I think she was really good for a kid in the early seasons but teen Sally always sounds like she has a stuffed up nose.
Not to mention that vocal fry. Ugh!
I was never interested in the kid story lines at all. Who cares what happens to the kids? Sally was nothing special. As a teen, she’s even less interesting than before. JMHO.
I doubt Lou is stilk creative director. It was Draper that McCann wanted – well Draper and Ted. Don’t surely got that job back after the buyout.
He’s the Creative Director of the LA office; the same job Ted Chough had when he was out there. I wonder if the firm even has any other clients out there besides Sunkist.
HA! Tom and Lorenzo referenced Mr. Furley!
http://tomandlorenzo.com/2015/04/mad-style-the-forecast/
I win the internet!
The old Don might have flirted. But this Don did something which I think is the real theme of this episode, which is moving from doer to adviser, inspired by having to think about the future.
He gives Creative Guy good hints about how to handle the situation, which stupid Creative Guy botches, and so Don fires him.
He gives the real estate agent advice on how to sell the apartment, which works. And he asks other people what they want to do with their lives, and listens.
He turns down the booze, and he turns down the girl. Maybe this is pointing to Don growing up by the end of the show.
However, I wish one of the poll choices was “Ewww.” The Glenn scene was indeed cringe-worthy.
Cringe-worthy?
I can’t believe I haven’t seen one post here (but I couldn’t stand to read them all so there may in fact be one) that says the episodes in this “season” are just worthless and it’s a waste of time to watch them.
That is how I feel. But how could this once superb show become so completely worthless?
I think it may have something to do with the contracts. The actors or other people who support this show may be under contract to appear but may not be contracted to produce anything of good quality.
I’m going to close this post now because spending any time on this season or these posts just makes me feel sick.
No offense to anyone else who may love this show. I just can’t stand this season.
Personally, I think the correct course of action is to nail the seventeen-going-on-thirty girl, but maybe wait until she gets back from her field trip.
Ohh Bryan Ekers, you’re going to fry in (the Straight Dope) hell for that one!
Actually, that’s a spoiler for the next episode!
Wow. I saw the same show and came away with opinions 180 degrees from yours.
We’ve seen Don failing as a human being for six and a half seasons. As Mathis said, he’s been skating by on his looks and charisma. Now we’re seeing that as he ages and his beauty fades, they no longer get him out of sticky situations.
The real estate agent was obviously right. His empty apartment smelled of failure. Don was being defensive in telling her that she had failed, a tactic that always worked in the past. She brushed him off like the bad crumb he is. He can’t read the public any more. He got lucky in selling it - to a pregnant couple, a pair with a future that is not, unlike his, completely written out.
Don was always awful in handling employees. He even managed to drive Peggy away and she worshiped him. The scene with Mathis was a disaster. Is this the first time they’ve spoken? Don clearly thinks that everybody ought to take care of their own problems - even though he has failed repeatedly by not getting help. He took a minor incident and though his ineptness with his employee hurt his firm.
But all that pales before the future fiasco. Everybody else has it exactly right. McCann wants to hear that they would be going after a big client. Period. They don’t want the Gettysburg Address. They want to know that their investment will make them money. Everybody Don talks to is doing their jobs. And he doesn’t care. He doesn’t even get how alienating he’s being. His head is somewhere else. He’s failing them and himself.
You know how everybody keeps talking about the opening scene of the man falling and predicting that someone will jump out a window? That’s not going to happen. THIS IS IT. Don is falling. He’s in mid-air. He doesn’t know how he’s going to land.
Don’s life started at zero because he was a nothing going nowhere when he lucked into taking someone else’s identity. It’s now returning to zero, a life of nothingness going nowhere. That’s the arc of the series. How can anybody believe there’ll be a happy ending?
I was interested in the location and value of the apartment. I think he said it was on the Upper East Side and that it was a penthouse apartment. It sold for $85,000. I found a table that said that the median household income in the US was about $7,500, so the sale price was about twelve times the national median income. I’ll bet that today it would sell for much more than that. (And also, someone would have removed the sunken living room.)
Based on the CPI Inflation Calculator, $85,000 in 1970 would be worth $514,210.57 today - I bet today the same location and type of apt would be over a mil.
($7,500 in 1970 would be $45,371.52 today)
Looks and charisma aside, Don is still a legitimate creative talent. He didn’t get to where he is purely on his smile and haircut. Mathis, besides being petty, was just an idiot who failed at a self-made problem. He tried to take the easiest way out – using a line of Don’s without considering its audience or appropriateness. This is a guy you’d want writing your ads?
No idea what the real estate philosophy in 1970 was but isn’t it the common wisdom today to have your place as sparsely furnished as possible when trying to sell for exactly the reason Don stated? You want people to imagine their own stuff in there, plus it makes the place look larger.
Particularly since he DIDN’T follow Don’s advice. Yes, Don shared the balls story, but what he actually advised was the soap gag.
Don is also rich. I assume he wouldn’t have been hurt by offering Megan a million bucks, so he’s gotta have several million on top of that. Worst case, he can retire to a beach in Hawaii. (And his children don’t even need his money, as Henry is richer.)
Although I agree with much of what else you said (except I think McCann will be happy with the Gettysburg Address if Don can pull out another Carosel speech), I don’t think we’re to take that Don is currently in free-fall.
I think he’s been falling ALL ALONG. His inability to fit in has been there since the beginning, and although he keeps desperately clutching things that he thinks will save him – Betty, kids, Megan, an endless string of affairs, wealth, success at work – he’s still been left empty and wanting.
But there’s a glimmer of a realization that there should be something more. In this particular episode, it came across in Don’s rejection of everyone else’s ideas of the future when he’s trying to write his Gettysburg Address. And when he snapped at Sally that she’d have to be something more than a pretty face – he just doesn’t know how to get there himself.
It’s not a show about a successful jackass who finally fails when he can’t rely on his charm as he ages (Roger is an example of someone relying on his charm as he ages, after all). It’s a show about a jackass who’s been failing all along and calling it success, and the question to be answered is if he’ll actually find true success or will just end up as a smear on the pavement of life.
Yeah, he was a millionaire before the McCann buyout and, if Joan made a million on it, Don made several times that. Plus Don’s not really the spendy type. Left to his own devices, he’d likely live very modestly (see his apartment between divorcing Betty and marrying Megan). The only fly in the ointment is that Don isn’t content to just retire at 45 and kick back on his pile of cash. He wants to be doing something.
I think the assumption will be that Don wrote a good enough speech for Roger. Didn’t Roger need it on Monday? In show-time, we’ll be a month past that by the next episode. The speech was just a MacGuffin to make the episode about everyone’s futures – it won’t be heard from again.
Are there really people who think the falling man in the opening credits is foreshadowing Don actually, physically falling? I understood from season 1 that it’s a metaphor.
Now watch in the final episode how he leans on the railing of his new balcony and hits the pavement on Madison avenue.