Don’s also making some very good scratch. He told Sterling he wanted $40k/year in S1 and got it. Average salary back then (1961 for S1) was ~$5,500 with an average of $9k for college graduates. I wish I remembered but I think Cosgrove was told he’d be making just under $20k (18?) as Half-Head of Accounts which makes me wonder how long they’ll drag out paying two salaries to Ken & Pete or if the “real” Head of Accounts should be making ~$35k
Don pulled $5,000 out of his desk drawer to give to his brother and signed over a $2,500 check to his Bohemian mistress without a wince. He’s not ready to gold plate his house but he seems to have significant means that he largely just sits on.
I had an epiphany regarding this a few weeks back; Betty & Don aren’t supposed to be just above-average-looking folks portrayed by beautiful/handsome actors, as in most TV shows. They’re supposed to be as beautiful/handsome as the actors who play them. Look at the way the opposite sex fawns over both of them.
Betty is the quintessential, well-educated, unbelievably-gorgeous blonde (whose looks have helped her considerably in life) who marries Don, despite knowing very little about him, because he charmed the pants off of her, AND because he’s super good-looking too.
I don’t think Don could be as successful as an ad man if he “bought in” to everything he espouses as the American Dream. He’s much better at selling it than the others because he can stand outside of it. The bubbling counterculture - the hitchhikers and the Village beatniks - see this side of him too.
I finally got around to watching this episode, and both hubby and I remarked on Betty’s flyer she was going over about the town hall meeting. It had a big headline on it, in like 20 point script. The rest was type-written.
Could they have done a headline like that in 1963? I don’t remember being able to do anything other than plain old courier until lasers/inkjets came out. That really seemed out of place to me. But who knows? Maybe Betty had access to some advanced fancy typewriter thing that I don’t know about. Anyone?
I don’t know if they were around in the early 60’s, but by the 70’s, we were using transfers to put fancy lettering on newsletters. They came on a clear plastic-like sheet and you rubbed them on to paper, for reproduction. We just called them “transfer letters”. They came in a wide range of fonts and sizes.
ETA: The trip down memory lane continues. Prior to that, we used templates. You’d get a sheet of letters, on heavy stock. You’d punch out the letter and trace around the gap on to stencils, using a metal-tipped thingie. I’m describing it very poorly. Think of the letters as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, only shaped like letters.
He was making $300 a week before taxes, so that comes out to $15,600. Harry was making $200 a week ($10,400 annually) and got a raise to $225 ($11,700 annually).
I’m a REALLY late adopter on this show and am just getting up to mid-season 2 now. I’ve decided to watch the new eps as they come on, though, so I’m aware of most of what happens. I’m just enjoying watching it all unfold.
I was actually confused by it. For a while I thought they were showing Pete in his fancy apartment, alone, and he was flashing back to when he was slumming it when they showed the outside hall. Total mismatch between apartment and hallway. It was like a high-rise apartment with a 5 floor walk-up hallway.
Was it that little for Cosgrove after his (and Campbell’s) promotion? I could have sworn he asked what the pay was and was given an amount like $18,000 with a “We’ll review it after you’ve settled in” carrot tacked on. Or are you refering to his pay in the episode where Harry tries to get a raise?
Both are about the same age. Both are beautiful, pursued by every man, intelligent, and capable and both are frustrated by not being able to live up to their potentials.
The difference is that Betty got married and had children while Joan went to work. Yet neither path led them to a happy present. Both appear to desire what the other one has. Betty wants the outside job, Joan wants the house and children. Neither understand that getting the trappings wouldn’t be sufficient. They need to be fulfilled internally, the way Peggy has shown herself to be, even though Peggy still feels that she needs the trappings because the world keeps telling her that she does. The loosening up of Peggy this season is interesting because it hints that maybe she’ll be the one to rebel against the social consensus. Although the writers will find 16 ton weights to drop on her every moment of the way.
What’s interesting about the series is the way that each character’s path plays off another character’s. This week it was Joan/Betty. But also Pete/Don. Pete tries the philandering route that Don pulls off effortlessly but is a different person. The guy across the hall doesn’t care how many beds he’s in as long as he keeps it out of the building - exactly what Don does - but Pete can’t handle secrets.
A lot of the character reveals on the show come specifically from the way they handle secrets, well or poorly. Every main character has a set and each is terrified that they’re going to come out. They’re all facade. Sometimes the facade breaks. I think that’s the key metaphor for the program.
Exapno Mapcase, I agree with everything you said except that I don’t think Joan wants a house and children – I think she sees the house and kids as her only choice at this point in her life. I think she’d have been happy (or at least content) to keep going as she was (Roger’s mistress, Queen Bee at SC). But Roger falling for a younger woman (and a lowly secretary at that) forced her to think about the future. She panicked.
I think if she’d held on a bit longer, with Peggy leading the way and showing the guys that a woman can do the work, Joan might have been able to do what Peggy did, move up, use all her skills.
Do you remember the episode in which Joan’s drivers license got pinned to the bulletin board, revealing to everyone that she was gasp 30? Everything since then demoted her from being the Queen Bee and showed that she had - or thought she had - no future at Sterling Cooper. And she probably didn’t. After 10 years of being a secretary no one there would take her aspirations seriously, as the temp tv reader job showed.
Joan may have panicked or she may have come to a realistic conclusion based on the times and her situation. We obviously haven’t seen the last of her, so we’ll find out something. Right now, her complete and apparently willing rather than reluctant support of her husband indicates to me that she wants the home and family that is boring Betty to death.
Joan gave up too easily. With the Chipmunks (Sepinwall’s name for the guys in the office), sometimes you have to hit them over the head. I can’t remember – did Joan ask to be considered for that position?
No, she didn’t ask for the position. It was just work she was doing & happened to be good at. She was informed it was “a position” just as a man was hired to do the work; of course, she would have to tell him how. That is, the moment “the position” appeared, it was taken away from her. She was surprised & hurt. But she might be ready to grab a chance–if another one appears.
Bobbie Barrett was bad news but I wish Joan had heard her say “Pick a job and then become the person who does it.”
Yes, I’m pretty sure it was the back utility stairs, the apartment doors were second entrances into the kitchens or some other back room. I know someone in a 1949 hi-rise with the same layout, most apartments have 2 doors, one to the main hallway that’s carpeted and decorated, and one to a back landing with the stairs and freight elevator.
