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Jace Lacob

Mad Men Postmortem

BS Top - Lacob Mad Men Finale AMC Dead presidents, divorce, and new digs: Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner talked exclusively to The Daily Beast about Sunday’s game-changing season finale.

Sunday’s gripping season finale of AMC’s Mad Men embraced both bitter endings and bright, new beginnings, even as its characters were recovering from the tragic events of November 1963.

For a series that has thrived on exploring the subtle nuances of its characters and the unspoken subtext that hangs in the air like the curls of smoke from one of Don Draper’s cigarettes, creator Matthew Weiner ended the third season by removing its central settling—the Sterling Cooper office—and ripping apart its romantic leads, all while giving the enigmatic Don Draper (Jon Hamm) a new outlook on life and the future. In a single hour, Weiner, who co-wrote and directed the installment, offered a stunning set of reversals for the ad men and women the series revolves around, not only shattering the Drapers’ marriage past any hopes of mending but also giving birth to a new advertising agency, which rose up out of the ashes of Sterling Cooper and set up shop in a hotel room. (The Pierre, to be precise.)

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The Daily Beast spoke to Weiner about the end of the Drapers’ marriage and Sterling Cooper, new beginnings for Don and Betty, the Kennedy assassination, and real-life figure Conrad Hilton.

The Daily Beast: We witnessed the birth of the new agency Sterling Cooper Draper and Pryce last night. What was behind your decision to remove the series’ central setting, and hit the reset button?

Matthew Weiner: My intention from the beginning of the season was to accentuate the corporate nonsense that is unrelated to work: the acquisition by the British, which was done for money… and the fact that the British company acquired them with no understanding of why they were doing it… I felt that Don Draper would get sucked into this thing because he wanted his whole life to be that guy in the suit… in the end, the work is what mattered. That firm was not fully taking advantage of Don’s talent… if we believe that Don is as good at what he does as he says… he could not continue working in the place. And to me, that meant him being in a new place and the rest of that was working backward from there.

“I am proud of the fact that I use it all up… [Getting rid of Sterling Cooper] was very scary but I knew in my heart it was what I had to do.”

The Daily Beast: The formation of the agency left a lot of characters in the wind. Have we seen the last of Ken, Paul, and Sal?

Weiner: I am going to say something that I don’t always say: I don’t know.

The Daily Beast: While there have been cracks in Don and Betty’s (January Jones) marriage before, their marriage appears now to be well and truly over; is there any hope for the two of them to mend the wounds they’ve inflicted on each other?

Weiner: It’s so unambiguous to me that this marriage is over, but the audience seems to cling to the idea that they should be together because we want to believe in those things. The marriage was not good. It was built on a lie and the lie was exposed. In the end, Don coming clean really damaged his relationship with her, more than the lying, her seeing who he actually was. I do believe when he says his mother was a 22-year-old prostitute that Betty is looking at something that is very far from what she had planned for herself... That was the whole story of the season. When Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley) came on to her… a switch went off in her head of what was missing in her life, which was a true, romantic attachment. In the end, that combination with her gut feeling that something wasn’t right in her marriage and finding out the truth, they don’t belong together anymore, kids or not. You’ve got to take it pretty seriously when someone’s flying to Reno to get a divorce.

The Daily Beast: You could have withheld Don telling Betty the truth about his identity for several more seasons; why was it crucial that he come clean to his wife now?

Weiner: I think, as does Betty, that he wanted to be found out. I think that’s why he had a relationship so close to home, I think that’s why he left the keys in his pocket… He was not comfortable with the way things were going and I think that… in his heart, something about having to live as this other person, it was too much for him.

The Daily Beast: Has Betty grown up from learning the truth about her husband?

Weiner: Yes, she has grown up on one hand because she’s taken control of her life and is not just taking what’s handed to her… I knew from the beginning that this would be the end of their marriage and I worked my way up to that. I didn’t want the marriage to end because she found out who he was; I wanted the marriage to end because she didn’t love him anymore. Her concept of what love is is a lot of what the season was about… I think Betty Draper is an impulsive person and she may have an arrested state in terms of what she was taught to expect from her life, to be taken care of by a man, to be loved and worshiped and adored… Has she grown up or is she just so frustrated with the status quo that she can’t take it anymore? I don’t know, but she definitely put her foot down and I’d like to believe, not just as a dramatist but as a human being, that that is growth.

The Daily Beast: What does Henry Francis represent to Betty? Is he, as Don suggests, her life raft or is there something deeper there?

Weiner: Betty married Don because he was the whole package. He looked good on paper and that’s what she wanted. I think that Henry Francis does but in another way. Being put on a pedestal, being worshipped and adored, being accepted, in a way it’s almost more flattering to have a man be that attached to you who doesn’t know you. I think she’s very susceptible to that. Don has not given her any of those things, as far as she’s concerned. He said that to her: “I’ve given you everything you ever wanted” and Henry said, “I don’t know what you want.” She might not even be able to express it, but what she wants is for all of her needs to be met, with anticipation.

The Daily Beast: What was behind your decision to set the Kennedy assassination in the season’s penultimate episode?

Weiner: I had an opportunity because people knew these characters to really recreate the experience. Originally, I was going to do it in the third to last episode but doing it [here] was really about catching the audience by surprise. I wanted [the characters] to be going about their lives and have it stuffed into the middle of everything and see how an event like that heightens the reality in all of our regular lives… The powerlessness and the family tragedy, which a lot of people really identified with, all of that personal drama really comes into focus. No one can control anything and it makes people nihilistic and it also makes them take action.

The Daily Beast: One of the season finale’s most touching and revealing scenes was between Don and Peggy (Elisabeth Moss). How has their relationship changed this season and what did Don’s tearful plea to Peggy mean for him?

Weiner: It was hard to write [that scene] because Peggy doesn’t get to say a lot. Don does identify with Peggy; she’s more like Don than anybody else, whether she realizes it or not… Don is hard on her the way he’s hard on himself… That speech to me is about him—about losing his marriage and the way he saw himself—it’s about her and her past and it’s about the assassination and Don, if nothing else, is attuned to the zeitgeist, even if he can’t put it into words.

The Daily Beast: Is there any potential for a rekindling of romance between Joan (Christina Hendricks) and Roger (John Slattery) then?

Weiner: Whatever Roger’s true feelings are for Joan—and whatever they are, they are deep and we’ve always known that—he sure as hell welcomed the opportunity, not just because of her skills, to have her back in his life in that way. I am not big on giving the audience what they want but I am big on giving Roger and Joan what they want, if they can get close to it.

The Daily Beast: Did you know that Conrad Hilton (Chelcie Ross) would end up being such a pivotal character this season?

Weiner: I definitely knew I was going to introduce him in Episode 3 because his character served the story, whether anyone knew it was Conrad Hilton or not. Until I met Chelcie Ross, I did not have the confidence to make him as important as he was. We haven’t seen Don really face [a] nightmare client… Conrad Hilton is not a lunatic, he’s not crazy, he’s not a fool; he is a formidable, respectable businessperson and cut from the same cloth as Don. Whether Hilton really did want to have a hotel on the moon or he didn’t, he wanted to use that as a symbol of the limitlessness of the American dream.

The Daily Beast: Looking ahead to Season 4, what’s next for these characters?

Weiner: I don’t know what I am doing next season; I’ve just finished! [Laughs.] I’ve made a habit—and I’m proud of it but it's very scary—of committing to a story for each season and starting on page one and leading people through and they may think it’s slow at the beginning or may not understand what they are supposed to be paying attention to. Betty Draper lost her father this year, Sally Draper might have lost her innocence and realized that her parents might not be there for her, and Don realized that living his life as that guy in the suit came at a tremendous cost and it motivated him to change his life. I am proud of the fact that I use it all up… [Getting rid of Sterling Cooper] was very scary but I knew in my heart it was what I had to do. I have to believe that if Don is as good as he says he is, there’s no way he’s going to go through the '60s working at a firm like Sterling Cooper. It’s got to be something different… Life is change. I am thrilled that I delivered it to the audience in a way that they are very excited about it…They are worried about Sal, Ken, Paul, Hildy, and Allison, the Draper home; they’re worried but they are also excited and it was my intention to put them through that experience.

The Daily Beast: It worked so effectively that we all want the first episode of Season 4 now.

Weiner: I heard that! Oh, Jesus Christ, you’ve got to let me get some Gatorade.

Plus: Check out more of the latest entertainment, fashion, and culture coverage on Sexy Beast—photos, videos, features, and Tweets.

Jace Lacob is the writer/editor of Televisionary, a Web site devoted to television news, criticism, and interviews. Jace resides in Los Angeles. He is a contributor to several entertainment Web sites and can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

For More of The Daily Beast, become a fan on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.


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November 9, 2009 | 9:41pm
Comments ()
bdomenech

So many frustrating aspects of this season, and of this show. But it always seemed like Mad Men was on a collision course with time: in the next season, it's going to be 1964, and really the end of the art deco remnants of the 1950s that seemed so charming for the first two seasons. Much as I love the look and feel of this show, uprooting it from the old world of the ad agency and pretending as if characters like Henry Francis are characters and deaths by lightning-induced horsekick are inventive as opposed to shallow, vanilla plot devices is as sure a way to ruin a show as one could invent. I'm reminded of the ad to promote this season that showed Draper sitting in an office full of rising water -- who knew he was going to drown in cliche?

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11:26 pm, Nov 9, 2009
ponderingsometimes

If you think this wonderful show is full of cliche, I wonder what TV you like. Two and a Half Men?

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1:51 am, Nov 11, 2009
DavidReese

The death of Don's Father was not cliche, nor is Henry Frances. I've never seen a man's face kicked in by a horse before on TV. Lighting does tend to be over used for dramatic effect, but in this case it works. Weiner created a quick flash back to show that Don's world is unraveling. It was a very small piece of the episode. Also Henry Frances is painted in that way because that is how Betty sees him. He is perfect, caring and everything Don is not. I PROMISE you he will have flaws that arise in season 4. Betty unfortunately will not get "what she always wanted," because it doesn't exist. Which is exactly the type of choice that makes this show GREAT. Perhaps you should watch the episode or season again and really try to pay attention to what is being presented. Everything on the screen is a choice, be patient, this show isn't like the rest of them, it's a bit deeper and a bit more subtle. Mr. Weiner knows exactly what he is doing, even is some of his viewers aren't savvy enough to keep up...

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5:55 pm, Nov 11, 2009
AlwaysOptimistic

Wonderful, smart television series....thanks!

I think the divorce was inevitable, realistic, and needed. I think there is still plenty of story line for Don and Betty because of the children. And of course, Betty will soon find that her new love isn't perfect, which gives the writers a lot room for just about anything.....

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7:57 am, Nov 10, 2009
Beatrice405

I think Betty's story has the greatest potential for growth. Chronologically, the feminist revolution is just around the corner. Every woman in America, under 40, was profoundly affected by it. There's great stuff in that for the narrative.

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1:43 pm, Nov 10, 2009
Veronicaxy

My mom is still a Betty Draper, so were many of her friends, and now they're in their 70s. Some will adjust to the changes ahead and become full-fledged adults -- often because they'll be abandoned by their husbands just as happened this season with Don's business partner for a younger woman.

I don't think we'll see Betty change much, she's a pretty limited human being. I think Joan who we saw this season is more cut out to be a doctor than her doctor husband is going to show us the most change. She's poised for it.

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9:33 am, Nov 11, 2009
amapola101

Always optimistic,this show really beats politics.!!Its,Fun,sexy,drama,enetertainig.Or maybe it resembeles politics.?I think that the Drapers might encounter, a set back. Like the baby,getting ill,or something with the daughter.?You're angle is better.great,great show.!!!How about son's of anarchy.?its the sopranos in motorcycle.Mad Man,awesome.Youre name is very inspiring.Im not going to start out negative. Have a Good Day .

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8:45 am, Nov 10, 2009
overdue

Hey Jace Lacob, have you ever heard of alerting your readers with "Spoiler Alert"?!?!?!
Thanks, I'm only on the 6th episode of this season, now I guess I don't need to watch anymore?
Really, is it asking too much for you to say "Spoiler Alert" at the head of your article?
Grrrrr.........
:-(

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10:16 am, Nov 10, 2009
bybrandy

i don't think you can expect spoiler alerts for shows that have already aired. That's asking a lot. If it's aired and you haven't seen it, don't read it!

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11:14 am, Nov 10, 2009
decyphersmc

I got to the homepage and all I see is "MADMEN! Divorce!"

thanks for spoiling it right from the homepage, and I'm also all caught up on the episodes..

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12:56 pm, Nov 10, 2009
slw49332

overdue -
the intro to the article reads:
"Dead presidents, divorce, and new digs: Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner talked exclusively to The Daily Beast about Sunday's game-changing season finale." Emphasis on SEASON FINALE - did you really expect that this article would be free of spoilers?

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11:31 am, Nov 10, 2009
houstondude

Overdue......its not Jace Lacob that needs to be telling us spoiler alert...which should be obvious when it says "MATT WEINER DISCUSSES SEASON FINALE..." what was he going to talk about episodes 1-5??? NO the season finale..yes it is too much to ask....moron.

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11:40 am, Nov 10, 2009
Circumvrent

"Dead presidents, divorce, and new digs: Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner talked exclusively to The Daily Beast about Sunday's game-changing season finale."

You would think that's all the "Spoiler Alert" someone would need...

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1:04 pm, Nov 10, 2009
citivas

It's clearly labeled a Mad Men "Post Mortem" By definition isn't that an analysis of the season? Why would anyone care to read that if they hadn't watched the season yet? That's like getting mad because you recorded a football game and hadn't watched it yet then deciding to watch the Post Game Wrap Up first and learning who won.

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5:21 pm, Nov 10, 2009
MichiganMark

The header said: "Dead presidents, divorce, and new digs: Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner talked exclusively to The Daily Beast about Sunday's game-changing season finale."

Did that give away too much? VBG

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11:30 am, Nov 10, 2009
timwindsor

overdue:

If that subhead didn't stop you, you're just not paying attention. You have to expect that an article written after the initial airing of a pivotal episode will discuss plot points.

If knowledge of certain plot points will spoil your experience, it's up to you to be especially vigilant in what you read and what you avoid.

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11:36 am, Nov 10, 2009
djgrisman

Cheers to the writers like Weiner and the others who have created outstanding drama for cable. Great storytelling at its best.

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12:48 pm, Nov 10, 2009
flyoverland

I love the Pierre. I was sitting there once near the side entrance when an elegant lady approached me and said, Sir, the King of Sweden is going to be coming through in just a moment." Not even knowing they had a King in Sweden, I told her, "that all right, he won't bother me and kept talking on the cell." I somehow got the impression that she wanted me to move. Perhaps, you could work that into next year's script.

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1:00 pm, Nov 10, 2009
TheOldSchool

flyoverland, the fact that it will be 1964 might make your cellphone incident seem more sci-fi than Mr. Weiner intends.

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11:22 pm, Nov 10, 2009
flyoverland

So, what they didn't have a King there in 1964? Make it a pay phone.

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8:54 am, Nov 11, 2009
Barbara416

I can't wait to see the 'visual' changes. The scenery, the sets, clothes, hair and makeup. The 60's had 3 major stylistic shifts. Brilliant writing! What a series of cliff hangers. When does season 4 return? Any dates?

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1:02 pm, Nov 10, 2009
DEhrenstein

Such a great show. Though "The Sopranos" was teriffic, this has it beat. Not jsut because of the depth of he characters but the breadth of the story. A Mafia Don from New Jersey is alien territory. A businessman in New York is not. And speakign as someone who was a teenager at that time and recalls it very well the period details are perfect.

So great that he got Barbet Schroeder to direct the Kennedy assassination episode. But the season finale beat all. It's obvious the Draper marriage was heading for collapse but I wasn't expecting the fireworks that John Hamm and January Jones brought to their big confrontation. Their son crying in Don's arms was truly heartbreaking. Plus Sally running out of the room suggests she feels Don is divorcing HER -- and in many ways he is.

Damn it Weiner, Sal HAS to come back! Go into the Ramble and pull him off that sailor he's having sex with!

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2:09 pm, Nov 10, 2009
Trilby16

Jace Lacob? Are you sure you don't mean Lace Jacob?

I love this show but as someone born in 1952, I think some details are off. My family looked exactly like the Drapers (I was Sally) except that my mom was a dark-haired beauty. But we looked like that in 1958, not '63! Where are the white go-go boots, the miniskirts, the painted on lower eyelashes, the wider ties with flowers on them? I hope that the Beetles show up soon and usher this show into the REAL 60's.

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2:42 pm, Nov 10, 2009
JustinTimberwolf

Oh, Lord, please don't hurry up the descent into the hippie nightmare! Keep it in the stylish 60s! The best aspect of this show for me is how strongly they have resisted nauseating baby boomer nostalgia.

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4:37 pm, Nov 10, 2009
TheOldSchool

Trilby, pehaps you and your family were VERY avant garde.

André Courrèges unveiled the go-go boot in his Fall 1964 collection. Nancy Sinatra's song, "These boots are made for walkin,'" popularized them in America in 1966.

Mary Quant introduced the miniskirt in 1965.

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11:35 pm, Nov 10, 2009
GreybirdK

It's BeAtles, dear, unless you are referring to insects. I was 13 when JFK died, eighth grade. In the DC suburbs we dressed exactly like the prim preppy women in Season 3. The white go-go boots and Mary Quant minis showed up in 1964. Betty's last scene in the suit with white trim is a fashion harbinger, along with the sheath dresses sported by some Sterling Cooper secretaries. Would love to see Peggy update her wardrobe, she's still dressing too much like a school girl (and I should know).

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12:39 pm, Nov 11, 2009
highflag

Sorry, but I was 16 in '63 and I think you're memory is getting ahead of itself. Sure, the Beatles arrived on the scene in late '63, but "She Loves You, Yeah,Yeah,Yeah" is not Sgt, Pepper ('67). They may have been considered "revolutionary" because of their moppet haircuts, but the "60's" movement really didn't arrive until the"Summer of Love" ('67) and Woodstock ('69)...

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10:28 pm, Nov 12, 2009
Natalee

Season 3 box set now please!

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4:20 pm, Nov 10, 2009
GinAgin

Regarding Trilby 16's comments, I see her point regarding anachronistic hairdos, dress, etc... but only to a certain extent. I was born in '49 (yeah, right, I'm an old-timer), and my first job out of high school was a "Peggy" type (clerical) position at Benton & Bowles advertising at 666 Fifth Avenue (Procter & Gamble was our big client at the time). It was the later 60's when I was there (1967) and that's when we began wearing thigh-high go-go boots (mine were alabaster; tre cool), falls and false eyelashes were big, too. The show is set in the earlier 60's - with remnants of the 50's still in evidence. I surmise the show's fashion will change appropriately as time moves on. But one thing I MUST say...on this show they have got the sets down spot on! Kudos to the set designers. The Sterling Cooper offices, window treatments, use of color, artwork, furniture, secretarial set ups, are absolutely perfect! I feel as though I'm peeking into my old office setting whenever I watch this show. It is positively surreal. The alcohol flowed freely back then, too - and two-martini lunches for us all were the rule and not the exception. So were cigs in the office and the smell of pot forever wafting through the air - especially so on the 13th Floor (Creative Department). Everyone there wore their hair long and looked perpetually stoned. Ah...fun times!

We were all too familiar with the intense rivalry between B&B, McCann Erikkson, J Walter Thompson, Doyle Dane & Bernbach (DDB), Ogilvy & Mather, and Grey. It was brutal. I later moved on to a smaller, more creative agency - Jack Tinker of Alka Seltzer fame - and I'm betting that the newly-formed nucleus group that we left assembled in the Pierre will be highly successful, too, defined by their little-fish-in-a-big-pond intuitive creativity (ala Jack Tinker).

Thanks for the interview, Jace. Enjoyed it and Televisionary tremendously!

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5:00 pm, Nov 10, 2009
Veronicaxy

I'm with you on the surreal quality of the visual accuracy. I'm the age of their youngest baby but far away from NYC, so things changed later and got to experience the Don & Betty life.

The dress, hair styles and even the stylized manners that some say can't be real, well people really did act like that then. Betty flipping the blanket and tossing the remnants of their picnic lunch all over the park grass? Yep. We had to get a national compaign about 'littering' in the 70s to show us the error of our ways.

What a great gift to be able to live through it again and say, thank goodness that's changed!

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9:47 am, Nov 11, 2009
mavennyc821

fantastic interview Jacob!

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6:47 pm, Nov 10, 2009
par3182

As much as I'd miss them, I'd love the show even more if Paul, Ken and Betty were gone for good - that'd be more truthful to the wrenching changes the brilliant final episode of Season 3 served up.

(That being said, I hope we haven't seen the last of Sally - Kiernan Shipka really holds her own with the adult actors)

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7:21 pm, Nov 10, 2009
MadGirl

I hope Matt Weiner will bring back Kurt and Smitty!

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9:12 pm, Nov 10, 2009
saskia520

I love that little girl. "You made him sleep in Gene's room and it's scary in there". Completely off the wall and yet so in touch with her emotion.

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1:32 am, Nov 11, 2009
Trumansgal

I was fifteen in 1962, and this was the world I expected to enter as an adult. Any young person who wonders why there had to be a woman's movement should see this series .

Certainly the Kennedy ideal was a myth, but tell that to an impressionable 15 year old. Tell her how to pattern her own life when the ideal is destroyed in such a violent way.

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3:10 pm, Nov 11, 2009
WilinMSP

Wonderful article! I - too - am waiting season 4 with ants in my pants! I enjoy the way things are proceeding and the Kennedy episode was amazing. Sad to see certain Sterling Cooper alum go the way of real life employment situations, but that is what is great. And did I mention I was looking forward to Season 4 anxiously!?!

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9:12 pm, Nov 11, 2009
zygarch

Well, I AM Sally Draper. My mom looked like Betty and had her background too. She married "down" to a man who was secretive, controlling, and pathologically obsessed with us looking like "the perfect family" and it didn't work for her either, so when my parents divorced (shocking!) she became candy on another man's arm just as Betty will.

Predict that Betty will be just as miserable as her husband's fantasy object in her new marriage to Henry. The inevitable boredom will drive her (more) into alcohol and then pills, finally (if the show lasts that long) she'll awaken in a consciousness-raising group and plot her next escape by getting a job-- probably selling real estate.

For another bizarre parallel, I myself married a liar and a phony, a man pretending to be someone he wasn't. I was never suspicious never dreamed of snooping until he left too many clues to ignore. I broke into his "private" file cabinet and discovered the truth... UNLIKE my mother, I simply left this self-loathing, ashamed-of-his-origins, married-me-as-his-fantasy-object liar and have been happy on my own ever since.

Thank you Matthew Weiner for the best show ever to grace television.

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9:46 pm, Nov 11, 2009
Bettie

Wow, good luck to you in your new life. Hope you find happiness.

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12:45 am, Nov 12, 2009
Veronicaxy

"plot her next escape by getting a job-- probably selling real estate"

Lol! To the career, that's exactly how I imagined it too.

I tried to get my Betty mom to watch the show with me (she has grown a lot) but half way through she said, "I can't watch this, I've already lived it." People who idealize the 'traditional family' and 'the old ways' need to watch this show.

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8:35 pm, Nov 12, 2009
EgyptSteve

Where's the mystery now, though, that Don't not hiding his triple life from his wife & mistresses?? That rising water was always the juice for me. Is it now just going to be a soap opera about people in an ad agency? I hope it doesn't jump the shark next season.

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8:39 am, Nov 12, 2009
periscope

I've always thought it was a great metaphor to have Don Draper as an assumed identity by the leading character, who worked at an ad agency, where fraud was the primary product.
The whole male-chauvinism of the early sixties is also fascinating to see recreated. Someone previously decried the arrival of the hippies, but I think they were the vanguard of the future, with their irreverence for the suffocating conventions of the time.
I just wish the drug thing had stayed limited to pot and LSD, and not moved into the far more deleterious Heroin, Cocaine, Meth and Ecstasy.

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5:18 pm, Nov 12, 2009
dhacker615

The Draper marriage was always the weakest element of the show, so it was hardly shocking that its unravelling was its all-time weakest story-line. It is disappointing to find out that Weiner utterly failed to communicate what he intended to communicate. Weiner seems to have been so determined to finally end the Draper marriage that he failed to play the cards that he dealt himself.

Henry Francis was creepy. Betty knows him even less than she knows Don and what little she does know is very mixed. We are, after all, talking about a man that hits on pregnant women outside of ladies rooms. He treats her like a helpless child and encouraged her to leave her own children over Christmas to get what he wanted.

Coupled with the recent death of her own father and it is the most repellant relationship yet for MAD MEN. If this is Weiner's idea of growth for Betty, then maybe I have over-estimated MAD MEN.

The deck was always overly stacked against Don in the relationship anyway. D squared was always so busy being a bad boy and being "punished" that Betty's side of the bad marriage was never explored. She was always treated like some sort of hostage, who was totally innocent of the situation. Her point of view was never challenged in any meaningful way.

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9:59 pm, Nov 12, 2009
furtive

love this matt weiner's ingenious mindset! and the writers he has selected to create each character's personality... and the subtle cultural literacy and nuances: eg. Roger's 2nd heart attack due to pastrami ("acute pastrami generated heart failure") is a true Fact! Someone he knew must have had such an episode. Wonder if there was any pastrami in Trudy's sandwiches?
The cigarette IS the latent theme. Tell me Don's wake up cough in the finale was not a harbinger of serious health issues which will unite his family...and that cigarette killed the real Don Draper in the Korea explosion.

The new Pierre ad agency should definitely grab new accounts and vintage ads for some of the 60's soaps: Love of Life, Search for Tomorrow,, The Edge of Night, and The Guiding Light. Gloria Monty was director of The Secret Storm during these years.('54-'69)
and oh, how mah jongg and poker games were such big diversions especially in suburban nyc.
the "desperate housewife, pills-and-all is more like a liz taylor soap; to betty's relief, 'better henry suddenly drops dead and she attempts to "find herself" one summer on the new jersey shore with a much younger man, only to have don appear on the scene.
sally will be a rebellious oppositonal handful, believing her parents don't care what happens to her...
some drawing board ideas...

here's a link to the alleged real don draper: draper daniels
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/August-2009/I-Married-a-Mad-M an/

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5:29 pm, Nov 13, 2009
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Mad Men Postmortem

by Jace Lacob

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Jace Lacob
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