It's interesting to me how everyone she meets assumes instantly that they know what her relationship with Don is, whether or not they think the relationship is sexual.

Yeah, definitely interesting. It's clear that she couldn't have gotten where she is on her own, so it must be her relationship to Don...which is true in that he allowed her to have the opportunity, but a lot of what Peggy has in her career is what Peggy's carved out for herself. I'm thinking about her ballsing up to ask for Freddy's office, that kind of thing. But it's assumed that it must be relationship and not merit based.

Unlike Roger, or Danny...

Stupid Old Boys' Club!

Just thinking about it friendships between men and women who had no familial ties weren't that common. Or at least, I can't think of many instances in movies or books of the era.

One of the things I do love about Mad Men are the odd ties of loyalty and friendship which exist in the show which are almost invisible to other people in the era and culture. Because there's no need for an adult man and an adult woman to ever be friends in that universe. Nobody can imagine that's what exists between Peggy and Don. Or Joan and Roger for that matter. Or Peggy and Pete. Or Joan and Don.

Admittedly there's a lot of sexual history involved but some of my favorite Mad Men moments are when those moments of friendship are acknowledged: Joan and Don at the hospital after Guy's accident; Don having to go beg Peggy to join the new firm; Roger turning to Joan to run the new firm; the curious bonds between Peggy and Pete which still persist despite everything.

Okay, so Mad Men from last week.

For obvious reasons, this was a difficult episode for me to watch, and the interesting bits for me were not at all related to Betty. I have trouble separating my visceral reaction to Roger's slurs from my critical assessment of a piece of pop media.

I think the show thinks it did an equitable job of presenting the issues and portraying the racial tensions of the time. Roger's carefully backgrounded outbursts are countered by the others and delicately frowned on. But as the viewer, I'm clearly supposed to understand the pouting Roger with Joan afterwards. I'm supposed to respond to the war trauma that caused his prejudices and feel like he's been hard done by and be back to empathizing with and supporting him next episode.

But I don't. Roger's epithets are the same ones that accompanied countless atrocities against Japanese people, both those from Japan and Japanese-Americans. Don't get me wrong. I'm not discounting war atrocities committed by the Japanese, as they were copious. But I had an aunt watching the planes fly over Pearl Harbor and one watching the planes fly over Hiroshima. War's not happy fun times for anyone.

And yet, racism is not the correct response to it. One of the greatest ills of racism is that its assumptions prevent us from getting to know one another as individuals. Roger's attitudes prevent him from being willing to do business with a nation.

So. I now carry a grudge against Roger, a bias against him because of his prejudice.

Now let's turn to the show. The show slaps Roger's hand, but has Joan pet it. Then the entire rest of the episode, the work based bit, is Don successfully manipulating the Japanese businessmen based on the assumptions made in a book written in wartime about how to understand an enemy.

For me, Don's gleeful superiority (purportedly against his rival company, but effectively directed against the Honda execs) exploits as prevalent a stereotype as Roger's more blatant insults. That this gambit is successful indicates to me that the show sees this as fine.

Things the show did get right, at least: the names were correct and the actors portraying Japanese characters are apparently Japanese-American. So there's that, at least.

I think I'll stop there. I'm clearly still processing on this.

I don't think the show condones Roger's racism, but just shows it as a fact. And in that time and place and with his position he's not going to suffer any consequences for it except that he's going to be increasingly out of step with the world.

The show does a pretty good job of indicating that Roger's hard feelings are racist when they note that nobody's got an issue about working for a Volkswagen campaign.

Also, the others in the office aren't any more enlightened. They object to Roger's behavior because it's unprofessional, not because it's racist. Bert's interest in Japanese culture is neatly balanced by his total lack of progressive thought with the civil rights movement.

I don't think they're exploiting stereotypes or endorsing anybody's behavior. Like the sexism and the antisemitism and the homophobia it is the characters' unexamined prejudices which reveal so much about the era.

Leverage: How did the con get the girl out of custody?

The problem with Roger is not that you're supposed to understand his viewpoint(s), but that you're supposed to like him anyway. Which I often do, thanks to John Slattery -- he says the most offensive shit, and it makes me laugh. Oh, Roger! But that doesn't mean I think it's right, or OK, and I don't think Matthew Weiner does, either.

Although, the whole show is slightly tainted for me after hearing that he doesn't think Betty is a bad mother. So lord knows what he really thinks about the rest of it...

Neal dressing Peter. A little something inside me just up and died in absolute pleasure.

Oh god, yes.