Are you kidding? It’s a society in which a single mother would have had it difficult at best. And she’d probably have to quit her job. Giving up the kid for adoption, while personally painful, was probably the best thing for the baby.
Huh? Since when is giving up a child that you cannot adequately support causing pain to anyone except (potentially) the mother herself? I would agree she’s not innocent, but “not innocent” does not equal “fuckwitt.”
Giving up the baby wasn’t a remotely fuckwittish thing to do.
Telling Pete about it was, though.
What I was thinking about was how hard it’s going to be for Don and Megan to be on their feet walking around Disneyland with the kids all day after staying up canoodling and making flippy-floppy all night. I just did the Disneyland thing this summer and it requires a good night’s sleep the night before, or you’ll be one miserable pup.
What was it Pete said, “You don’t congratulate the woman, you congratulate the man and you tell the woman ‘Best Wishes’”, or something? Never heard this before, of course, I wasn’t raised with a silver spoon in my mouth.
I think I’ve watched *Groundhog Day *too many times, because during the credits I couldn’t help but fill in with “OK, campers, rise and shine, and don’t forget your booties because it’s cold out there today…”
Big fucking deal.
It just seemed like such a… Pete thing to say. What a perfectly written line for that character. Simultaneously making himself seem better educated in matters of manners while being a complete douchebag.
Giving up her child for adoption is not fuckwitted.
I disagree. At the time Pete was still in need of daily verbal smackdowns.
I’ve actually heard this before (and no silver spoon here either.) Congratulating a woman on being engaged is considered slightly rude because you’re implying that she’s lucky to have found someone to want to marry her. And a lady should always be made to feel as if she’s in demand (as far as proper manners go, anyway.)
I think that was an intentional reference. As Sepinwall mentions, this episode (and the season and series as a whole) was all about fresh starts. Who had more fresh starts than Bill Murray in Groundhog Day?
Exactly! When Don proposed, I was going nuts trying to guess whether it was going to be Don’s or Megan’s dream. But I was almost certain it was a dream.
Did anyone notice the wildly different decor between Don’s hotel room and Megan’s? Hard to imagine they were in the same building.
A few really good scenes in this, but too much seemed to be thrown in at the last minute.
“Yes, they’re bigger”. Classic!
It was clear that the moment Don truly felt he wanted to be with Meghan was wehn she didn’t explode on the kids after spilling the milkshake. The look on his face was alomst like, “Who are you? What planet are you from?” I think he thinks he loves Meghan, but Don has a way of forgetting his wedding vows, and I see no reason to think that it will be different this time around.
Of course, if he doesn’t tell her about Dick Whitmann, then maybe Betsy will. 
I thought the scene with Ken was very interesting as it contrasted will with Don’s situation. Ken refusing to let his home life mingle with his work life, while Don can’t really tell the difference. I mean Don doens’t just bed and propose to his secreatary, but he takes his kids with him on a business trip. And then there is Peggy who is stil trying to figure out what she wants from her personal life and her career. . That was why she was so mad, she is stuck in this netherland where she seems to have trouble being seen as either a typical woman looking for a man (very 1950’s) and a career woman with just the same ambition as a man (very post 1960’s).
I don’t see this at all. What it’s showing is that Ken has his own Chinese wall between his professional life and his personal life. He’s not going to use his relationship with his father-in-law in order to get his father-in-law’s company’s business. And that’s an admirable line to draw.
I hope this is some kind of emotional hyperbole. Because in actuality, while Don did hurt Faye, he did nothing wrong to her. He met someone else he preferred. All is fair in love. What would have been wrong would have been to try to string her along anyway while trying to hide his relationship with Megan.
Wrong. Pete needed to be told. He was acting like an ass and Peggy showed him what real life is like. There was absolutely no good reason to keep him blissfully ignorant.
I don’t think this is what’s happening. Megan’s decision might be hasty and ill-considered, and perhaps, in the end, turn out to be wrong. But she’s not marrying Don just so she can become a copywriter. If it was career-boosting she was interested in, she would have been much better off as a mistress.
I disagree 100% with this. It didn’t show that Ken is less committed to SCDP, it shows that Ken has priorities that they can’t even begin to understand. To the four of them, the agency is their life and any personal relationship is worth exploiting if it nets a gain in the end. Ken is the only one who has any sort of perspective on the world–namely that the woman he loves is his actual life and that he’s going to have to have a long relationship with his father-in-law. He doesn’t want to have a lifetime of awkward holidays and family discussions b/c he shit where he eats, and now bad business is complicating everything. That’s not a sign of being less committed, that’s a sign of being sane. He’s the only well-adjusted, normal person on the show. It’s probably not a coincidence that he’s the happiest.
I doubt he’s considering bolting. He’s getting married soon. Going through another big change isn’t a great plan, and he seemed to be genuinely excited to land that account with Peggy. They worked so well together, it was such a contrast to the 1st season where they were at odds and uncomfortable with each other. Honestly, that little subplot made me ridiculously happy because I’ve always liked Ken, and I wanted him to be redeemed for his earlier behavior.
Pepperlandgirl nailed it.
“Screw you” is a verbal smackdown. “I had your baby and gave it away, I gave you no information and no choice, and now I want you to feel bad about it.” is a serious dick move.
Every single word in every post I have ever written on the Dope was in service of hyperbole, save only this sentence.
Rhymers prefer to solve interpersonal problems with fisticuffs, preferably by proxy as we are all cowards. That’s why so many of us are in prison.
Quite so. Ken’s role in the series is to be a counterpoint to the other characters. He’s not shown to have much depth, not because he hasn’t any but because occasionally the audience need to be reminded that Don, Pete, and Roger are miserable fuckwit.
Fuckwit is my new favorite word, by the way.
I especially liked how he went out of his way to point out that getting this account was all Peggy’s doing.
The rest of your post is right as well. I’ll add that the 30% remark was to remind the three partners ganging up on him that he was not refusing to do his part; he was keeping the firm afloat.
Last night I remember thinking that, while the other characters live to work, Ken works to live. When he dies, his wife & kids will have countless happy memories, and anyone who comes to his funeral seeking to drum up business will be furiously rebuffed by whomever they approach, because the people who go to Ken’s funeral will be mourning him.
I’m not sure I see your point. Surely you can’t think I disapprove of it merely because it was cruel.
That point about Cosgrove handling 30% of clients was mentioned not as a threat of quitting but as protection from retaliation. Ken was being put on the line about his father-in-law’s business, stood up to the partners, and then had to remind them that action against him for this stand would have very bad consequences at this time in the firm’s history.
It was not played subtly but it was played smart.
Baby aside, Peggy jumped into bed with Pete after a line like “Hey, I’m getting married tomorrow” and then spent the rest of the season acting superior to everyone else’s dalliances. I spent Season One hating Peggy and it took until now for me to warm up to her based on S1.
Trudy has walked all over Pete from S1 as well, demanding a pricier apartment than they could afford and then bringing her parents into it when Pete reasonable stated he only made X much per year. Then she flipped out that Pete got a rifle with the chip-n-dip return. Other stuff too but the point is that she spends the first couple seasons expecting more material comfort from Pete than the level he was at and then using her parents as an over-ride when Pete tried to slow the luxury train down a little.
I don’t think you disapprove of it at all, of course. Neither do I, really. But it makes her a bit of a fuckwit.
That seems like a self-contradiction to me.
That was interesting. The model mentioned that Topaz fired the agency and her, and Harry was so busy leering at her that he didn’t realize the significance of this. But Peggy did, and so she did some digging and figured out that they needed a new ad agency.