I'm'a stick with Clay-Liston. Not because I have any evidence, mind you.

That is a good reference point, because that's probably the earliest cultural conflict between old school/new school notions of masculinity as it was played out in sports. In football you don't get it until it's Namath vs. Unitas (1969) or in baseball with the long haired, mustachoied A's vs. the clean cut Reds (1972). (All of those instances of the newer, more "feminized" masculinity triumphing.) It's largely a generational shift as the Greatest Generation of WWII vets (and its ideal of a stoic, hypermasculine culture) is succeeded.

There's been a long focus on the changing roles of women, but there's an intriguing shift in the notion of masculinity coming as well. The Beatles will be a huge shock along that faultline.

Loved the look on Duck's face when Don was all, "I don't have a contract."

BUH - WAH?? I was counting on that to be all self-righteous and pompous and and and....fuck. I need a drink.

I have nothing to add that even come remotely to what all of you have said ever so smartly and wonderfully. Although I will say that even knowing how the Bay of Pigs turns out, I love that writing for the show is so good, that I actually caught myself thinking, "I hope they're still there Monday!"

Heh. I didn't see The Simpsons Mad Men parody.

But I think he was planning (or she was hoping he was planning) to come down on the train later anyway.

I think that's exactly why she kissed him. She took his ambiguous answer as an assertion of what she wanted to hear.

I'm'a stick with Clay-Liston. Not because I have any evidence, mind you.

And we had some foreshadowing of that with the Don/Jimmy bar fight scene.

I wonder though... what about MLK's "I have a dream..." speech. That's August of '63 and with children and civil rights and the future being such a strong undercurrent this past season it might provide an interesting starting point. Or do we think it might fall under the aegis of an event that's been "done" to death, as it were?

I think that's done to death. Or at least to on-the-nose for this show.

Some fascinating bits from a Weiner interview here:

You stop worrying about Peggy as a person and you start seeing that it's a secret she's living with, and she was really young. If nothing else, you start to realize that having that baby would have ruined her life. And that is so common and so part of our culture, and we're judgmental about it, it's just the way it is. Women leave their families, men leave their families. When I started talking to the priests about what I was doing, they were saying this is a 3 or 4000 year old problem socially that we figured out how to deal with. Just from the Catholic point of view, I've had wonderful consultation from amazing clergy, most notably Jim Van Dyke in New York City. Part of his job is shepherding older priests who are retired, and he would ask them for all the details, he's the one who gave me the great detail of Father Gill doing the modern Grace, and Peggy's mom going "Now, are you gonna say Grace?" Everyone Catholic has said that was right on the money. My own fascination with it was, okay, Peggy has committed a sin that is like murder, and maybe worse for a young girl, probably the worst sin a young girl could make. She's been raised thinking that, and where is that going to go? I wanted her to have to deal with it, but I also wanted it, from the very beginning, I wanted it to come out -- look, it was all about telling Pete. That was all about revealing that secret and not playing that irony any more. I built it into every episode this season, I knew from the beginning, to earn that. I knew that Pete would fall more and more in love with her, and they would become more and more of a real relationship. When his father died, he looked around the office and looked at her -- they slept together. They slept together. They had a relationship. I think, in the end, the baby, all of it, was just a way for us to see, what I'm showing with everybody: that Peggy is a complicated person who has made a lot of private choices, and she can either be like Don -- she's going to pay a price somewhere, and not in a judgmental way.

Same interview:

I think, honestly, that Don left because he knew Pete would take care of it. I think Don was telling the truth. The reason Duck picked Pete is because Pete has changed. What Don said is true. You see Pete has gifts, and rather ] than just acting like he's in charge and he's top of the heap and deserves everything, he has behaved properly. His whole research that he did, you could see at the hotel that Pete had done the work.

A creative director, Hal Riney in San Francisco, who was sort of the last of these guys, he died this year, he would disappear for months with his wife who was a casting director, and would come back with the Bartles & Jaymes people, would find weird casting, sample the culture. That's the story, anyway. And it's completely believable that Don could disappear for three weeks or four months. My intention was, and I know it's one of those things that's a surprise to the audience because they don't get to see every piece of information, what is Pete going to tell on him? He knew Pete wouldn't tell on him, I think he knew Pete had his back, and I do think that he thought Pete was ready. I do believe it. Don's a good judge of those things. As soon as Pete's not interested in destroying Don, (Don's okay with him). I go back to what Cooper said to him last year in episode 12: "One never knows how loyalty is born." You saw what happened when Duck gave Pete the job he's wanted since we've known him. He was like, "Really?"

Heh. I didn't see The Simpsons Mad Men parody.

Isn't that part of the Treehouse of Horror next week?

Isn't that part of the Treehouse of Horror next week?

That might explain why I hadn't seen it yet.

Quick Survey: Who thinks Don and Betty's marriage will survive the decade?

I'm happy they both found some small portion of peace after this turbulent season, but I still think they're ill-suited for each other, and they have a fundamentally flawed marriage.

I was really glad to see him accepted back home, and I really don't think they belong together.