The problem with ‘shipping is that that typically, it’s part of an unrequited love story between two people who don’t really have much in common, much less enough to build a life on. Niles/Daphne, Jim/Pam, etc. MOST of those are about infatuation, not love. Niles looks at Daphne in the first episode and falls head-over-heels with her and that’s that.

I think it’s pretty trite to not be able to view male/female relationships as anything except a ramp toward a romantic finish. I think it makes it a lot harder for women who have close platonic relationship with straight men. That said, I’d much prefer a Jack/Liz, Don/Peggy hookup to most of the other crap because the whole point is that whatever could happen would be built on top of a very strong friendship, where two people really understand one another, go to bat for one another, and I could see a romantic relationship last more than 6 months once the novelty of actually getting the object of your infatuation has worn off. Not that Don and Peggy are there yet, but last night was a huge step in the right direction.

There are only a few episodes left this season (6?) and each season tends to end in an “oh shit” moment, and it’s anyone’s guess how that’s going to play out. After all, Peggy is not Don’s equal. She is his ambitious underling and we’ve been watching Don teeter all season. A show ready to go to seed might show Peggy as a stabilizing force in Don’s life, but I think the writers still have some conflict left in them.

Also, I wasn’t as annoyed by the ghost imagery as everyone else seems to be. Some people, on waking suddenly from REM sleep (like, for example, if you were having the whiskey woozies on an uncomfortable couch), do in fact see “visions” in front of them, projected by their still-active unconscious mind on their waking room. I’ve had this happen and I figure this is what happened with Don, because your dreams are typically going to reflect things that happened to you during your day. He was thinking about Anna and Samsonite luggage. So on waking up suddenly, he had a brief glimpse of Anna carrying Samsonite luggage. He may have interpreted this as a ghost, most people would. But I’d like to think the writers were just talking about a hypnopompic state.

I’m really torn myself because I think it could mark a downward slide in the series.  I hate the whole “will they or won’t they” crap. 

But, (and I didn’t even know Draper and Peggy were based on actual people, that’s a surprise for me) I did feel that when you have two people that connected, that close, and who see each other that deeply, both of whom are creative forces, then that is going to be some mind-blowing sex.  And I don’t see many people walking away from that.  The problem is, this is tv.  I think in real life, that would be one hell of a relationship, the best either had ever had.  But on tv it could just come off as cheap.  So, that’s a big challenge for the Mad Men creative team.  And if they could really pull that off, then they will have set a whole new standard.

But I really have no idea if they are going there or not.  THere are after all, so many other places these two could conceivably go.

I don’t have a problem with the ghost imagery.  Don hallucinated about his father all the time.  It’s another example of Mad Men’s use of curve ball callbacks.  The writers are always putting an interesting spin on something we’ve seen before.  We saw it last week when Don essentially gave the Bizzaro version of the “Wheel” speech to the Life cereal guys.  This week it’s Don holding Peggy’s hand, a callback to the first season, but with completely different dynamics and implications.

Eh, I wasn’t crazy about the ghost either.  This was probably my favorite episode of Mad Men ever.  I thought it was riveting and amazing.  I could not believe the job Hamm did when he looked at Peggy after he got off the phone.  The whole thing was like watching the masters of theatre acting out the best play you’ve ever seen.

So I didn’t care about the ghost.  But I didn’t like it either.

To be clear, the ghost was just one sore spot in an episode that was otherwise one of the best I’ve seen.  I don’t know if it’s my favorite—-it’s hard to beat “Maidenform” or “A Guy Walks Into An Advertising Agency”—-but it’s up there.  BTW, the latter, where the foot got run over, was directed by the same woman as this one.

“Guy” was directed by Lesli Linka Glatter (most recently, she did “Chrysanthemum and the Sword”), and this one was directed by Jennifer Getzinger, who did s2’s “The New Girl,” another standout Don and Peggy episode.

A great episode overall, definitely one of the high points of the season so far.  Hamm and Moss were both spectacular.  Peggy trying (and failing) to pull it together in front of the bathroom mirror.  That utterly terrified look that flashed across Don’s face whenever the phone rang.  Peggy’s simmering, (then boiling) annoyance and anger at Don’s flip dismissal of her ideas.  And, of course, Don’s facade cracking after The Call, that look of total sorrow and anguish that splits into sobbing.  Great performances, but of course we shouldn’t forget that it works so well because of everything that’s come *before* this episode.  A great example of how masterful long-form drama can pay off.

The ghostly Anna didn’t really sit well with me, either, for all the reasons Amanda elucidates, but I can live with it.  It certainly seemed a little hackneyed, but I doubt I would call it the dumbest move the writers have ever made.  As prufrock notes, Anna’s spectral appearance is at least consistent with Don’s periodic hallucinations, especially about events from his childhood.  (Correct me if I’m misremembering, but didn’t he at one point hallucinate an event he couldn’t possibly remember: His own birth?)

As for the Don / Peggy speculation, I’m in Amanda’s camp: I really hope they don’t get together romantically/sexually, although they would have plenty of good reasons to do so.  It’s weird: Within the universe of the show, I feel like a Don/Peggy relationship could be really good for both of them, given certain conditions (Don getting sober, Don actually apologizing and changing his behavior once in a while).  It has the potential to be a respectful, emotionally satisfying, sexually hot, creatively stimulating relationship.  From the outside, as someone watching this show in the real world where the long-gestating hookup happens on television far too frequently for my taste, I really hope Peggy and Don continue to build a loving, warm co-equal friendship and partnership.  And that’s it.  Just once, for a change, let’s have an awesome relationship between a straight man and a straight woman that doesn’t lead to the bedroom.

It would really fascinating if Don’s shift towards being more open-minded to change didn’t just help him in his career, but also helped him become a better friend and ally to Peggy.  It would be nice to see him have her back more frequently, not necessarily in the sense of just supporting her ideas, but in the sense of recognizing her unique challenges as a professional woman more clearly, and using his own authority as a white male partner to back her unambiguously.  This episode gestured towards that a little bit, especially in the restaurant and bar scenes where they both “opened up”.  Peggy needs more than reassurances like, “Aw, c’mon, you’re a very pretty girl.”  She needs an ally who can call the other boys in the club on their bullshit.

At least we finally know who Dr. Lyle Evans is.

This was one of my favorite episodes, up there with the very first one, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”, and “The Wheel”. I’ve watched it at least four times already. I just love the way they developed the relationship between Don and Peggy. I’m not sure where the writers are taking the story, but they’ve done pretty well so far, so I trust that whatever the resolution it will be good. Personally, I’d rather Don and Peggy remained friends, since they both need friends much more than they need lovers. I am always afraid of major tv couples hooking up because that is usually a cheap recourse to melodrama used when writers run out of ideas. Not always, but often. I didn’t mind at all when Mulder and Scully got together in “The X Files” (anyone remembers that show?) because it was well done and it never dominated the show. I really mind House and Cuddy getting together in “House” because it’s ruined some of the basic premises of the show. But I digress. I have a weakness for wounded characters getting together when the pain feels real and not cheap, and I think both Don and Peggy are deeply wounded in a very sincere way. I am not so sure about something, though: I don’t see much chemistry between them. I see them as potential friends, but for some reason I can’t put my finger on I don’t see any romantic chemistry.

I’ve got to think Weiner and the writers didn’t make these long, fascinating arcs for Peggy and Don only for the two characters to get married.  It’s possible that if there’s a happy ending for Don by the end of the series it’ll involve him in a marriage that can contrast with the huge amount of time they developed Don and Betty’s marriage and why it didn’t work.  Isn’t Don and Peggy as co-workers just more interesting?  (Or she as his boss!)  M.Z.S. wrote yesterday that he there is no hint of sexual chemistry between the two, and I think I agree with him there.  Chemistry all over the place, but not sexual.

From a feminist perspective I thought one of the most interesting bits was the convo where Peggy was saying she didn’t get enough credit for her ideas and Don was kind of telling her to grow up.  This is such a dilemma for women.  If you point out (correctly) that something was your idea you can come off as whining or overly concerned with trivia.  But if it’s a pattern and you fail to point it out, you can seriously lose out to the person(s) who get the credit.

The problem with Don and Peggy not ending up together is that we struggle *today* with the notion that a man and a woman can have a close platonic friendship without a sexual element to it. I had a situation where a girlfriend of my best friend actually weaseled my number out of someone who really had no business giving it out so that she could call me and accuse me of stealing him from her when he was late to an event. If Don and Peggy are going to have any sort of happy ending together that doesn’t involve them pairing up as a romantic couple, they both have to end up with partners that respect the closeness of their relationship without getting jealous and flipping out. Hard enough today, I’m not sure if it would be possible back then.

My bad.  I must have been thinking of the other episode.

Something not mentioned, though I am sure others saw it (and I think it was fairly obvious) is that the ghost scene was Anna passing the “true friend” torch to Peggy, though it was terribly unsubtle.  And I think what happened in this episode is that Don adopted Peggy as his new Anna.  He needs a real friend, the kind that can tell you you are full of it when you are full of it and Peggy seemed, in this episode, to have finally taken that step where she just says what she really thinks of Don to Don.  Don, to his credit, can accept that.  In the past, Don has said what he really thought to Peggy and with no sugar-coating, but now she is saying it to him and that is an important step.  That is also what Anna did, though she always seemed to say it without any anger behind anything.  With Don and Peggy, there was anger behind some of the straight talk in this episode, but I think that anger is going to disappear and Peggy and he are going to be honest with each other from here on without any animosity behind it.  That’s how real friendships work.  As for romance, maybe yes, maybe no, but to me that is the least interesting prospect, while a real honest friendship between them is much more interesting.

Huh, I didn’t interpret it as a ghost.  I chalked it up to a drunken, semi-conscious hallucination.  He consciously didn’t want to deal with the fact that she’d died, but he did need to deal with it, so his dreaming mind brought her forward.  I have those kinds of waking dreams all the time (not due to alcohol—I usually get them when my sleep schedule is seriously messed up).  I never once assumed that it was a ghost, or that I was being abducted by aliens or possessed by demons or any other supernatural thing that some people leap to when they have them.  As someone else upthread mentioned, Don has had these kinds of hallucinations before, like when he was warming up milk for Betty and imagined he saw his own birth.

I think Don and Peggy’s relationship is platonic.  In the “previously’s” they showed him coming to see her in the hospital.  They share a bond with each other but it feels more familial than romantic.  This episode was fantastic, and Peggy continues to be my favorite character.

Let me state up front that I don’t like ghost images.

I’m willing to take it as another alcoholic hallucination. Don’s on the edge of serious alcoholism now – at this point he can’t even stand the taste of coffee or water.

In other words, they want their country back!

Yeah, and that strange Muslim name. Bet he doesn’t have a birth certificate!

I think there’s reason to hope that things might be turning a corner for Don.

Same here, especially in the context of the season’s theme. Part of starting over successfully is acknowledging that the old rules and certainties and comforts are gone. Compartments (and closed baggage) were the old certainties, and Anna occupied a warm and remote space away from Don’s work and home lives. With Anna gone (and Betty, for that matter, although she wasn’t about that sort of comfort), it seems that Don is realising the value of someone who can move between compartments.

Keeping one’s sanity almost requires that some other person know one’s real self, as opposed to the presentation of self (i.e. the real vs. what seems to be real, which is the show’s over-arching theme). If it’s only the uncaring mice and cockroaches who see that real self, one is truly alone. Anna’s death seems to have shocked Don into understanding that he needs what he had with her, and more, and that Peggy may be the friend he needs (and vice-versa, of course – Peggy’s own storyline and continuing struggle to define herself away from old expectations could have stood on its own in this episode).

And while Don was a monster in many ways in this episode, he redeemed himself a little in my eyes for refusing to judge her when it came to Duck, and of course his searing anger when Duck called Peggy a “whore”.

There was another great bit about this at the bar, and it ties directly into the nature of friendship. When they’re discussing the rumour that Peggy has slept with Don, he says “what do you care what I think?” And then when she calls him on breaking his “don’t f*ck where you work” rule, he says “You don’t want to start giving me morality lessons, do you? People do things, right?” Friends can call each-other on their BS, friends don’t judge each-other harshly (except when they’re being self-destructive), and at a certain point friends don’t even have to use words like “Allison” or “abortion” to know exactly what they’re discussing.

It’s significant that, right after this conversation, Ali K-Os Liston. A major cultural change mirrors what may be Don’s personal one.

Re: the little hand-holding at the end.  There was much speculation at our apartment about whether or not Peggy and Don will hook up now.

Although they teased the audience a little by glamming up Peggy, it would have been lazy to do in this episode. Going forward? You never know with this show. Also, keep in mind that Don also did a little hand-holding with Joan at the Clios – that’s the hook-up I’m watching for, although it’s more of the mothering relationship that Don’s seeking alongside (and often confuses with) the friendship one. She’s certainly presented in that way: telling the boys to clean up after themselves, and Don’s comment that she knew exactly what he needed and gave it to her.

I don’t know if it’s my favorite—-it’s hard to beat “Maidenform” or “A Guy Walks Into An Advertising Agency”—-but it’s up there.

This episode was the Mad Men team at the top of their game —superb writing, acting, direction, even cinematography (note the mouse’s eye view of Peggy taking her nap) and lighting (Don’s face is shaded into a skull as he falls asleep on Peggy’s lap). So much going on, and conveyed by everyone without a bloody sledgehammer.

At least we finally know who Dr. Lyle Evans is.

I feel for Bert, but after that revelation I was less surprised that he became a Libertarian.

Also, the Queen of Perversions! I’m so glad they introduced Blankenship this season.

The ghost was filmed differently than his hallucinations, if I recall correctly.  His hallucinations have vivid details, are framed in the setting the people lived in, etc.  This was ghostly and transparent, with no setting.

I really love how complicated the Don & Peggy relationship is. I therefore think making it a romance would be kind of lame. He likes her, he respects her, he sees himself in her, he (whose mother actually was a whore) gets all defensive when Duck calls her a whore, so there’s that mother-stuff snaking in there too. He exploits her talent, he demands she essentially keep him company on her birthday, he understands what drives her. The very thing he castigates her Glo-Coat idea for is the thing she castigates his Samsonite idea for—being an interesting kernel, but not viable as a commercial. It’s a terrific bit of psychological terrain to explore, and I loved the episode for devoting so much of the hour to it.

But perhaps you’ve buried the lede: Mrs. Blankenship as Queen of Perversions! That is just too much awesome to absorb; no wonder you left it out.

I’ve got to think Weiner and the writers didn’t make these long, fascinating arcs for Peggy and Don only for the two characters to get married.

Agreed, especially when we consider the inter-generational rivalry that’s a major theme of the show. Forget marriage – the friendship might not survive once Peggy finally decides she belongs in the men’s room (so to speak – I loved that whole bit in this episode) and tries to supplant and/or exceed Don in the work world. It’s clear in this episode that, even as the friendship and personal respect develop, he still considers her callow and unseasoned and in need of mentoring.

So not only do we get great performances by Moss and Hamm, we learn Bert Cooper has no balls and Roger had a fling with Ms. Blankenship (who is the living embodiment of the lawn mower from Season 3).  At least for one week we won’t have to hear the complaints from the “nothing happens/too slow” crowd.

His hallucinations have vivid details, are framed in the setting the people lived in, etc.

When he was having that drunk party with the two hitchhiker kids at the motel, Archie appeared to him in the context of the motel room, so Don’s had that sort of hallucination before. Anna’s appearance was somewhat jarring in this episode, but it’s hard for me to think that the writers just dropped it in lazily.

Re the Samsonite stuff - I loved how they kept dancing around ideas that were later in real-life Samsonite ads.  For instance, at some point there was a Samsonite commercial where a hockey goalie blocks shots with a Samsonite, “proving” how strong they are.  There was also a real-life Samsonite ad that featured an elephant balancing atop a Samsonite because it was afraid of a mouse.  Which is alluded to several times during Don and Peggy’s fraught pitch session. 

Count me in as someone who thought the vision of Anna was a drunken hallucination.  Or maybe a dream.  I didn’t think she was a “real” ghost. 

I’m not sure that “the hand-hold means Peggy is a true friend/equal” and “the hand-hold means Peggy and Don are Gonna Do Itttt!!!!11!!1!!!” hypotheses are entirely mutually exclusive.  It’s become very clear that, while Don is willing to have an empty-headed dolly at home (or on his arm at an event, or even in bed), he really needs a woman who is his equal in order to feel fulfilled.  Until Suzanne came along last season, all his affairs were with powerful women who had ideas and ambitions of their own.  (And even Suzanne was a far cry from Betty).  It’s entirely possible that Peggy is the ambitious and creative woman Don will eventually settle down with.  As much as I want Peggy to go hang out with the artists in Greenwich Village and make out with cute boys in turtlenecks and be free. 

If you point out (correctly) that something was your idea you can come off as whining or overly concerned with trivia.  But if it’s a pattern and you fail to point it out, you can seriously lose out to the person(s) who get the credit.

I think this, and the other aspects of the subplot about Peggy figuring out how to assert herself at work without going too far, is really interesting.  But what I find especially interesting about it is that Don is right.  We don’t see it as easily because we’re used to TV not being like real life - on TV, we expect the full trajectory of a story arc over a year or two.  In real life, no, actually, you don’t get to go accept an award for your awesome idea which was totally and completely yours when you’ve only been in the business for a couple years.  Regardless of your gender.  It’s another reason I think Peggy knows that Duck’s offer of bringing her into a new firm where she would be full partner and creative director is manic bullshit.  Because there is no way in hell that she is remotely ready for that.  And it has nothing to do with her gender.

Mrs. Blankenship: Queen of Perversions would be a good album title. 

Part of me thinks that Roger Sterling’s “memoirs” are completely fabricated, or at least distorted out of all connection with reality.

glamming up Peggy

Buuhhhhwhhhaaaaahh???  Are we watching the same TV show?  Peggy certainly has stepped up from her 1960 Brooklyn parochial schoolgirl look from season 1, but I don’t know that she’s been “glammed up”.  And in this episode she’s dressed rather frumpily and gets more and more unkempt as the night wears on.  We also see her cry real ugly squishy-faced tears here, have a vomit-soaked man put his head in her lap, woken up in a very non-glamorous manner by her male coworkers, etc etc.  Peggy is probably the least glamorous woman on the show, with the exception of Mrs. Blankenship.

Gracchus: and at a certain point friends don’t even have to use words like “Allison” or “abortion” to know exactly what they’re discussing.

You mean “adoption”, right?

Though other characters on the show have used other words that are not “abortion” to describe actual or potential abortions, in other contexts.  And those are also situations that reveal a certain sort of intimacy between the speakers.  I’m thinking specifically of Betty’s conversation with Francine in season 2 about how “It’s Not A Good Time,” as well as Joan’s discussion with her doctor of certain “procedures”.

One of the successes of the show for me personally how they’ve decisively brought me around to Peggy as a character over three and a half seasons.  In the first season, my feelings about her ran from ambivalence to annoyance, and I would have been happy if Mad Men were just the Don Draper Show.  Now, I could watch a weekly Peggy Olson Show happily.  (Meanwhile, Don is teetering…)  I doubt it’s intentional—too many viewers seem to have liked Peggy from the beginning—but it really feels like the show has a Don—> Peggy arc in terms of its emotional locus.

Amanda: You’re right, now that I think about it.  The vision of Anna was presented in a visually different way.  Much more of a “soap opera ghost” look, which is why I suspect it didn’t sit well with me.

Gracchus: One thing that’s fascinating astounding about Mad Men is its treatment of morality.  Don and Peggy’s resolve to be non-judgmental about each others’ lives is an expression of this.  I’ve seen some criticisms of the show for its immoral or amoral worldview, but I’ve always been struck about how much room the show gives the viewer to form their own judgments about the characters’ behaviors, rather than hitting us over the head with constant messaging.  That said, it’s a show that definitely emphasizes the specific, personal dimension of morality rather than sweeping principles.  The show doesn’t really have villains, in the classical sense.  There are liars, cheaters, addicts, and manipulators, but hardly anyone is fundamentally villainous on some essential level (well, maybe Lee Garner, Jr.)  It even allows that some categorically “bad” behaviors are ambiguous in some circumstances, or when looked at from the right angle.  Can anyone say that Dick’s theft of Don Draper’s identify was “bad,” fifteen or so years hence, with all the ripples and aftershocks and effects of that one decision.  What I love about this show is how it acknowledges, in a way that almost no dramas will, that life is complicated and messy and the Right Thing is rarely obvious, almost never easy, and sometimes isn’t even an option.  The evolution of Peggy and Don’s relationship has been about solidifying the lack of judgment about things that don’t matter (in that relationship) so that the judgment about things that matter (like their creative work) can be sharper.  Don’s never called Peggy a loose girl for her sexual liberation or a selfish person for giving up a baby she wasn’t ready for.  He, of all people, knows that we torment *ourselves* enough over our decisions, good and bad. We don’t need someone else to pass judgment on us, *unless* we don’t see the problem.  That’s why Peggy can call Don on his alcoholism now; because A) it’s become a serious problem and B) she never called him a cad or a dog for his philandering, not even when she had to bail out him and his lover after a late-night car wreck.  She’s kept her powder dry, so to speak, in her friendship with Don, so it has that much more impact when he is really, truly, in need of friend who will be an honest broker.  This is consistent with my own experience: When a close friend who is *not* normally a overly-critical, judgmental scold tells us to shape up and stop Self-Destructive Behavior A, it *really* hits home.

Back to the Anna-ghost again:

I think that even if Anna was presented as a “ghost” and not a dream or a hallucination, I don’t think we’re meant to think that this means that the writers of Mad Men envision the universe they’ve created as a universe where ghosts exist in a bluntly “real” sense.  A lot of people, after they lose someone close to them, say that they’ve “seen” that person, that the person came to them in some way, and the like.  Some people straight up say, “I saw a ghost”.  Others understand it differently. 

To be frank, I’ve had an experience like this, even though I don’t believe in ghosts and wouldn’t call it a ghost.  Just my weird little brain trying to wrap itself around grief and loss.  In the form of “seeing” someone I knew was dead. 

I find it somewhat unrealistic that Don Draper circa 1965 would be such a skeptic in the 2010 sense of the word that he wasn’t even capable of having a moment like that.  The guy isn’t Spock, as much as he probably wishes he were.

You mean “adoption”, right?

Whoops, I stand corrected. But, let’s face it, “adoption” is standing in for a whole bunch of other unacceptable choices for “nice girls” in this era.

Are we watching the same TV show?  Peggy certainly has stepped up from her 1960 Brooklyn parochial schoolgirl look from season 1, but I don’t know that she’s been “glammed up”.

In comparison to what we’ve seen before, definitely glammed up – even more so than her more professional office look this season. Part of this is plot-driven (she thinks she’s going on a romantic birthday date with her BF), but hair and wardrobe pushed up the notch on sophistication here. She’s not at Trudy’s level, let alone Joan’s seemingly effortless one, but she’s evolving. And people are perceiving the change, even if they don’t recognise the reality underneath—that ladies’ room scene with Trudy and the younger secretary illustrates

That she becomes more unkempt over the evening is another issue, one that I think goes to illustrating intimacy and adulthood. But from what I saw they made an effort to make her look especially good this episode.

This is consistent with my own experience: When a close friend who is *not* normally a overly-critical, judgmental scold tells us to shape up and stop Self-Destructive Behavior A, it *really* hits home.

The episode was beautiful in depicting that aspect of friendship, more so against the background of squalor (rodents, dive bars, blood sports, etc.).

Opoponax, good point.  For me it was “smelling” my dad’s cigarettes at random times at my family home for years after he passed away.  I knew no one had smoked in the house for years and I couldn’t really be smelling them.  The mind is some tricky shit.

Part of this is plot-driven (she thinks she’s going on a romantic birthday date with her BF), but hair and wardrobe pushed up the notch on sophistication here.

I respectfully disagree.

From my standpoint, Peggy was wearing an ugly floral print dress (nicely tailored, but sorry, the print looks like it belongs on a plastic-covered couch in her mother’s sitting room) and a frumpy coat and little girl easter bonnet.  With her hair in an unflattering and dated style.  And then she goes downhill from there.

Even putting my mid-60’s goggles on, if I’d been there I’d have said something like, “you’re not wearing THAT on your romantic birthday dinner, are you?”  She’s dressed as if she never planned to go in the first place.

You’re right that they’ve bumped her up a notch this season, but that’s to be expected.  She’s a professional and a Manhattanite now.  Conversely, though, she still displays extremely questionable sartorial choices - which, btw, I love for that character.  She’s trying, but she still defaults to ugly sweater vests despite her best intentions.

I liked the bit where Don was rooting for Liston. It reminded me of that bit where they were trying to get the dogfood account and all the dog owners described their dogs as if they were talking about themselves. Especially when Don is being forced into acting like Ali for the papers and creating controversy by firing clients because they don’t want innovative advertising.

“adoption” is standing in for a whole bunch of other unacceptable choices for “nice girls” in this era.

Peggy couldn’t possibly have had an abortion, even if she’d wanted to - she didn’t know she was pregnant until she was in labor.

And Mad Men has depicted MANY other “good” female characters as considering, or even having had, abortions.  Joan has had at least two, and while she’s sometimes played as the vamp, she’s definitely still a “good girl”.  Betty strongly considered it and is portrayed as only holding off out of some kind of apathy/ennui/Cuban missile crisis inspired weirdness.  Francine, who is probably the ultimate good girl in the world of Mad Men, offers to connect her with the right doctor.

Peggy and Don will not hook up. Peggy’s some combination of Don’s mother* and little sister. He may find her attractive but, at this point, she’s so solidly in Don’s friend zone, she’s practically family.

*We’re to understand, correct, that Don’s continual abuse of Peggy has been a projection or displacement of his issues with his own mother? That scene in the bar when Peggy says “playgrounds” was a revelation to Don that his mother would have cared about him if she’d survived his birth, wasn’t it? And prior to that, Don casually telling Peggy in the diner that he never knew his mother, Peggy makes a series of expressions indicating that this information explains something to her about Don, I think.

Snobographer - I don’t really see Don as “continually” “abusing” Peggy, at all.  He’s a little more shouty than is appropriate in the 2010 workplace, but I’m not sure that’s meant to equal “abuse”.

And most of the time, Don is right.  Peggy wants way too much, way too fast.  She needs to learn to hear criticism, needs to learn to work with difficult people, needs to pay her dues and be one of the nobodies for a while*.  She has a tendency to get too big for her britches, partially because she has to overcompensate for her femaleness. 

*What’s the timeline on Don’s trajectory from tricking Roger into hiring him to becoming Creative Director, which is where we meet him back in 1960?

Betty strongly considered it and is portrayed as only holding off out of some kind of apathy/ennui/Cuban missile crisis inspired weirdness.

Wait, wha?

Her doctor basically told her “good girls don’t, you’re married, roll with the punches.” She went to someone for help and they told her to buck up and have the baby, so she took Don back out of desperation. I don’t think it was Cuban Missile Crisis Inspired Weirdness, there was a definite air of defeat—being so close to freedom and then having the door slammed in her face again. She went and fucked a random guy in a bar so that she could feel she “made even” with Don so that she could stomach taking him back at all because her other options were not available to her.

The person she went to for help was like, “well, I think you should wait and see, but there’s always that doctor in Albany…” - which is a fairly weak disapproval, even if the show took place now.

I interpreted Betty as just giving up on the effort it would take to actually do what she really wants.  Which is something she does over and over throughout the series.  “I could call that doctor in Albany, but ugh.  Whatever.”

Op @ 30, yeah, that dress is for stay-at-home wives for afternoon tea in the autumn—in fact, it could be worn by Peggy’s mom! I am dating myself, but there was a very definite kind of dress you wore to work, and that leafy carpety thingy wasn’t one of them. It’s even less appropriate for a romantic dinner out in New York.

Does anyone remember “The Donna Reed Show”? The character would change out of her dress and into a city appropriate suit when going shopping.  Even a housewife wouldn’t have worn that dress into the city.

If Peggy had changed into a cocktail dress in the ladies’ room and then been high-jacked by Don as she was leaving, that would have made more sense. It would have also made a bigger issue of her overnighter as the guys woke her up the next morning.

Also, “good girls don’t” is not at all what Betty’s doctor tells her.  He tells her that abortion is an option for younger girls who have nowhere else to turn - she’s married and has money and there’s no reason she can’t raise this child.  Which isn’t exactly pro-choice or anything, but it’s a far cry from the moralizing you’d expect.

LCforevah - though the fact that she was going to wear that to dinner supports Don’s bullshit excuse that he didn’t know she had plans and wouldn’t have demanded that she stay if she’d spoken up about it.  She doesn’t look like she’s going out to a fancy restaurant - she looks like she’s going home to eat a TV dinner and watch Mister Ed.

I am not crazy about Peggy’s clothes at all.  And I do think she’s the least glammed female in that office or in the other office.  But she is certainly very pretty, and she’s got a great bod.  She would not lack for male attention in any time.

But she’s no Grace Kelly (Betty), and she’s not the all American beauty that Cary Grant (Don) is normally going to end up with.  And that of course is what makes their relationship so much more interesting and any romantic relations between them, so much more exciting because what could be more boring than the prom king and queen fucking?

She’s a very exciting woman, and there’s no doubt that he sees that and understands what it means, in my opinion.

Op agreed. Don’s demand to stay would’ve had to be rewritten to account for her evening dress. I would think it was a matter of the wardrobe people not knowing, but they’ve been spot on otherwise so I’m mystified.

I think we can give Anthony Weiner more credit than immediately jumping to a Don/Peggy hookup. Love stories can be non-romantic - Anna and Don were absolutely devoted to each other and while I don’t think their relationship was devoid of romantic feelings, I do think that they eschewed sexual entanglements because they didn’t want to fuck up a great friendship. Sure, Don is an asshole, but he values genuine relationships like the kind he had with Anna. When he sobbed out to Peggy that the only person who really knew him had died, she told him that no, that wasn’t true - if there’s one thing that Don Draper is really good at, it’s pushing people away, but he didn’t push Peggy. The hand-grabbing later seemed to reinforce that - Don was cleaned-up and sober and in his ad man armor, but with the hand grab, he tacitly admitted that Peggy had seen under the shield and he wasn’t going to pretend otherwise.

That being said, if Don and Peggy do wind up together, I think it will be more complicated than “You saw me cry and I know about your fling with Duck, so let’s bang.” Regardless of how this evolves, it’s going to be interesting. Goddammit, I love this show.

See, I feel the opposite - that the dress Peggy is wearing was chosen for extremely specific reasons.

For instance the guys who do the Mad Style series on this blog have pointed out how rarely Peggy wears florals (the only other instance I can think of was also a scene about the fact that she doesn’t want the life she’s been raised to aspire to), as well as the fact that deep yellow and gold tones are her “power color”. 

I also got the sense, throughout the episode, that she didn’t really want to leave, didn’t really want to go to this dinner, and is only going through the motions in her relationship with Mark.  Under those circumstances it would be understandable for her to subconsciously dress down.  Besides, Mark isn’t the kind of guy who’s going to notice, anyway.  And remember earlier this season it was revealed that she lets him think she’s a buttoned-up virgin who thinks premarital sex is morally wrong.  He clearly likes seeing her as the frumpy proto-housewife who doesn’t really want all that Manhattan career stuff.

@Opoponax #34 - Five or six years Don goes from yokel-off-the-street to Clio-winning Creative Director. Or he was Creative Director when the show starts in 1960, which is only a year or two after he’d snowed Roger into hiring him. I wouldn’t expect Peggy to rocket to the top that fast, but for all Peggy’s done for Don and the agency, his continual assertions that she sucks at her job and should be grateful he doesn’t fire her for sucking so bad is obviously completely irrational. You don’t see him saying shit like that to Joey or Rizzo.
Couple other examples of Don kicking Peggy around: After the interview with Danny, when Peggy says it’s good to see somebody worse than her, Don says, “don’t get used to it.” Or when he excludes her from the Jantzen presentation because it’d be better not to have a girl in the room - for a pitch on a women’s product.
I’m not trying to vilify Don here, I’m just saying the point’s being made that he has issues with Peggy that go beyond the job, and Peggy’s having a baby she doesn’t know and Don’s having a mother he doesn’t know explains some of that.

In real life, no, actually, you don’t get to go accept an award for your awesome idea which was totally and completely yours when you’ve only been in the business for a couple years.  Regardless of your gender.  It’s another reason I think Peggy knows that Duck’s offer of bringing her into a new firm where she would be full partner and creative director is manic bullshit.  Because there is no way in hell that she is remotely ready for that.  And it has nothing to do with her gender.

I dunno.  She’s had the job as a copywriter for 4 and a half years by this point.  How long was Don working in the industry before he became head of creative?  Not much longer, I’d think.

@#39: Antigone - I saw that as the guys including her in the boys’ club, actually, for better or worse. They’re treating her like one of them. Like with Joey’s casual locker-room talk to Peggy about Trudy, I take it on some level Joey forgets Peggy’s not a guy like him. I think if Rizzo had caught Joey sleeping on an office sofa, he’d have woke him up in the same way.

Five or six years Don goes from yokel-off-the-street to Clio-winning Creative Director. Or he was Creative Director when the show starts in 1960, which is only a year or two after he’d snowed Roger into hiring him.

This is almost certainly not the timeline.

Remember that it’s 1965 now (and it’s obviously still a Big Deal for Don to be winning an award like that), and the show started in 1960.

In 1960 Don and Betty had two children, the eldest of whom was 6 years old.  Which means they must have been married since at least 1954.  In the last episode, it’s implied that the ad Don made which Betty modeled for was a new, or at least still current, development when Don and Roger met.  That ad is how Don and Betty met.  Which means that it cannot be any later than 1953 - and that’s assuming that Don and Betty got married and pregnant almost immediately upon meeting each other. 

At least 7 years must have passed between Scheming Don and Established Don.  Though we don’t know how long he’d been Creative Director when we met him in 1960.  Since it’s unlikely that the promotion was brand new, let’s assume he became Creative Director in 1958-59.  That means he spent at least 5 years paying his dues as a copywriter.

She’s had the job as a copywriter for 4 and a half years by this point.

Good point.  But didn’t Don say “you’ve been a copywriter for two years!” Or something like that?  Maybe he forgot how much time has passed, himself…?

...let’s assume he became Creative Director in 1958-59.  That means he spent at least 5 years paying his dues as a copywriter.

Which is only one year longer than Peggy’s been paying her dues as a copywriter, and Don’s still telling her she doesn’t know how to do her job.

And Mad Men has depicted MANY other “good” female characters as considering, or even having had, abortions. 

This is just as much about historical accuracy as the show’s inherent feminism, to boot.  Back then, women were all the more likely to have abortions, it seems.  You definitely have a lot more pro-choice activists from the pre-Roe era talking about getting an abortion than those of my generation.  I don’t think that’s a coincidence.  Better birth control means less demand for abortion.  I’ve read stuff that suggests that for some women, having 7 or 8 abortions wasn’t that uncommon.  By the 60s, that was probably reduced, but the high prevalence of the procedure was absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the number one reason it was eventually legalized.  The contradiction between the cultural expectation that women would use this service at some point and the legal issues became way too stark.

Serious question here:  am I the only one who feels like watching Don Draper getting it on with women is about as sexy as watching Rock Hudson do it?  I can’t be the only one who watches and feels awkward for the participants.

This was a fabulous episode, I have nothing to add to what people are saying.

#53, yes. Objectively, I can look at Don Draper and think, hey, what a good-looking guy, but I feel like at this point, he’s just pulled too much shit for me to find him sexually attractive. I don’t root for him to find lasting happiness in a romantic relationship because as he has demonstrated so admirably in the past, he just fucks those up. I think he needs a family more than anything else, whether a genetic family or one he assembles himself. That’s why I’m such a big fan of Dick Whitman and his platonic soul mate, Anna.

I think all of the sex scenes on the show are filmed to be deliberately awkward and not titillating at all.  No matter how attractive the characters are.

Did anyone else watch the sneak peek for next week? Don asks Miss Blankenship to place a call to Bethany. Is he canceling a date or rekindling that romance?

#55, that is a solid point.

@56 - I don’t know how I feel about Bethany. She kind of bores me, and her conversations with Don are always out of sync; he says something and she interprets it as something else and vice versa. I’m sure it’s intentional, but it would indicate that she and Don aren’t really meant to be. I think she’s just a rebound girlfriend and an excuse to evade Sally and Bobby. She’s also sort of a young Betty replicant, and I think part of Don is attracted to the familiarity of that, but doesn’t really want to go there again.

Then again I didn’t think Betty would really marry Henry Whatshisface, and yet the writers were willing to go there.  Though on the other hand they’ve also implied that Don isn’t that into Bethany and basically only asks her out when he requires a date to something.

I’ve also heard that the Mad Men folks have been cobbling together the most ridiculously inscrutable Next Time On bits lately, which cannot possibly mean anything.  So just because that’s in the sneak peek doesn’t necessarily mean anything other than that Don might need arm candy.

I agree snob@ 58.  She is boring and they’re boring together.  I think part of the problem is that after getting used to the dynamic between Don and PEggy, any of Don’s “types” are really going to be a big yawn.  It’d take a Rachel Menken to put some spark back in things.  THough I actually have always found his taste in women to be boring, with Rachel a big exception.  Betty bores the shit out of me too.

The idea of Don and Peggy being romantically involved fills me with dread.  To be honest, I dislike the fact that Peggy is still working for Don, despite given a chance to get away from him.

And my dislike of Don has become so strong that I find myself no longer caring about his love life.  Actually, I had come to that point back in Season 3.

I can see Don and Dr. Miller getting together once Don gets his head on straight. She’s his type, plus she’s an outside consultant, so he’d technically be within his don’t-shit-where-you-eat rule.
I can also see Peggy and Dr. Miller becoming good friends, which has been alluded to in little ways, like Miller entrusting Peggy with her ring and complimenting her on her Pond’s idea.

Alcoholism. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

There is a big fucking difference between being an “alcoholic” and someone who drinks too much. Even waaaay too much. There’s little question that Don depends on alcohol. No question at all that he abuses it. But that is not what being an alcoholic is. I don’t want to sound like the drunk uncle who’s all like “but I can control it, I can stop whenever I want, blaaaarrrrrph,” but there’s a sea of fucking difference between abuse, dependence, and addiction.

I’m sorry, but is there seriously no one here who went through a phase in college where they drank too much on a regular basis, or a period where they used booze to escape from a painful situation? Using the logic of some people here (including Amanda), those people are (or were) alcoholics. Well, we’re just going to have to disagree on that.

I don’t understand why people insist on projecting their own expectations and biases onto a story instead of just watching it for what it is. All that’s going on, I think, is writers showing the consequences for all that drinking (and drinking at work for that matter), and having a fucked-up personal life in general. Which was bound to happen, considering the amount of press this show has received just for the drinking that goes on.

Ultimately, there’s a reason why our society decided that maybe it’s not such a good idea to get all shit-liquored at lunch. Don’t be surprised if the show depicts some of that. But seeing this as an “alcoholism” storyline, at least as it relates to Don (and even Roger) seems a bit tortured.

Does Don occasionally drink heavily after a disappointment, a quarrel, or when the boss gives him a hard time?  Yes

When he has trouble or feels under pressure, does he drink more heavily than usual?  Yes

Did he ever wake up on the morning after and discover that he could not remember part of the evening before, even if it is clear he has not passed out?  Yes

Are there certain occasions when he feels uncomfortable if liquor is not available?  Yes

Does he sometimes feel a little guilty about his drinking?  Yes

Does he often have a reason for the occasions when he drinks heavily?  Yes

Does he often regret things he’s said or done while drinking?  Yes

Is he having an increasing number of work problems?  Yes

Does he sometimes stay drunk for several days at a time?  Yes

Does he sometimes feel very depressed and wonder if life is worth living?  Yes

Sometimes after periods of drinking, does he see or hear things that aren’t there, like a dead woman with a suitcase?  Yes

Op @ 44, wearing that dress to an evening out Is Just Not Done. Her feelings for her boring boyfriend regardless.

Wearing a casual dress out is a 2010 sensibility—it doesn’t fit the fifties or sixties when form of dress was enforced. Remember that men couldn’t enter certain places without jacket and tie, women weren’t allowed to wear trousers even if made of gold imprinted silk.

I’ve also heard that the Mad Men folks have been cobbling together the most ridiculously inscrutable Next Time On bits lately, which cannot possibly mean anything.  So just because that’s in the sneak peek doesn’t necessarily mean anything other than that Don might need arm candy.
Comment #59: The Opoponax on 09/07 at 03:07 PM

Trying to figure out what’s going to happen from the Next Time On bits is like trying to read a newspaper from the cut’n'paste hostage note the letters were clipped from.

Appropos of nothing, since I don’t watch Mad Men, but this was weird:

I don’t like the self-centered fantasies that ghosts would bother to haunt the living.

We have a whole Tea Party movement based off of people with nothing better to do than try and annoy others and hold others down.

The fact that there would be people so dickish, so cruel, and so single-minded to put off their nirvana or heaven or transcendence or disintegration just to harass living people seems obvious.

Certainly the world of the dead would have its Tea Crackers, Mens’ Rights Activists, Fred Phelps’ and Rand cultists. Just be thankful that ghosts are typically known to communicate only through moans and screams, rather than quoting didactic, overwrought prose.

Synchronicity strikes again!  I was at the Smithsonian American History Museum this weekend and was impressed by how large the section on the birth control pill is.  That synchronizes with Amanda’s comments (#52) on the change in the need for abortions since the early 1960s.

Yams.  Who knew?

Don and Peggy an item: No.

Don replacing Anna, at least in part, with Peggy: Yes.

Which was the point of the cheesy, see-through, Anna ghost (although the suitcase was a nice touch.)

I think the Anna vision would have been a little less ‘50s cheesy effect if she’d been represented as the three-dimensional, fully-fleshed Anna.

Not entirely because, the one time my brother inadvertently saw a ghost (he’s not a believer, it wasn’t a loved one) my brother was not only wide-awake, and not drinking, but that person appeared to be real.

Long story short: my brother visiting his boss around the holidays, walks into the living room where a man in a red and black plaid shirt is sitting on the couch.

They smile at one another, my brother looks away for a second, and when he looks back, guy in plaid shirt has disappeared.

A little shaken, my brother, tells his boss in the kitchen about it. Boss is nonplussed, “Oh, that’s Oscar. He lived in this house before he died, and he usually comes back for a vist around Christmas time.”

And no, not my brother’s little joke. We’re the two people in the family who are not only close, but talk honestly to one another.

I’ve also had several people confide that they saw a loved-one at the moment they passed, in dreams or otherwise.

Not particularly interested in seeing ghosts myself, but there you go.

To be honest, I dislike the fact that Peggy is still working for Don, despite given a chance to get away from him.

I’m actually involved as we speak in the TV/film version of the end of season 3 beginning of season 4 Sterling Cooper transition.  Which, just like on the teevee, involved several department heads leveling up and grooming others to come with them onto the new job.  I did not think it was odd that I was asked along to the new gig, nor does anybody I know think it’s weird that I’m continuing to work with my former colleagues on this new project after a small promotion.

Although I agree that ghosts as a literary device can be a bit tired: I groaned when the Anna ghost appeared, especially since her death had been telegraphed throughout the hour.

Smiling beatifically on the new platonic couple of Peggy and Don, yeah, again a bit trite.

However, it’s interesting to note that while other fantasical creatures may have a relatively short life in literature (griffins, centaurs, trolls, hobgoblins, etc.) ghosts seem to have spanned the centuries and cultures.

Perhaps because ghosts, as hallucinations, in dreamscapes, or otherwise, are a more common experience?

wearing that dress to an evening out Is Just Not Done. Her feelings for her boring boyfriend regardless.

Yeah, but notice how her family and roommate are dressed in the scenes at the restaurant.  They’re dressed up, but it’s a downmarket B&T;sort of “dressed up”.  They’re no more formally dressed than Peggy is over at the office, aside from the mother and sister wearing hats (I hope Peggy wasn’t planning to wear that awful hat inside the restaurant - it totally clashes with her dress!). 

Part of what I love about Mad Men, especially in terms of the design aspects of the production, is that they tend to keep it pretty real for the less elite characters.  The Olson family shows up for dinner at a fancy restaurant* in the best they have, whether it’s entirely appropriate to the setting or not.  Peggy, being one of them, continues to show sartorial cluelessness despite the fact that she knows better and can afford better.

Though, again, I think Peggy subconsciously never intended to go to the dinner at all.  Because she probably could have pulled out something a little more apropos if she really cared.

*I’m also fairly sure that the restaurant is not nearly as fancy as the characters are making it out to be.  I forget the name she said and a quick skim of google results turns up nothing, but it didn’t sound like The Classiest Joint Evar.  Some kind of ancient Greek or Roman quasi theme restaurant?  Cesar’s Bluh Bluh Forum Something?  It wasn’t Lutece, that’s for sure.

I’m sorry, but is there seriously no one here who went through a phase in college where they drank too much on a regular basis, or a period where they used booze to escape from a painful situation?

Sure, but the look on Don’s face when he begged Peggy to make him a drink so he could call California? 

I’m pretty sure I never looked like that, not even after the worst of my rum-and-depression-soaked Freshman Year binges.

I guess one can make a case that, right now, Don is slightly less of a total fucking drunk than Duck is.  By a hair.  But yeah.

Every season there’s like one Peggy & Don episode with a big Peggy & Don moment and it’s invariably like the best episode of the show.

This is just as much about historical accuracy as the show’s inherent feminism, to boot.

The show’s historical accuracy and inherent feminism are pretty much about each other.

Also did anyone think Don’s Samsonite Ali ad was kind of terrible?

Yes, that was the point.

From the article, my assumption is that Peggy, Mark, the Olson family, and Peggy’s Roomate going to dinner at Forum of the Twelve Caesars in 1965 is kind of like a family from Staten Island going to Pastis now.  Yes, it used to be the hippest and most exclusive restaurant in the city.  A decade ago.  Now it’s where you take your mom when she comes to town, because it was on Sex And The City.  It’s still a nice place and all, but it’s not Per Se.  (Shit, Per Se probably isn’t still “Per Se” these days…)

Though, again, I think Peggy subconsciously never intended to go to the dinner at all.  Because she probably could have pulled out something a little more apropos if she really cared.

This.

Peggy is generally clueless about clothing. She hits it on the nose every now and then (the black and white check sheath!), but both growing up an outer borough girl, and now a Manhattan copywriter not paid enough to take an airplane trip, has limited her.

For her, that was a dressy-dress, and it’s certainly a step up in style from her usual pleated skirts and pussy bow blouses.

Actually, it’s Peggy’s compromise between a dressy-dress and office wear: she’s a gal on a budget and it’s gotta do for both.

We get the feeling that Joan learned fast about how to dress both classy and sexy (even though it increasingly seems Joan came from nothing, too) but Peggy isn’t considered “the type.”

May not want to be that type, either. Peggy’s got to walk a tightrope of attractive and office attire for the girl in the middle between the secretaries and “the men.”

I thought the dress was a reflection of her weirdly maternal role with Don I mentioned earlier. It was very much like something her own mother always wears, and the crinoline and the upholstery-like print made her look very resignedly maternal with Don’s pukey head in her lap and that drink in her hand.

Duck’s new “agency” struck me, by the end of the episode, as not much more than a scheme for Duck to get back with Peggy

Indeed, did anybody not read Duck’s new agency as being only about two things, one of which was his dick, and one of which he was hoping would envelope his dick?

Those full skirts were still being worn up through the mid-sixties, although I’d ditched my crinoline earlier. (And that was for a dressy dress, even then.)

However, that particular print is pretty forward looking for, essentially, a shirt dress of the period.

(Note Peggy’s family dress, and even roommate, may match shade-wise, but Peggy’s print is kickier.

However, full skirt and crinoline, yup, more of a pillow for the great man’s head.

@Brian - Could you clarify? Are you talking about the Tampax account? The name of the agency? Did you see some symbolism or something?
It was pretty chilling when Duck got all angry, “It’s not exactly a gold necklace, but I did spend some money on those cards!” If Peggy stuck with him, he’d be knocking her around inside of a week.

No, I think Duck’s own agency was about Duck being canned from wherever he’d last found roost, and an acknowledgement that he’d need a copywriter as talented as Peggy to get anywhere on his own.

Maybe, he was jealous of Don on a sexual level, as well.

But I think co-opting Peggy’s talent was as much, if not more, important to him now that Duck is obviously washed up.

We get the feeling that Joan learned fast about how to dress both classy and sexy (even though it increasingly seems Joan came from nothing, too)

Joan definitely went to college, though; her lesbian roommate in the first season was an old college friend.  I don’t remember if they’ve ever said where she went, though.  If she went to Hunter College or something she might be from a more lower middle class background.

@snobographer - I don’t think Duck had a serious, competant plan to put together an agency, no.  Maybe a bit of self-delusion, grasping at what he lost (in getting fired) and (in his relationship with Peggy).  But inviting her over to the agency was grasping at sex, not grasping at staffing (at least, as I took it.)

Yes, Joan went to college, but my guess is on a full scholarship.

Back then, if someone came from an old family (like Pete), money (like Roger) or Ivy-related school (Paul) they dropped hints in conversation, eventually, if not sooner. Possibly because coming from none of the above could be considered “embarrassing.”

Joan has made even fewer references to her background than Don has (none!), but that accordian was a clue.

In 1930s-40s middle-class kids took lessons in piano, or an instrument on which one could play classical music. Only working class and “ethnic” kids got accordian lessons (or learned from Uncle Stash, for free).

Which is another reason Joan was embarrassed to play for the doctors and their wives, since it revealed something of a “lower-class” origin.

Sure, Joan pulled it off with that particular song and being Joan, but it was an exotic performance precisely because neither the doctors, their wives nor their children would ever learn the accordian.

(And yes, I know Christina knew how to play the accordian, but the writers jumped with joy, because it made their point even better than a piano: husband embarrasses Joanie by forcing her to play for his boss.)

The accordian is the only clue, besides college that we’ve been given in four seasons about Joan’s background.

There’s a reason for that: Joan, like Don, is a self-made person, and she considers her background an embarrassment.

@87&89;- He was also covetous of the buzz Don had generated by breaking off and starting a new agency which, along with booze, probably inspired him to make a dramatic exit from Grey. He said something about that in his phone conversation with Peggy.

Getting business cards printed (a more expensive proposition then, than now) was obviously a desperation move for Duck, but more toward luring Peggy for business than pleasure, I think.

A combination maybe, but Duck often needs something more than himself to get somewhere in the advertising business: he can’t get back on with the English company without giving them all of Sterling Cooper’s accounts as well as Sterling Cooper.

He’s as jealous of Don’s business relationship with Peggy, as the imagined “relationship.”

Duck got fired for being too drunk too often to be effective, is my guess.

The “dramatic exit” is probably a lie to cover for being canned.

But Don’s supposed success could be the impetus for business cards that involve Peggy, who Duck figures is part of that success.

Just to comment about how long Peggy’s been a copywriter - the show is currently in early ‘65.  She was promoted at the end of ‘60, but the beginning of season 2 (which starts in early ‘62) implies that she only recently returned to Sterling Cooper - her mysterious (to everyone but Don) absence was very long.  So she’s been a copywriter for a little over three years.  I assume Don was being careless and forgetful, and that it’s not a continuity error (though they do happen - the post-Korea timeline is a little fuzzy, and there’s an episode where Don takes a long swig of milk straight from a bottle even though he tells Roger, in a different episode, that he hates milk because he grew up on a farm and hates cows).  In general, although I think Don is often way too harsh with Peggy, I don’t think it’s wrong to think that she’s overstepping what would be perceived to be her bounds, regardless of gender.  Peggy’s been continually drawn as being much more driven than most of her peers - she gets Freddy Rumsen’s office precisely because no one else had the guts to ask for it, or they simply assumed it would be given to them - but part of that is going to involve stepping on the toes of Don’s patronizing sense of propriety.  I think he’d have treated Kinsey, or the new guys, the same way, it’s just that none of them is as daring as she is to begin with.

Yes, that was the point.

If it was it’s kind of aggravating that after all that Peggy’s still sitting there putting up with Don being an asshole to her about his own shitty idea, when she should be telling him that it sucks and asking him if he enjoys failure.

I disagree: from the first Peggy has had to deal with sexism that none of the guys do.

Paul makes more money than she does, even for the same job, done badly.

Where to put the Xerox machine? Why, in Peggy’s office, it’s not like she needs to concentrate or anything.

Having to wade through innumerable sexist insults from Stan, and then locked into a hotel room with the creep because he’s too lazy to get work done in the office.

Peggy isn’t daring, so much as occasionally having to fight for the basics.

I haven’t seen the new episode yet. (The show moves so slowly we download two at a time and watch them.) I agree with cycles @ 48 - a lot of the show is about the changes in the 60s, particularly in the ad business. Again and again, Peggy is shown as part of the newer creative generation while Don is part of the older one. He’s clever and creative, but it isn’t clear that he can make the jump. He reinvented himself once. Can he reinvent himself again?

A lot of the show is soap opera, but it is also about the advertising business. (I keep expecting one of the Mad Magazine guys to show up. A lot of them were working ad men. Maybe Danny?)

Of course there were a lot more abortions back then. Condoms were only so effective, the birth control pill had just come out in ‘59 or ‘60, and not every doctor would prescribe it. Hell, people were prosecuted for sending information about it to married couples in the U.S. Mail. The good news is that New York would legalize abortion in ‘68.

(I’m one of those rare people who find that spoilers enhance their enjoyment of things. It’s not as weird as you think. Do you really want to come out of the Louvre thinking, ‘I don’t know who that da Vinci guy is, but he can sure paint’?)

judybrowni -

Oh, sure.  Peggy takes a ton of crap because she’s a woman - although much less of it this year, the episode with that asshole art director aside (I’d say it was a big aside, but I think Peggy would say it was actually a very little aside, and smirk).  And very little of it from Don.  But I do think she’s aggressive in a way none of the male junior copywriters have been, and I think Don would be as harsh and dismissive of the same aggression from anybody else.  It’s not like he was really trying to encourage Paul Kinsey.

I’d say the only person who’s as aggressive as Peggy, that’s her professional peer, is Pete, which makes sense, and Pete also has taken a fair amount of crap, though in a different way, for being so presumptuous over the years.  The other thought that occurred to me about the speed of peoples’ professional ascent is that Don - who after all is supposed to be phenomenal at his job, though less so of late - wasn’t just very talented, but totally had his pulse on the moment of the mid-late 50s, and, crucially, that pulse was close enough to the world of his senior colleagues like Stirling and Cooper that they understood it.  Nobody in SCDP understands the emerging pulse of the culture as well as Peggy and Pete do (though it’s not like they’re perfect), but their senior colleagues have a harder time recognizing it.  Not a hard time recognizing the talent - otherwise they wouldn’t be where they already are - but a hard time recognizing that Peggy’s voice, and Pete’s business ideas, are exactly what will keep SCDP ahead of the curve.  Of course, Harry Crane fell assbackward into being superimportant by realizing that TV would be important, and I’m sure Harry has by now picked up the Yiddish word which appropriately describes his kind of hapless luck.

When you’re repeatedly passed up by and paid less than people who are less competent and talented than you, you get the impression you have to be aggressive to get anybody to notice that you do anything. Don didn’t even give her the benefit of the doubt with Rizzo. She’s the one who’s scolded for not somehow making Rizzo do his work.

Everyone’s taking the piss out of Peggy’s fashion sense, when at least she’s experimenting.

The heaviest symbol of tired fashion sense in Mad Men is Don’s hat. No other man is wearing them anymore, and he simply hasn’t noticed. A basic element of Western men’s apparel—stretching back over a thousand years—has been annihilated by the moptops, and he still carries his totemically around. Hamm and his cinematographic team are playing this perfectly: in the first couple seasons, the hat makes him look like the sharpest shark in the pool; now it’s 1965, and he’s wearing it like a tiny dunce cap.

Roger’s ultramod office is an obvious grasping at the latest thing without understanding, and he looks suitably lost in there. But Don still thinks he knows better, and is behaving like he still knows the trends. He doesn’t. The era’s coming attack on all traditions is already threatening to wash him away, and one of the most startling assaults will come from the realm of men’s appearance.

In defense of Peggys (ugh) hat and dress,  heres the opening of “that girl”  sometime between 66 and 70. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMoKFbPYdm0&feature=related  Shes wearing pretty much the same hat as jaunty marlo thomas,  just wearing it worse. 

In defense of Ida Blankenship:  Roger’s office faces dons secretary.  Might he just have plucked the name, as in TBD (he cant remember the dates of his romances after all)  Dunno.  If Ida was a hellcat,  thats about the funniest plot development ever. 

I cant really read some of the secretaries sometimes.  When the blue dress secretary says about the restaurant “Well, then youre doing all right!” Does she mean peggys on the good marriage track at age 26?  Or is there some sarcasm there.  I know Peggy invited her to lunch with the hippies. 
Trudys interaction was priceless.  I think theres some womans intuition there;  plus the look on petes face as they exit the ladies room together was awesome. 

I cant really get a feel for class of the account men, because theyre all wearing suits.  But the copywriters!  I know Joey wears short sleeves mostly because hes young and part time, but the sexist guy (Stan?) wears that rebellious polo shirt (!) because hes part of the creatives and can get away with that kind of dressing down.  Comparing them being a little casual (more than the account men or the women) Danny’s suits read as the new guy overcompensating.  Joey is also the one with enough senority to not clean up when Joan tells them to…

Is Danny supposed to be younger than Peggy?  The actor is in his 30s,  it doesnt read that way for me.

These are minor points.  You guys have covered the rest of the main plot;  and a great episode.  This was the halfway point of the 13 eps BTW.

Yeah, the ghost thing could have been overblown and tacky, but I didn’t see it that way. It makes sense as a dream in Don’s dozing mind from the two most important subjects he’s had all day: Anna dying + Samsonite suitcases=Anna leaving with a suitcase.  Now, if Anna had made a sweet goodbye speech or been lifted up to Heaven on the wings of angels, then I would have been the first to groan and roll my eyes, but it was surprisingly well done.

Elisabeth Moss is such a great actress, though.  I love how she keeps it together just long enough to get to the bathroom, then she glances at her face in the mirror and loses it.  What a terrific moment!

I don’t see Peggy and Don hooking up (but then again, I didn’t see Peggy and Duck hooking up either, so YMMV).  Weiner’s said that he sees Don as “the dream mentor I’d always wished I had”; that’s what Don is to Peggy, the mentor, the father figure.  It looks like Peggy is Don’s replacement for the family he’s lost.  If Anna was the warm mother figure Don never had, then Peggy is the understanding daughter that Sally has never been and never will be.

I think Stan, Joey, and Danny are treating her the best way that they know how: as one of the boys.  When she falls asleep on the couch, they do what they would have done if any man had done the same thing; they whistle in her ear and do the drill sarge act.  She responds just like one of the guys too, and calls them assholes.  (Did anyone catch that little paper crown they made for her?  Awww….) That’s probably why she didn’t feel too much remorse about blowing off dinner with her boyfriend and her family; she’s already sharing her birthday with her real family; Don and the guys at work.

Blue Jean:
Add to that the looks Moss gives Hamm when he rattles off shop talk (which on its face,  a good idea and a terrible one are very close,  sounds really dumb)  and the look she gives him just before he breaks into tears;  they both did a superb job this episode, and if theres an award show in the cards for either,  this epsiode may figure highly.

I think Anna carrying the suitcase is a pretty good indication of her not being an actual disembodied dead person.

Well, why couldn’t a ghost carry a suitcase?

If Anna can whip up enough ectoplasm to adorn herself in that yellow Heidi dress, from beyond the grave—why not add a suitcase in a complimentary color?

C’mon, we’re talking supernatural here, and just how many angels could dance on a pin, anyway?

No, I think Duck’s own agency was about Duck being canned from wherever he’d last found roost, and an acknowledgement that he’d need a copywriter as talented as Peggy to get anywhere on his own.

Why would Duck need a copywriter for?  Why?  Is he trying to start his own company? 

You know what.  The more I get into this series, the more I find myself disliking it.  And I don’t know why.  It’s a feeling in my gut that I don’t like how Weiner is handling some of the characters.  I believe that was the last episode I will be watching.

Ctrent:  Ducks an account man.  Account men are like dedicated sales men;  they service a certain number of clients.  Copywriters are the creatives.  You need both.  Account men can contribute to the creative process,  but are not creative on their own.  It took me a while to get this too.  Meanwhile,  Sal was an art director.  Hes also creative,  but he didnt come up with slogans.

I read the implication of the whole business card thing as that Duck has become such a drunken wretch he’s been fired from wherever he last collected a paycheck.

Duck is an accounts guy: he’d need somebody to write ads and supervise art in his own shop. Peggy is an up-and-comer, in addition to having been an old squeeze.

I’m among the minority who wasn’t crazy about this last episode either, but hey, I’m too addicted to quit. Mad Men will have to jump a half dozen sharks more before I’ll be able to move on.

If you can yank the needle out of your vein, more power to you.

Whoa, woah, whoah! 

2 lines that stuck out at me from don,  when on watching a second time because Don doesnt talk jesus or spirituality: 
“you should be thanking me, and jesus for giving you another day”
“theres a way out of this room we dont know about”

During the GlowCoat Argument,  Peggy is saying: Youre stealing my ideas.  Don is saying: Relax, because youre going to live a long time.  My friend is dead.

the second line is about the mouse, but it still picks at me.

Pastey, someone on another board said they thought that the mouse line was the turn in the road for Don of how to get out.  Because the opening credits appear to depict a man jumping (I know that they say it is meant to show the world rushing past, but the fact is, it looks like a foreshadowing of a jump, and there is no getting around that), a lot of people have always wondered if Don was going to end up out the window.

And now he is saying, hmm, there’s another way out.

I really liked that idea, and it feels like that person could be on to something to me.

Yamara that is an excellent post about Don’s hat.  I wish I could copy and paste, but I can’t - I love your point that a few years ago the hat made Don look like he could have been walking around with “they really go crazy for a sharp-dressed man” playing in the background, and now he just looks like a dork.  That’s true.

I a;ways found the Anna character a bit cheesy, corny, heavy-handed, and Mary Sue, so having her appear as a ghost in a white dress, while eye-rolling, was kind of appropriate to the character.

Well, why couldn’t a ghost carry a suitcase?

If Anna can whip up enough ectoplasm to adorn herself in that yellow Heidi dress, from beyond the grave—why not add a suitcase in a complimentary color?

Hence the use of the word “indication”.  Don is thinking about the suitcase on a bunch of levels, both as advertising copy and as a symbol for important things in his life. That the “ghost” shows up holding a suitcase is an “indication” (not proof, but a strong hint) that the intended reading is “all in Don’s mind”.  And, to anticipate the next point, sure if there were such a thing as a ghost maybe it could pull stuff out of Don’s brain. But the addition of the suitcase makes hallucination the more straightforward explanation.  Different photography? New season, so maybe the camera work has changed. Or if you don’t like meta, Don is drinking more heavily and Ana was important to him in a different way than the other people he hallucinated.

@102 pasteymachine - The secretary who said to Peggy, “you’re doing alright, aren’t you” was Megan, Joan’s new flunky who fetches her things and watches the front desk, the lowest-status most entry level of secretarial-type jobs. I took from that line that Megan sees hope for herself in Peggy’s accomplishments. She’s probably another one who isn’t all hopped up on getting married.

People seem to forget that creative types like Don and Peggy also need the accounts types like Duck Roger and Pete.  Peggy is not the only creative copywriter in New York.  Why Duck would solely need her makes no sense to me. 

Frankly, I’m getting tired of Peggy as the show’s “New Woman”.  If this continues, Weiner will end up portraying her as a flawless character.  And there is no one more boring in this world that someone who is apparently “flawless”.

[“Every season there’s like one Peggy & Don episode with a big Peggy & Don moment and it’s invariably like the best episode of the show.”]

Not in my opinion.  Most of my top favorite episodes have nothing to do with Don and Peggy.

“Why Duck would solely need her makes no sense to me.”

Because he’s burned all his bridges being a belligerent drunk with a massive chip on his shoulder?

——————————————————————————————————————

Couple potentially interesting developments I’ve noticed about Roger on rewatches:

In The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, when he notes that Selma’s “not going away,” he says to Cooper, “you still don’t think they need a civil rights law?” Indicating he’s not on the same page as Cooper, who’s said civil rights is a “slippery slope” and unnecessary.
He also put $300 on Ali. So maybe he’s not quite the obsolete old fart I’d been thinking he was.
From his phone call to Don from the bar, I get the feeling he and Don have more of a friendship than has been acknowledged.
He also seems to feel obliged to kiss Freddy Rumsen’s ass for some reason.

Ken is carrying a hat,  never puts it on.  neat.

Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard all the arguments about the “vision” of Anna being an alchol-induced hallucination, a wish fulfillment dream, etc.

But I was having fun with the poster who seriously posed the idea that a ghost wouldn’t carry a suitcase!

An argument that made me laugh!

“Super - natural,” anyone?

That a ghost can appear at all would seem to give it the power to deck itself out how it liked, if we’re following that logic.

The Anna hallucination was also wearing a dress Don has never seen (and isn’t her usual style), so, by the same logic, Don is going to bother to hallucinate all that specific Schiffili embroidery?

I prefer to think of ghost Anna having a good natured laugh at Don by including the luggage in her appearance.

Knowing, of course, the metaphor it represented as “baggage,” as well as being aware of the campaign—she’s dead, you know, so yeah, she can see all.

The cheesy ‘50s special effect of the transparent Anna usually indicates “ghost” filmatically, Don’s other hallucinations have been realistic.

But in the end, I suppose I’m fighting for the actual ghost of Anna, because it’s so amusing that she’s carrying that suitcase.