I had mixed emotions about the episode, which I thought was very well written, mainly because I think the show “ended” in essence a while back, maybe when Don brought his kids to see the whorehouse where he lived. And now he talks about those days, a little sanitized by referring to “boarders”, as the kind of interesting story you share that makes you human.
As usual, there were many references to the past and repetitions within the episode. The waitress Diane looks like so many other dark haired women, from his birth mother to his stepmother Abigail to Midge to Bobbie Barrett to Sylvia and so on. Loaded with Freud. And further loaded by the fact Abigail was such a judgmental shrew who hates Don for being a son of a prostitute with his father and who ends up in Mac’s whorehouse and emphasize in this episode by Diane taking Roger’s tip as future payment for sex to be delivered.
And that of course ties to the treatment of women in the episode. The absurd sexual harassment of Peggy and Joan. The leering ad executives watching models play at being sexy dressed in little more than a fur coat (Chinchilla, cost $15k). Peggy not wanting to sleep with her date because she’s done that and it didn’t work. Joan buying expensive clothes because she can and because she looks like that no matter what she wears.
I really liked the scene with the flight attendant who starts to act like Megan when the wine spills on the carpet. Megan did the same thing: trying to clean the floor in bra and panties until Don stopped her with sex. The actress even spoke in a Meganish inflection.
The one scene that didn’t play well for me was when Ken turns on his wife after she says he should quit and be a writer. That didn’t make sense but then we’ve barely seen them so I know I’m imposing my sense of them on the scene without justification. I had no problem with Ken moving to Dow because he says his father-in-law loved working there and what Ken hates about running accounts is the sense of being jerked around all the time by clients, by others in the agency, etc. I never saw him as hating work, just the lack of control.
I was surprised that Ted is divorced. Or I think he’s divorced. I liked the line about 3 women in a man’s life. I didn’t see it as a retread of the earlier ad idea about a woman being Jackie and Marilyn because that’s the woman’s perspective on herself. Ted is speaking to the male perspective. It’s easy to come up with 2 - mom and wife - and more than that (other than daughter) speaks to where Ted is in life. So it’s an echo but not a repeat.
I thought Rachel Katz’s dream appearance was interesting. I liked they made the dream state sort of obvious by having Ted open the door to let her in while Pete lets her out, but then he wakes in bed so it’s clear anyway. She says you missed your plane, which references Don saying he’d run away with her to Paris. It also obviously refers to Peggy’s date. And to the flight attendant. And to Megan out in CA. I like Don’s comment in the dream: you’re not just smooth; you’re Wilkinson smooth. (That’s the razor company, btw.) It’s like she’s the actual dream of the ad, not a pretense put on by a sexy girl, and she’s like that because she’s unattainable in every literal way. Wilkinson smooth is the dream being sold.
I think the most important source for the show has become more and more Gatsby, but with Don as both Gatsby and Tom Buchanan. He had his Daisy in Betty. He was the complete fake of a man, but more legitimate than Gatsby because Don sells dreams for big business while Gatsby associates with gamblers and fixers. And a question has been: how much Nick Carraway is in Don? That to me gets to a heart of the issue: we never learn much about Nick and don’t know what happens in his life and so I don’t know what happens with Don. He’s already floated face down in a pool, echoing both Gatsby and Bill Holden in Sunset Blvd. so I don’t see that coming.