Don is dropping bits about his past here and there- growing up on a rural farm, growing up in a whore house. Interesting.
Don Draper wears a suit like no other man… that sport jacket was an abomination!
Pete thinks he has nothing?
“Whitman”
How weird it must have felt, hearing that hated, dreaded name attached to a mass murder.
Early in Season 1, there was a dinner scene with Don, Betty, Roger, and maybe Roger’s wife in which Roger was fishing for information about Don’s past and he noted that he knew that Don must be from a rural area because he sometimes lets a rural accent slip through in his speech.
I still find it weird that New Yorkers consider the suburbs to be “the country.”
The Madame is the kind of person that Don has always been truthful with.
That’s true.
It seems that he’s beginning to get comfortable with himself and who he is, maybe for the first time ever.
Cos Cob, Connecticut–it featured in the dinner scene this week.
I like how the episode opened with Pete laughing at the gore in the Driver’s Ed video and ended with everyone at SCDP laughing at Pete getting his comeuppance.
“Let’s make a baby”- so Don wants to make Megan a mommy? Interesting choice of phrase, if all he really wanted was a quickie by the side of the road.
I liked the differences in fighting stances between Pete and Lane, particularly Lane’s “put up your dukes” stance like in old-timey pictures.
“He had chewing gum on his pubis!” My wife kept repeating that on our way up to bed last night. I think it’s going to become our new favorite re-quotable line.
The look on the faces of the other partners was priceless. I laughed through that whole scene.
I, like Roger, had Lane from the start. I figured he’d be the type to have taken pugilism in boarding school.
Very much enjoyed this episode. Good mix of character development and humor. And no dream sequences.
I was never so glad to see “Handsome” Hansen show up and deflect Pete’s coming on to that young high school girl. Loved how the camera focussed in on his muscles and that casual sweater. What a difference between him and Pete, still dressed in his suit n’ tie, mistaken for the driving instructor! I wonder if Pete even has any casual clothes he wears out of the office (though he might have gone to driving instruction school directly from work). Pete’s suit puts him directly in Squaresville, in with the other ‘suits’, the older formally dressed businessmen.
What IS it Pete wants? He’s like Betty last few seasons, they both have everything they think they wanted (or think they should have wanted in life), but neither of them happy about it.
I love those wild paintings in Roger’s office. Does anybody recognize them? Kind of like circular zebra stripes.
He wants everything Don had in Seasons 1-3 and to be as collected and satisfied as Don seemed to be in S1-3.
There’s multiple issues with that personal quest.
Why do y’all think this is? He seems to be really in love with Megan. Frankly, I don’t see what he sees in her. I think the “let’s make a baby” line, though said drunk, expresses his serious, old-fashioned, husband/wife love for her. I wish I liked her more, but she seems air-headed, capricious, shallow, and manipulative (though sort of innocently, the way a wife of that time was expected to be). I mean, she’s no Joan, and I want someone of Joan’s depth for Don. But whatever. Clearly there is strong physical chemistry between Don and Megan–maybe that’s what he needs to feel anchored and secure, not intellectual/emotional bonding.
Megan’s way of moving is all slithery, like a slinky made of Jell-o. And I wish she’d keep her lipstick within the boundaries of her lips. Also don’t like her hair. Hehe. 
I thought so, too, and I think this proved to be true. Or maybe he got some training in the army.
Slattery did another bang-up job in directing this week. Although I’ll admit I couldn’t wrap my head around Pete’s driver’s ed scenes at first–they cut to him in bed, when he first heard the faucet dripping. I thought he was fantasizing about picking up a high school girl, and it wasn’t until almost the end of the episode when I realized what it was about…
By the way, the film I remember seeing in driver’s ed was called Mechanized Death.
I smiled when Joan simply opened the door and sat back down. Lane’s line should’ve been an understanding smile and “You are special,” with the understanding that the kiss is forgotten, but now they have a bond.
Just a damned good episode.
This show just doesn’t miss. Great episode, as usual, although I have also noticed the relegation of Peggy to more of a supporting role. The fight scene was priceless.
Did anyone else notice the Joan-ishness of Roger’s “date”?
What’s your sense of what it was about?
I suspect that’s temporary.
Yeah, baby.
I was afraid it was another dream/fantasy. We’ve seen Pete become more and more slimy, and we know he’s not really happy being married to Trudy, so I simply thought he’d lowered himself to fantasizing about high school girls. He’s not that much older than they are (Don wishing he were with a high school girl would be way over the line, Pete, on the other hand, would be creepy and wrong, but not as wrong, IMO).
Are you sure Pete isn’t that much older than high school girls? When the show started it was 1960 and now it is 1966. In the first season he was at least a year out of college, if not two or three, so he must be at least 27 and perhaps as old as 30.