Well, Ginsberg seems to have been fired from a lot of places, so I’m not sure if he is as clever about work issues as you think. Creatively, yes. How long has it been since Don has had a great idea? He just doesn’t seem hungry enough any more. Ginsberg is, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the pivot for them to get into the big time again. And I’m looking forward to the fireworks when Don claims his ideas.
He’s a surgeon in Saigon. He isn’t under fire.
Yet.
Joan got knocked up pretty quickly after he left and human gestation times have a few weeks of play in them. Assuming he wasn’t keeping track of Joan’s menstral cycle, not knowing the kid isn’t his is hardly surprising, doctor or not.
And this is the first time he’s seen the baby. Joan couldn’t told him the baby was 3 or 4 weeks premature and he wouldn’t know any better. He wasn’t there when the baby was born, and I highly doubt it would even occur to him to look at the medical records. His only experiance with infant development milestones is probally 1 class he took in med school.
I think you mean Tet.
Well, that’s offensive.
It’s foolish to argue what constituted rape in 1965. It’s a TV show. One written, produced, directed and acted by people whose age was in single digits during the period depicted.
And that’s being generous. Hamm was born in 1971, Hendricks in 1975, Moss in 1982. Jon Slattery was 3 years old in 1965. Matthew Weiner hadn’t reached a year old. None of these people have any concrete idea what were the mores of the day. I believe the only person in the entire cast who was an adult during this period was Robert Morse. I would be surprised if any of those debating this point had obtained their driver’s permit by 1965.
All of the scenes of this drama were written from a current point of view and meant to be interpreted that way. It doesn’t matter if a woman in Joan’s position in 1965 would consider herself raped or not. We are supposed to apply the modern judgement that she was. It’s a TV show and definitely not a historical document. I was ten years old in 1966 and lived in the New York suburbs. I know for a fact that this show gets it wrong as often as it gets it right.
The concept that forcing a spouse to have sex against his or her will is rape didn’t magically spring out of the ground in the 1980s. The fact that legal change happened in the 1980s was the result of decades, perhaps centuries, of individuals who experienced it and thought it wasn’t okay. So the fact that the laws were changed in the 1980s is pretty good evidence to me that there were plenty of people 20-25 years earlier who believed it was rape.
As I said before, 1965 isn’t some alien land. My parents and all their friends were adults in 1965. I think most of us have a pretty good idea of what at least some people alive in 1965 were like.
Can you cite an example of a successful prosecution of spousal rape from 1965 or earlier?
Premature is going the wrong way. That’s what you use to claim that a baby was born after marriage, not before leaving.
And what medical records? The birthday? The day he left? I, who am not that kind of a doctor, knew exactly when my kids were conceived. I suspect that being thousands of miles away he spent a lot of time thinking about the last opportunity for conception.
I don’t know that this will be a factor, but his cluelessness has bothered me for a while. On the other hand, he does seem to be a crappy doctor.
This is beginning to Hanoi me.
Anyhow, before he walked out I thought for sure they were going to frag him - I’m sure he makes inspection tours of hospitals in the fields. Now I don’t know.
Don’t give up on that idea! I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn of his demise the same way MAS*H dealt with the death of McLean Stevenson’s character.
Why should I? Whether or not I could would neither prove nor disprove anything I have said.
1960s mores were different. Most men left all that to the women to think about. It was a very different time for most middle class white guys.
BOO! Hiss! (but well done!)
80% of babies are born within two and a half weeks of a 40 week gestation time, so if Joan’s baby was born on the earlier side of normal, that means she can have waited for more then a month after Greg left to have had sex with Roger and still plausibly pass the kid off as her husbands.
I don’t think we know exactly how long it was after Greg left that Joan slept with Roger, but my impression was it was just a few weeks, so I don’t think Greg has to be particularly stupid to think the baby is his.
And also take into account the fact that after she discovered her pregnancy, she then went to visit Greg. So that’s another bit of wiggle room.
Did she? When? I don’t recall that. Although, I think they are going to have to reveal that something like that happened, because the baby was conceived something like 7 weeks after Greg left. And, I’m sorry, but no one in the service is that dumb. And no doctor is that dumb. A week or two? Sure. But almost 2 months??! No way. I don’t know what she did, but she had to have done something, because this is just not believable. But I have faith Weiner will explain in the end.
Well, certainly it matters a lot when working out the motivations and reactions of the characters…