Crow Jane posted:

Did they hang out with Joan's bird and Peggy's cat?

Crow Jane posted:

Did they hang out with Joan's bird and Peggy's cat?

GimpChimp posted:

Did Peggy ever actually get a cat? I've seen two films in literally the past couple of days where Elisabeth Moss ends up with a cat as a consolation prize for being unloveable (Girl Interrupted and Listen Up Philip, for the record) and it made me feel a little better that Peggy overtly finds love at the end of Mad Men, rather than going with her mother's plan of a single life measured in feline mortality.

Crow Jane posted:

pentyne posted:

Because he's living a lie, and no matter what he does there is always the specter of Dick Whitman hanging over him. You can see it when he's with Anna, he's like a completely different person. He always has the expectation of one day needing to up and disappear, and even though he doesn't consciously plan for it the second he comes close to getting caught he suddenly realizes he needs to set up a trust for all his money so his kids are taken care of.

Don is someone who cannot be fundamentally honest with anyone in his life, and those people who know about Dick Whitman don't really grasp the implications of what it means, so why would he bother being honest with his wife or hold to a rigid moral code? At his core he has the capacity to be a genuinely good human being and that peaks out from time to time but is brutally suppressed by his need for a distraction. Look at the hosed up things he's done over the course of the series

- Tried to pay off his brother to leave and never come back
- Constant philandering
- Treating Peggy like absolute poo poo sometimes when he needs an outlet (throwing money are her, berating her angrily after Roger pissed him off)
- Treating Sal like a disgusting deviant for not letting Lee Garner Jr. have his way with him

And then he'll turn around and not expose Lane and instead give him a life raft to escape from his serious crime because Don knows that when someone is caught in that kind of lie being able to walk away from it almost consequence free is like a gift from God.

Don Draper is one of the most complex and confusing characters of the last decade, and when the show hit it big there were a lot of magazines talking about how much women loved him even though by any standard he was a reprehensible bastard.

Jake Snake posted:

I know Don does ask her about it, which is when she denies it. I kinda assumed it was her too, but only because it was happening when Don was seeing her. But it could easily have been Henry or Glen.

PriorMarcus posted:

Doesn't Henry tell Betty it was him in that same episode?

Astroman posted:

It's not just women...as a hetero male I can say I at times admire Don as a character, for being cool at times, dominating at work, and for those moments his humanity shines through, but also find it frustrating when he treats someone like poo poo, fucks up his life, or backslides.

You're also right about Don always wanting to be able to go at the drop of a hat. Of course we saw that early in the show, with Midge and wanting to go to Paris, and again and again, but consider his final arc. Think for a minute how incredibly difficult it was to do what he did in 1970. He got in his car and just drove west with the clothes on his back, and after a day was halfway across the country. No ATMs, no internet, and few places that take credit cards. You could write checks, but I'm sure by then it was difficult to get out of town checks cashed. Can you imagine how many times he stopped for gas on just that first trip?

Yet somehow flash forward a few months and he's tooling around the country, staying at motels, buying clothes, gas, food, maps. He somehow managed to access his bank account and money, perhaps even took care of finalizing his apartment sale from Bumfuck Iowa by phone. Logistically that's pretty impressive, unless of course Don had it all planned, with his car stuffed with traveler's checks and stacks of cash. The biggest indicator of this is the fact that he had the signed title in the glove box...I can't believe even in 1970 that was considered a good idea. But it would seem Don was ready to leave anytime and leave his life behind. Just like 10 years before when he had his locked drawer of cash.

GimpChimp posted:

Oh man. I should watch Season 6 again, all I really remember clearly is Ken tapdancing and Pete reacting to his mother getting pushed off a cruise liner.

Sakarja posted:

Speaking of season 6, I love Pete's reaction when Trudy tells him that the neighbors wanted to go skinny dipping. It's overshadowed by all the times he falls over, gets punched or uses old-timey expressions, but to me it's one of his funniest moments on the show.

Sakarja posted:

Speaking of season 6, I love Pete's reaction when Trudy tells him that the neighbors wanted to go skinny dipping. It's overshadowed by all the times he falls over, gets punched or uses old-timey expressions, but to me it's one of his funniest moments on the show.

Overwined posted:

I just realized that over the course of the series I have come to like Pete's character whereas in the beginning I hated his guts. I think you're supposed to hate his guts at the start. However, kudos to the writers for making him sympathetic (sort of) while never betraying his douchey fabric.

pentyne posted:

He came into the show as a spoiled child of privilege who had the best of everything, prestigious name, insanely rich (or so he thought), ivy league, married into money, and his attempts to mimic the attitudes and behaviors of successful men like Don and Roger were hilarious disasters. When he tried to demand he be given prestige and power he was smacked down and humbled. Even up to season 5 Pete was still behavior like a jackass most of the time, in between sleeping with a neighbors wife (for the second time), having blatant disrespect for Lane, and throwing temper tantrums when Trudy does something he doesn't like.

Season 6 Pete started to shape up and run his life more as a mature professional, and by season 7 his time in CA has changed him and he was no longer desperate to try and be someone else and he's realized that he wasn't happy trying to be the man he thought he should be. There were quite a few articles about him in the run up to the finale about how his character evolved so well that he went from a childish rear end in a top hat to one of the only genuinely good people on the show (again, in the context of the 60s/70s).

Beamed posted:

I don't know if I can forgive Pete for being one of the people to push the Joan and Jaguar thing so hard.

Astroman posted:

Joan seemed to. The had a pretty respectful relationship towards the end. Pete was eager to work with her, and said some great things about her. Even though she was too proud to ask for their help, Pete and Don would have raised hell against Ferg if they'd ever been able to intervene for her before she got into it with Hobart.

I almost wonder, if Joan had told Don what she was going through, if that might have prevented him leaving? He'd probably have went to war to help her out (if only as she was a former partner and long term coworker, not even necessarily because she was a "damsel in distress"). It could have occupied him enough to keep him from going AWOL, and might have saved her job and then her relationship with Captain Pike.

Though of course she'd have had some inevitable disappointment when they got married, she'd not have created her production company, and Don might never have had the inspiration for the Coke ad. He would probably have still wandered off in an existential crisis a year later and Sally would be dropping out of college to raise her brothers or some such nonsense.

netally posted:

Never lied to her? Didn't he tell her that the partners, including Roger, had agreed to the Herb thing, even though they were all pretty mortified by it.

Finndo posted:

This has probably been observed before, but in rewatching, back in Season 6 Duck was trying to get Pete to consider a position in Wichita. Gotta love this show's easter eggs.

shadow puppet of a posted:

Pete's resolution with Don came at the horseflesh line when Pete grew past needing to see Don as worthless.

Overwined posted:

I just realized that over the course of the series I have come to like Pete's character whereas in the beginning I hated his guts. I think you're supposed to hate his guts at the start. However, kudos to the writers for making him sympathetic (sort of) while never betraying his douchey fabric.

pentyne posted:

Recently I'm seeing a lot articles about "this is the next Mad Men" for whatever show of the week is hot, but are there any shows in their second/third season that are anywhere close?

Personally for me, Hell on Wheels is easily the best show to compare it to as far as a slice of history/drama angle is involved yet for some reason tv journos are slobbering all over some hot new show as the "successor" to Mad Men probably for clickbait attention.

Halloween Jack posted:

Why was Duck so fixated on seeing Don (and Creative in general) as contemptibly precious, anyway?

Halloween Jack posted:

My pet theory was always that there was a Pete/Peggy axis where one becomes warmer while the other became colder.

Astroman posted:

Joan seemed to. The had a pretty respectful relationship towards the end. Pete was eager to work with her, and said some great things about her. Even though she was too proud to ask for their help, Pete and Don would have raised hell against Ferg if they'd ever been able to intervene for her before she got into it with Hobart.

I almost wonder, if Joan had told Don what she was going through, if that might have prevented him leaving? He'd probably have went to war to help her out (if only as she was a former partner and long term coworker, not even necessarily because she was a "damsel in distress"). It could have occupied him enough to keep him from going AWOL, and might have saved her job and then her relationship with Captain Pike.

Though of course she'd have had some inevitable disappointment when they got married, she'd not have created her production company, and Don might never have had the inspiration for the Coke ad. He would probably have still wandered off in an existential crisis a year later and Sally would be dropping out of college to raise her brothers or some such nonsense.

Overwined posted:

There's certainly a lot to support this. In the beginning, Pete is the avaricious ladder-climber at the outset. Then over the course of the series, Peggy's taste of success drives her to do some really despicable things to keep climbing whereas Pete realizes his folly and he sort of resigns himself to his fate.

Overwined posted:

There's certainly a lot to support this. In the beginning, Pete is the avaricious ladder-climber at the outset. Then over the course of the series, Peggy's taste of success drives her to do some really despicable things to keep climbing whereas Pete realizes his folly and he sort of resigns himself to his fate.

Dr. Gene Dango MD posted:

I'm curious, what is the general feeling on season 7 in this thread? And is there a season which is considered "bad"? I enjoyed pretty much the entire show including 7. I'm glad there's a bow on it so it can be drat good tv show forever.