<p>The reason to watch is the layering of meaning. </p>
<p>Take Dinkins. There is so much there in just a few moments: the wedding recalls Don’s “ex”, the real Mrs. Draper, and how fake Don came “back” to her but the real groom Dinkins is heading off to war. Does his tossing of the lighter mean he doesn’t want to be a soldier anymore? That he’s finally done with it? He has that weird affectation of carrying a soldier’s lighter though he was barely a soldier and built a fake life based on his fake experience. Or did the words on the lighter say it too well: sometimes you have to do things that just aren’t your bag. I have no idea. I really don’t. I doubt it’s supposed to mean one thing. Dinkins has that great line about how Hawaii is the same place as Vietnam. That to me is the kind of throwaway insight the show specializes in. They hammer you with the bluntness of The Inferno being read on a beach and then play with it like a cat with a ball of string until they hammer it at you again with the revelation of where that copy of The Inferno came from. </p>
<p>There is, for example, no way you can hear “doors” and not think of The Doors and then not think of The End and maybe Apocalypse Now. This is the end, beautiful friend. The end of laughter and soft lies/The end of nights we tried to die. That record had been out a year at the date of this episode. And all the children are insane/Waiting for the summer rain. Is this part of what Betty experiences? She tears her coat - which might be Chanel - on a flophouse door where the children melt snow for water.</p>
<p>They say the sole of art is ambiguity. I prefer this to having heads lopped off by actors whose teeth are far too white for their times.</p>
<p>^^^
I agree with Lergnom about watching for the layers of meaning. I also love the way Mad Men constructs each season with an overall theme which is introduced in each seasons first episode although it’s not always obvious until later in the season. From the very first episode of the series the show presents an array of characters and ideas which initially may seem random and insignificant. As the season goes on, the stories emerge and develop, threads are woven together and the last 2 or 3 episodes always seem to bring everything together in an unexpective and often disturbing way. I’ve noticed this every season and each new season always seems to be a new leap forward with a very different feel from the earlier ones and this new one does exactly the same thing. This is one of the reasons that I can watch the earlier seasons again and always pick up things I totally missed the first time.</p>
<p>I can’t think of any show, other than The Sopranos that is so artfully contructed and which provides such food for thought.</p>
<p>I’ve mentioned this before but Weiner and the exec producers say he sets the overall them of the season a few months before they get together in the writers room. That lets them get research done and work on ideas before they “open” the room.</p>
<p>Anyone know the aria playing during the restaurant / sex scene? I was trying to listen to the dialogue.</p>
<p>The bluntness of the symbolism sometimes amazes me. He sees Uncle Mac as the rooster in the whore house and they make that explicit by having him mount Don’s pregnant mother as Don watches. For all her self-righteousness in Don’s early life, she’ll do when necessary. And then of course Don pays Sylvia, a moment he must somewhere inside himself know is symbolic. </p>
<p>The title The Collaborators turns out to be more about Chamberlain at Munich and other betrayals but also acting with hidden motives: the fakery in front of the Heinz Ketchup guy, Don’s ridiculously obvious bag job in front of the Jaguar people, Peggy blurts out a confidence and this guy we’ve been seeing as caring and interested in people uses that to force her to sell out her friend. </p>
<p>The scene with Sylvia is very strange. It plays to me, because of the flashback, like Uncle Mac, like Don is the pimp running the house and he says what he says because that is his role, that is the part he looks up to, that is an image he can pull off. He’s comfortable in the role. It’s what he does. I contrast his assertiveness there with his meek “I’m ready to talk when you are” about children with Megan. The most he can say is you should have told me. I gather it’s really true he doesn’t want to deal with actual life but needs to keep it at arms length. He can’t even open the door to his apartment. I was struck by Sylvia’s comment that Don said he and Megan were drifting apart. In other words, a line. Why? Because that’s who he is. The first years of the show set people up to believe and hope Don would come to terms with his life but the problems keep showing they run deeper than not actually being Don Draper. The guy who is Dick Whitman is no prize.</p>
<p>I’m sure everyone loves Trudy’s reaction. I’ve never understood what happened there. We’ve seen Pete acting very badly but why Trudy wanted to be out in the country never made sense before. I thought the contrast between Don and Pete is weirdly drawn: the wife Pete brings to his city apartment is so obviously a model with not an ounce of fat that she didn’t seem real as a suburban woman, even a young one. Her immaturity, with the suggestions of parking her car, etc., is a contrast with Don’s weird needs. Pete is drawn to children: a nanny he assaults, Peggy when she was her most vulnerable, a woman with mental illness and now this married girl who thinks an affair is exciting. Don is drawn to women of substance. It looks more and more like both of them need to corrupt: Pete with the literal innocent and Don by showing that even the women of substance will do like his mother did if you are the rooster. Their morality - a teacher of his child, the wife/manager of a star, the wife of a friend, etc. - is what he needs to disprove. That seems to be how he shows he is the man.</p>
<p>Lergnom, I’m confused, maybe you can clear this up for me: I recall in the early seasons of MM that there were numerous references to Don’s mother dying in childbirth when she had Don. How then is it possible that the pregnant woman in the above scene is his mother? </p>
<p>Also, I enjoy your analyses, please keep them up.</p>
<p>Yes, Don’s biological mother died giving birth to him. I don’t remember the details of his relationship with his stepmother, but she must have been pregnant with the half/brother when his father died and she had little choice as to where to turn.</p>
<p>The rest of it is his step-mother treated him like trash and then moves into a whorehouse and presumably became a whore. </p>
<p>I read a nice addition: the affair with Sylvia is in “Don’s house” and he is literally her back door man. In a repetition of Mac, he “brings on the day” as the rooster with Sylvia.</p>
<p>A bit of background that makes no sense. I know that MW says Don was born in 1926. That makes him too old for Korea: they weren’t drafting 26 year olds in 1952. And if the real Don were wounded, he’d have been shipped back because combat engineers had what we now call a “stop loss” on them, meaning they were considered too valuable to go home. (I learned that from a veteran.) But I understand the original idea was Don was drafted in 1944. That of course makes sense: he’s 18 in 1944. </p>
<p>But if Don is in WWII, then Roger isn’t the old guy with war memories. I don’t know if that’s the reason they shifted the action to Korea but they certainly decided to play up that angle. Even the last episode has Roger reminiscing about Pearl Harbor in 1943 and the smell of gardenias. He sounds out of touch.</p>
<p>The weirdness is Don’s career comes from nowhere so by 1960 he’s the Creative Director at Sterling Cooper. It makes more sense for him to have been in WWII. And they want him to be 40 now. If he actually was in Korea, he’d have been 18 or 19 in 1952 and that would make him born in 1932 or 1933 - my mom’s age - and he’d be only 34 at the start of 1968. That makes him not much older than Megan and means he’d have been Creative Director at age 26, which just doesn’t work.</p>
<p>This issue is not resolvable. They shifted him from WWII to Korea just because. </p>
<p>BTW, I looked up the actress who Pete has sex with and who is beaten and tossed out - with the line in the background, “She’s your problem now, Campbell!”. She’s 33. She’s playing a girl. So Hollywood. </p>
<p>I think the best line in the show was Pete’s sarcastic - It’s all about what it looks like - to the brownnoser. It is. Except when it isn’t.</p>
<p>It’s pretty simple. Don’s (born Dick Whitman) real mother was a prostitute who died giving him birth. The nursemaid at the birthing took him (Dick) to his father (Archie) and Archie’s wife (Abigail) who, I think, had just lost a child at birth. They lived together until Archie died (Horse kick to the head). Abigail remarried Uncle Mac (Season 6.). Adam from (Season 1) I believe, is the son of Abigail and Uncle Mac.</p>
<p>No on Adam: Abigail is clearly pregnant in both her scenes at the whorehouse, when they arrive and when Mac mounts her. </p>
<p>I’ve been thinking the use of Just a Gigolo at the end must refer to more than Don, that it must mean Mac. We’ve just seen him as the rooster in the hen house but we don’t know what happens to him. That would give more meaning to Don’s slumping in the hallway and it ties in with the point of The Inferno, which was to descibe hell so convincingly that you repent before it’s too lat.</p>
<p>I’m interested that we find redemptive potential in Don and not in others. Pete is becoming worse. Betty is lost in her woman-childness. Roger keeps being Roger. I wonder what happens with Peggy: she’s clueless about so much but she must know that betraying Stan, her only real friend, has consequences. What if Stan gets fired because the Heinz mess comes back at him? Then Peggy is a betrayer in the 9th Circle of Hell.</p>
Stan shouldnt have said anything about Heinz to Peggy. His actions are equivalent to what a corporate spy would do. I dont buy Peggys innocence in this matter. By relaying the Heinz info to Ted, she is really saying Here is a potential client but hey, you came up with the idea and it really wasnt mine.</p>
<p>Are you sure Don was born in 1926? And btw, don’t assume you had to be 18 to enlist during WWII or right after. My dad lied about his age. He was 17. This was not uncommon at the time. Many others did the same thing, as my son’s 5th grade Social Studies teacher explained when he announced his grandpa’s lie in class.</p>
<p>I didn’t find this episode boring in the least.</p>
<p>I thought that Dick and Adam Whitman were half brothers. In a flashback that shows Adam being born Uncle Mack tells Dick that he has the same father (Archie) as his new brother.</p>
<p>Adam and Dick are half brothers. Abigail is pregnant when they show up at the whorehouse, so Adam is her child with Arch. The statement about 1926 comes from a variety of sources, but he says he turned 40 “six months ago” at his birthday party in 1966.</p>
<p>Was the real Don Draper (who was a lieutenant) born in 1926 or was Dick born in 1926? If it was the real Don, it would make sense that he had first served in WWII and now was in the Korean War. </p>
<p>I figured it was the real Don’s birthday since Dick would have had to assume Don’s birthdate as part of his identity. I am not prone to analyzing details as it sometimes spoils the fun for me - but this occurred to me when Megan had the birthday party for him. I remember wondering whether Don was really turning 40. Would have been a little strange. Not that it wasn’t awkward enough already!</p>