amarinth, excellent points. I guess I was a starry-eyed as Don. Also, it’s been tiresome this season, watching him with so many different women – I’m just glad to see him light on one of them so we can move on.
His romantic relationships might be a big part of Don’s story, but they’re the least interesting aspect, to me anyway.
Crawlspace, I really like your analysis of those scenes, especially Don looking out the window instead of looking at Megan.
We can see all of this clearly, but Don can’t. And she can’t because she’s only 25 and while she’s cosmopolitan, she’s not exactly worldly. She probably doesn’t know she should be asking those questions, and what is perhaps tragic ignorance is viewed by Don as refreshing innocence.
A chance for a fresh start, as it were.
Yeah this is what I thought.
Are we sure it is Sterling’s baby?
That Joan didn’t have the abortion and get pregnant to the husband before he went to Vietnam I though they met up (off screen) after basic training ended and before he got posted overseas?
My reasoning- it is Autumn.
Joan got pregnant to Roger Winter/Spring (they were wearing coats at night). When she went to have the abortion she was at least 6 weeks pregnant and hubby had been gone for 9 weeks. If this is Roger’s baby she should be a LOT more pregnant than she is.
Also, you guys have it backwards.
If it is Roger’s baby hubby will think it is due 3 or 4 weeks before it is. She will have to tell hubby it came LATE if it arrives on time, not that it came early. No doctor alive will believe the kid stayed inside for 4 weeks past its due date.
Also- irishfella and I called it on the new Mrs Draper weeks ago.
It has been set up all Season. Sleeping with the first secretary, Miss Blankenship, Sally’s trip to the city, sleeping with Don at his low point and finally the trip to California.
Faye is horrible with kids, and Meghan is great. Don realises after all of Sally’s acting out that his kids need a good mother- and it isn’t necesarily going to be Betty and it certainly won’t be Faye.
Meghan’s been in love with him since she started working at SCDP- giving him advice, keeping an eye on his drinking, being there in whatever capacity he needed her to be.
Don is trying to be a better man- the man Anna saw in him, the man Meghan sees in him- of course he’s going to marry her. She’s pretty, good with kids and knows he’s a cruel, philandering borderline alcoholic obsessed with his work…and loves him anyway.
The Don/Meghan thing is that Don has fallen for his own advertising. He wants to be the American dream–he wants the happy home and family. Or, he thinks he does. His behavior proves that he doesn’t really, or at least that the Don Draper identity stops him from acting that part. Somehow, he thinks that happy, relaxed Meghan… clean-slate Meghan… is going to let him be the happy, relaxed Dick Whitman he’d like to imagine he can be. Just like Leave It To Beaver. Just like Glo-Mop commercials.
Joan and Roger weren’t wearing coats when they were robbed (I have the season DVRed and just went back and checked). I don’t know that there’s any specific indication of the date in that episode, but Faye tells Don that she doesn’t want post-coital cuddling because it’s too hot.
At the beginning of episode ten, Roger tells Joan that it has been “weeks” since their dalliance, and Joan tells him that she’s “very late.” We know from the Beatles concert that this conversation takes place at some point between August 9 - August 13 (Don says “this Sunday” to Sally on the phone).
Based on that, I would put Joan and Roger’s hookup somewhere in early-to-mid July. That certainly corroborates Faye’s statement, since New York City is an unbearable furnace in July. If the “holiday” mentioned in the finale is Columbus Day, that makes Joan about three months pregnant.
Now, Joan’s husband leaves for Basic Training sometime after his appearance in episode 8. In that episode, he tells Joan that he’ll be back from Basic in eight weeks (“In uniform. You’ll like that.” vomit). I can’t recall any specific date markers in that episode, but it is certainly summer (the episode is called “The Summer Man” after all). I’d put that episode sometime in June.
If that’s the case, then Joan and her husband presumably had sex sometime in August, putting Joan’s pregnancy one month further along than her husband thinks it is, maybe a little less. Considering that Joan’s husband won’t be around when the Baby is born, that doesn’t really seem like too much fudging on her part to make things plausible.
Regarding the episode, I thought that it and this season as a whole were fantastic. The climax of this season happened a couple episodes ago; there was no need for a splashy, cliffhanger-y season finale, and it would have felt artificial. Structurally, this might have been the most interesting season yet.
Joan said in a later episode that her husband was going straight to Vietnam from basic. There was no opportunity for post-Basic impregnating.
Ehhh… no he didn’t. She told him to hurt him, when she just needed to make it clear that it was long over and would never be again with him.
Her pregnancy was the one thing she had over Trudy.
They made this clear when Peggy sees Pregnant Trudy for the first time. Peggy has lost her ‘one thing.’
I don’t agree with any of this.
Most of all, I don’t think Pete had some kind of right to remain ignorant of what had happened.
I don’t agree with Push You Down either. Peggy told Pete about the pregnancy because that was how she made it clear to Pete that it was never, ever going to happen. It wasn’t cruel, and it can be argued that he had a right to know.
If Peggy wanted to be cruel, she would have dropped that bit of information out of anger or spite. She didn’t; she only told him when it was necessary to prove to Pete that she really didn’t want him anymore.
Watch the clip:
Pete is coming on to her and telling her she’s perfect and he loves her. She tells him so he knows there is no chance they can ever be together because if she had wanted him, she could have gotten him. This was also during the Cuban Missile Crisis, so perhaps she felt this was her last chance to tell him the truth. There is nothing vindictive in the way she does it.
You know, it’s kind of interesting how Peggy went from, in season one, being psychotic enough to be completely in denial about a pregnancy, up to and including labor, to slightly quirky but otherwise normal, seasons 2-3, to completely with it and the best adjusted and most self-aware romantically, emotionally, and maybe professionally of the cast in season 4.
Considering season 1 Peggy (in addition to the pregnancy thing) was just sooo awkward and strange . . . is this even realistic? It’s like a total personality makeover.
Powerful experiences transform people. She went through delivery and the realization that this happened to her- she let herself be naively manipulated by a soon-to-be married man, who didn’t treat her so well. Also being made copy writer and getting affirmation of her intelligence, strength and abilities have changed her. Not just time.
Peggy has also been opened up to a lot of new experiences during her time at Sterling Cooper and SCDP. She went from being largely ignorant of office and sexual politics to running with a counterculture crowd. And her change has been realistically gradual; it wasn’t long ago that she had no real idea how to find herself a roommate.
And I’m not sure that she’s that put together even now. Peggy still has a lot of growing to do and remains conflicted about what she wants, what she’s supposed to want, and how she’s supposed to go around getting either. She’s not the tortured wreck of a human being that Don is; nor is she the show’s real representative of a well-adjusted, successful, healthy individual: Ken Cosgrove.
Ken isn’t a useful protagonist, anyway. No real faults. He’s basically there to contrast against Don & Pete.
Lol, wut?
That was a perfectly odd copy/paste error.
I predict a custody battle between Don and Betty. I would love if Don got the kids. He seems to care for them much more than Betty. Recognizing that Carla is good to them and that they need a nanny isn’t a bad thing. But I think Betty is a witch. January Jones in actual interviews is lovely, which just shows how fantastic of an actress she really is.
The Peggy and Joan scene was great. I want to see more of that. Especially since they should team up, rather than be at each others’ throats.
Does anyone have an explanation for why Joan was promoted in name only? Has she been doing more, or is Lane afraid to lose her after her husband returns a surgeon?
I wonder when Joan tells people she’s pregnant. Will Roger find out? Or confront her?
WONDERFUL finale. Not what I was expecting at all. And that’s just what I have come to expect from Mad Men.
Concerning Peggy’s evolution: We saw the flashback when Don visited her in the mental ward. He told her to pretend nothing had happened & tell them what they wanted to hear so she could move on. At the time she was not responding to heavy meds & the doctors were probably considering shock therapy; and she was about to lose her job, just after getting a promotion.
So she got out & threw herself into work. Pete became disillusioned with his marriage & began to admire Peggy more. The young priest began to pressure Peggy to “confess.” She had taken Don’s advice in the short run but did think about the past. Then, during the Missile Crisis, when the world seemed to be ending, Pete insulted poor Trudy & confessed his love to Peggy.
So Peggy told him what had happened. She thought she’d done the right thing; for those times, she had. If she’d come knocking on Pete’s door, baby in arms, his marriage would have ended. Both their careers would have suffered; no unwed mother could be a success & knocking up a co-worker (thereby losing an important father-in-law client) would be a bit much even for the “boys will be boys” culture. Pete had no family fortune; he would have been tied to Peggy with guilt & resentment.
Peggy went home & made the sign of the cross before sleeping; she’s lapsed but Once a Catholic, Always a Catholic. Pete sat through the night & then went to Trudy. When we saw them next season, they were making a go of their marriage. He screwed up badly when he coerced the au pair into sex; Trudy is not above raising her voice to her husband. But they have a decent marriage–for this show. Peggy’s choice was not just best for her & the kid–it also benefited Pete & Trudy.
That scene between Peggy & Joan made me happy; let’s hope those women can really share what they know about business & men. I’m still not sure about Don & Megan. But what if the main focus for next season is not Don’s Miserable Marriage or Don’s Miserable Bachelorhood? Maybe we can spend more time with the other characters. And see how SCDP becomes a success, client by client & campaign by campaign. This season’s finale wasn’t as much fun as last season’s, but many interesting stories remain to be told.
I think Betty cares for her children as much as Don does; she just doesn’t like them as much. And she has trouble seeing beyond her own needs.