I believe they do want me to sympathize with him at least a little bit. Why else show his shitty childhood scenes? Also, in Monday's ep Sylvia said she, "...prayed for him to find peace." Poor wealthy, successful, good-looking, top-of-the-food-chain Don. Ugh! They need to do something - anything - to make me give a damn about his character at this point. He used to be more complex but now he's just a straight up entitled asshole. More Peggy! More Joan! More Betty! More Sally!

It was a very plotty episode - not so much with the recurring motifs and metaphors that they've been prone to over the last couple seasons.

I like when things happen! So I liked it quite a bit except for agreeing with all the discontent with Don, whom I've generally liked and found interesting as a character, but the way he treats Megan, ugh. Be fucking happy for her success, for fuck's sake.

"I tolerate it, but I won't encourage it."
"You're perfect."

Megan has low standards for perfection.

Well, for someone who also seems to hate himself, Don is a narcissist.(And I do still care about him, but it was always annoying that all he thought would fix everything was a hipper scene and a hotter woman. Even if I liked the psychologist better anyway.) I'm not so sure that Don is capable of that kind of give-and-take, at least not with somebody he's married to. Megan has rejecting parents that have made her really insecure.

He sort of deserves to be wearing medallions and too-cool shirts that don't fit around his expanding middle trying to chat up young girls in the Regal Beagle in a few years, but somehow, if it happened that way, it would seem really sad.(Sometimes things are sad, of course, especially on this show.)

So Matthew Weiner doesn't dislike Don, and doesn't think we should, either. [link]

I find I enjoy Mad Men much more when I don't read what Matthew Weiner wants us to get out of the show.

For non-New-Yorkers...the Second Avenue subway construction began last year. HA. Sorry, Peggy.

Okay, wow - I'd just started the ep when I wrote that last post. That was some powerful stuff.

I'm still processing, but I found it kind of unrealistic. I find it hard to believe that no one said anything nasty or offensive. Even Roger. Suddenly, the casual racism that we've seen from everyone went away?

Have not watched tonight's show but about Don and change. I think there was one important thing that gave the illusion of change but was not.

Back when Don was married to Betty, she was a woman he could control (until the end) but the vibrant independence that attracted him before he married her vanished when she became a housewife. He dominated her, but was bored by her. The women he cheated on her with were women with lives of their own, women he could not control. When he married Megan, and she proved so talented as copywriter and dealing with clients it was the perfect situation for him. Here was a women busy doing work he found fascinating (the same work he did, but working for him). He had a lively interesting woman he could still dominate.

But when Megan moved to acting that changed. She remained interesting, but now she is independent, with a life apart from him he can't control. So now he turned to cheating again. Hec pointing out that this particular profession involves so much time away from Don that it would have destroyed marriages even to better men who shared the attitudes of the time. But in Don's case it would not have mattered if she became independent with something with much more flexible schedules - freelance drawing that could have been done at home or something. Just spending time in a life he could not have controlled would have been too threatening to Don. He can't really deal with a long term romantic relationship with a woman where he is not totally in control - where she has space of her own. Maybe in professional relationship, or platonic friendship, but not a long term sexual or romantic relationship. That is one reason why none of his affairs ever lasted for the very long term. Women who interested him were not women he could control completely and sooner or later that would lead to the affair ending if nothing else did.