It is specifically Don I am criticizing. Don is without honor.
“Whatever it was you think Don and/or Pete should have done didn’t occur to Don and/or Pete.”
Well, I guess you burned him.
Without honour? Which of any of these assholes has honour?
If Pete was honourable, wouldn’t he report knowledge about a deserter to the government? And Cooper?
All of these people have done much, much worse things than let someone else unfairly take a minor ass-chewing at a board meeting.
I think that Roger’s silence on the loss of Lucky Strike is a pretty big failing. That should be a Red Alert for every partner, signaling them to do everything they can to save the company.
Instead, he gives Joan a thumb’s up.
I think that was easily the shittiest thing anybody in SCDP has ever done to the company and each other. Don might have lost them $4 million, but he’s still working every day to build the agency into something beyond clouds in the sky. Roger is a waste of time and resources, and now he won’t even give them lube for the, well, rogering they’re about to receive.
[QUOTE=pepperlandgirl]
…and now he won’t even give them lube for the, well, rogering they’re about to receive.
[/QUOTE]
Heh heh… I see whatcha did there!
I didn’t say Pete was especially honorable; I think I expressed a desire to see someone break his rapist jaw upthread. That said, I don’t think honor necessarily requires Pete to report Don’s desertion to the government. Honorable is not the same as law-abiding, and even if it were I am not aware of a law requiring a civilian to report a long-ago misdeed to the authorities. Is there one such?
It was pears. Did she get the pears? To hell with peaches. We don’t need no stinkin’ peaches. Did she get the pears?!
And hey, here’s another question for you guys. Not as interesting than the dropped pear subplot, but still.
In this last episode, the two men who visit Betty identify themselves as from the Department of Defense. She also reports this fact to Don on the phone. However, later that night, she tells Henry that two FBI men came to visit. (If my memory on any of this is incorrect, you’ll tell me of course. It’s been a few days now.)
Is this a bit of confusion on Betty’s part? Or is she misdirecting Henry for some reason? Or did the scriptwriter just slip up? I appreciate any thoughts.
First of all, I’m a bit bemused by the idea that anyone thinks what is “honourable” is an important standard here. Legal, yes; ethical, yes; moral, yes. Those are all valid questions in my mind. Even fairness is an important consideration in our society. But honour? Honestly, who gives a rat’s ass? I certainly don’t. I care more that Don fails to treat people with kindness, empathy, and sympathy than I care whether he fails to act with honour. Honour was always a self-serving concept anyway.
Don’s crime is ongoing, and that makes Pete an accessory.
It’s common for people to be confused about things like this. I’m satisfied leaving it at that.
However, I am under the impression that the F.B.I. does sometimes execute these kinds of investigations on behalf of the Defense Department.
I think it’s just confusion on Betty’s part.
Cite that a civilian has the legal obligation to report a deserter, please.
And honor is hardly a self-serving concept. Honor (as I am using the word) is no the search for glory; it is the keeping of obligations and fulfillment of duty regardless of one’s personal desires or whether doing so is to one’s profit or wishes. Don’s prime act of dishonor is the act of desertion, but his lack of honor is evident through all the episodes I have seen. (I qualify it thus because I’ve only seen one episode of the first season.)
I’m not an expert on this area of the law and I’m not interested in becoming one just for the purposes of this thread.
But what I know about criminal accessory liability makes me believe that I don’t have to prove that “a civilian has a legal obligation to report a deserter.” All people have the obligation not to assist others in committing criminal acts, which is exactly what Pete is doing.
One of the advantages about pleading honour is that you can always make it sound like something peachy. Honour is and always has been full of all kinds of self-serving bullshit and is often contrary to lawfulness, ethics, morality, fairness, sympathy, empathy, or any range of desirable qualities. Every tyrant and killer has been honourable in his own mind. Honour has enslaved and slaughtered millions and comforted their killers.
And as I said before, Don’s tendency to behave badly is not unusual in his world. They’re all disgusting assholes to one extent or another. Don’s actions haven’t harmed others significantly more than the other people in his world.
If you’re going to claim that Pete is doing something illegal, you should be able to explain why that is.
And before you try to toss the cite ball back to me, I haven’t made any such claim one way or the other.
I was going to call bullshit on this, but I can imagine that Pete’s calling his friend at the DOD may qualifiy as that.
That is utter bullshit. I told you exactly what I meant by the term honor. It has nothing to do with anythng you named. Honor is KEEPING YOUR OBLIGATIONS WHETHER YOU FIND THEM PLEASANT OR NOT. It is paying child support though you hate the custodial parent; it is lying to the Nazis about the Jews working in your factory because your obligation as as a decent human being trumps your obligation to follow the law; it is acting to help persons you have no sympathy or affection. Acting to further one’s own desires or prejudices, as tyrants and killers do, is the very opposite of what I mean by honor.
Incidentally, obeying the law is not necessarily an honorable act. There are plenty of situations in which honor requires one to violate the law. I’m not talking about Pete and Don here; I mean, for instance, refusing to turn in a fugitive slave regardless of what the Supreme Court says on the issue. Honor is also indepeent of sympathy and empathy, because it requires you to act right regardless of whether you like the person you are dealing with or not. It requires no honor to help someone you love, because love impels you do do so.
And with that I’ll drop this hijack.
I would think that had been established from the first episode of the series. Don Draper is only a hero in the Byronic sense.
[QUOTE=lisacurl]
Don Draper is only a hero in the Byronic sense.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, the Byrony.
I didn’t see the first episode. I only started watching in the second season. The first episode I saw was the one in which Freddie Rumson was fired and he chastised a few of his employees for mocking Freddie’s moment of weakness. That particular exchange (especially seen without the knowledge of Don’s identity theft) gives one a false idea of how honorable he is.
It didn’t take long for me to see what a horrid person he is though. He’s only marginally better than Pete (and not at all better than Pete in the latest episode).
Yeah, Papa Pryce would certainly approve of Lane beating his wife and/or son. I just can’t see Lane actually doing that. In every scene with his wife he’s come off as passive. Of course it would be interesting to see Lane try his father’s approach, only to have it backfire horribly.
Mrs Pryce is also from the upper classes. She & her family have money. It’s very possible tha Lane could lose it with her, only to have her react by by fleeing to her parents or brother and Lane ending up divorced for cruelty, persona not grata in London society, and never seeing his son again.
To those wondering about Lane’s behavior, how he’s childish in taking his father to the Playboy restaurant and giddy about him meeting her, I can say with full conviction that Lane was acting exactly in tune with how my recently divorced uncle has been for the last year. My 58 y.o. uncle was separated (now divorced) from his wife of 25+ years and over the last year has acted like a great big well-off man-child. He hits on waitresses and dates women as young as he can find and spends his free time exercising and lifting weights like a madman. He is awkward and treats his life like he’s been “captive” for the past 25 years. So yeah, Lane is perfectly within the situational norm.
I’m dying to know if Joan kept the baby. On one hand, it would be out of character, on the other, she definitely realized her age in the waiting room. I hope we find out in the next episode.
Well, I think Joan is very lonely. And a baby isn’t going to leave her like a man would.
I’m wondering exactly what Roger thinks he’s going to do with the 30-day reprieve he begged for. He could land every single account in his dusty rolodex (he won’t, and he probably won’t land any) and I can’t imagine it would make up for the loss of Lucky Strike.