$67 is good money for buying groceries for an evening’s dinner. Realistically though, I don’t know how much 1965 heroin it purchases.
Lane would shoot for Sterling Campbell Draper Price so they can keep the old reams of SCDP letterhead 
The finale is entitled Tomorrowland and the synopsis on amc.com is simply “Opportunity arises for Don and Peggy.” I’m guessing Disney is somehow involved and I’m hoping the opportunity is professional rather than romantic as I don’t like the idea of Peggy and Don as a couple.
There were two major Disney developments ongoing in 1965. The first was that Tomorrowland at Disneyland had already become a bit dated and was being redeveloped, which could of course figure into the title. The other was that Disney World was throwing off its cloaking device.
For those who don’t know the story of Disney World, Walt Disney hated what happened to Anaheim and surrounding areas after the success of Disneyland. The park was of course a huge expense that many experts predicted would fail and which exhausted all of Disney’s capital and was a major gamble that could easily have ruined Disney and his investors, and since all the money went into the park itself and even then Orange County real estate was expensive they only bought 160 acres (which for perspective isn’t even that big a farm). When the park became a major success all of the surrounding land was snatched up to build everything from luxury hotels with golf courses to many many many cheap motels and tourist trailer courts and the like and Walt felt it cheapened his park PLUS he wasn’t making another fortune on it, so he envisioned a second park where instead of 160 acres he and his investors could buy thousands- preferably tens of thousands- of acres.
Of course any landowners who heard that Disney was wanting land to buy a second park instantly raised their prices (who wouldn’t?), so he drug some red herrings intimating he might be thinking of land in Arizona, Texas, Washington, etc., and even bought some land (not much) in those places under deliberately transparent dummie companies to indicate that’s where he was thinking, but by 1963 he’d already decided on Orlando, Florida and did a masterful job of buying up almost 30,000 acres (more than 175 times the original amount of land purchased for the first park) under dummy corporations and holding companies. (I can’t remember what the guise was, but it was something that didn’t arouse great suspicion).
In October 1965, after the ink was dried and the i’s and j’s all dotted, some investigative reporters followed the money to Disney and he admitted “Yep, that’s me, we’re building a big muthah of a park in Florida”, which of course caused a frenzy of real estate speculation and, as planned, Disney itself raised millions by selling a few thousand acres themselves for many many times what they paid for it. Masterpiece of corporate secrecy and capitalization- could probably never happen today.
Anyway, I’m guessing that the October revelation, or the days before, will figure into play on the finale. But then I figured that the Beatles would be a major plot point on the first episode of this season and that Don was going to have a modern art ad for Heinz green beans so who knows.
Based on the 2010 Business Rate Card for the New York Times …
126" (full broadsheet) on a weekday, using the open rate and adjusted for inflation, we are looking at $26,550 or so (or $178,633 in today’s dollars). Of course, it would all depend if Don were able to use negotiated agency rates (possible) and whether or not his ad would be considered display or national. National ads are considerably more expensive, but I also don’t know when NYT started making that distinction.
Can someone remind me of the Midge backstory? It has been lost to me in the mists of time or something.
Unless she only appeared in the first season, in which case I’d not know a damn thing about her.
Hell, her position was INTELLIGENT. And I didn’t see her as an entitled bitch princess.
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Regarding the $10 Don gave to Midge’s “husband”: when I moved away from home in 1970, my roommate and I budgeted $10 per week for groceries and we ate royally. Bread was 19 cents a loaf, chicken 29 cents a pound or less on sale. Gas was 20 cents a gallon. So $10 might have gone pretty far even with a heroin dealer. (Back then gold was $35 per ounce… the other day it was $1,000 per ounce.)
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Someone please remind me of who Midge is?
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I love Dr. Edna, and I want an appointment with her asap. Does she remind anyone of the dorm/den mother on the show about the four girls at boarding school (rich girl, tomboy, chubby girl, black girl named “Tootie”- can’t think of the name of the show)?
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Could Betty be ANY more of a bitch?
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How refreshing that Don didn’t hop in the sack with anyone this episode.
The Facts of Life. And the dorm mother was… Edna Garrett.
Hmmm… is that a little inside joke?
Midge was in the very first episode and the first woman we saw Don with before we knew he was married. She’s was an artist who hung around with the beatnik crowd. She introduced Don to marijuana and memorably threw a television off her balcony when Don noted that she received it as a gift from another suitor and became jealous. Basically, she was a free-spirit who was a direct contrast to prim and proper, establishment Betty in the first season.
Don asked her to run away with him to Paris at the end of Season 1 and when he realized that she was in love with one of her beatnik friends instead, he decided to sign over his $5000 bonus check to her and left. Funny enough, I’m sure she managed to cash that check, which just underscored how low she fell since then.
Wasn’t Midge Don’s original girl on the side in Season One?
ETA: Doh! figures someone would post confirming my belief right before I posted… that’s what I get for not previewing I guess.
Weiner approves all the scripts. He basically does what Don does in the show. People bring him ideas and he gives it a thumbs up or down.
The writers are also paid very well for their ability to keep a character’s voice consistent from episode to episode.
And finally there’s also the actors themselves, who know their characters very well and can tell the writers when something sounds very wrong. They also will read the the lines well enough so that they will always sound consistent with the character.
<holding breath> It was $1,350.00 today… </holding breath>
:eek::eek::eek:
never mind!
Well, he did direct this show so of course he gets the best line.
I think the trip to Paris was more an invitation for a hot vacation than actually “running away.” Midge’s relationship with Don had been a long-time “friends with benefits” thing; he did realize she was in love with one of the male Bohemians as he ended it. Midge was smart & independent–smoking a bit of pot & hanging out with her arty friends but not dressing like the Beatnik Chicks (who were mostly suburban teenagers in for the weekend.)
Midge probably did have a checking account back then. She was a freelance commercial artist & got paid by check; checks were handy for rent (on the sunny little place she had back then) & utilities. As a junkie, she probably wrote too many hot checks & the bank got mad.
Still, she might have been able to cash a check later, by going to Don’s bank & supplying some kind of ID. However, she wanted cash right away for her pressing need.
(I liked her in Season 1 & find her fate most distressing.)
I think he came from money as well; his father seemed right at home in the Playboy club, not because of the women but because of the influence/money aspect.
I hope Burt doesn’t go. I really enjoy his weird behavior and wise tidbits.
I liked the heroin storyline. Giving a dose of the outside world into their lives. Wish Don had up and run, rather than giving her any money at all though. Why give her money when it’s all going to drugs anyways?
Pity, misplaced guilt, and identifying with her situation.
Speaking as a former television writer, the ability to capture the individual voices of a show’s characters is one of the most crucial parts of the job. You have to do that for the show you’re currently working on, and then in a few weeks/months/years, you’re going to have to learn how to write for a whole new set of characters for your *next *show. It’s a fun challenge.
Most tv shows are written by a group of staff writers. One writer cranks out a first draft of the script (and he or she gets the “written by” credit in that episode’s opening credits, and the payment for the script as well), then the rest of the writers throw in their input/suggestions until the group nails down a satisfactory shooting draft.
But back to the show in question…
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It sounded to me like Midge completely lied about losing her purse. She deliberately tracked down Don, and came up with a cover story to get him back to her place.
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I will be on cloud nine if next week’s episode has anything to do with Disney.
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The Sally/Glen conversations were great. They didn’t seem to be sexual in nature at all, but surely Betty assumed the two of them were sneaking off into a dilapidated shack to fornicate. I wonder if Glenn still has that lock of Betty’s hair?
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Me to Mr. Smaje at the beginning of the episode: “Lord help me, but I kinda miss Betty. I hope she’s in this one.” I got my wish, and man, does that woman creep me the fuck out.
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I don’t have the energy to go back and look, but one of the first responses to this thread was about how Don didn’t make Peggy cry during their conversation. I looked at it more as Peggy didn’t let Don make her cry - she made a little bit of a joke, instead of taking his anger so personally as she’s done in the past.
Can’t wait for next week! I’m shocked that these seasons are only 13 episodes long. It seems so unfair.
In addition to Betty not wanting the neighbors to think that her daughter is “loose”, because she’s hanging around with a boy… I suspect she doesn’t want Glen around, lest her incredibly creepy dealings with him come to light.
Yeah, there’s got to be massive amounts of gossip already flying around about Betty, and “Like mother, like daughter”. I mean think about it Betty flaunts her “friendship” with Henry, brags about having an in with someone in the Governor’s office to that ladies civic league thing, then divorces Don, marries Henry, & moves him in practically overnight. Sure the audience knows she didn’t sleep with him before splitting with Don, but ya gotta admit it looks really bad to everyone in-universe.