Oddly enough, I agree that they were looking for an out-of-state character who moved to the big city and broke into advertising, but they also wanted to make Peggy’s family live locally so they could introduce some family tensions into her story, and there was no way to do both smoothly.
I know this is years old, but…Peggy gave her baby up for adoption. She did NOT ‘dump her kid on her sister’. Her sister had her own baby. Peggy’s baby is gone bye-bye.
That’s true, and Weiner has said as much, in addition to making that point explicit in later seasons, but I think he was uncertain at the time what the baby’s status would be. Most likely, he planted the idea that the baby living with Peggy’s sister was Peggy’s baby to make a (melo?)dramatic point but to make it ambiguous enough that he could wiggle out of it later on. Poor dramatic structure, if you ask me.
That ambiguity has caused endless maddening discussion. There were those who INSISTED Peggy’s family has the baby (and were yearning for her and Pete to track it down or some kind of mundane soap opera thing). It’s made obvious the baby was given up for adoption, it played its part in the plot, and isn’t relevant any more.
My two cents that nobody asked for:
I liked watching Mad Men, but my least favourite plotline – hands down – was “Don is an imposter”. Every time they tried to mine that story for phony suspense, I wanted to fast forward to more ad agency shenanigans.
The only part of that plot line I liked was when Pete got shut down, thinking he has an ace up his sleeve. The rest of the time it didn’t really resonate with me and I feel like, if they wanted some “This isn’t the real me” pathos, it could have been done better.
Still loved the show. Think it was the last show that counted as “appointment television” for me.
You mean the climax?
I know, I know. They brought it up a few more times and it even became a major side arc, the time he would spend with real Don’s wife and her family (so much so it would lead directly to his final scene).
IIRC, there were also some legit consequences when they were competing for a government contract that needed security investigations, which led to the firm losing a major account, and so contributed to much of the animosity between Don and the other partners later in the series.
I think they’re talking about part where Cooper basically says to Pete, “I don’t give a fuck who Don Draper really is.”
I don’t think the later animosity for Don came much from losing North American Aviation because Pete took all the blame for that.
Yeah, as I recall Pete took the hit for losing the aviation firm and Don made it up to him later by paying Pete’s share in the company. That said, it’s been a while.
And, yes, I was referring to Cooper’s disinterest in Don’s past and being more annoyed at Pete for trying to leverage it.
Which is also what I’m referring to. That scene is the major payoff for the imposter storyline and, IIRC, something like the climax for season 1. Saying that’s the only part of the storyline you like… is kind of like saying you like the storyline, isn’t it?
Not if the payoff isn’t worth the journey.
Personally, I thought it was an oddly implausible and unnecessary storyline - you could still have had the same general childhood background without the old switcheroo. I’m sure a fair number of people could have reinvented themselves after the war without the extreme of pulling a Martin Guerre. It was a more wide open period than most in American history.
That said I didn’t dislike it myself, so much as found it a little bemusing. But I could see someone just not enjoying it, while still liking that one scene.
No, on both counts. The whole thing hung around the entire length of the show including being one of the primary factors to Don’s divorce, all the scenes with ‘real Mrs Draper’, etc. It wasn’t anywhere near over by the end of season one.
Also, while the scene was entertaining, it doesn’t mean it was worth having the plot line hanging over the show for seven seasons. Or even worth the clunky Season One Korean War scenes or Don’s brother, etc. Again, didn’t ruin the show or anything but I would have been happier with some other pretext to Don “inventing” himself than the dog tag switcharoo.
I’d call it more of an anticlimax, insofar as it just amounted to as much as Pete cutting a fart in front of Don and Cooper.
edit-
well, I guess it would come to be important during the Conrad Hilton escapade, but I mean in the context of the Pete vs. Don Thunderdome of it all.
FWIW I liked the ID switch story arc. It shows how sad and lonely Dick/Don’s existence was, to have no reason not to cut himself off from his family. The revelation that he’s not the happy success we first meet IMO is part of his success as an ad man, whose job it is to sell dreams of a better life to the public. (The crescendo of that was the Hershey pitch several seasons later).
It’s also a look back into a time when such a move was possible, before surveillance cams, facial recognition, and TrueID.
I remember the first time I saw the scene where the old Army buddy recognizes him on the train, and addresses him as ‘Dick’. He doesn’t respond at first, then he looks terrified, then he acknowledges him, but tells him that he lives upstate. I wondered, ‘What the hell was that about?’
Reducing the whole show to a single sentence, I’d say that sentence is “Don Draper is a terrible human being.” He gets away with it because he’s very good-looking, and glib as hell, and charming and well-educated (especially for a high school dropout) and lucky, but he’s basically scum.
And most of us were rooting for him all the way.
But he’s even more deeply flawed than he is good-looking: just now, I’m watching him expressing angry jealousy because his actress-wife has a 30-second makeout scene on camera at the same time he is conducting a real-life affair with a woman who lives in his building. Hard to get more hypocritical than that, yet I find myself hoping his affair won’t get found out.
I think the show is about what hypocrites we are, the viewers, how willing we are to tolerate and approve of terrible behavior if it’s done by someone we like, and Weiner gives him enough charming qualities to force us into liking Don.
Deserting the Army is just one of the many shameless, selfish acts Don has performed.