You’re not alone. That would’ve certainly been interesting; but I’m up for seeing a little more of the Francises. Not too much though, Betty probally should’ve been demoted to recurring character. I hope Weiner focus more on the other characters this season instead of giving Don the lion’s share of screentime.
PS; I’m not goint to question the merger, but it’d probally be a good idea to put some kind of courtesy warning in the thread title that there are unboxed spoilers for the season premeire.
I think you are missing the point of what Don was trying to do. Don intentionally gave them an ad that would work but wasn’t what they wanted so that when they rejected it he could throw them out on their asses. Throwing them out, loudly and violently, was the point. He is advertising the new firm through word of mouth this way, establishing the new brand and identity and saying to the world that the new SCDP (is that right?) is strong and doesn’t need to grovel for work.
He is the face, people are there to see him, if you aren’t going to listen to what he has to say then no soup for you, get out.
Alan Sepinwall’s interview with Weiner leaves me thinking we’ll be seeing as much Betty as ever this season. I actually found her a little bit more interesting and, frankly, tolerable now that her situation and relationship to Don has changed. It may be that she’s Henry Francis’s problem now, and I’m not particularly concerned with his character other than as a convenient bit of plot furniture, but I didn’t find myself tensing up every time she showed up on screen.
I liked the episode - especially for the story line it seems to be setting up.
This is the way I see it: The show started with a big contradiction. Everyone pretending they are equals, but in fact it’s the Don Draper company. Don is self-loathing, and didn’t realize that he was the only reason the company exists. But then he found out how important he was when an interview in Advertising age had the tremendous impact it did. Don had no idea.
Then Peggy gave him the lecture about how everyone was in that office because of Don, and how they just wanted to please him. So he starts to realize that HE is the product everyone wants. The episode ends with him making a huge power play - giving another interview in which he basically says the firm is all about him. He lets the reporter know how they broke of from Sterling Cooper, and that it was his idea. This will no doubt have all kinds of ramifications: the way they split from the company was not exactly legal or ethical.
So it looks to me like Don realizes that he’s the draw, and he’s about to market himself as the mysterious man who does daring things, and he’s going to make the ad agency thrive on his own cult of personality. That should drive some of the other people nuts and cause trouble, but it might also make him famous and drive millions of dollars of business to them.
I disagree that it was premeditated. They’re desperate for work, to the point where the entire office is busting his balls about it. He hit a breaking point in that meeting and got tired of groveling, which is why he turned to his assistant and asked for the WSJ. He’ll now do anything necessary to get enough positive PR so that he doesn’t have to beg clients anymore.
That’s an excellent summary. While it will no doubt piss a few people off, I get the sense that Sterling & Cooper wanted him to behave this way from the beginning
This whole episode is about how the changes in the company are reflecting a channge in the country, a counter culture channge. Jantzen are the old school Phyllis Schafley prudes who helped get Barry Goldwater nominated for President. Old rules don’t apply and Don hass always been had that kind of thinking when he was developing a campaing, but never in everything else. But he does see the kind of Andy Warhol-ing of America, the cult of personality, etc. He certainly didn’t get it at first, but Don finally understood it when he realized hw he botched the AdAge interview, how the ham fight actually worked and how if he wants to promote a fresher outlook then it has to ooze out of the company.
Don gave the interview at the end that he should have given earlier, and that everybody expected him to give earlier. Nobody - not even Cooper - really understands how badly Don wants to hide himself. I saw the ending as saying that Don is finally realizing that all the reasons he had earlier for hiding - the wife, the children, the suburban life - are truly over and gone. He can shine the spotlight on himself.
Which is risky. You can’t get more heavy-handed than a one-legged Korean war veteran for reminders of the risks. The big risk for the show is that subtlety is also over and gone. I have to hope not.
ETA: I disagree that Don is going to be the one to break open the stodginess to the new era. He can’t. Peggy can. She already has. My prediction: This season will be all about how Peggy is right and Don is wrong and the war that brings on.
I think it’s more that she thinks of herself as a new '60s independent woman. She seemed very impressed with herself, but she was obviously a big phony.
I was watching with my mom, who was 22 in 1964, and during the taxicab scene, she snorted and said “Gloves! An evening wrap!! Nobody would have worn those out to dinner!!” She wasn’t criticizing the wardrobe department, though. She was pointing out that the lady was way overdressed for the occasion, which would fit in with the rest of the things we saw about her personality.
I just rewatched the episode. Hallway fiance and Peggy’s art partner are definitely not the same guy. Art guy is named Joey (I think?) and she seems to be calling the hallway fiance “Mark.”
Plus I don’t think they look much alike, on second viewing.
The last 2 seasons of Mad Men have sustained enought interest for individual episode threads and I don’t see any reason why this season won’t.
I wonder how far they’ll go with Betty and the house. Obviously she has entitlement issues (which predate the house-thing) and it’s my understanding that the wife usually did end up keeping the house in the '60s. However Don made a huge deal about him keeping the house as a condition to agreeing to the divorce and I don’t see him just taking her word for.
So let’s assume she signed something and/or it’s in the divorce decree that Don get’s the house. What happens if she keeps dragging her feet on moving out? I don’t think she’s above using Don’s visitation with Sally & Bobby (& Gene) as bargaining chips. And what can Don really do about it short of sicking the sheriff on her?
And Betty’s an even bigger pariah than Helen Bishop now. When she was in that ladies’ civic league thing she made a big deal about “knowing someone” in the governor’s office and her friendship with Henry (that alone got her some funny looks). Then she disappears over Christmas and comes back divorced and quickly marries Henry (possibly while still in Reno) and they both live together in her old house! Just imagine the gossip that the local housewives are all exchanging.
Don didn’t seem to be at all upset about them remaining in the house until he came over and they weren’t home, then it was an issue.
I’m wondering if he’s going to have financial reversals this season. Since he’s rich enough that if the agency tanks he’s still relatively well off it takes some of his drive away.
The not-a-bikini clients reminded me of when he told the owner of Caldecott Farms that anybody who told her she could be a success after the scandal without changing the name of her product was stealing her money. I can’t remember, however, whether she took his advice or not. (It was based on Kal-Kan, which came into business under almost identical circumstances.)
Last year they introduced Conrad Hilton as the first ‘real person’ recurring character; any suggestions or requests for who you’d like to see them introduce this year? I thought about Brian Epstein since he was famously careless with Beatles licensing but he seems a bit too big; perhaps a young Ross Perot (he’s enough of an egomaniac he’d probably gladly give permission) or an interesting exchange twixt the bedhopping nihilistic Don and devout Mormon Willard Marriott, or an early ‘lunatic’ attempting to market mini-computers (which did existin the mid 1960s).
I don’t remember this. Can you remind me? I recall him calling her from the SCDP hotel office and telling her he wouldn’t fight her, but not him putting his foot down about the house?
I don’t remember any “conditions” for the divorce either. I remember Henry wanting Betty to take nothing from the marriage, as she sat meekly in his lawyer’s office. And I remember Don saying he wasn’t going to fight her.
In the new episode, Don’s accountant mentioned a post-divorce agreement that Betty would stay in the house until October. Which would make sense for a newly divorced woman with kids–but not so much for a woman whose new husband wanted her to accept nothing from her ex. (In a non-Community Property state, the house was Don’s.)
ETA: I don’t think Don wants the house. But it is costing him money–& Henry lives there, rent-free.
She exits that episode having rejected their advice. She hasn’t appeared again (to my knowledge), so we don’t know how that decision worked out for her, or even whether she’s re-considered.
That idea would entertain me at least — however, mini-computers were far, far from being consumer products, and our favorite agency seems to deal only in that field.
