Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

[Heliotrope]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

More about AG's questions eventually, but I wanted to point out the fantastic Mad Men entry (number 21) in the Washington Post's annual marshmallow-peeps* artwork contest.

*Yes, the peeps mainly seem to be bunnies.

[Yoss]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

Of AdC's points, I don't have much of an explanation for (1), I had also tried to figure out (4) and decided it was just about possible, but (3) is the one I find most difficult to explain. I guess Pete must be very good with the clients in the bits we don't see; and as Don said in that last (brilliant) episode, he's more forward thinking. But you can't help thinking it's really because Pete as a character and Kartheiser as an actor are more important and interesting to the show, and attempts to justify it internally follow that rather than vice versa.

I'm not buying (5) for a minute.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

Whose 5 AG's or mine?

[Yoss]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

AG's.

My last post was meant to say AG as well. Poor quality thread scanning. Sorry.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

you can't help thinking it's really because Pete as a character and Kartheiser as an actor are more important and interesting to the show, and attempts to justify it internally follow that rather than vice versa.

I think that's right. The Sterling Cooper survivors are, and have from the beginning, been the show's key characters. Except Pryce, who's a recent addition, and Cooper who, I'm guessing, may not live past the coming season.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

I dunno about that. Was Crane more important than Kinsey? They had to bring him along because they needed a TV guy, not because his charcter was intrinsically more important.

You guys really don't see Peggy and Don together? She's so very obviously in love with him.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

You're right, I'd forgotten about Crane. But the others still stand. There's no place for Kinsey, Cosgrove or — sadly — the two Smiths. But there have been even better supporting characters dropped along the way, that's just the way it is. In life as in drama.

She's so very obviously in love with him.

Sure but Peggy is even more obviously destined to outgrow her mentor. It'll take them both a while to realise it, and part of that may well entail an affair at some point (though I kinda hope not as it would be a bit too obvious, and this is a show that's been excellent at avoiding the obvious) but it will happen. The alternative is that Peggy will suddenly meet Mr Right and quit the ad biz altogether, either way Don won't be part of the picture.

[Yoss]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

Pete is the only one who I'd say was there for external rather than internal reasons. Crane's inclusion made perfect sense - he's a lucky idiot rather than thrustingly ambitious like Peter. But even if it's by accident it's clear he's done pretty well in expanding the TV thing.

It's also clear that Kinsey's talent is prosaic compared to Peggy's. Note also that when Peggy initially turned the offer down Don mentioned talking to Kurt and Smithy next, ahead of Paul.

We should probably still be covering the thread with spoiler warnings - BBC4 in the UK is still only up to episode 11.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

Was Pete not supposed to get his name on the list of partners for getting all his clients by Sunday? I thought that was the deal - but at the end of episode 13, Joan answers the phone with "Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce", and leaves Pete out. What gives there d'you think?

[Yoss]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

He was being made a partner if he came up with the goods by the Sunday, but they left the name in the title thing as a goal "because like it or not that works with you", as I think Don put it.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

Don can't have been invalided back to the US until 1951 at the earliest, at which point he would have been 24 or 25 (based on him claiming to be 36 in 1962).

I've been giving this more thought and I reckon it can't just be an oversight on the writer's/producer's part. It's too much of gap.

So, either Don's lying about his age and he's younger than he claims. (Possible, a few extra years would add more gravitas.) Or there are 8–10, pre-Korea years, unaccounted for. I'm leaning toward the latter. We know he's a child of the depression, and it's possible he's still hiding something.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

Ah, you're right, Yoss. So they gave him an unspecified equity stake but not a name. Got it.

AdC - Well, it adds up with what we know of his father and his father's death. Don looks about ten when his father dies, and it's at a time when there is still an agricultural depression... looks like '36 or '37, which would line up with him being 36 in '62. The thing is if he were really running away from home because he couldn't take it, you'd think he would have done so at the end of WWII, when he would have been 18-19. So I think the mystery is what happened between 1944 and 1950.

What did he say to Conrad Hilton when they first met? That he was from Illinois via Ohio? Maybe that's the clue.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

Or he might have been even younger when he ran away. The outbreak of WW2 would have presented an excellent opportunity for a desperate 14 or 15 year old to attempt enlisting. If he tried, and failed, what then...?

I'm trying to remember if his brother left any clues as to how old he was when he left home?

[Yoss]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

The age of 36 was given to his doctor to whom he's always been Don Draper, right? So unless he's juggling info from his past and current lives very carefully indeed then that's presumably the original Don Draper's age and there's every chance that Dick Whitman is younger.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

Excellent point. The original Don Draper certainly appeared more experienced and mature than Dick Whitman.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

I wasn't thinking of the doctor. When Don was in California and hooked up with the 21-year old (name escapes me), he told her he was 36. Plus, like I said, that age lines up with the scenes with his father which make him anbout ten in the later stages of the depression - meaning a birth date around 1926 or 27.

He couldn't have left home very young. His half-brother couldn't have been born before '38 or '39 (give it at least a year after the death of his father, probably a bit more), and probably a bit later given that he doesn't look more than ten when Dick's coffin shows up in 1951. The photo of Dick with Adam on a horse shows the younger child to be at least six. Which suggests that Dick stuck around until at least 1947 or so.

[Yoss]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

Antonio Gramsci wrote:

He couldn't have left home very young. His half-brother couldn't have been born before '38 or '39 (give it at least a year after the death of his father, probably a bit more), and probably a bit later given that he doesn't look more than ten when Dick's coffin shows up in 1951. The photo of Dick with Adam on a horse shows the younger child to be at least six. Which suggests that Dick stuck around until at least 1947 or so.

I saw season 1 episode 12 again at the weekend, and I was wrong about 36 being the real DD's age - according to Pete when he confronted our DD about it, the real one would have been 43 by then (1960).

Don said elsewhere he was ten when his dad died, his mum was pregnant with Adam at the time, so an age difference of roughly eleven years. And you're right, I wouldn't put Adam much older than ten in that scene, which would make Don about 21 or 22. Conceivably Adam might have been a young looking twelve, maybe, Don about 23 which would just about stretch to your 1927 birthdate. I think maybe it's more likely he subsequently added a couple of years onto his age to make his army career and lieutenantship a bit more plausible (presumably no one - other than Pete - has ever had the occasion to check his claimed age against his army records); it also makes it more plausible for the story for him to be running away at the age of more like twenty.

So it just about fits, but that would put the depression era scenes into the very late 30s. Don't know how that fits historically, but wiki tells me the US economy took another nosedive in 1938, and unemployment levels didn't drop back to normal until into the 40s.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

If DD were 43 in 1960, that would put his birthdate in 1917, not 1927. That makes the gap even bigger and less explicable - that would put his father's death in 1927 (not possible, since it was clearly in the Depression) and his age at enlistment for Korea at 33, which I'm not sure was possible, either.

[Yoss]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

Sorry if that wasn't clear - 43 was the other Don Draper's age (or would have been if he'd still been alive in 1960), according to Pete who'd evidently done a bit of research with a pal in the army before he confronted Whitman / Draper about it in his office.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

Oh, I see. Yes, of course. I'd forgotten the way that conversation went.

[Yoss]

Mad Men 3 — Spoilers oozing everywhere.

Charlie Brooker on Mad Men

You can gauge how addicted to Mad Men you are by working out how much of your body you'd be prepared to slice off, fry and eat in exchange for a five-minute sneak preview of the next season. I'm currently standing at one little finger, which might not sound like much. But if pushed I could raise it to a thumb. A thumb, goddamit. Mad Men really is that fantastic.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/apr/10/charlie-brooker-mad-men-screenburn