of “Where is Love,” by the way:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljSphKThejg

One thing to note in this regard: unlike Oliver, Don ran away from love (his adoptive mother’s and “Uncle Mack” and his half-brother’s) when he was in his late teens—after Arch had died. Perhaps this is Don’s great regret.

Hoboes travel alone. Gypsies travel with their people.

Did Roger actually say he was in love with his wife?  Or did he say he’s married now, and that he wasn’t in love with the old customer, and let her draw the obvious wrong conclusion?

Almost everywhere else, the online analysis of this episode, “The Hobo and the Gypsy”, has been widely mixed on whether the creators have overdone the symbolism of said hobo and gypsy. Some viewers appreciate the easy metaphor of Don = Hobo = Halloween Masks. For others, the title and the last line, “Who are you supposed to be?” are ironies too painfully and unsubtly “on the nose”.

“I’ll always love Minnie Mouse,” declares Sally. Bobby states, “I want to be an astronaut,” the everyboy line of the decade—I remember saying it myself, and making my parents smile. Minnie is a character of the Jazz Era past, and astronauts were a byword for the beckoning future. But at the end of the episode, these roles, and their outlooks, are reversed.

The hobo, like the cowboy, was already a part of a romanticized American past. It was harmless to let your kid beg at the door like a bum, because the nation’s prosperity was unparalleled. Poverty was just a game you could play at, since your middle class children need never know it.

Most online commentary focussed on the “Hobo” because of Don’s youthful encounter, and the class issues. So having it repeated in the last scene that Don is a secret drifter with his own code, a stranger in a mask at the door, fell flat to most commenters, especially that final line.

One can accept its obviousness as a kind of period approach to irony, a la Rod Serling, but it’s actually deeper than it first appears, and this harder-to-discern metaphor may be meant to evoke the very presumptiousness of the characters in the viewers. To cap the ending, instead of the Twilight Zone theme we get “Where Is Love?” from Oliver!

Evoking Oliver Twist reminds us of the shaming of a self-satisfied Empire, of the wider, endemic issue of social justice, something Betty is still no better at than Don, and something that the future will not wait much longer for Americans to demand of each other.

Which brings us to the “Gypsy”.

The gypsy woman Sally is dressed as is the same stereotype that existed in Dickens’ day—and despite the reality of the Romani people, this old racial stereotype easily persists to our own century—and like any stereotype, it comes with its tropes—tropes of a woman’s power, btw. Notably:

1) Foretelling the future (Sally even holds a crystal ball)
2) The Gypsy Curse

The gypsy woman differs strikingly from the stereotypical Halloween witch. A witch can curse, but does so with simple malevolence, out of hate or envy (and Bewitched, with its good witch and many parallels to Mad Men, will not premiere until the fall of ‘64). The Gypsy Curse is always one of response to injustice, its power deriving from the transgression of the person being cursed. They know they deserve it.

The gypsy, then, is the underplayed part of the symbolism—the gathering future, the curse coming from injustice—and this is not such a shallow or obvious irony, as I haven’t seen anyone online analyze it yet, despite “Gypsy” standing right there in the episode’s title.

The unspoken Trick, not the obvious Treat. Social Justice to be exacted to shame indifferent Consumerism.

Revenge for injustice echoed in the stories of Betty, Joan and even Roger. The angry ignorant consumers who are cursed to keep killing ponies to feed their darling beasts.

Hence, “Who are you supposed to be?” is more than an obvious play on the common Halloween phrase, because Don and Betty’s masks are obvious, even to each other now. This becomes the question of America, as its manifest destiny is over and its crimes are called to measure against its ideals.

Where is Love?

But before justice is pursued, the magic curse must first be felt. Bullets will soon fly from schoolbooks, and a common mound of grass will be transformed into the eternal haunt of unknowable, malevolent spirits.

That’s the tragedy of Joan and what makes her story so bitterly compelling. She’s stuck with an unappreciative asshole.

At the moment.

America did have “at-fault” divorce laws at this period, didn’t it?  Joan sounds clever enough to manipulate her husband into literally screwing up…

(Disclaimer - wasn’t able to finish first series of the show.  Mainly due to being in serious pain when i had it out.)

Phoenician:  New York still has “at fault”  divorce laws.  It took me ten years to get a divorce from my wife, even though I was the one committing adultery.  When my kids got to be old enough, I quit my job and moved to another state.

Does Amanda shatter her music snob credentials by taking a post title from an old Who lyric?

19-

I think you are absolutely right on that symbolism. My first response to the gypsy outfit was that this was just another hint that Sally would be spending the early 70s calling herself Galadrial Moonchild and running with the hippie movement, but more broadly, it is a big hint to the growing fights against injustices.

All season there have been injustices in the background. MLK and the black characters against the inequalities, segregation, and literal murder of those fighting for right, the teacher standing up in her own way to teach her privileged children about the larger world, Sally watching the burning monk, Betty finding out about the lack of no-fault divorce and what that means, Peggy legally being denied equal pay for better work, Sal fired essentially because he was gay and that could be used against him, etc…

In short, yes.

On a separate note, am I the only one who strongly suspects that Joan won’t need to divorce her waste of a husband because he’s going to get very killed in Vietnam?

a) I unabashedly love the Who.  The reality is that music snobs, especially after their novice period, are not so easy to shame.

b) I knew someone would figure out the reference.

Love ain’t for keepin’.

Also Don did grow up in the 30s… the era of not trusting banks and stashing cash in the house.
I was for a minute thinking that it might be a holdover from that but I’m pretty sure it’s about 75% Don being the way he is and 25% that. OK less.

The fact that Don was keeping that stash a secret from Betty makes me think it was there in case he wanted/had to jet all of a sudden.

Who did Roger Sterling call to talk Joan up anyway? Was it Duck?

Whatever is profound loves masks; what is most profound even hates image and parable. Might not nothing less than the opposite , be the proper disguise for the shame of a god? A questionable question: it would be odd if some mystic had not risked something to that effect in his mind. There are occurrences of such a delicate nature that one does well to cover them up with some rudeness to conceal them; there are actions of love and extravagant generosity after which nothing is more advisable than to take a stick and give any eyewitness a sound thrashing: that would muddle his memory Some know how to muddle and abuse their own memory in order to have their revenge at least against this only witness: shame is inventive.

It is not the worst things that cause the worst shame: there is not only guile behind a mask - there is so much graciousness in cunning. I could imagine that a human being who had to guard something precious and vulnerable might roll through life, rude and round as an old green wine cask with heavy hoops: the refinement of his shame would want it that way.

On a separate note, am I the only one who strongly suspects that Joan won’t need to divorce her waste of a husband because he’s going to get very killed in Vietnam?
No, but everyone expecting Joan to leave her husband, or lose him in some fashion or another, is probably projecting.  Joan is who she is, and she’s almost certainly going to stick with her husband.

and she just couldn’t stand listening to Mr. Privilege whine about the unfairness of it all.
YES. That’s exactly what I thought. All that anger at being passed over because of her gender, while lesser men are rewarded.

And getting rid of Greg would make things too easy. As much of a choad as he is, he’s added some compelling plot points.

I knew someone would figure out the reference.
In my own insuffereable music snob youth, long ago, when dinosaurs still walked the earth (and formed into bands) the Who were considerered respectable, even cool.

I’m so old apparently I was totally unaware there was any issue with the artistic credibility of the Who.

On a separate note, am I the only one who strongly suspects that Joan won’t need to divorce her waste of a husband because he’s going to get very killed in Vietnam?

Lot’s of people are wishing this, but Greg’s going in as a surgeon - it’s not like he’s going to be a medic or otherwise anywhere near combat, so a Vietnam-related death would have to be an accident/contrived scenario along the lines of Henry Blake getting killed in a plane crash on his way home. As one of the MM actors said in an interview once, “That’s not our show.” I think the best we can hope for is that he disappears overseas for a few years and possibly leaves Joan for a nurse or something similarly trite.

Apropos of my comment @ #8: http://www.lippsisters.com/2009/10/27/you-dont-know/

I was hoping the show would make a connection between Roger’s rejection of the Dog Food Lady and Sal’s rejection of the Lucky Strike Guy.  Looks like LSG is in the preview for next week, so there’s still time.

I suspect we will see more rich irony with Roger’s new-found fidelity to his new wife.  She no doubt was aware of his philandering ways and will have a high index of suspicion.  Roger will take grief while he’s being relatively chaste because of his past ways.

America did have “at-fault” divorce laws at this period, didn’t it? 

PIATOR - NY State had only one ground for divorce up until the 70s: Adultery—which is why old movies always showed estranged couples hiring professional co-respondents or going to Reno, and also why the attorney asked if Betty could prove adultery in a way that would stand up in court. 

(Now, if you’re legally separated in NY for more than a year, the separation itself is a ground, which is effectively a no-fault.)