Also, Anna is the one person with whom he has ever had a genuine relationship.
Someone from that time would have called out the smidgen of genuine-ness buried in him.
What year is it now- 1969? The $1,000 that Megan wrote would be the same as writing one for over $6,400 today. That seems a little excessive.
I seriously thought Ginsberg had cut off his nutsack- “I had a blockage, but I cleared it. This is for you.”
I assumed Megan was trying to give her enough money to go away for good. Give her $50 and she might be back in a couple weeks. She didn’t seem thrilled that Niece (no one knows her name, huh?) called later and talked to Don; I think Megan thought she was paid off and gone for good.
The Ginsberg nipple thing didn’t resonate as violently with me as it seems to with some folks here. I didn’t think it was great television but Ginsberg’s been a loon since Day One and obviously cracked without the outlet of the Creative Lounge. Wasn’t any worse than most of the episode.
So I suppose Don crashing the Phillip Morris meeting counts as “going off script”.
The direct homage to 2001 with Ginsberg trying to read Cutler and Lou’s lips made me think that scene was originally written to be in last week’s episode. Maybe they had to shuffle some of the scenes around and it got pushed back into this one. It seems weird to drag out the Kubrick references.
I assumed it was Ginsburg’s dick in the box; the dialog plus his obsession with being “turned homo” all pointed to it. Maybe the writers decided it was just too much for Mad Men and settled on nipple.
All of Ginsberg’s talk about needing to find his valve reminded me of Ignatius in “A Confederacy of Dunces” always complaining about his “pyloric valve” getting stuck.
Coincidentally, (and I realize this is only a coincidence to a connection I myself made up), John Kennedy Toole (author of Dunces), killed himself in March of '69 though nobody knew who he was at the time and his book wouldn’t be published until many years later.
I didn’t think Don was oblivious - he knew what was happening, but wasn’t interested under the circumstances. After a long history of failed relationships and infidelities, Don appears to be “on the wagon” with respect to affairs. Megan sprung this on him with no warning. I felt like this was almost a counterpart to last week’s bender.
Megan has turned the tables on Don. It used to be Betty sitting at home in the 'burbs while Don was out gallivanting around Manhattan, drinking and dining and having affairs. Now Don is sitting around in staid old Manhattan, while Megan is living it up in sunny California. Don used to be the one with the “wild” sex life. Megan just outdid him but good.
And now with Betty not needing to be told what to think, who knows what may happen next.
A semi-frigid lie down in a public restroom with some random dude on top of her? 
I should clarify. He wasn’t oblivious in the bedroom, but prior to that, there were some vibes radiating that he didn’t seem to pick up on.
Slate episode review makes some interesting points.
Betty doesn’t get any sympathy from me. She’ll probably never see the contradiction between her contempt for people who dare to question the status quo, and her own dissatisfaction with being under Henry’s control. She’s a perpetual child who will probably always be dependent on some man.
Speaking of picking up on vibes… wasn’t Megan the one skeeved out by her bi costar/producer’s wife? In Manhattan she’s not that kind of girl, but out in CA she is?
Well, as Don points out, she was stoned (as was her red headed companion who sort of slunk out the next morning)…
I certainly think it’s just too much, too! :eek: He’s GOING crazy, he isn’t totally out of touch with reality - yet. If he had cut off his dick, that would be a major, major injury - would he even be able to calmly walk into the office?
He’d already been sewn up after taking off his nipple, right? He said something about “They’ll sew you up, but they won’t cut if off for you so I had to do that myself.” Something like that.
That bit was a little confusing. Presumably after he mutilated himself, he walked into a hospital and they sewed him up without locking him up or otherwise inquiring as to the reason for his injury? It makes no sense.
Who knows what kind of clinic or hospital he went to, or what he told them regarding how it got sliced off. Could have just claimed an accident of some sort? But he seemed too loony-toons to have come up with an excuse since he was so confident in what he was doing and why.
Or perhaps he still had to get sewn up and was lamenting the fact that he was turned down on his “slice this off for me” request.
No, when he unbuttoned his shirt, I saw a gauze pad over the wound. It looked like the wound had already been sewn up. But perhaps he just put the gauze over the wound himself.
I didn’t notice it at the time but you guys are right about the nipple dialog and competently bandaged wound not making a lot of sense. Presumably if he had really asked the doctor to cut it off, s/he would have been the one to call the crazy police.
As Ginsburg tells it, it sounds like he asked the doctor to cut it off and the doctor said no, left a scalpel and tasteful ring box on the table, and said, “I’ll send in a nurse in about ten minutes.”