The Draper kids were watching The Prisoner, which had just finished airing in the UK but was being shown as a summer replacement in 1968 in the US.
A show about a man whose past name has been stripped from him and who is now trapped in a surrealistic world in which everybody is pretending to be normal, while an ever-changing group of men in suits challenge him to reveal his secrets. “A variety of techniques are used … to try to extract information from [him], including hallucinogenic drug experiences, identity theft, mind control, dream manipulation, and various forms of social indoctrination.”
This Slate magazine analysis of the episode suggests the Chevy account is the ad firm’s Vietnam, and it shows an Esquire cover photo of Muhammad Ali as St Sebastian that appeared in April of that year.
I noticed that also. (Nice to be getting to years I remember very well.) Symbolically it makes sense - literally I’m surprised Sally was watching. Go Sally! (IIRC it actually did run on Saturday, but I’m going to have to check my Prisoner book to be sure.)
I read a quote somewhere from Truman Capote that Dr. Feelgood’s shots give you energy for 72 hours, not needing to stop for sleep or even a coffee break. There might be some exaggeration, but it seems possible to me that for some people the energy boost shot lasts for three days.
I think Betty had been flailing a bit. But now Henry is running for office, which has given Betty purpose again as a trophy wife. She will be needed to look good at meetings and fundraisers, just like she was once needed to look good to Don’s clients. So I think the weight loss and blonde look shows us that Betty has gone from back from housewife to trophy wife.
No kidding. I used to absentmindedly wipe the wax off my X-Acto knife on my forefinger and at the end of the day, I’d have a zillion tiny razor cuts all over my fingertip. :smack:
Betty definitely wants Henry to run. She was thrilled when he told her he was going to a couple of episodes ago. Now she has a reason to look good again.
When she said she didn’t expect anybody to be home, I believed her. She looked startled at the time, and when we later found out she had hit a number of apartments in the building it made even more sense. Obviously she wouldn’t be breaking in if she thought a tiny chance of her being discovered existed. And that meant she did at least a minimum of research first.
But why in the world would she think the Drapers would be gone? That minimum of research would have told her that he had his kids on occasional weekends. She couldn’t have known that Don would work several days straight. She might have heard that Megan would be at a play - but from whom? They fired their last maid and we haven’t seen a new one. You can argue that the unlocked door was an opportunity, but only if she were deliberately trying every door, ridiculously risky. Not to mention that it could mean that somebody just ran down to the basement for a moment. Of all the apartments, the Drapers seem one of the riskiest from what we know.
And the break-in runs head on into the touchy subject of race. Grandma Ida was a fright. But imagine if it had been a black man who broke in and encountered Sally in her jailbait scanties, even if he were also grandpa age. Sally is 15, which means she’s older than juvenile Don, who (just) lost his virginity at 14. Mad Men always plays the “spot the parallels” game, but Weiner couldn’t touch this one. Forty years later it remains too hot, too fraught. Dawn reappears, as the lowliest of menials in an office swarming with spoiled white folk abusing their bodies and minds - and by extension all of ours in the audience of advertising. But I think I’m reading too much into this episode, like the Vietnam metaphor guy. Sometimes a bad trip is just a bad trip.
I thought I remembered that we had established her being born in 1953. If she’s 14, then you got me on the nitpick, but what’s the difference otherwise? She and young Dick are the same age.
Sit outside, watch people leave, see Megan leave alone dressed for an evening out - surely she didn’t leave the children home alone! Or even home at night with Don!
April, 1954 according to this. Was just wondering since I could have sworn she said she was 14 during the episode but I tend to miss a lot of stuff so she could have been lying, that is, there might have been more of a point to her saying she was that age.
I want to know if Grandma Ida ever made her those eggs. Speaking of which, Sally should have known what was up when Ida said, “Is your father Donald Draper or not?” I don’t think anyone anywhere has ever called him Donald.
Well that’s a full-service burglar! Rich people, everything they have is just a little bit better than ours.
I liked how Ida was trying to do a nice cold-reading of Sally. Is your father still handsome, is your mother still a piece of work. It was funny because she was gambling that a wealthy man like Don had been raised by an African-American nanny when really he was getting beat up in a whorehouse by his stepmom. However, Sally knew nothing about Don’s upbringing so she couldn’t call out Ida on this mistake.
A Grandma Ida could really rack up- that’s almost the perfect guise for a burglar. In the 1960s especially nobody’s going to think much if anything of a black maid in uniform going in and out of back doors of well to do apartments. Unlike in the suburbs she doesn’t have to drive or walk very far and she only needs to find one unlocked door to make a good haul. Even if you see her going into or out of the apartment of a neighbor you socialize with you’ll just assume they have a new maid, and if she leaves with a bundle you’ll assume it’s laundry or some silver she’s taking home to polish or what-not.
I wonder if there were many crooks like that. (If so, a novel about them would have to be worlds better and more uplifting than The Help.)