It’s been made clear, I think that Sal is a closeted gay man, but I never got that impression about Ken Cosgrove.
I think he’s off. He was more animated, more confident, less tenative, looser…
he might have finally found his own self worth, but based on last week with Chauncey, I think he found a good bottle of vodka.
Yes, we’ve seen Don be kind and Jimmy be cruel. We’ve also seen Don be a prick and a philanderer, and Jimmy express perfectly justifiable anger. The morality of their actions in other situations doesn’t change the facts of the morality of their actions in this situation.
What often gets forgotten, especially with the tendency to remember only the more flamboyant and violent episodes of the 1960s, is that SDS began as a highly intellectual movement and only later began to place more emphasis on the sort of direct action for which they are best known. The “rant” that the guy was reading from in this episode was actually the Port Huron Statement, the main intellectual and political document of the early SDS, formulated at that meeting in mid-1962.
James Miller’s book Democracy is in the Streets does a great job of charting the early development of SDS, and focuses closely on the intellectual underpinnings of their ideology.
I thought Ken was the one that had a “date” with a guy last season. If I remember correctly, he struggled with the decision to take the other guy up on his offer. Am I thinking of the right person?
Based on pimping his wife to Don. He didn’t do anything about it until his TV deal was in the can. I think we can safely assume he’s used her that way before. It’s sad as hell, and I do think it hurts him. I do like the character though.
I agree that he’s no worse than some of the others, but he’s the one we were talking about.
mhendo, thanks for that information.
peaceplease, Sal’s the one who had the date in S1.
It seems to me she did that herself. And it was pretty much peripheral to the whole deal going through.
Bobbie didn’t get anything from Don that she wouldn’t have gotten anyway. Bobbie has hinted that she might have used sex to get what she wants, but it’s not entirely clear what her exact history is along these lines and what Jimmy might know about it. Her attitude is that she plays with Jimmy like a child to get what she wants. With Don, what she wanted was the sex. Neither Don nor anyone else was holding up the deal in exchange for it.
I don’t think we can. His anger was of a person who wasn’t accustomed to it.
I would have had some respect for Jimmy if he had stepped up earlier, even if it meant pissing Don off and possibly losing his TV show. You’re right though – Don and Bobbie got what they wanted, so why shouldn’t Jimmy.
I still don’t agree that he was justified in telling Betty. Seems like when you drop a bomb like that on somebody, you can’t just walk away. It’s a bit different when a friend tells you – presumably they’re trying to help, and they’ll be there for you. The way I see it, Jimmy hurt an innocent person to get back at Don.
It’s a sign of good writing that we can have such different ideas about these characters. 
Just to clarify, Sal is the handsome Italian gent; Ken is the skinny blond account exec. Sal struggled w/his decision, I think because he hadn’t yet fully admitted to himself that he was gay. In the year and a half since S1, evidently he’s come to terms with it and isn’t afraid to hit on a co-worker.
I don’t think he has come to terms with it, given that he married a woman, and I don’t think that Ken was fully aware that Sal has the hots for him. He’s starting to feel discontent with the marriage, though, and I’m really interested to see where they’re going with this, whether it will be an ongoing unrequited crush, or if he will risk everything by making a move.
I would disagree - in the year and half since S1, he’s gotten married to a nice girl from the neighborhood and has gone even deeper into the closet.
I don’t think he realizes that he’s hitting on a co-worker. We see it, because we’re outside the situation, and not blind. But I don’t think he realizes how much he’s flirting, how much he’s crushing on Ken, how absolutely weird that entire non-date was. If you asked him, he’d say that it was just dinner with a co-worker, same as all the other dinners with co-workers. And he’d mean it. And believe that he was telling the truth, because he really needs to believe that.
I completely agree with this, and you articulated it much better than I could have.
I think a lot of gay people can probably relate to exactly what Sal was doing during that dinner with Ken. I know that before I really admitted I was gay I had interactions with friends that to an outside observer (and to myself looking back) were obvious attempts to hit on them, but I wouldn’t have seen them as such and would genuinely have meant that.
Unfortunately, Sal probably isn’t in a position where he’ll be able to look back on those interactions in a few years and laugh.
I’m curious regarding what Ken thought of the whole matter. Clearly he thought that Sal was being a little overly-friendly, but I’m wondering to what extent it would have occured to someone like Ken in (whatever year this season takes place in) that he was being hit on by another man.
My take on Ken’s reaction was one of mild discomfort but not suspicion (yet). He seemed to realize Sal was leaving his wife out of the conversation, but I don’t think he caught on why it was happening.
Whoo! I just noticed the duck-ass haircut on Don’s head in the flashback scene … Yay 1950s …