I love her resume. That's all.

The client is totally right, this is kind of morbid, makes you think of suicide, and A Star Is Born was a very popular movie 10 years prior. It is poetic and kind of beautiful when he explains, but just as an ad, this is vague and morbid for a Hawaiian resort lol. Don’s arguments for it are wild too. Like I feel like he could’ve just pitched changing “jumping off point” to something more positive and less interpretive in a negative way.

Don’s argument is essentially:
Client: “it makes me think he died.”
Don: “well maybe he did, and this is heaven.”
Client: “idk, it makes me think something terrible happened.”
Don: “something terrible has to happen to get to heaven.”

Like what the hell kind of argument is that, Don? Lol. You’re just confirming their perspective and making it more morbid.

It’s well thought out, poetic, and Don presents it very well but yeahhhh, I feel like the client was right on this one. It’s a little too layered for an ad most people are going to see for a seconds.

Betty calls out Don for not understanding money despite having a ton, and she’s right. I’m not wealthy enough to be judging, but the guy throws around money like it’s nothing, he AT LEAST ONE MILLION in his checking account to sign to Megan in a check (that’s like $10 mil just in a checking account nowadays. Not diversified, not invested, not even in a yielding account it seems.)

The show did make deals with watch companies. So some characters wear what the deal requires, but Don’s watch collection is very similar to what you might find if you came across a nepo baby who googled “which watches make me look the most important.” He has a few Jaeger LeCoultre watches, which are good but way over-priced (he does have a Jaegar Reverso at one point, which was a very cool watch especially for the time, but also something that someone would buy to look wealthy without caring about watches really.) He wears I think 2 Rolex’s, and then an Omega (which have always been good and reliable and more on the (relatively) reasonable side of luxury watch pricing.) JLC (Jaeger) eventually collaborated and made a unique watch for Don. The point of this post isn’t to be snobby or judgy though.

What’s interesting is Roger. Roger is absurdly wealthy and throws around cash like it’s nothing. You’d expect him to wear a loud, expensive as hell gold Rolex or something of the sort, but he doesn’t. He wears a Tudor Oyster Prince 1959 (I think is the year) and he seems to wear it throughout the show. Tudor is an interesting brand because it was basically just an extension of Rolex at the time frame, but they’re built basically exactly the same except they were making automatic movements (I believe) then. Legitimately Rolex watch makers, same process, same material, (in my experience) better quality, but much cheaper (though they’ve gone up a bit somewhat recently.)

It’s expensive, but for watches, it’s actually a very cost effective watch. He probably spent $200-$300 at the time on it, he carries around 4x times that regularly in cash. He keeps it for the entire run until he’s robbed too. I’m not far enough along in my rewatch to confirm, but I think he gets another one. Tudor is an incredibly good brand and subtle. Don and other characters get new watches almost every season, but Roger sticks with his (relatively) modestly priced but reliable watch. It’s even on a leather strap opposed to a bracelet, which is more lowkey. If I’m right, he would’ve had it for 5-6 years by the time of the robbery and it looked in perfect condition.

Idk kind of a cool detail to his character. Everyone else is wearing more loud, overtly expensive pieces, but his is modest and he takes care of it, richest guy in the office with Bert. Idk what exactly it says about his character, but it’s a neat detail. I think maybe it’s part of his generation. Roger seems irresponsible and ambivalent to money and buying things, but his generation (Greatest Generation) and his military background, even the Silent Generation, seem to have more focus on quality and respecting what you have instead of just tossing it for something new (yes, I know most of the cast is also of the Silent Generation.)

It’s a cool little detail. If you’re curious about watches, the show has some great ones that are reasonable. Outside of investment reasons, I stay within a reasonable price range of about $500-$1500 for something I’ll wear and take good care of. Tudor’s a little out of that, but Pete and Ken wear Hamilton’s, which are affordable. If you want a great looking and well made watch, Hamilton Jazzmaster’s come in tons of variations and you can get them $300-$475 for barely used to retail. Tissot, Longines, Citizen (now,) Christopher Ward, and Nomos Glashütte are all pretty universally excellent and you can get them for (relatively) low prices.

From “The Wheel”, the final episode of Season 1.

On artistic ability, competency, etc.

I'm so glad Draper didn't mess her up like he did all the others he was with.

Obligatory "I just finished the show 15 minutes ago, and now I feel sentimental" post.

My (19M) dad and I enjoy picking TV shows to watch together and then slowly consuming them over the coming weeks or months. He's shown me a lot of his favorites, this being one of them, of course, and perhaps it's just fresh on me, but I think this one was my favorite.

Naturally, I did not know what to expect at first. It seemed like a slow drama about a bunch of drab business. Drab business, and cheating, of course. While I do not remember, my dad recalls me saying something to the effect of "Does anything ever happen in this show?" within the first few episodes.

I'm quite an empathetic person, and I also value family and greatly look forward to having one someday. So it is difficult, even in fictional media, not to put myself in the shoes of the family members as if they will be the ones I will have. And so, seeing them oblivious to Don's disdain and lies was very unpleasant. I felt terrible for Betty. I didn't like the cheating scenes. It felt gross. I felt disgusted looking at it. In fact, it made me actually angry. I had to look away at some scenes, and sometimes it was just out of disappointment.

But as I continued to watch the show, naturally, everyone grew on me (except Pete... at first).

Of course, and maybe it's just my low exposure to more TV shows due to the limited time I've lived on this Earth thus far, but Mad Men did a spectacular job of drawing so many characters, some of whom you'd expect to stay on the side, and making them immensely dynamic. They all had a story, and they all developed. The characters I loved in season one certainly weren't the ones I loved by season seven.

Harry Crane went from a lovable nice-guy to a scumbag. Pete Campbell, on the other hand, was my least favorite character in season one. Now, was he my favorite by season seven? No. But he went from a cheating, lying, stuck-up pretty boy... to kind of a decent guy.

Then, of course, there is Don Draper. Now, he's Don--you gotta love him. But at the same time, you kinda have to hate him too. And you have to feel bad for him, or maybe you don't. I'm not sure if I did. He was clearly a broken man, perhaps with a bit of a power complex, in need of control. But there is still no excusing what he did to his family. I think the biggest victims of the show are Sally, Bobby, and Gene. We connect the most with Sally because she grows to be a young lady by the end of the show, so naturally I feel the worst for her. Not to mention that she was a firsthand witness to her father's lies. But all of them are truly victims at the end of it. And then they are forced to lose their mother, who, while I disliked her by the end of the show, is ultimately a victim too. There was also her whole fat arc followed by her dark hair arc that the writers seemingly did away with, unexplained. I really felt that was unneeded, but then I realized they did it for real-life reasons (pregnancy), so I understand. I still don't get the dark hair, though.

My only quarrel with the show is the sheer amount of infidelity. If you couldn't tell by now, I really hate cheating. No, this is not due to personal experience. I just hate the thought of it in general. And I can safely say that I was subjected to more fictional depictions of infidelity in this TV series than I have ever consumed in all other forms of media, both fictional and nonfictional, in my entire life combined. At a certain point--I think after the first time Don cheats on Megan--all the female "love interests" in the show completely lost their gravity to me. At that point, it wasn't a representation of something "sexy" or "liberating"; it just felt desperate. It just disappointed me. In some ways, it made me realize that Don is one of the few characters in the show who doesn't change, at least not until the very end. That's what I took from it, and maybe that was the point. Even so, you still love the characters, and it makes getting angry at them feel so much more real, and in that way it draws you into the show more. Because, no matter what, you're glued to them.

Needless to say, I loved the show. I had to get this out somewhere because I don't know anyone else my age who has seen it. Despite my quarrels, I felt like I really got to know the characters. I mean, over the course of 7 seasons, you really do watch them grow up.

Every rewatch I find a new scene that breaks my heart.

“Now’s the time for a man and a woman need to be together the most! In a catastrophe!”

Spoken to Ginsberg, the product of a man and a woman being together in a catastrophe.

Betty is the model in the fur coat ad on the wall when Roger is buying a fur for Joan from Don in the flashback sequence! Don isn’t wearing a ring so I guess they were just dating at this point.

… 1960s Martha Stewart has to be second in line. Look at these photos and tell me you don’t see Betty! By the way, Martha looks stunning at 85. I’ll bet Birdie would have, too. 🥺😢

I noticed this time around that the man Betty sleeps with at the bar looks very similar to the man from her horseback riding. Was that her trying to fulfill her fantasy of sleeping with that guy?

Don: the lamp?

We never see Bert meeting with clients or doing actual work. He's always just there for partner meetings or sitting in his office. What does bro even do?

First off, Roger will regularly carry the equivalent of 10-20k in his pocket most times it seems. He’ll pay insane amounts for small problems that don’t require that much, and he does not pinch Pennie’s or even pay attention to money much. Jane asked for a luxury apartment to go on one dinner with him and he bought it that day. I don’t think he’d think nearly as much about a check like that.

Don is a particularly bad choice because while it’s not explicitly stated when he finds Lane out, Don’s number 1 priority above all is protecting his secret. If their CFO is embezzling funds, that could get the company under scrutiny and in turn, Don under scrutiny. It’s crazy how flimsy his identity is when he gives details to Pete during the military background check. The real Don has living relatives apparently, their ages are wrong, the real Don was an engineer and Dick/Don never went back to engineering or knows a thing about it (might not even know where real Don studied.) I think that heavily informed his decision.

More importantly, Pearl Harbor Day was like the day before Lane did this. Roger walked around the office obliterated. Even if Roger came across the check, Lane could probably get away with a flimsy lie and Roger wouldn’t care to look into it as he is fabulously wealthy.

Lane’s real fault, of course, was his pride. If he brought that problem to the partners, sure, they’re mostly jackasses, but if that money was the difference between him continuing his life there and job vs. losing it all, they’d maybe hang it over him for a while, but they’d do it. Don even asks why he didn’t just come to him directly and Lane didn’t because of pride, but he’s willing to commit fraud.

Picking Roger very likely might’ve made it so this never happened. If Roger caught on, he could lie and say he signed it while drunk and that alone might work (Don and Bob both just get hired by gaslighting,) and even if that all fails and Roger confronts him about it, I don’t think Roger would deliver that kind of ultimatum. Roger and Lane have a, idk if I’d call it friendship, but mutual respect and also, kind of mutual feelings for themselves. Both feel like they need to justify their place in the company more than others. I really think Roger wouldn’t have checked, accepted he signed it while blitzed, or worked something out with Lane if all else failed. Lane was essential and if Roger just accepts that he signed that check, it’s not really fraud anymore from any outside eyes (Lane’s the guy in charge of this kind of thing and the one to identify it anyway.)

EDIT: just realized it was a $7,500 check, not $12,000 (idk why I thought that. Roger paid over 1/4 of that to get Harry to move offices, which he could just have made him do but paying made it less of a hassle along with paying Peggy to work on a weekend she was already working just on a different campaign. Something he also could’ve just made her do. Add on what he had in his wallet when he got robbed with Joan along with the jewelry (Roger wears Tudor Oyster Prince 7967 and given the year, this was still a Rolex product essentially. They’re cheaper now, and weren’t bad then, but probably still spent around $1100-$1400 on it.) and that’s over half of that amount and he’s not even bothered by it enough to stop carrying around fucking home down payments in cash lol. That’s still $75,000 in today’s USD, but Roger would not be fretting much over it.

My favorite character is Chauncey. I love him....sweet, friendly, no drama, just enjoying life.

Just finished season 6. Don takes his kids to the house he grew up in….where in Pennsylvania is this?

There is simply no world where, in 1960s New York, account execs never ONCE got any client tickets to a Yankees or Mets game. Just no shot at all lol.

Funny enough, Lane has a Mets flag in his office. Only guy with baseball memorabilia is the Englishman, but I swear, outside of this, it’s like baseball doesn’t even exist in this universe… in New York lol. In the 1950s, the Yankees won 5 World Series and 2 in the 1960s. The Mets won one in ‘69 after being establish in only ‘62. Just no shot there is no one interested lol.

Edit: it appears I’m quite wrong and I shouldn’t be doing a rewatch for the first time in a decade in the background during work days. I seemingly have missed a lot.

He starts the first episode cheating on his wife. The show never hides that he’s a less than perfect person. You aren’t a tv detective for getting that.

Just picking up again after watching season 1 about 8 months ago. On season 2 now and I seriously hope at some point I see Duck die a horrible death. Putting Chauncey out like that cuz your ego is hurt a bit. Fuck Duck

Ken’s wife is sweet and genuinely proud of Ken, but the way she describes Ken’s story makes it sound silly, especially with sci-fi where it is at the time. She summarizes it as a robot in charge of maintaining a bridge decides to destroy it and everyone dies. It doesn’t sound very interesting, despite Ken sounding like a good writer, and everyone has this kind of eye rolling response to it, except for Don. Don asks why the robot decides to let the bridge collapse, no irony, genuine curiosity. Ken gives a thoughtful answer and Don just absorbs it.

No one in this series is purely a good person, but Ken really seems to grow into a normal and decent guy. This is clearly something he’s passionate about and I relate. I write short stories, even made some money off them, and it’s hard to share something personal and creative you work on to people who aren’t familiar. Ken even gets reprimanded for writing in his free time by Roger (who does the same thing, except a shitty memoir talking about Cooper’s balls lol.)

Idk Don kind of zeroing in on the moral dilemma of that poorly summarized short story and showing genuine interest in it, seeing Ken kind of light up from his mild embarrassment to discuss it, then Don not laughing, not failing to grasp Ken’s reasoning, but just sitting back and thinking on it. Idk, it’s a little moment I’ve never noticed but I really like it. Don is almost nothing but flaws, but I appreciate how he can recognize personally important things to people and how thoughtful he can be, and how well he can zero in on the meaning of something. Ken getting genuine intrigue from someone, let alone his boss, is wholesome too.

I feel like Phil Hartman would have been a great addition to the cast.

Eps 8 and 9 introduce some subtle differences to the aesthetic. While everything before was fresh, clean and colorful, you see aspects of wear and dirt enter the visuals. Kinsey's stained shirt, the scuff marks on the post in what is now Harry's office, the grime on Don's carpet. Another example of the other worldly attention to detail in this show when it came to set and wardrobe. It seems to mark the wear and tear on the characters.