You know, you look at the photographs of Dick and Adam together and you wonder, what was that relationship like? Were Dick and Adam sheltering each other against Abigail, et al?

Don definitely adores his children and he gives credit where credit is due for their well-being, Betty. That's an important thing that redeems Don; when he sees qualilty in other people, like Betty or Peggy, he acknowledges them for it.

One last little note about invisibility: I finished my entry last night and went to bed, but couldn't sleep for a while because Paul Kinsey's lines kept going through my head. A modern world, filled with wonder and ease. That is our space-age dream, no hard work in the future. But when we can't actually achieve that, when there are still dirty and difficult jobs to do, we make the people who do them invisible, so the rest of us can have the fantasy of a modern world.

Thanks for supporting my obsession.

You're right that Don doesn't understand connection. But in "Shoot" he certainly worships the notion of a good mother and seems to believe it has redemptive qualities. Betty already has the most important job in the world, he says. Not as his wife but as mother to his children. She is surrogate for the mother he never had, as his children are surrogates for the childhood he never had, and they MUST MUST MUST be happy, because he believes this can heal him somehow.

Dan, nice observation about the janitor. Good stuff.

Again, I go back to seeing Don as a metaphor for ourselves, and for post-WWII America: possessing = happiness.

Immediate gratification over emotional investment, surface slick over inner substance. Don has none.

Couple of points on your post:

1) Re: the black janitor … another blog had a post some time back indicating that the janitor in the elevator that morning was the same one that saw Peggy and Pete going at it in Pete's office. And he's the same janitor that Peggy got fired in Nixon vs. Kennedy because she complained to management about her blouse being stolen. So when she rants to Don about the unfairness of others doing whatever they want and getting away with it, she misses the irony of an (we can assume) underprivileged maintenance worker having to see two overprivileged white collar-types playing around with impunity — and HE'S the one that loses his job! Sure, such a series of events could happen today, but with the racial element in the story taking place in 1960, the egregiousness is stark.

2) as for Don's connectedness, I think he's simply learned to take everything for granted, in the purest sense. He didn't get a beautiful wife, great job and kids because he earned it, it's just what he's supposed to have. The whole self-made thing is a joke and he knows it. "Deserve" has nothing to do with it, so infidelity won't disrupt the image. But remember that Mr. Weiner has repeatedly stated that everything has consequences, and so this will too. He's a metaphor for us.

Which leads us to the final frame of the season, with Don starting to feel the walls close in … no Rachel, no Betty, no family … and that brilliant closing music by Bob Dylan, who no one's heard of yet, but will …

The second verse seems like it was written just for this show … 35 years early …

It ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
That light I never knowed
An' it ain't no use in turnin' on your light, babe
I'm on the dark side of the road
Still I wish there was somethin' you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
We never did too much talkin' anyway
So don't think twice, it's all right

We only get one episode to know Adam, so the claim that he sees things simply, without adornment, may indeed be farfetched. But he does focus almost totally on his connection to Dick/Don. And he is not focussing on Don's success or his whorechild status.

I'm not so sure that Don realizes that having a family is about connections. It appears to me that having a family for him is like having a car or some other possession. The nicer the car, the happier you should be. I go back to his conversation with Betty when they are discussing the possibility of therapy for her in bed. He points to the house and the kids and her beauty and wonders how she could not be happy. To be fair, all of these "things" are things he probably thought he never could have as Dick Whitman, whorechild, so just having them is an immense improvement in the quality, as well as the quantity, of his life. He's been able to get all of this through taking another man's identity and lying about his own but he may never have anticipated the cost to himself in terms of authenticity and his ability to connect meaningfully with those he loves.

I'm going to disagree on a couple of small points; first, I am sure that Adam doesn't view horseshoes without symbolism; he's a farm boy and his culture is steeped in folklore.

Second, I think there was an important political point in Adam's disrupting of Don's sleek world—one that a Commie like you should have noticed! —the sleek, pretty world of Sterling Cooper cannot function without the janitors; without the underclass. Adam is part of the machinery that makes the world pretty for the "haves." He's also the only white "servant class" worker we've seen, indicating just how low on the totem pole of opportunity he is—equal with the "coloreds."

I also think that Don believes in family values—for other people; for people who had families. It's why he's trying so hard to take care of Betty, and is so confused that it isn't making either of them happy. He's sure that what's lacking in his life is the absence of ever having had a mother and a family that accepted him, and he has done his best to create that as Don Draper, so why doesn't it feel good?