Back in S1 or S2, Joan’s female roommate confesses to her that she followed Joan to New York because she’s in love with her. I don’t remember where Joan was from but she wasn’t local to the Big Apple.
The “Don/Dick” thing is the central conceit of his character; they’ll never move on from it. The character, and the show, hinge on that.
Furthermore, this season’s theme has been about Don’s world falling apart and his struggling to change in response. He’s seen Sterling-Cooper go down, his marriage blow up, had his only true friend die, had to recognize the damage his womanizing has done, had to cut back on his drinking… there is no way this season wouldn’t address his carefully constructed lies falling down around his ears, too.
Don’s dark secret bubbling up again was the culmination of this season’s events. That’s not jumping the shark – that’s finally having someone take Checkov’s gun off the wall and shoot someone with the damn thing.
I agree with this. What’s more, the show gives you reason to doubt that Don will come through with the tickets. He has to keep harassing Harry - now a name-dropping blowhard - about the tickets, and it isn’t clear that Harry will come through.
I have to say I disagree with virtually all of kevja’s criticisms of the episode. In particular, I don’t see Don’s reaction to the government investigation into his life in this episode as a retread of what happened when Betty found out.
You can’t really count Doris since there’s no reason to assume she knows of him as Don Draper. And there’s certainly no reason to assume she knows he deserted from the Army under a false identity.
Ok, this is possibly completely pointlessly nerdy a thing to raise but did Pryce Snr. not sound like a different social class to his son? (I’m asking British dopers this question btw.) 
For the record, it’s the Clio. (Pronounced klee-o, even though it’s named after the Muse pronounced kly-o. I don’t know why the difference. Does anyone here?)
Does anybody know who the actor playing Papa Pryce is? He’s not listed in the imdb credits but I know I’ve seen him and heard him (very familiar voice).
In an interview I saw recently Jared Harris (Lane Pryce) talked about how often he’s used the time he lived with his stepfather Rex Harrison in his acting and developing dark characters. He said that Harrison was every bit as suave and refined and sophisticated and intellectual off camera/off stage as he was on and could be the most charming and generous and funny person you’d ever want to meet, BUT he could also be a belittling and controlling asshole with a near psychotic temper. After his mother became the fourth woman to divorce Harrison none of her sons ever had the slightest desire ever to see him again; Richard Harris was often drunk, unreliable, irresponsible, benignly belligerent, dated embarrassingly young women and constantly forgot birthdays or promises and he was usually broke due to carelessness/gambling/extravagance/etc., BUT he was generally a caring dad and they all preferred him many times to Sexy Rexy because he didn’t have scarily insane moments.
Anyway, I wondered if this scene either brought back memories of Harrison or even perhaps Harris was involved in its writing, because his father on the show seemed almost exactly like his description of Harrison. That caning of a middle aged “child” was totally unexpected, especially coming from an old English gentleman.
my brother made a reference to the actor being involved in a Star Trek episode, but I have no idea which iteration or in what role.
A credit hasn’t show up on IMDB yet, but I think it’s William Morgan Sheppard.
alphaboi867, the AMC website says you’re right. I didn’t realize he played one of the high important Vulcans in the newest Star Trek movie. (That would explain why he’s familiar to me, besides being Mark Sheppard’s father.)
One of the minor characters this episode (“George Casey,” don’t ask me who that is) was played by JD Cullum, son of John Cullum- Lee Garner Senior.
I totally agree with this. As soon as it was made apparent that Don didn’t actually have the tickets yet my first thought was “poor Sally.”
W Morgan Sheppard played a member of the Vulcan Science Academy in the recent movie. His long, long career includes roles in earlier* Star Trek* movies & episodes.
He was Blank Reg in Max Headroom.
Let’s just say she’s old enough to have a daughter of reproductive age…and looks it. Poor Joan. It’s not just Don’s world falling apart, you know. Joan’s is unraveling even faster–she was supposed to be the wife of a successful man, someone who didn’t have to work and could spend her days shopping, lunching, and doting on her children, and she was supposed to have achieved this goal through the power of her face and body. She’s still working, in a place where junior employees treat her disrespectfully. She doesn’t have any kids, and no real hope of having any any time soon if she terminated this pregnancy. She’s married, but to a guy who will never, ever be as successful as she’d thought…and that’s if he even makes it out of Vietnam alive. And she’s slowly coming to realize that nobody but Roger sees her as the sexy young thing who can lead any man around by the dick any more, which tends to limit her chances of catching a rich man if she’s widowed.
Of course, all of this is pretty directly tied to her own choices in life–if you’re going to trade on your pretty face and your Rack of Doom to get a rich husband, you gotta work fast and not waste years and years on someone who will never leave his wife, because being the youngest, most exciting piece of ass on the market is a fleeting thing. But even so, I still feel bad for her.
BTW, is there that much danger for Joan’s husband in Vietnam? I got the impression from watching MAS*H that the surgeons were quite far from the front lines.
Of course! That’s it. Thank you. (He was also in The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, which has no bearing on anything except it’s a great excuse to mention the title.)
MM has been really great at keeping us guessing about things. E.g., “Did Joan have the abortion on not?” in this thread. This episode really sets up a lot of these.
I have been leaning towards Lane finally losing the vest and becoming a 60s American swinger. This episode suggested that he was finally going to go that way. The black Playboy bunny girlfriend and all. But then he announces he’s taking a leave for 2 weeks-a month to go back to London. Maybe he won’t come back at all. (Especially if SCDP starts to fail.)
I’ve been assuming that the woman that Don finally tells the truth to at the start of the relationship will be “the one” that he finally ends up happy with. So he told Faye. I don’t think this is going to work. Especially with the look he gives Megan at the end.
Betty was practically normal in this episode. She was even sewing! Last week she was a heartless bitch. The week before she started off crazy and ended up normal. Next week …?
Like the trailers for the next week episodes, the whole show is misdirection as to what happens next.
As we’re watching this, my wife turns to me during the commercial break and says, casually: “Did I ever tell you about when I went to see the Beatles at Shea?”
Why on EARTH would you think anything on MAS*H was accurate regarding the Vietnam War??
Obviously, you should have been watching “China Beach”. MAS*H was in Korea 
She didn’t waste years and years on Roger. She continued to date other men during that time. It was made clear in “Long Weekend” that Joan didn’t wait around hoping that Roger would be able to spend time with her because both of them knew there was no future in it.
It’s not an illogical assumption.
(1) The situations are similar and close enough in time to support an assumption that certain policies would be similar.
(2) You wouldn’t expect there to be too great a divergence in this respect between the two wars.
(3) MASH was nominally about Korea, but it was really about Vietnam.
But there’s always this on the other hand:
– TV makes stuff up.
The more I think about it, the more I think that Joan kept the baby and that any awkwardness explaining the timeline to her husband will be obviated by his death (and may Dr. Rapist suffer a fiery, painful one). I’m not totally certain (if she did keep the baby, her not immediately telling Roger seems weird, since she’ll start showing eventually), but that’s my guess.
Meanwhile, like some other posters I’m wondering if Roger is going to survive the loss of the Lucky Strike campaign. He has been suffering a lot of setbacks lately and this one will sink his career if something doesn’t come along to save SCDP. As an aside - does Roger need his job at SCDP? It seems as though he’d have plenty of money from his years and various deals at Sterling-Cooper (and probably from his father), but my impression is that he lost a ton of money in his divorce.
Roger, Cooper, and Don also put a lot of the money they had made into establishing the new firm.