Mad Men

You're right. There's no one in that office with a sense of humour whatsoever.

 

After watching tonight's season finale, I really want next season to start soon because I want to see what happens to Don and Duck Phillips and consequently, Pete Campbell.
And speaking of Pete, what happens to him now that he knows he has a kid out there? There was some good stuff.
I loved seeing Duck get it during that meeting. Ah! It was just like chess when you make a move you thought would work and bam! It backfires.
"He could never hold his liquor."
Did Betty let Don back in the house because of the letter he sent or because she cheated?

 

I can't say it was one of their greatest episodes, but I think we saw some really interesting things tonight. Consider Don and his lack of contract. That merger will not go through primarily because he did not sign a contract. Don's success---combined, of course, with a portion of good luck, which almost every American dream includes---is tied to the fact that he has no strings attached. He's an outsider from the get-go and isn't as frightened about the possibility of being an outsider once more. Pete doesn't have that freedom---he was born into a certain type of people that expect a certain way of life. And though Pete wants to reject those things, he doesn't have Don's courage.

And what's even more interesting is that, as we are about to be wiped off the face of the earth, Don is with his family, whereas Pete and Peggy are alone. The man who is living with a fake identity is the one with his loved ones---the little parts of him that he and Betty created, as Peggy explained to Pete.

This season we saw how close Don and Peggy truly are in philosophy and their ways of approaching life and its problems, but we saw one crucial difference tonight---Peggy believes in God. That's why she feels guilt. That accounts for the reasons how Don and Peggy are different. She eventually rationalizes as Don does, but she has a harder time looking forward than Don because she believes in a God.

And Pete shows his loyalty for Don by telling him the truth about what Duck said. Pete is told by Peggy to be honest and damn the consequences, for good and for bad, because people respect that. And so Pete is with Don, even though it will cost him a promotion. That's ironic, of course, because Peggy hadn't been 100% honest with Pete even.

Pete is a good man. I didn't think that two hours ago, that's for damn sure. And I guess what Bert Cooper told Don when deciding whether to fire Pete in Season 1 rang true.

 

I think Betty let Don come back home partly because of that. I also think it's because she knows that, if she wanted to, she could have the same thing that he had. She can cheat on him. She can abort the baby, if she so chooses. She has some freedom now, too. Plus, she also knows that if Don were to disappear again, she could easily survive without him. She won't just "float away." She knows for certain that Don cheated on her, that it wasn't her paranoia, that she just wasn't doing a good enough job of keeping his attention. He admitted it. The big fight over the imported beer had to do with her insecurity about Don being a keener reader of people and situations, that Don knew her better than she knew Don or even knew her herself. But now she knows she's not bat-shit crazy and that she won't be as blind now with Don as she once was.

Don now needs Betty more than Betty needs Don---and that's never been the case for the first 10 years of their marriage. Betty doesn't need or want to be the type of woman that Peggy is. She still doesn't fit the feminist ideal of a woman, but at least Betty has some power and knows that her life won't totally end if her marriage were to end.

 

Being preggers, Betty took her free shot. Now they're (sort of) even.

 

I might be reading this wrong, but my take is that Peggy kicked Pete right in the nuts, and made him like it. I have no sympathy whatsoever for Pete. Welcome to the real world, pal.

 

See, I think we did read it differently, but I also agree with your reading of it, even though I still think my own reading of it was right, too. That's why this show is great---there can be more than one reading of it, because there's meant to be. But I also think she was showing him some compassion. He repeatedly asks her for her advice. She tells him to be honest---and he does so---even though she knows that she's not even living up to her own advice.

I think she saw the priest and realized that she had to tell him, too, because we could all be gone by tomorrow. But mostly, I think she was following her own advice. If she really wanted to kick him in the nuts, she could have done it earlier. But I think that the "kicking him in the nuts" theory served as extra sweetener for her.

 

Unless they take some serious liberties, Don's situation can't stop the merger. He's only 12 percent, and it's otherwise unanimous.

My opinion has always been clouded by the fact that I think January Jones is hot as fuck, but Betty really is a bitch, isn't she?

 

Perhaps she's a bitch, but consider what has led up to that. Daddy's little girl, obviously, as we saw. Beautiful Betty on campus. Landed the "perfect" man. And for the first time in her life -- over the two seasons of this drama -- she's finding that life is not a little girl's fairy tale.

I think Pete's wife is truly Betty in training.

 

I liked the episode, but can't help feeling the season didn't really resolve some of the stuff they opened up early in the year.
So next year, they work the season up to Kennedy getting shot.
Year four, the growing realization that the Mad Men are The Establishment all the kids are railing against.
The final season: Everything splinters, Pete gets killed in a race riot, Peggy starts her own agency aimed a female audiences, Sterling hooks up with Sal, and Don Draper is discovered to be a sleeper agent for the Russians.

 

Great episode. Peggy telling Pete about their baby is hands down the best scene of the first two seasons.

Peggy didn't have to tell Pete because given her position in the agency, she could easily deal with his advances but the confession was the coup de grace.

You could see how absolutely devastated Pete was (check him cradling his gun alone in his office later on) but I thought Peggy's touching his shoulder on her way out was lovely. I think at some level they are the best of friends. Pete actually seems to be a real person around Peggy.

 

Pete's wife didn't marry the kind of man she thought she did.

Pete's a dinosaur. They're still around, today, but there are far fewer of them.