If Wiener does the usual time leap between seasons thing I think Duck sauce will be out or on the way out. If that happens we will miss Betty in Reno which would (I think) be entertaining. In looking forward there seems to be so much happening right now that there may be less of time leap this time vs the past episodes. Maybe a few months this time vs a year or more for past episodes.
There wasn’t a very big skip before this last season. The previous one ended with Betty telling Don she was pregnant; she hadn’t yet had the baby when this season began.
The actress who plays Sally is so good it would be a pity if she fell by the wayside between seasons.
Alas, Betty only needs to be in Reno for six weeks, so she’ll probably be back by next season. But, as a fan of The Women, I’d love to see her encountering the Divorce Culture out there. Surely, she’ll realize that letting Henry set the terms of her divorce is foolish. She apparently needed his help to break out of her almost catatonic numbness & get the divorce rolling. But maybe she’ll delay marrying him a bit. Sally & Bobbie will need time to get to know their New Grandpa…
Not when you’re in college. 
Thing is, kids don’t tend to be very good at sex. Not their fault, they’ll get better, but in the meantime, there’s a lot of fumbling around. And frankly, the boy she picked up at that bar couldn’t even handle a burger adeptly.
Rewatching the episode, I wondered by Don’s key wouldn’t unlock the art department. He certainly expected it to and, as Head of Creative, you’d think he’d have a working key to the offices under him. Although, in reality, there’s probably no deconstruction there beyond “Because it was cool to have Don kick the door in”.
I did catch Trudy’s chip 'n dip this time which gave me a chuckle. And, of course, Pete’s rifle.
I was hoping Joan would walk around the corner, grab the key from it’s secret hiding place, and then unlock the door.
Ah, but think of the potential ;).
Seriously, I’m not trying to idealize Peggy’s college boy one-night-stand which was clearly subpar on several levels. But I do think that the affair with Duck was/is equally subpar. (I certainly don’t assume he’s a better lover than the college guy–his wife did not seem to miss him).
Who knows what the writers will have in store for Peggy but I hope she follows Don’s example and keeps her love life out of the office.
For a real-life Peggy I could imagine any number of possible beaux floating around Manhattan in 1963-4 with an interest in an ambitious, smart, creative, sexy woman.
On TV, as in soap operas, there’s often a kind of economy at work: if existing cast members sleep with each other there is at least less casting to do! But while it might be nice to see a re-linking of Joan and Roger (as she hopefully dumps her rapist husband) I’d really like to see Peggy get seriously interested in a man with a somewhat different mindset than what SCDP is likely to put into her ambit.
Jophiel, perhaps Don’s set of keys to the art department are still in Betty’s washing machine 
If Matthew Weiner wants, he can resolve the legal issues from the departure of Messrs. Sterling, Cooper, Draper and Pryce and return to the original set. As it stands, PPL will close Sterling Cooper and lose the millions they’ve already invested in it and whatever millions they stood to make from the sale to McCann Erickson. But if SCDP go to him and offer to buy their former firm back, PPL can save face and recover some money.
I doubt that Weiner would go that route, but I think it would work.
And the website The Daily Beast has an interview with Weiner. Among other things, he addresses the question of what “terrible thing” Don was referring to when he said to Peggy, “Because there are people out there who buy things, people like you and me. And something happened, something terrible. And the way that they saw themselves is gone. And nobody understands that. But you do. And that’s very valuable.”
The terrible thing was, of course, the Kennedy assassination.
Yeah–but do we need to take his word for it?
Don’s key not working didn’t bother me. A friend of mine who is the chief deacon of a church had to get me to unlock the door to the church store the other day. She is supposed to have keys to everything, but recently we had changed the lock on that door; the new key looked identical to the old one, and she had accidentally discarded the correct copy.
But these attributes are the kind that a man will recognize only after he gets to know her. She still dresses pretty much like she did in S1 and her hairstyle is that of a teenager. I think the reason she attracted that young guy at the bar in S2 is because her actions were so different from the way she looked, kinda like the librarian who takes off her glasses and fluffs her hair, only with Peggy it happened on the dance floor. I think it’s going to be difficult for Peggy to find the kind of man who’s right for her. But that’s okay, because I don’t think she’s looking, not really.
For all those who think Peggy has all these options she really doesn’t (IMO) in a practical sense. Despite what we want her to be Peggy is not smooth or natural or even particularly seductive. Her fashion sense is noveau-dumpy despite being surrounded by all these stylishly dressed women. It’s not like she doesn’t have fashion cues she can take. She makes a decent wage and can dress much better than she does. Like Don she is as polite as she needs to be, but she is often brusque and blunt to the point of rudeness and impulsive in her sexuality. She’s very focused almost (in some ways) like Conrad Hilton.
Re the recoiling at her hooking up with Duck it’s interesting in looking at the female doper’s responses. While there is all this earnest chatter about how she needs a man to respect her abilities etc. there is this virtual high school girl squeal of “Ewww! Gross!” when this very man pops up and seduces her because he’s not pretty enough, or young enough for their tastes.
Or one of them could ask Peggy to take a boddy pin and try to pick the lock. Peggy reacts by throwing a potted plant through the frosted glass window.
AuntiePam, true that Peggy is not (yet) very good at “pulling” men–to use a very useful British phrase. And you’re right that she was in rare form in that season 2 episode and (IIRC) she was even using Joan’s line as a way of attracting male interest.
But, at least in real life, I think the Peggies of this world do (and I’m guessing even did) get their chances. And women like that don’t generally meet their love interests at bars or parties. So I don’t see why PO can’t succeed in love as in professional life–when she is ready. And I agree with you that although she’s on record as saying that she wants everything that Don has that she is wise enough to be focusing on the career part of that right now.
Sure, astro, all of these things suggest that she’ll never be a magnet for men the way that Joan is (and that’s not what she wants anyway). But does it really mean that she can’t have a sexually and even emotionally fulfilling relationship with a man? I don’t see why not.
Who knows if the storyline will go that way–but I think it would be interesting to see her trying and perhaps even failing. As we all sometimes do when we are looking for love in the right places and the wrong…
Not sure if I fit the bill of the kind of female response you’re describing. To me Duck is “eww” not because of his age or looks but because of who he is. I don’t want Peggy to sleep with him for the same reason that Don doesn’t want to do business with him. I think Don thinks he is “eww” and in this case I trust his judgment.
When age came up in some dialogue we took part in in a previous thread I was responding to your seeming to assume that because Peggy was finally going for an older and more masculine man–I hope I’m not misrepresenting what you wrote–that we she should see her as having done better for herself and her sexual needs than she has in the past.
If I disagree and see Duck as a subpar partner for her–even for a casual affair–it isn’t because I think he’s old or unattractive. It’s because I don’t like who he is and (as I said before) I find his failed masculinity kind of pitiful and abject.
When you take into account the period and at least what I’ve heard from successful career women of the time, it seems most felt that they had to sacrifice family in order to be successful in business. This was way before the famous Enjoli commercial: “I can bring home the bacon…” and Women’s lib and the failed ERA, etc. Think about how low the glass ceiling is when we first meet Peggy - it’s just above the secretarial pool for the most part, some of the female owners of business not withstanding. Every step up is going to be a fight for her.
I think I’d trust Don’s judgment about Duck, too… at least, professionally. As we well know, Don is willing to toss his better judgment aside in order to score some tail. Not really a surprise that Peggy, his protege, does the same.
Peggy is the person Dress for Success was written for. Ditto Games Your Mother Never Told You About. Unfortunately they won’t be written for a decade or so.
For some reason, Joan doesn’t need those books. If she were playing in the same field as Peggy she’d be dressing a whole lot differently than she does now–probably still sexy. She’s given Peggy some good advice, but Peggy needs a whole makeover.
Slight hijack but- I missed some episodes this season and just watched them last night on computer including the one with the riding lawn mower. Such a horrible scene and I can’t remember the last time I laughed out loud that much while watching a TV show alone. And I almost think Joan could make me straight (and how wonderful to have a sexy smart woman on a show who isn’t a size 0).
I was hoping they’d call Sal and find out nobody thought to take his keys when they fired him.
Apparently Smith and Schmidt weren’t deemed important enough to ask. Not surprisingly since neither focuses much in any of the plots- one gets high and the other does Peggy’s hair but that’s about it. I will miss Kinsey though just for his pompousness and that Orson Welles beard.
ShibbOleth, I have worked with lots of women who came of age in the Mad Men period. Several didn’t have children (and some didn’t want them) but all ended up in relationships of one sort or another (gay as well as straight). NYC is a big place and accommodates all kinds; it always has. No reason I can see why a woman like Peggy couldn’t find her fair share of casual and serious relationships. I don’t mean that I think you’re wrong to say those women made sacrifices–I think they did. But I don’t think those sacrifices had to take the form of a lifetime unwanted celibacy–or at least not so much more often than some people today, men as well as women, get stuck in that situation.
To me the challenge of writing Peggy’s character would be just what see so far; her difficulties reconciling her very non-stereotypical ambitions with the commonplace expectations of what a woman should be.
Maybe partly for that reason I’m not really interested in seeing P become a fabulous vamp (didn’t she already do that once when she ended up sitting on the client’s lap in the men’s club in S2)?
Joan is a one of a kind and is very comfortable being the kind of working woman she is: the consummate femme professional in a subordinate and non-threatening (if totally important) role.
I think it’s good to look good at work to a certain point but, really, having men stare at you when you’re trying to get them to take you seriously is very undermining–unless you happen to love being looked at. What works for Joan very often doesn’t work for women who need their male colleagues to think of them as equals or as superiors.
This is why God gave women the gift of the chic black pantsuit