No, it was Conrad Hilton who required Don to have a contract, which came after the PPL merger.
Duck got Sterling Cooper in bed with PPL after he learned he wouldn’t make partner at SC. He proposed a merger with PPL, with himself as president. Don comes back from out of town, and Duck outlines how he’ll be running the company. Don says that if that’s what they want, Duck is the man for the job – but Don will be leaving. Duck thereby learns to his chagrin that Don doesn’t have a contract.
To keep Don on board with the merged agency, PPL jettisons Duck from the deal. Because PPL wanted Don as part of the deal, as I’d said.
Then, later (after the merger), Connie Hilton won’t work with them unless Don signs a contract.
All PPL wants is an American presence. They don’t cut Duck loose to keep Don; they cut Duck loose because he’s a drunk who goes apeshit in the meeting. The PPL guys don’t particularly care for him, so it’s like a happy accident that shitcanning Duck means Don will stay, it’s a situation that resolves itself.
I mean, of course they would want Don working for them like any agency would, I’ve already said that- but he was peripheral to their reason for acquiring the whole of Sterling Cooper. Don was not, as you said, one of the reasons PPL wanted Sterling Cooper. I think it’s easy to think that, though, because even Cooper assumed it was all about Don.
It should be noted that the day after this episode is April Fool’s Day.
Wiener on Fresh Air mentioned that Don being honest isn’t working out well for him. That’s been pretty clear, especially with Megan.
Don had a rocky time with Sally to start with, but pulled it out by being honest and by his “prank” at walking out without paying. Betty started having a great time and screwed it up. Big parallel there.
I think Don is fully aware of what a mess SCP is creatively. He knows they need him. Media buying is fine, but advertising agencies get clients by reputation, and media buying isn’t going to help with that. Don Draper will. And, it seems, having a compute means you are a major agency while renting time does not.
I worked on minis my senior year of college in 1973 and in grad school, just to rub it in. But the prestige of the computer is the important thing. Just like the staircase.
No.
Don announces he won’t be staying around if Duck is in charge.
Duck throws a tantrum.
Roger asks if the deal is off since Don won’t be staying around.
PPL says no, the deal is still on, because Duck won’t be in charge, so Don will stick around.
PPL was perfectly fine to go ahead with Duck being in charge up until the moment that Don announced he would then be leaving. PPL already knew he was a drunk, and didn’t have a problem with that until Don told them he would leave. That is the point when Duck became a liability because they wanted Don as part of the deal.
It’s easy to think that PPL wanted Don as part of SC, because they actually did.
Hilton’s men where the ones who insisted Don was under contract. Cooper goaded him into signing it by stating, “After all, when it comes down to it, who’s really signing the contract, anyway?”
Interestingly (or not that interestingly), the agency I work for ONLY does media buying and we partner with creative shops. They handle that side of things and we do the media planning and buying. Our CEO was actually the guy in the 60s that came up with the idea of shops separating out their buying services like this, so it’s kind of neat to see it play out on the show a little bit.
This is an interesting observation regarding the deal offered in this episode. What is the status of things Don/Dick has signed? Does Don presume that if push came to shove he wouldn’t be able to win a court case for his share of SC&P given that he is not Don Draper? So the reabsorption of shares is the worst case scenario either way.
It’s interesting how good some people are in teasing things out of an episode based on their particular interest. Here’s someones take based on fashion. Not much of interest to me personally. That Peggy is wearing the same outfit as at two previous critical times in a nice catch. But the real winner is the caption for the last photo. Check it out.
Loved it. Thanks for posting the link to Tom and Lorenzo. I really should be reading their recap every week.
I doubt it. The partners signed the agreement with him knowing him as Draper, paying him as Draper and with knowledge that Draper was not his birth name but was the name he was using and being employed as. I’d guess that any court would still find the contract (and later stipulations) to be valid.
All that is needed to make a valid signature is intent to do so. It doesn’t matter what shapes you actually make with your pen. For the purposes of that contract, he is Donald Draper.
Both of those last two photo captions are winners. Although I do think they’re going a bit overboard on the meaning of Joan’s dress, I’m surprised they didn’t mention schlubby Lou lurking in the background wearing father-knows-best sweaters.
I think you’re getting bogged down in the merger meeting scene so I’ll restate that my position is that, while any firm would of course love to employ Don, he was not, as you said, one of the reasons for purchasing Sterling Cooper. That was never shown on screen or off. When Duck comes to PPL with the offer, Don’s name is never mentioned. We never see the PPL guys talk about Don to themselves. They never show any indication that getting Don is a feather in their cap for them. All they were looking for was a toehold in America; that it was Don’s shop was incidental.
I think we buried my grandmother in Peggy’s dress.
IIRC only Cooper & Campbell know about Dick Whitman. In any event “outing” Don wouldn’t really help them at all, if anything it’d just make things worse.
And on what planet does an alcoholic get offers from other companies when he shits on his own pitches. People are forgetting why this asshole has to take a break in the first place.
Don has an offer in hand in this very episode. I think we’re probably watching two different shows. We’re watching the one that’s broadcast on television.
As far as the outside world knows, something happened at the Hershey pitch and they’re not sure exactly what. The guys from Wells, Rich were probing around just to find out more, and if they don’t know, nobody knows. They can guess, but they know a lot less than you as a viewer.
To the rest of the New York ad community, Don is a valuable commodity who may have some personal problems. Alcohol was only a problem if it became a public nuisance in those days, and drinking and being a discreet drunk was not a cause for blackballing someone. Look at Roger’s drinking problem, which is worse than Don’s.
Much of the point of the show has been that although Don is a badly flawed person, with some redeeming qualities, so is every other character. If you want to reduce the world to only the Good you’ll have a show about an empty office. I’m no fan of Don’s - read some of my posts from last year’s threads. But you’re spectacularly missing the point.
I watch these episodes a week after everyone else because my sister and I have a pact to watch 'em together. So, sorry for catching up. Please don’t spoil anything for later episodes? Or if you do, put 'em in boxes, if possible. Just a request, I know not likely anyone else is as far behind as I am.
Anyway, I am loving this season so far, and it’s mostly because of Jon Hamm’s performance with this new, hesitantly trying-to-be-good Don. (Sure, he’s tried it before but it never lasted three whole episodes!) The thing is, despite what some other posters think of him (which is clearly very very very negative), no matter how low or scuzzy Don gets, I still root for the guy because I can always see a raw, aching vulnerability and desire to be… somebody, something, anything better than the dirt-eating son-of-a-whore army deserter he is. I see that guy all the time, whether Don’s on top of the world acting cocky and cold, or in a self-destructive spiral of shame. He’s still Dick Whitman at the core, and I never lose sight of that, thanks to both the writing and Hamm’s subtle acting choices.
The end of the episode made me want to cheer. To me that five-second silence, followed by his lifted head, slight hint of a smile, and that far-more-good-natured-than-the-partners-expected quip of acceptance, put a huge grin on my face. I don’t think he has a Super Plan for Taking Over; Don’s not one for long-term thinking. But we’ve seen him think amazingly quickly on his feet before. He’s the guy who pulls rabbits out of hats. Sometimes the rabbits are missing one of their feet (the lucky one), but still, he’s shown us that he can rally. That “okay” was this episode’s equivalent of his “It’s Toasted.” His “Fire us” to Lane. His pulling out the pen and jotting down the advertorial, “Why I’m quitting cigarettes.”
His whole day at the office was painful to watch, but damn it, he took it. Being forgotten by Roger, having nowhere to sit, hearing whispers, the awkwardness of meeting Lou, everyone practically saying “seriously? this guy’s still alive?” He swallowed it all without a wince. He even accepted Peggy’s viciousness (hardly unearned but still over-the-top) with as much aplomb as he could muster. Of all the snubs he got that day, the one that hurt the most for me was Joan’s. I understand her behavior, to a degree, but the Joan/Don relationship has been so enjoyable–they’ve had great chemistry (but were smart enough to stay away from the bedroom) and respect for each other. Last year in particular, thinking back to the Christmas episode when they drank together at the bar, and especially when Don made a beeline for Joan’s apartment to tell her not to sleep with Mr. Jaguar Dealership Guy (too late, alas, but he couldn’t know that). Her coldness to him now just felt like a punch in the stomach.
But God Bless Kenneth! He is so true to himself. Besides Ginsburg, Ken’s the only one who’s genuinely happy–bubbling over, really–to see Don. And isn’t that totally Kenneth? Just as Pete noted a few seasons back, Kenneth’s possibly the only character on the show who has no bitterness, no secret dark side. He just enjoys things. Dude lost a freakin’ eye and he’s still charming! (Or did he? I don’t remember what’s under that patch.)
During the partner meeting, Roger impressed me with his ability to keep things together thanks to his pragmatism and possibly, just possibly, his friendship for Don?
So he’s fucked up his marriage to Megan (but in fairness, girlfriend has issues herself, if her agent is telling the truth about her desperation) despite making an effort to change and acknowledge his shame of having been sorta-fired, and yet in the same episode, managed to repair his relationship with Sally by being honest in the diner as well as lightening the mood by pretending he was willing to skip out without paying. That was the bigger win for him, I think; his feelings for Sally are the strongest connection he has with another human being, at least since Anna Draper died. I think that’s what gave him enough confidence to go into SCP to get his job back.
I cannot wait to see Don vs. Lou. Flawed genius vs. bland mediocrity. No matter what Peggy may think, she must know that as difficult as it was working for Don, he was the one who saw her talent, who promoted her, who challenged her, and that’s why she was able to strut her own stuff. He might have been extraordinarily frustrating, especially when on one of his shame-spirals, but he inspired her and she looked up to him–artistically, anyway. That’s got to be better than shuffling around with Mr. Adequate (which, despite the late great Bill McNeal’s insistance, is not a compliment! :)), who barely listens to her or seems connected to the work they’re doing.
As for the Betty/Bobby storyline… boy, do I feel for that poor kid. Even if Betty didn’t see Bobby’s protective seat-saving maneuver, she was there when he was so pathetically proud on the bus, announcing to the teacher: “We’re having a conversation!” Clearly this is a novel experience with Betty the Popsicle (or I should say Momsicle) – to quote Roseanne, frozen solid with a stick up her butt. And that final, “I wish it was yesterday” just ate at me. I was a depressed child, and even at a crazy young age like 9, I remember already wishing I could do things over and be younger again. No little kid should be that regretful. Bobby isn’t enough of a rebel the way Sally has always been. He’s caught between the clashing Sally/Betty relationship and Betty’s idealization of her perfect little Gene, aka the reincarnation of her dead father. I foresee bad things in Bobby’s future unless he manages to eke out a relationship with Henry or we finally get some good Don/Bobby scenes. (It might be difficult; the kid playing Bobby can act against January Jones and he’ll still look decent, but I’m not sure how well he’d do against someone like Hamm who actually has more than three facial expressions.)
Anyway, all in all, I voted “loved it!” for this episode. It seems impossible that Don has a happy ending in store for him; I don’t think we’ll be seeing him going up and up and up without another huge disaster over the final (sob!) episodes this year and next. But damn, I wish him the best. There’s never been as enjoyable a storyline as the caper-like beginning of SCDP, and I want to see that guy in action again.
Oh, and as a P.S. to this ridiculously long treatise: Jon Hamm/Don Draper is chubby and old-looking/ragged? I must be watching this show through one of those old 1960s rabbit-ear antennas, because the guy still got it as far as I’m concerned!
I watched S1 Ep 1 the other day and there is a distinct difference in DD around the gut and jowls - but I only recognised it by going back.
What I really came to say was how much I enjoyed reading your post, and in doing so made me realise that I’m the same age as, and had a more than distant mother just like, Bobby Draper. Only without the money, divorce, style and New Yorkiness.
MiM
I’ve been seeing a bunch of comments as well about Don looking bad. While there’s scenes where they’ve obviously done him up to look schlumpy, when he’s wearing a crisp shirt, combed his hair and stands up straight he still looks pretty sharp from my perspective.