And yes, Roger lost a lot in the divorce. If you remember, that was one of the arguments that Duck made when he suggested that the British firm seek to buy Sterling Cooper, that Roger would welcome a cash offer after his divorce.
I think MAS*H was the inspiration for LOST, which is why they spent 11 years in the last year and a half of a 3 year war. The episode where the soldier is dead and walking around only able to communicate with out-of-his-head-in-delirium Klinger was I think the entire cast really- they were all killed in a bomb blast in the second season and they were in Purgatory but didn’t know it.
Good point; I hadn’t considered that.
Vietnam was a very different war from Korea. Korean battles typically involved large numbers of ground troops fighting along a defined front. That made the deployment of MASH units slightly behind the lines sensible. Vietnam did not mostly have defined fronts and troops were broken down into smaller units. There were far fewer MASH units in Vietnam, having been replaced by the MUST units (Medical Unit Self-Contained Transportable), and even those didn’t become mobile until later in the war, after 1968, when the numbers grew higher. Check this article.
For sure dangers awaited anyone in Nam, and people were killed even in Saigon. Greg could become one of the unlucky ones. But unless Weiner wants to stretch the odds, Joan has every reason to expect her husband to come home safe and whole. I don’t expert her to look at this rationally, of course, but we can.
My personal doctor for many years said he was in a MASH unit in Nam. That could be true, or he could be conflating it with the other units or he might have been lying. I like to think it’s true because he was batshit insane, a trait I find a lot more humanizing than arrogance in a doctor. The strangest thing he ever said to me, of many, was after my annual prostate examination, when he turned to me and said, “You’re as clean as a homosexual’s wet dream.” (In those exact words.) I can picture that happening in a MASH units among soldiers (though not in those exact words) but in a suburban office park, I was speechless. If Nam turns him that crazy, that’s a far more interesting fate for Greg than death.
Joan is at least 35. In an episode from season one, someone (it was implied that it was Paul) copied her driver’s license and put it up on the office bulletin board to humiliate her. The camera focus was on the detail of the license and it was clear she was supposed to be embarrassed by her age, with a date of birth in the late 1920s.
It’s repeatedly said in MAS*H episodes that their camp is only two miles from the front lines. Only the “field hospitals” were closer.
It was a joke about China Beach, not really a critique of MAS*H.
Yes, I know the Don/Dick thing is the foundation, walls and roof of the show.
I rewatched it this morning after a good nights sleep. **It. Has. Not. Jumped. The. Shark. ** I was wrong.
After seeing the show again, there are plenty of story lines to build from this episode. I’m looking forward to the rest of the season.
But the next time the Don/Dick “secret” comes up, I hope he is in handcuffs.
I still would like to see a few more episodes where the ending doesn’t end well. Life is not that way. And the last few episodes seem to tie everything up in a nice neat little bow. Fifty nine minutes of tension, then everything is all better.
Given that SCDP is potentially on the verge of bankruptcy and Pete had to scuttle a four million dollar account to save Don’s ass, I wouldn’t say it “ended well”. Rather most of the company is ignorant of just how poorly it ended.
This. They’re building up to the season finale, which should involve some major conflict and be nowhere near as merry as the previous season ender. Pete, in particular, has been screwed by Don’s venality.
No, he hasn’t. Pete was acting in his own self-interest as much as he was acting in Don’s interest.
Furthermore, “screwed by Don’s venality?” That’s overstating it. His instinct for self-preservation isn’t venality. Unlike other people on the show, he’s never killed anyone and no one has suffered for his little identity switcheroo.
That said, it still took some balls for Pete to complain to Trudy that some “bad” people made life ever so hard for the “good” people like him 
Hmm. I’m not really so sure about that. Pete dumped a huge account essentially because Don told him to. I assume that doing so is in Pete’s best interest to the extent that it leaves Don indebted to him, but I’m not really sure what Pete can get from Don that would be worth as much to him as that account would have been. But I might be misunderstanding your point.
I was specifically referring to Don’s behavior in the partners’ meeting. He let Pete take almost the entire hit. Simply not fair.
I’ve already stated my approval of anyone who wishes to dish out some physical pain to Pete. But as I took it he was talking about Don’s enormous irresponsibility, and in my opinion he was right. Don’s endangered the agency.
Don was only half right when he said Pete could run the agency by himself, by the way. They still need Don’s creative reputation; Peggy isn’t there yet.
It’s not like Pete was selflessly throwing himself on the conference table, but he could have done much, much more in the way of self-interest in he wanted to. He was legitimately upset at the suggestion that he could run SCDP without Don. He’s opportunistic but he has some degree of loyalty here.
And are you really insisting that Don doesn’t have his own wake of destruction trailing behind him? His instinct for self-preservation is why so many people in his life (like, nearly every single one) suffer.
No, Pete dumped a huge account in order to (1) save the firm from destruction resulting from arrest and prosecution of Draper and (2) save the firm from losing its creative director. Pete did not do it to save Don’s ass.
If the Feds go after Don, the firm is dead. Pete is saving his own job.
I don’t think there was really any more that Don could do in that situation. Don did step in and defend him and Cooper made Roger apologize.
What, exactly? Without Don, the firm is dead. With public disclosure of Don’s situation, the firm is dead. Pete didn’t really have a choice.
I don’t think so. Pretty much no one has suffered from his identity theft.
As for everyone in his life suffering, I don’t think Don bears all the blame.
While it’s true that killing the Defense deal was in the agency’s interest and thus his own, Pete could still have told the partners exactly why he killed it and thus put it back, rightfully, on Don without getting himself or the agency into any trouble with the Feds. Frankly I wouldn’t have blamed him for doing so, either; Don owes him big time.
I watched parts of the show again last night and Pete definitely said they “haven’t” flagged Don, but he says it with that somewhat clipped speech so it’s easy to mistake as “have”. And apparently we’re never going to learn if the old lady got the peaches- they just left that one hanging.
If Pete had told the partners all about Don at the meeting, that information would probably have gone into the minutes. Everyone there would become an accessory for helping to cover up Don’s desertion. If the truth comes out anyway it could damage or destroy the agency–but not get all the partners into legal trouble.
Officially, nobody else knows about Don’s checkered past. Not even Betty; if the facts come out, she can just say that she was fooled, too. What she told the agents was the truth as she knew it at the time.
But I was still happy to see Betty’s discretion. Keeping Don’s secret is best for their kids, her financial status & probably even her current marriage. In the past, her desire to destroy Don might have led her to tell all. It appears that she’s now concerned with getting on with her life–not with her anger at Don. And it was good to see her smile over Sally’s trip to see the Beatles.
Ask Joan to leave. That’s not complicated.
Anyway, it’s not that I think that Roger and Lane need to be told about Don’s true identity (Bert already knows, no?). It’s that if anyone’s going to take the hit for causing them to lose this major account for reasons that cannot be disclosed, it should be Don, not Pete. It’s Don’s fault after all.
Whatever it was you think they should have done didn’t occur to them, and I don’t really know what you’re suggesting either. Pete’s way was the easiest and quickest that they could think of, and that’s what they needed. People make decisions as they come, not in some idealized circumstance that allows them to choose the fairest option.
Sometimes life isn’t fair. But Pete knows what’s ultimately in his own best interest and the firm’s.
Anyway, it made for a few uncomfortable moments for Pete, but he’ll survive them easily without blemish. Anything else they might have tried might have (1) failed, or (2) caused more harm.