Television
Eric Freeman
Don’s unhappy at work and typically uninterested by everything happening on Bullet Park Rd. We all know what that means: time to have an affair! At this point, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Don wants to cheat or that he’d be attracted to a hot, independent brunette interested in things other than puppy dogs and ice cream. It’s also tough to say it’s about the thrill of the chase, because he doesn’t seduce Miss Farrell so much as bed her by sheer force of will. There’s no logic — it’s all about satisfaction, the one thing that he can’t get at work.
Television
Darren Franich
It’s a central part of Mad Men’s appeal that our protagonists — who make jokes about how their tomboy daughters are “little lesbians” and can’t stand to ride in the same elevator as a black janitor — have an eerily admirable amount of respect for things we didn’t know we were missing. Like the scene in the Season 2 premiere where Don is in an elevator with a lady and two crude young men, and Don tells one man to take his hat off before just going ahead and doing it for him. Of course, this scene is morally ridiculous if you consider that Don is a regular adulterer – if you consider that the crimes perpetrated against his wife far outweigh any amount of mental damage a woman could suffer from overhearing a few dirty jokes. But the morality of Mad Men is more complex than our own morality.
Television
Eric Freeman
The key plot turn of the first episode of Mad Men’s third season concerns Pete Campbell and Ken Cosgrove battling to become Head of Accounts, but the obvious most important moment is when Don catches Salvatore Romano with a shirtless man in his Baltimore hotel room. Salvatore is rightfully terrified, knowing that Don could end his successful career with one word to his fellow partners at Sterling Cooper. Then, on the flight back, Don asks him about an idea for the London Fog campaign as if nothing had ever happened. Salvatore is safe, and we seem to have a case of one man who passes in his own life empathizing with another who must do the same. Except Don and Salvatore have to do very different things in order to pass.
