<p>Does Sylvia represent Don’s prostitute mother and he is attempting to control her? What was the enjoyment or benefit to Sylvia?</p>
<p>Why does Roger so enjoy firing Bert?</p>
<p>Mom2jl, we’re supposed to find Don creepy: it’s been clear for a while now that he is - well, if not downright falling off a cliff - then getting perilously close to it. Nothing is much working for Don. At work, he’s being snapped at by Peggy, and upstaged by his new pilot-partner. He tunes out the good woman he married, and is so afraid of losing his mistress (whom he overhears haranguing her husband, much to his relief that it’s not him) that he ‘imprisons’ her in her hotel room. This was a sex/power game she was willing to play… until she wasn’t.</p>
<p>Razor - I didn’t take Sylvia as a substitute for his mother - I think she’s a substitute for her husband, whom Don clearly admires. He tried to control Sylvia because he senses she’s stronger (the scene with her berating the husband) and because he feels he can’t compete against her husband, the life-saving surgeon. He has little power these days, poor Don. As for Sylvia – she was titillated… for a while… until she became ashamed and had the strength to stop. Don doesn’t have the strength or the will to stop - he’s been a troubled serial philanderer from season 1. His own shame has nothing to do with his (shameful) cheating – he’s just ashamed he got dumped.</p>
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<p>That make sense. Possibly Don wants to compete with the Dr. so he dominates his wife?</p>
<p>Don tries to dominate the wife, but knows he can’t (for long anyway.) She’s the one in control - of the relationship with her husband and ultimately of the relationship with Don. And I don’t think Don wants to compete with the doctor… it’s more like he’d like to BE the doctor.</p>
<p>I thought that Don was angry that Sylvia called him at work and demanded that she see him and then she complained about her husband who Don admires. So to punish her, he did that stunt in the hotel room. Because Don wants to dominate and on some level hates women. But as has been the theme this season, it didn’t work for Don, just like everything else in his life.</p>
<p>Oh, and if you aren’t already reading MadStyle on Tom and Lorenzo’s blog, it’s truly one of the best things written about Mad Men.</p>
<p>I don’t read a lot into the hotel room with Sylvia. Don is stressed with the merger bringing in a rival creative director/partner. He’s realized he isn’t connected to his children. He is having trouble even hearing Megan though heaven knows she’s trying to be both lover and wife. So he reverts to being Uncle Mac with women in rooms with the Sherry Netherlands as the cathouse. An interesting part to me was this makes Don a client - he pays for the room and the dress - while Mac is the actual pimp. Maybe that’s another enacting of Don’s life as a lie. </p>
<p>I was surprised by the desperation in Don’s voice and manner when Sylvia ends playtime. He needs this kind of escape. I don’t think that means he values it much but that he wasn’t done with it so therefore he’s the little boy who doesn’t get his way. He acts like that. The scene undercut the idea that he was doing this to force an end to the affair. I thought that was a very deliberate choice which reveals a lot about how Don is no longer in control. He isn’t in control at work because a bigger agency runs differently. He was never in control at home but that distance was always his choice - keeping Betty at arms length and away from his secrets, etc. Now Megan is making plans around her career. I thought that was telling as well: he can’t announce, as he likes, “let’s go back to Hawaii”. Instead Megan announces she’ll either get written out for 2 weeks or shoot some scenes early so they can go to Honolulu. She’s doing this to bridge the distance but it takes away his control. </p>
<p>I think the season has been about playing with control. Pete can’t control Trudy, his father-in-law, his brother or his semi-coherent mother. He’s pulled away from business because his schedule is no longer his. (BTW, anyone notice Trudy’s dad says Pete never wanted to have children and doesn’t deserve to be a father? That was a fiction Trudy played because she’s his princess who didn’t want her daddy to know she couldn’t conceive. So Pete gets blamed for things beyond his control.) </p>
<p>Beyond control. That was 1968. From Tet to Khe Sanh to MLK to RFK to the Chicago convention and on. The centre cannot hold.</p>
<p>SCDP and CGC are being jerked around by clients. “Giving away creative one car at a time.” They merge to try to control destiny. Oddly, Roger’s mother’s death seems to free him to act to make things happen; he’s been freed by the loss of the past even as the rest of the world is pulled down. </p>
<p>One effect of loss of control has been the shift from Don being the center to everyone else being the center. We still hope for Don but we probably care more for Megan. We care what happens to all the other characters - well maybe not Pete - when before they were actors in Don’s play. Peggy’s, Ginsburg’s, Joan’s lives are more intimate to us than Don. </p>
<p>I go back to the first scene when we see Arnold resuscitating that man without knowing who it is. Loss of control. It can happen to you. Arnold had a heart and a kid and now they’re both dead, but we saw him save a life. We saw him do and then have stuff done to him. Just like Bobby Kennedy: a few minutes after giving a speech about winning in Chicago, he’s shot in the head. Doing and being done to.</p>
<p>Very religious, isn’t it? A version of the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you but expect to be done otherwise by them.</p>
<p>As always, Lergnom, thank you for your outstanding analysis of the show. I can’t tell you how much it helps me make sense of it and encourages me to keep watching. And I think you’re absolutely right about the show shifting from Don at the center to several of the other characters–a step in the right direction in my opinion, although I try to continue to hold out hope for Don.</p>
<p>Don is a whore child and hates himself for it. He actually has a giant inferiority complex so the only way to level the playing field is to degrade people.</p>
<p>Even at his worst, I’ve never found Don repellent before this episode. The cheating on Betty always seemed to be about trying to escape the fact that she did not really know who he was and that he knew that she was too much of a child to ever be able to accept the truth about him, if he told her. Sure enough, once she found out about his past she was done with him. Even so, he seemed so full of guilt and remorse about the end of his marriage that he spiraled downward while living on his own, graphically shown when he hired the prostitute to slap him across the face on Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>He seemed to really be happy with Megan who had none of Betty’s childishness, was kind and understanding with his children and who knew the truth about Don/Dick and loves him anyway. I get that the overriding theme this season is death and Don’s sense that he’s losing control over both his life and his business but in this last episode he is so bizarre that for the first time, I feel like I don’t get him at all. He seemed to love her so much; was that ever real and is it completely over?</p>
<p>That said, I loved how he tried to establish dominance over Ted by outdrinking him but then was outmatched by the fact that Ted held his life in his hands by being the one in control of the plane. He tried to establish control over Sylvia with his hotel games until she grew weary of the whole thing and ended it. Peggy is no longer in his thrall and even Joan, who he respects and likes told him off last week. </p>
<p>No sympathy for Pete who destroyed everything good in his life and now sees his career slipping through his fingers and has been saddled with his batty mother. Roger Sterling firing Bert Peterson AGAIN (and enjoying it so much it was practically indecent) was my personal favorite moment.</p>
<p>Turning your key character into somebody very unlikable is dangerous and you can tell the show is already winding down. Will he be redeemed before the end?</p>
<p>How do you even continue to sleep with a man who orders you to crawl around to look for his shoes? Seeing Don perspire and squirm in the plane with Ted as the driver was, to use Joblue’s phrase, “my personal favorite moment.”</p>
<p>A lot of the show revolves around mothers. Roger’s mother loved him and he could never return that feeling. Pete’s mother is half-demented and shockingly reminiscent of Trudy in the way they both wanted the husband’s affairs to be discrete for the pretenses of family and position. Remember, the first time we see Trudy this season she’s talking about which community event a family should sign up for. </p>
<p>Don was never loved by the only mother he knew and he saw her willingly give herself - with a look of lust - to Uncle Mac, in direct contrast to the harshness of her life with Don and his father. In some sense, he wants his mother’s love but his mother is/are a whore … his real mother and his step-mother. </p>
<p>I remember that Betty said in the first episode while in the run down flop house “someone has to take control of this mess” or something like that. Funny her words set the tone. Henry is frustrated because Lindsay took control to stop a riot … because that involved shady deals made earlier with bad guys in the community. I gather he doesn’t like that form of control; it’s imposed on him the same way life imposes on everyone in this show.</p>
<p>Peggy wants control over the tenants in the house they bought - probably for next to nothing - on the upper West Side. She wants control over her life so she fantasizes about Ted Chaough. I could go on. </p>
<p>I don’t read anything into the episode about Pete’s career. I think that was about how he’s always afraid and how this guy who needs to be in charge can’t be. The good part of Pete is that he turned his back on the prestige of his old NYC family to be an ad man. But he’s remarkably insecure. And he’s drawn to women who are children unlike Don who is drawn to women with a lot going on. </p>
<p>As I think back on Don and Sylvia, I realize she said everything of importance. He twice said you only exist for me now in this room, first in Sylvia’s bedroom and then in the hotel. She talks about love and guilt. The most we hear from him is “I want to stop doing this.” What does that mean? It’s the opposite of feelings for her. I think in some ways the hotel scenes were the same kind of escapist fantasy we saw when he asked the department store owner to run away with him. Sylvia is alone. Her husband is apparently in Minnesota and her son is in Paris while the riots are happening. Remember the Sheraton proposal: Hawaii, the stepping off place. Don is always looking for that but at the same time he knows it’s transient: the speech at Dow about how happiness is something you get just before you want some more happiness. </p>
<p>I’m reminded of Claudius’ speech where he confesses to God he has killed his brother and married his brother’s wife so he could be king … but he can’t repent because repenting would mean giving up what he did that for. That is The Inferno as well: a warning to you that you must repent … but Don can’t repent. Not now. Maybe not ever.</p>
<p>BTW, I keep hearing discussion about “who is the man with a plan” referred to in the title. I assumed that the title is a play on the old Jewish adage, when man makes plans, God laughs.</p>
<p>new mad men fan here
Thanks to all, especially lergnom for the insight. enjoy reading the analysis, and thanks to deb for the mad style link. </p>
<p>" man with a plan" - Did Don hear Sylvia breaking up with her husband?
Didn’t Sylvia say something about " them not falling in love"’ as if Don could, but she definitely could.
So, I viewed the domineering scenes, as Don’s plan to break/ break up with Sylvia. As Lergnom mentioned Don’s reaction when Sylvia walked out, was well played, nuanced. his eyes brimming its tears, but it had to be done, or else his marriage jeopardized.</p>
<p>the other man with a plan, of course, Ted, controlling the plane, threatening Don’s life, in addition to his status in the new firm.
What book was Don reading during that plane scene? such a contrived moment, therefore, I thought the book selection, meaningful. I know it was the book he took from Sylvia.</p>
<p>It was The Last Picture Show. I never saw the 1971 movie or read the book, but it looks like there are plenty of connections one can make between Don/Dick and the story of a dead end town and two young men who grew up there.</p>
<p>I always think that whichever books Don is shown to be reading have significance for the series although I’m hard pressed to figure out what they may mean until many episodes later. I dimly remember reading The Last Picture show and seeing the movie so maybe roshke is right about the lives of the young men in it paralleling Don’s life but my feeling was that maybe it was the title of the book that was significant given this season’s focus on death.</p>
<p>I can’t wait for next week. I remember what a bombshell Bobby Kennedy’s assasination was and I really hope that they don’t short change the event in next week’s show. The summer of 1968 was such a game changer and I’m really looking forward to seeing it play out.</p>
<p>^^ I agree and think it’s probably some elements of both. The novel and movie portrayed young people moving into the cities and leaving that way of life in the dust. Some people don’t get out - they are left behind. Despite Don’s outward image of success, and the physical transition to a more upscale world, a large part of him has never escaped, either.</p>
<p>Jon Hamm is only committed to one more season, (I think), so I hope M. Weiner takes him to some dark unlikeable places. BTW since Don is a self made man from the humblest of beginnings who loves his children, he will always be liked at least at little bit.</p>
<p>One of my favorite shows. Finished season 5 on Netflix about a month ago, but I don’t have AMC. Guess I will just have to wait until they get season 6 to watch it.</p>
<p>The show ends after next season. That was planned. Has nothing to do with contracts. That was Weiner’s decision in negotiating with AMC.</p>
<p>Credit to whomever thought of Vincent Kartheiser being Mr. Darcy in a theatrical production of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis this summer. Playing against perceived type (Pete Campbell) should pack them in.</p>
<p>I’m sure if you did a poll on which Mad Man actor would fit that part, Jon Hamm would be on the top of the list, with Pete relegated to Mr. Collins. </p>
<p>But if you look at this photo, you can see it: [Oh</a>, Mr. Darcy! Mad Men?s Vincent Kartheiser to Star in Pride and Prejudice at the Guthrie Theater | Broadway Buzz | Broadway.com](<a href=“http://www.broadway.com/buzz/169588/oh-mr-darcy-mad-mens-vincent-kartheiser-to-star-in-pride-and-prejudice-at-the-guthrie-theater/]Oh”>http://www.broadway.com/buzz/169588/oh-mr-darcy-mad-mens-vincent-kartheiser-to-star-in-pride-and-prejudice-at-the-guthrie-theater/)</p>
<p>Hey, it’s acting. When he was 7, Kartheiser played Tiny Tim at the Guthrie.</p>