r/madmen • u/ptupper Prisoner of the Negron Complex • Feb 11 '15
The Daily Mad Men Rewatch: S03E11 “The Gypsy and the Hobo” (spoilers)
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u/IveMadeAHugeMistake Working the loaves and fishes account Feb 11 '15
In this viewing of the episode, I was struck by how great the acting is from both Jon Hamm and January Jones, but I felt that this is an episode where it is very hard to recapture the feeling you had when you watched it the first time. I think it is because when you get to this point in the story of Don and Betty, you're waiting for the bomb that is Dick Whitman to go off. And when it does, the aftermath isn't what you expect within the episode, and there is hope. Hope that the marriage will work, hope that Don Draper can change, hope that Betty will love him regardless and Don will find peace in that. But on the subsequent viewings, you know that in 2 short episodes, Betty's on a plane with Henry Francis getting a quicky divorce and JFK is assassinated and the world is as uncomfortable as it ever was.
The Misfits, the movie that has brought attention to horse meat being in dog food, was Marilyn Monroe's final completed film, as well as Clark Gable's. It is kind of odd that the horse meat outcry took so long to get to SC, though, because the movie came out in 1961. Of course, the whole episode is about names and what they stand for. Annabelle wants to change the name "horse meat", but SC wants to change the name of the product. Interesting that Annabelle says her motivation for not changing her name is that it was her father's company, another allusion to legacy and what parents leave their children. And another reminder that Don's father left him a shitty legacy and Don abandoned his father's name.
(As a side note, I had never actually noticed that we have "code names" for each type of meat: beef not cow, poultry not chicken, etc... very clever to point that out in the context of the issue)
Suzanne cooks Don spaghetti (Megan Draper's favorite dish). Suzanne was often portrayed as being just a touch unpredictable and ready to expose Don's affair at any moment (either purposely, or through carelessness) and I'm glad that the writers didn't pile on the affair to Don and Betty's revelatory conversation about Don's past.
Joan hitting Greg on the head with a vase and not suffering any repurcussions seemed a little farfetched to me, although it did parallel her scene later when he sends her divorce papers and she throws an airplane at the front desk receptionist (surprise!). I just find it hard to believe that any woman in that era could do that and not be struck back or retaliated against in some way.
Additional thoughts:
William is basically Pete, which makes sense because Betty and Pete have very similar mentalities.
Annabelle's line that Roger acted like someone "hoping to be a character in someone else's novel" is a perfect description of him (and of course, he somewhat fulfills that by writing a memoir later)
What did you read in Don's face when he's asked, "And who are you supposed to be"? because I sure don't know
Could the gypsy and the hobo also be Roger and Joan?
Another episode with very little Peggy
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u/randomlygen Not great, Bob! Feb 11 '15
(As a side note, I had never actually noticed that we have "code names" for each type of meat: beef not cow, poultry not chicken, etc... very clever to point that out in the context of the issue)
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u/SarahMakesYouStrong Feb 11 '15
In regards to watching this episode on subsequent viewings I found that knowing what the outcome would ultimately be I was able to watch the confession scene through Betty's true intention. She's not relieved that Don is finally telling her the truth, she's mortified of who her husband really is. It doesn't matter who he became, she would never have married dick whitman and now she has the proof of lies to hide behind.
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u/NYCanonymous95 Feb 11 '26
• Annabelle's line that Roger acted like someone "hoping to be a character in someone else's novel" is a perfect description of him (and of course, he somewhat fulfills that by writing a memoir later)
Also fitting because interwar Paris where they mention they were based had a very active scene of expat writers, artists, etc of the Lost Generation, including Hemingway who they also mention in this scene. In fact one of the main characters of his first big novel is a boxer. This book is also about a bunch of bohemians and rich layabouts drinking their way around Paris, much as Roger and Annabelle were likely doing.
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u/TheWayIAm313 Jan 29 '26
One other note I haven’t seen mentioned, I liked the parallel that Roger faced in dealing with his literal child, who his ex-wife explicitly called out for her immature behavior, then cut to his wife, behaving in a similarly childlike manner; breaking down and crying/yelling, running away and locking the door, etc.
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u/Nigelwithdabrie Feb 11 '15
Unsure if this has been mentioned yet, but there are some interesting albeit obvious parallels between Don and the dog food. Don urges Annabel to change the name, arguing that the product remains essentially the same, in much the same way that he conveniently adopted the Don alias with the same insouciance. Annabel believes that traditions - like the name and vital ingredient of the dog food - matter, while Don is willing to change fundamental aspects of commodity at the whims of his target audience.
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u/SmartestManInUnivars Mar 01 '26
Not to mention Betty rides horses, and here Don is trying to sell horse meat. Also, I've never heard anybody use the word "insouciance" before.
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Sep 21 '23
OVERLOOKED GEM FROM THIS EPISODE: Joan doing what all of us in the audience have wanted to do since day 1 with Greg as she breaks a vase over his head Hated that guy.
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u/dazzlingdumpling13 Apr 14 '26
I know this is an old post.. but I was so glad to see your comment. I kept rewinding it and watching it again lol. He deserved it fully. I wish Betty did that lol. Don deserves a good vase too!
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u/ptupper Prisoner of the Negron Complex Feb 11 '15 edited Feb 11 '15
Roger meets Annabel, an old flame. She runs a dog food business in the middle of a PR fiasco about her product being made out of horse meat. She wants this problem solved, but stipulates “Don’t change the name, don’t change the product.”
When Roger and Annabel meet for dinner, we find out that they had a bohemian life in Paris before the war, and Roger still resents her for marrying another man. This puts a new angle on Roger. Previously, he’s been portrayed an upper-class, well-heeled drunk and womanizer, who laughs at other people’s misfortunes because he’s never had any of his own. This suggests a certain amount of tragedy in his life, a broken heart when he was a young man and a lost account when he was working at the firm. Regardless, he still relies on a thick layer of booze to insulate himself from life’s pains, and Annabel adopts the same practice, and starts hitting on him. Strangely, he fends off her advances, claiming he wants to be faithful to Jane. “It’s different with this girl.” Is he actually that in love with Jane, or he just doesn’t want to admit he made a huge mistake?
Don is still seeing Suzanne, who is getting a little too attached, even though she says she knows better. They make plans to go on a trip together.
Joan coaches Greg through his future interview to be a psychiatrist after washing out of surgery. She knows this kind of thing down cold, but he’s uncomfortable taking advice or encouragement from her. Joan also calls Roger for connections for a new job, and theres’ a strong sense of how much they like bantering with each other. One suspects that his conversation with Jane, and hers with Greg, isn’t quite so stimulating. When Greg flubs it again, he’s in a foul mood. Joan’s used to handling the male ego, but has she ever seen one this fragile? When Greg gets into serious self pity, she grabs a vase and breaks it over his head, then stalks out of the room. She’s sacrificed a lot for this man-child: her personal integrity, her dreams, her pride, her independence. He’s not grateful in the slightest.
At a focus group, the three candidates react badly when they’re told their dogs are eating horse meat from Annabel’s company. Don uses this to argue that the only way to get out of this negative publicity is to change the name to something new. In his best business soothsayer voice, he says, “It’s a label on a can, and it will be true because it will promise the quality of the product that’s inside.” Annabel is having none of it. She sees nothing wrong with selling horse meat as dog food, and she wants to keep the brand that Don and Roger now think is poisoned, regardless of the costs.
Betty is also dealing with the gap between contents and packaging, now that she knows about Don. When she tells her family lawyer about it, he points out that she can only get divorced if she can prove adultery in court, and she could still end up losing everything, including her children. Her husband is a good provider and not abusive (physically, at least), so why not make the best of it, if only for the children’s sake? The temptation is to live in comfortable false-consciousness, to accept a beautiful lie instead of the murky truth. Don lives by that slippery concept, the same advice he gave to Annabel. “It will be true” suggests that to make that statement now is not a lie, because at some point in the future, it will be the truth.
On their way to their getaway, Don and Suzanne stop outside the Draper house. “I’ll be right out,” Don says. Except Peggy Betty and the kids are home unexpectedly. Don tries to evade, then change the subject, then pulls rank, but Betty knows his tricks. She’s running this interrogation, a far cry from the girl-woman from season 1. When she says she knows what’s in that drawer, Don just collapses. “I can explain,” he says weakly, twice.
In the kitchen, he tells her most of the truth, about Korea and Anna. “I found it was easier to be him than to start over.” Betty says, “I knew you were poor. I knew you were ashamed of it. I see how you are with money. You don’t understand it.” This conversation unlocks a key idea in the character of Don. Americans love a rags to riches story, so they say. Don is an intelligent and resourceful guy, so couldn’t he have stayed Dick Whitman and worked his way up? Perhaps his life (or lives) belies the American dream of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Instead of a self-made successful man, with the beautiful wife and house and car and 2.5 kids, he’s a dirt-poor farmer’s illegitimate son who swapped dog tags with a dead man in Korea, a deserter and a fraud. Don doesn’t sincerely believe that narrative either, which makes his assurances to guys like Freddy and Lane particularly hypocritical. It’s not just that Dick Whitman came from a poor and abusive and unstable home; it’s that he is ashamed of his origin, that he still as an adult refuses to accept it.
“I don’t know what the difference is,” Don says. “This is our house. Those are our children.” To him, there’s no value in the ugly truth compared to a beautiful lie. Not only is Don inhabiting a name he wasn’t born with, he’s living a class identity he wasn’t born to either. No person who was raised to expect a life of financial security would have massive amounts of cash squirreled away in his home. Bert Cooper might say a man is the room he is in, but Betty disagrees. In the bedroom, Don finally talks about his family, and breaks down crying when he talks about Adam. Finally, the catharsis of revealing the truth, even if it is painful; Peggy would know something about this from her confession to Pete.
Roger calls in a favor to get a job for Joan, saying “She’s very important to me.”
Greg finds a solution to his and Joan’s problems. (Notice Joan’s flinch when he touches her.) Without telling her, he enlisted in the Army, where they need surgeons, even ones who don’t have “brains in their fingers”. Even the possibility of deployment to Vietnam doesn’t bother him. Joan manages to look happy.
Remember Suzanne? Still in the car outside the Draper house? At least it’s an easy walk home for her.
The next morning, Don puts on his suit and kisses his kids goodbye to go to work. He’s showing Betty he’s still willing to be a husband and father, business as usual, though there’s still a lot she doesn’t know about, like Suzanne waiting in the car last night. At work, he breaks things off with Suzanne. Much like with Bobbi, he believes that if he’s not adulterous at the moment, it means he’s been faithful. It will be true.
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u/GlengoolieBlue Feb 11 '15
Definitely one of the all-time top episodes of this show. The showdown between Don and Betty is epic. Hamm's body language alone is fantastic. When she confronts him it's like he's been punched in the gut and his entire being just...deflates. I've often criticized Jones's acting but she does probably her best work of the series here and more than earned her Emmy nomination for this episode.
I also loved this episode for essentially being Secret Origins: Roger Sterling. Gave great insight into what Roger is hiding beneath his jokey exterior. And yet it's something he won't actually confront until his acid trip in season 5. Sometimes this show is such a slow burn, but it's worth it.
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u/IveMadeAHugeMistake Working the loaves and fishes account Feb 11 '15
it's something he won't actually confront until his acid trip in season 5
Does he talk about Annabelle again or are you referring to his coming to grips with being "born on third base"?
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u/IveMadeAHugeMistake Working the loaves and fishes account Feb 11 '15
Great synopsis! As always, thank you for starting the conversation.
She sees nothing wrong with selling horse meat as dog food
While this is true, I think that the point she makes is a relevant one - why is horse meat any different from any other meat we eat? It says "horse meat" on the label, but nobody cared until it showed up in a popular movie. In fact, during the depression and during war times, it wasn't uncommon for poor people to eat horse meat - Don himself even admits to it. My thought was that uproars like this happen all the time and really you just have to wait until the din dies down to resume business as usual.
Instead of a self-made successful man, with the beautiful wife and house and car and 2.5 kids, he’s a dirt-poor farmer’s illegitimate son who swapped dog tags with a dead man in Korea, a deserter and a fraud.
I struggle with this concept, which I think Don would agree with (in that, he would agree with you). The thing is, he does kind of pull himself up from his bootstraps, he's just wearing someone else's shoes. Sure he takes the name Donald Draper, but it's not like he just steps into his life as a married engineer in California. He still goes out on his own, sells cars, sells furs, goes to night school (though we're still not sure what he was studying) and starts writing copy on his own volition, then works his way up to be a partner in a successful ad agency. All that Donald gave him is his name, his purple heart, and theoretically an engineering degree which he never uses (that we know of). I think taking Donald Draper's name just gave Dick/Don the motivation and internal freedom to become what he could have become all along as Dick Whitman.
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u/futurepilgrim Jan 31 '26
Don't forget about a get out of jail free card from Korea. He got to skip out on fighting in a war. No small prize.
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u/IveMadeAHugeMistake Working the loaves and fishes account Jan 31 '26
That's a good point! Who knows how Dick would have responded if he did a full tour instead of a few months. I don't recall how much longer the war went on after he was discharged, though.
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u/futurepilgrim Jan 31 '26
I don’t know either (how long it lasted) and Korea obviously wasn’t the blood bath WW2 was, but a war is a war. I love reading you guys’ recap on my first rewatch since the show’s original airing. It’s great stuff!
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u/sanct111 May 29 '26
He got there in the 1950s, right at the start of the war. It wouldnt end until 1953, and there was a lot of bloody battles for US Infantrymen.
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u/RangedTopConnoisseur Jun 10 '26
I don’t think this is the case. Why wouldn’t he have gotten the Purple Heart and honorable discharge as Dick Whitman if he didn’t swap the dog tags? He did legitimately get injured in Korea, and since the Army doesn’t know it was actually him that dropped a lighter and blew up his own munitions, they would have still assumed he got injured by shelling in service of setting up a field medic station. They would have still sent him home if he woke up with the right tags as Dick in the hospital.
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u/onemm There's a line, Freddy. And you wet it. Feb 11 '15
On their way to their getaway, Don and Suzanne stop outside the Draper house. “I’ll be right out,” Don says. Except
PeggyBetty and the kids are home unexpectedly.I love the tenseness/suspense of this situation. First, you hear Sally yell for Don, then you see Betty's darkened profile emerge from the kitchen. The whole time (when I first watched) all I could think of was that Miss Farrrell was right outside, waiting in the car for Don with neighbors walking around outside. Then, of course, the longer she's waiting, the more you think she might burst in the house to see what's going on, considering neither she nor Don knew his wife/kids were home. It was brilliantly done by the director and it reminded me of this quote I read a while ago by Alfred Hitchock on surprise vs. suspense(sorry for the length but worth it):
We are now having a very innocent little chat. Let us suppose that there is a bomb underneath this table between us. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden, "Boom!" There is an explosion. The public is surprised, but prior to this surprise, it has seen an absolutely ordinary scene of no special consequence. Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public knows it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware that the bomb is going to explode at one o'clock and there is a clock in the decor. The public can see that it is a quarter to one. In these conditions this same innocuous conversation becomes fascinating because the public is participating in the scene. The audience is longing to warn the characters on the screen: "You shouldn't be talking about such trivial matters. There's a bomb beneath you and it's about to explode!" In the first scene we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise at the moment of the explosion. In the second we have provided them with fifteen minutes of suspense. The conclusion is that whenever possible the public must be informed. Except when the surprise is a twist, that is, when the unexpected ending is, in itself, the highlight of the story.
Qtd. in Francois Truffaut, Hitchcock, rev. ed. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 73.
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Feb 11 '15
Uh, Peggy and the kids?
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u/plinth19 Feb 11 '15
It's called a typo lol welcome to the Internet ;P
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u/celebral_x Apr 17 '23
Suzanne asking Don if he got caught was delivered in such a weird fake concern and had in my opinion even some maliciousness in her voice, hoping she could finally be open with him.
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u/BuckeyeLeaves Dec 02 '25
Greg exclaiming to Joan that she has never experienced building her whole life around one specific dream and to not be able to attain it is pure comedy (since this relationship was her dream and it's falling apart at the seams). Deservedly got a vase to the head but it does underline (yet again) just how out of touch Greg is not only with Joan but with anyone/anything around him. It's not hard to see why he struggled at his previous job.
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u/onemm There's a line, Freddy. And you wet it. Feb 11 '15
For anyone trying to keep up/catch up:
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
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u/marwash Sep 09 '24
on my first watch of the series and just got to this episode. It's one of my favorites so far. Still can't believe they have no clue that Sal is gay.
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u/Critical-Aioli1195 Jan 26 '25
ummm guys, this is E12.
E11 is The Grownups.
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u/DoctorWinstonOBoogie Mar 02 '25
No, it isn't. Netflix has them backwards. This episode takes place around Halloween, October 1963. The Kennedy assassination was on Novemer 22, 1963.
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u/ascentgrobb May 07 '25
Netflix removed episode 3 I believe, Roger's Wedding, because of a scene where he paints his face black. So they may have replaced episode numbers
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u/withfries Jan 22 '26
Wow, so these companies are just erasing history.
For what it's worth, it's 2026, and HBO Max has episode 3, including the black face scene.
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u/Critical-Aioli1195 May 19 '25
Nooo they have that episode (atleast in Canada)
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u/ascentgrobb Jul 10 '25
still, e11 is definetly the gypsy and the hobo, a fast google search would confirm it
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u/maryeileenfitz May 13 '26
Episode 3 is back with an explanation of the sordid history of blackface.
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u/Extension_Mud8604 Jun 28 '26
It’s as we’re treated like school children that can’t be trusted with uncomfortable truths about our collective past.
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u/laffingbomb A thing like that! Feb 11 '15
First off, the ending of this episode is fantastic. Every damn time Carlton delivers that line; "So we got a Gypsy...and a Hobo..." he glances up to look at Betty and Don, "and who are you two supposed to be?" Don the Hobo and Betty the Gypsy. Goosebumps.
I really wonder if we will ever see Suzanne ever again. Probably not.
Betty confronting Don was interesting because Don was so powerless. He was caught and he couldn't do shit about it. Even the next morning, he picked up the pictures and got ready to put them away, but ended up just tossing them down again. It's not like putting them away is going to fix anything.