I pretty much disagree with everything in this post. Megan is the only “normal” person in Don’s social circle. And I don’t believe for a second that she staged a “reveal” of the Boston possibility in some kind of underhanded way. It’s simply that Don’s and Megan’s assumptions of what a professional acting life would require were different. And why is it that whenever Megan shows anger it’s a “tantrum”? I don’t think there was anything childish about what she did in this episode. It’s Don’s expectation’s about Megan that are selfish.
But you gotta admit the way she brought it up was…weird. The first indication, it seems, is when she says only, “Promise you’ll come visit me every weekend.” Since the play is in New York and the auditions have been in New York, it certainly seems like she should have said, “rehearsals are in Boston, so promise me you’ll come visit me every weekend.” I just thought it was weird how she did it, and might have actually been a little sneaky kind of test for Don.
I don’t think it was necessarily weird. People in real life do tend to get absorbed in their own lives in a way that they forget that people around them might not have the same information that they have, or might not have it uppermost in mind. Unless there’s some explicit indication that Megan was purposefully holding something back, I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
With regard to the Megan/Don scene, it would have been good if in a previous episode there’d been a short scene where she discussed travelling with her work and he was only half-listening. It’s hard for the audience to tell if she just sprang the Boston thing on him or not.
I assumed she’d told him and he hadn’t been listening. The way she said it was as if she thought he knew already. I expected her to launch into a “we talked about this - weren’t you listening” sort of rant.
You shortchanged Pete and Lane. Things don’t add up right with your numbers. Pete and Lane will each give up .625% shares. New partnership: Don, Roger, Burt with 23.75%, Pete and Lane with 11.875%, and Joan with 5%. Now that’ll add up to 100%.
That was an excellent episode, but I wasn’t surprised by either Joan’s or Peggy’s decisions. The multiple perspectives of the scene between Don and Joan were at first disorienting, but once you realized the real timing of events it added richness to the character reactions. Well done.
BTW, does anybody else think it was telling that Don left the initial meeting of the partners to discuss Joan. I mean yes he seemed very adamant and he was busy, but he also kind of abandoned the whole situation. I don’t think we are supposed to read into Don’s motives, I just kind of think it was somewhat lazy writing by Weiner to make the plot move forward the way he wanted.
I found it weird that Don didn’t understand this. Everybody in NYC knows how the theater works and doubly so in 1966 when Broadway was a much bigger deal than today. Somebody in the business, who works with actors, who lives with an actress, would have this ingrained in him. This was totally telling the audience something the characters would have already known. Megan is right. The only way Don could not have been actively anticipating this is for him to be positive that she would never land a role. That’s mildly idiotic, but the alternative is majorly idiotic. That was the one completely false note of an otherwise excellent episode.
I think Don figured that this was the end of the discussion. Besides, Don isn’t the kind of guy to engaged in protracted argument. He is used to getting the last word, especially when it comes to work.
Either that, or Don just never gave the implications of Megan being an actor any serious thought, which fits in to his character.
I thought Don’s scene with Joan in the bar last week was there to establish she’s the only woman he truly thinks of as his equal - perhaps even his opposite number in a frock. That’s why he reacted with genuine disgust to the proposal that she whore herself out.
Equally, it was Joan’s heartbreak that all the partners - even Don - thought so little of her that they’d seriously approve this proposal behind her back which pushed her into sleeping with Herb. At least she had the consolation, even if it came too late, that Don really does respect her and thought the offer was as repulsive as she did.
There may yet be repercussions for Pete’s lies, not only from Joan, but also from the other partners. Maybe that’s what they were setting up by having them agree to Pete’s idea with relative ease. By giving Joan that 5%, he’s just added one more name to the list of partners who hate him.
Don’t underestimate how different men’s attitude towards women was in those days - particularly in a world as cynical as advertising. Joan had always been known as a sex-bomb in the office, and the sad fact is that even Roger would have partly thought, “She’s been around the block a few times, she can handle it.”
For her own part, I’m sure Joan would have had the good sense to ensure she had protection, so I doubt we’ll see the pregnancy plot play out. Once Joan gets past the initial shit regarding how she got the job, I bet she’ll prove her worth on the board soon enough. She knows full well that that’s the next fight coming.
If Lane had privately gone to Roger, wouldn’t he have list face but ultimately come away with a sufficient private loan? It would look super-shitty for a CFO to botched his finances so much, but not as much as embezzlement.
I wonder if Herb’s gift of an emerald necklace was expensive or, as befits a sleazoid, green glass.
For all the hand-wringing over Joan, remember the first episode? One of her first acts with Peggy as Don’s new secretary was to set her up with birth control.
I agree 100%.
Yes, this will be interesting. It will probably be on a vote that Don abstains from, leaving Cooper and Roger on opposities sides, as well as Pete and Lane, however that matches up.
If so, it was poorly done given the confusion over it.
False. Don is not in the business. He’s a creative vice-president in advertising. Megan is in show business. He pays little to no attention to actors except to watch the commercial being filmed and will make sure that they bring the emotions that he’s looking for. The director and art department handle auditions, costuming, pops and overall production. SCDP probably farms all of that out. In a larger agency, it may be internal but he won’t even meet the actors until the day of filming. Actors are just moving props, the product is all he cares about.
His head is in HIS business. It’s possible that all he knows about Broadway is that it’s someplace to bring clients that you’re trying to win over. He hasn’t been shown to be involved at all in the NY social scene. He may know that the show always opens out of town, but it’s always been an useless fact in the back of his mind.
With the compressed timeline of the show, we don’t know if the subject of previews was brought up and he hasn’t paying attention. Megan didn’t mention that they had talked about it, so I presume that she thought everybody just knew how the acting game worked, and she was mistaken. Three months in Boston sounds like a long time to me. Knowing nothing of Broadway, I would expect six weeks of of rehearsals in NY and two weeks of previews out of town. This isn’t an elaborate musical production.
Well said and I agree. The only character I would expect to probably know something about the business of Broadway and acting is maybe Harry Crane.
Joan would NEVER go to that ‘date’ without protection! Even if she did get knocked up, she would get an abortion. And I don’t know why the sudsy soap opera complication of Joan getting pregnant from this would even figure in the show, it would serve no purpose to the story at all. Mad Men is NOT a soap opera type show, it’s beyond that kind of melodrama, which is why it’s so good.
A several month period for rehearsals and out-of-town tryouts is standard. Musicals do often take longer, but it totally depends on how troubled the production is. If everything gets changed, and important people are replaced, and all the scenes are rewritten, then it will take much longer. Or in exceptional cases, shorter. Oklahoma! is somewhat legendary in the annals because it was out-of-town for only 20 days, although that was partially because it had been in pre-production from July 1942 to March 1943.
The Heinz bean people from Pittsburgh might know nothing about Broadway. An advertising executive living in New York married to an actress would.
I hope Eve comes into this thread. She’s the expert here on Broadway.
I agree with this. I go back and forth on whether Don takes Megan’s career even a little seriously, but I’m absolutely sure that he couldn’t care less about the minutia of the theater. Plus, he’s been crazy busy with Jaguar.