<p>I loved the scene where Sally said she loved him. Don looked literally like he would have fallen over if he hadn’t been sitting in the car. I really liked watching them together in this episode.</p>
<p>Completely unrelated to the current analysis going on, and probably not nearly as interesting, but to me it seems like Sally is much more forgiving of Don’s failures than she is of Betty’s. I wonder why that is.</p>
<p>Ema- that’s an easy one. Mothers and daughters clash very often. The father often doesn’t seem nearly as bad.</p>
<p>I guess I can see that, but it doesn’t really make that much sense to me. When I was Sally’s age I had a bad relationship with both my parents, and I might have fought louder and more often with my mom, but I didn’t have any friendlier of a view of my dad. And my dad wasn’t an alcoholic, womanizing cheater who trashed his marriage to my mother. Not that Betty is perfect, either, but I don’t know many daddy’s girls with dads like Don.</p>
<p>Betty is often downright mean toward her children; Sally picks up on that. Don, on the other hand, while often absent, is more of the forgiving and humane parent. </p>
<p>That’s true. I think Betty has it rough being the only one who has actually had to be the parent… Don is never and has never been there, he gets to play Good Cop. But that’s the age old problem, isn’t it? I suppose since she dislikes Betty so much, perhaps she thinks she deserves whatever she got from Don.</p>
<p>Seeing Don through Sally is interesting. Something about those two together strikes a chord with me-- I’m not sure what it is. I hope we get to see more of them together and that this wasn’t a one off thing like I am afraid it might be.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure Don pulls a $1 bill out of his wallet. I don’t see why he’d make a joke about dashing only to pull out money to pay. He’s been treating her with value, showing that he knows she can see his lies (and he can see hers) and that they can/should be honest with each other. If it was just a joke, he’s treating her like a little kid. Maybe that’s the case but I don’t see it. </p>
<p>I think the show revels in the fact that Kiernan Shipka can act. Matt Weiner (and the exec producers) have been blunt about Bobby: last year was the first Bobby who could act so they wrote for him. Because Kiernan can act, they may have pushed more into the father/daughter dynamic than if she couldn’t act. </p>
<p>It took Don a long time to realize that giving his kids the physical goods he never had wasn’t enough, that he also needed to be the kind of father he wish he’d had. I remember the first season when he constructed a playhouse for them while sucking down beer after beer. </p>
<p>I remember Kiernan Shipka’s description of the show not long after it started: it’s about Don Draper’s home life and his work life. I keep in mind that what happens to Betty is peripheral. We learned a lot about Michael Ginsberg and yet nearly every episode now he only has a line or maybe 2. </p>
<p>I saw it as a Dine and Dash. Don pulled out a dollar to cover the “tip” so as not to cheat the waitress. He did get up and leave to go warm the car like he told Sally he would. I enjoyed how she said something like “I’m different people”, can’t remember the exact phrasing. I’ve noticed they don’t have much of Betty on anymore, though.</p>
<p>I also saw the scene as Don joking with Sally about not paying. You can see the relief in her face when he does pull out his wallet and leaves cash. (It has to be a small tab. Why would he not pay?) He’s been very generous with his money in this episode, both with Sally and his secretary. I think he did it to lighten the mood and break down Sally’s emotional boycott. It seemed to work.</p>
<p>Sally and Don, so much alike, both with very dark sides.
Sally knows what a very bad, bad boy her father is, catching in the act with Sylvia, lying about his working, and sitting across from her suggesting the dine and dash.
She knows where he grew up.
And, yet despite all HIS FATHERLY flaws, she tells him she loves him. Wow! Quite a moment for him! Worthy of being loved by his daughter, life changing ? </p>
<p>Like Lergnom, I didn’t think Don paid the entire check. I may be completely wrong, but my interpretation was that Sally’s anger is largely based on the fact that she sees him as a four star phony. Last season, she felt betrayed by her discovery of his affair, but then he took the kids to the childhood house. In this episode, once again she is upset when she found he was blatantly lying about his work, but it was tempered after he was able to show her the “authentic” Don (or Dick).</p>
<p>It sounds counterintuitive, but I thought not paying the bill showed Sally that Don is starting to own up to who and what he is and that that is what elicited Sally’s reaction. </p>
<p>Not paying the check would be out of character for Don. Throwing money around is a big part of his ego, and while he’s a cad, he’s not a petty thief.
I see it as a way of playing with Sally. The look of disbelief on her face elicits a smile from him as he pulls out his wallet slowly, as if to say, “I may have lied, I may be a total %#@$ up, but I do have some moral standards, and I am still your dad.”<br>
He loves Sally and would never intentionally put her in the position of being partner to stealing from a restaurant. </p>
<p>No, you’re all right, the check skipping was a joke. Don was poking fun at himself and his devious ways in that moment, which helped endear him to Sally. </p>
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<p>I distinctly remember a scene in one of the earliest seasons–possibly the first–where Freddy remarks that “it’s like a dog talking” when Peggy–still a secretary–expresses an idea to the “boys.”</p>
<p>What a great episode. I can’t believe so much happened in one hour. Betty has got to be one of the most unlikable characters ever written. The second her kids disappoint her and make her feel devalued she turns on them and punishes them. She was just brutal in this episode. No wonder Sally is more responsive to Don. He may have been absent and careless and a fake, but he’s not deliberately cruel to his kids.</p>
<p>Betty is a child herself. We’ve seen over and over again that part of the reason she could never deal with marriage problems is that she’s really stunted emotionally. She couldn’t leave Don until she had Henry lined up and now Henry is more of a father figure than a husband. Anytime her children don’t fit her image of what her ideal child would be, she turns on them. The only time her father treated her like an adult and tried to discuss his plans for his estate after her died, she actually told him that she didn’t want to hear it and said something like “I’m your little girl”.</p>
<p>I do think that she loves her children as much as she’s able to love anyone but she’s utterly self-centered in the same way an adolescent is. That’s not much use to a daughter like Sally, who has had to mature much too quickly without much support from her parents. I do think that Sally will have more inner resources to deal with life than her mother ever did, though and I’m glad that Don is finally being honest with her in a way that reflects her growing maturity. Poor Bobby, though. She’s never been kind to that boy except for the time she visited him (and Don) at his camp and for the first part of tonight’s field trip.</p>
<p>Does anyone else think that Betty has an eating disorder? I felt like we’ve been getting strong signals about that all through the show but especially in the current episode.</p>
<p>I thinks she has a personality disorder. </p>
<p>I was kind of surprised by Peggy’s reaction to Don’s return. You’d think she’d be happy. Don treated her way better than Lou does and appreciated quality work, which Lou doesn’t. But Joan also had a point - things are working the way they are now. It will be interesting to see where Harry goes in his alliance with Jim Cutler. </p>
<p>This is one of the few episodes I really didn’t like and that is because Don acted stupidly throughout. And also because, frankly, there were very few really good observational remarks.</p>
<p>In his first scene, Don is being petulant with an overwhelmed Dawn and hangs up on her in pique. Then he’s out in CA and Megan is really glad to see him … and he shows again he doesn’t actually trust her or know her by reciting her agent’s phone call and even saying she’s been “acting like a lunatic”. That he thinks he’s being the “husband” shows something is still wrong inside. They then have the conversation which has been building up inside her: “where is it quiet in that office?” and “Who’s your new girl?” When he says that he wanted to fix it and she reminds him the idea was he’d be in CA she says one of the only really outstanding lines of the episodes: “You got up every morning with a clear head and decided you didn’t want to be here with me”. (She also had a good line earlier: “It’s sunny here for everyone but me”, which is pretty much the way it is in acting for nearly all actors, but Don doesn’t get that.)</p>
<p>I’m impressed that Jim Cutler is concerned about the firm’s future in ways the others aren’t. After promoting Joan, he wants them to get a computer … though he says he’s mad at Don for what he did to Ted, which is sort of the opposite of why Ted is not there. </p>
<p>They can’t go to a farm without conjuring up Don’s past and this time it’s sunny and bright with a Dad who loves his daughter and Betty looking more like a model than a mom and, as we all know, being the one who actually ruins things and then acts like a petulant child at home by saying, “I was hungry. Now I’m not.” And then laying in bed with Gene asleep on her and complaining, “It was a perfect day and he ruined it” and whining “why don’t they love me” as Henry acts like her father reassuring his grown up baby. As we saw at lunch with her old neighbor - love that actress but don’t remember the character’s name - Betty is not adjusting to the new world and is in fact sort of pushing it away with two hands, which is what Megan says to Don that he’s doing to her. </p>
<p>And of course the absurd sequences with Peggy: she’s dumped on some more by not even being put forward for a Clio and then has a nasty conversation with Don. “Well I can’t say that we miss you”, which is just spiteful. </p>
<p>But it was the denouement that struck me as wrong: why exactly would Don agree and agree so quickly to a set of restrictions designed to take away his partnership at no cost to the firm? He’s smart. He has a lot of pride … and now it’s …? We’re talking a lot of money. He wouldn’t need to work or at least work very hard. He could start his own agency, including in LA. </p>
<p>As to the partner meeting, I was somewhat surprised by the vehemence with which Joan spoke: “allowing him to preserve his dignity while exploring other employment”. I noted a remark that “our creative is invisible” and that “Lou is adequate”, but I didn’t expect Roger to show up at all that day or that he’d call Don on Monday and tell him not to come in. It was a real messy scene that didn’t fit in my mind. I was struck by the way it was done, with Don staring at his watch at 9AM intercut with images of him walking around the office. I wondered if it was real or if the phone would ring and Roger would tell him not to come in or something that actually makes sense. That dig from Peggy was like something out of a dream. And as I saw it, he was actually leaving when Ginsberg calls out to him … how did that transition into him spending what must have been most of the day in the creative bullpen? As I was watching I had the weird sense that this was Don imagining how it would go. I hope that’s true because it just doesn’t fit: how can he say he loves Megan when she’s made it more clear he’s supposed to be in LA if he really wants to be with her? </p>
<p>I could not place the movie Don is watching at the start. I don’t remember there being any music at all in the episode, which is really weird.</p>
<p>This is the quote from “What Alan’s watching”. * The movie Don is watching at the beginning of the episode appears to be Jacques Demy’s “Model Shop,” which also involves a man whose relationship with a would-be actress is falling apart.
Read more at <a href=“Entertainment – UPROXX”>Entertainment – UPROXX;
<p>Thanks. </p>
<p>I’m bothered by some things. Don must know Lou has a 2 year deal. Does he expect SC&P would want to pay both? (And with Ted, that means paying 3 creative directors.) I’m guessing this is one of those areas where logic falls apart. Lots of stuff like that sticks out. </p>