One thing I liked was how Don looked like just an average guy when he took his shirt off at the pool. I’m sick of seeing so many actors with perfect abs.
I noticed that too. I they’re calling it the “Dad Bod”
Not really. Don Draper is just an “average” body of a non-obese, non-bodybuilder.
“Dad bod” is more bodyfat, maybe more muscular too.
And Don Draper, while he has put on some weight, has pretty much possessed that body shape throughout the series, nothing new. He was taking his shirt off 10 years ago when going to bed and mostly looking “average” in the body department.
As far as Don/Henry and the kids go, I don’t know how it would play out legally. As mentioned earlier, for all intents and purposes, Henry raised Gene. It was pretty creepy and weird, IMHO, how he courted Betty while she was pregnant with Gene, but he did. Betty and Don were finished when they had the floor sex “mistake,” and Don was never around for Gene, regardless of the circumstances. He’s barely been around for Bobby. I personally would not find it weird at all for a step-father to raise the kids. Perhaps that’s because I wasn’t alive in 1970 ,and as a step-father myself I know for sure I would continue to raise my son if his mom died.
Henry has too much clout and he knows too much about Don for Don to put up a fight.
Given Don/Dick’s history, I’m not so sure he would be ok with leaving his kids to be raised by a step-parent when their mother dies.
Others think Betty will be dead when Don gets back but I don’t think so. The doctors said that she has 6 + months to live without any treatment (I thought) and Don’s pretty good about calling the kids. It’s hard for me to see him going 6 months without giving them a call. He’s not a great father. But he’s not that bad. In a similar vein, it’s hard to see him abandoning the kids either. He can be a dick, but I’ve never seen that level of dickishness directed to the children. And that would make him very unlikable to the audience, and I don’t see the producers wanting that.
Last week’s episode made it sound as though he was talking to Sally on a pretty regular basis since she was asking about his route and where he was heading next. Just the tone of it sounded as though he probably also talked to her in Saint Paul, etc and was checking in as he moved from place to place on his journey.
I don’t think Henry is that kind of asshole. And it would take a lot for the kids’ real father–who happens to be a multi-millionaire–to lose them.
When Don & Betty divorced, she told him they would always be his kids. He may have disappeared from the office but he’s been keeping in touch with his children.
Guess I’m in the minority for this episode, as I thought it pretty much sucked. January Jones’ presence on screen is a mystery to me, as is that of whoever it is who plays the daughter. I fidgeted throughout their scenes; after eight seasons, I still don’t give a shit about either of those characters.
Mr. Comb-over gets an undeserved happy ending and a storybook reunion with wife and kiddies? Oh, please.
Hamm continues to put in solid performances and is the only reason I’ve stuck with this season.
Just to be clear, “the kid” was working at the fundraiser, so he was already there.
No Peggy this episode. Very Don and Pete centric. Bye-Bye Betty.
Don is on what seems like a Vision Quest. The Lakota have a ceremony where a man who wants to prove he of the highest esteem in the community gives everything he owns away. Everything. Then he comes back to the community and starts again. This seems like the path Don is on.
As I mentioned before, if Henry were to decide to fight over this, then he holds the trump card. Don can’t go to court to fight for custody when Henry knows about his desertion and identity theft.
I was just thinking this morning, but I don’t remember, did Don take his Sears bag (luggage) with him when he gave the kid his car?
I’m pretty sure he did but I’d have to watch it again to be certain.
Yes. A fair amount of the reviews show the last shot of him in the episode - sitting in the middle of nowhere with his bag at the bus stop.
Okay, thanks. I was assuming that he had a bulk of his cash in that bag.
I just caught up with this episode, and I was put off by some of the story.
The cancer storyline just seems like a really heavy-handed development to drop in at the eleventh hour. I suppose it’s possible that metastatic lung cancer would go symptom-free and unnoticed until it produced a melodramatic fall in public, but it comes across as a soap-opera plotline. And it seems sharply out of character that Betty, who was completely unable to deal with her father’s looming demise, can immediately accept her own death with perfectly calm stoicism.
I also have a hard time with the idea that Pete, a knickerbocker who can trace his heritage back for centuries and who hated even moving to Cos Cob, thinks that Wichita is beautiful and a desirable place to live, even allowing for a private jet.
Don’s adventure, and particularly his lonely wait by the roadside at the end, reminded me of Bill Bixby wandering the US and inadvertently righting wrongs as the Incredible Hulk. It also occurs to me that the Green Lantern of the early '70s had thrown over his square big-city lifestyle and was wandering through trailer parks and backwater towns, having crazy encounters with hippies and small-town bullies.
I think Weiner has been setting her up for this all along. It doesn’t seem out of the blue. Maybe Betty learned about coping from having to cope with her dad’s death. She also seems suicidal sometimes - this might be the answer to her prayers.
Pete always seems to end up as second best. His ideas about himself do not match the reality of what he is able to achieve. He is not big enough in real life to get his daughter into the school he wanted in his mind. I think he’s tired of being a small fish in a big pond and is ready to be a big fish in a small pond.
I think it’s less about Pete wanting to be a Wichita Big Shot and more that, like Don (or Ted) and California, Pete sees it as his shot at redemption. He says that they’re “good people” out there and he sees it as his chance to start over fresh. Away from New York, away from advertising, away from bumping into previous affairs or neighbors and school administrators who know and judge them.
Pete turned into a dick later on, but I saw him as a sympathetic character earlier in the show. Yeah, he was the same horny cheating sort of guy as everyone else on the show (who largely get passes) but Trudy going nuts over the rifle (mainly because he exchanged a chip-n-dip for it) or going behind him to get her parents to finance an apartment Pete couldn’t afford or pressing him to move to the suburbs, you at least could feel like he had some legitimate complaints. Even after the maid thing, he at least realized that what he did was fucked up and asked Trudy not to leave him alone like that again. It doesn’t excuse it but it contrasts it to Joan’s fiance who didn’t seem to give a shit.
Anyway, this isn’t to defend all of Pete’s actions and he’s done a bunch of shit and generally acts petulant and self-absorbed. But isn’t contrition and redemption about realizing that you’ve fucked up and trying to turn it around? Pete talks his brother out of ruining his marriage further and then sees he has a chance to possibly save his and his relationship with his daughter. It’s something that, for whatever his cross-country wanderings will earn him, Don will never get.
I was just thinking - do they ever say how Betty mother died? She insinuates it was a long illness, but do they ever say for sure what the cause was?