Dick as Don’s dark side is great. It doesn’t maintain as a theme for the season, but I can buy it as a them for this episode.

You’ll notice that most film noir techniques are used with Pete Campbell–suggested or overt film noir lighting, camera angles that create a feeling of entrapment.

The scene in Adam’s flophouse hotel is in keeping with realism–since he would be living in an older rooms with rundown 50′s furniture he can afford. However, the look of his room is reminiscent of “The Killers” with Burt Lancaster and the lighting creates a shadowy bizarro world for Don’s bad side to come out. Adam’s lines, “You look more like you, now,” and “Uncle Mac thought you were soft, but you aren’t soft, are you Dick?” do not reassure us that Don will not do something rash; nor does Don’s five-o’clock shadow and unkempt hair.

So is Dick Whitman just Dick Whitman, or is he Don’s dark side? Does Dick Whitman fulfill all those horrible things that Abigail thought he would always be and is Don running from more than the past? By the end of “The Wheel”, I can think it’s just the past Don is afraid of, since he tries to reconcile that a little by calling for the now dead Adam at the flophouse. But as of this episode, these questions carry more weight.

He's petrified in that moment, and it's all over his face.

I think Janet Maslin said right before the screening that everything that would come throughout the season is initially revealed in the first episode. So right, especially as regards big Don's make-up.

I have, I think, four favorite episodes: 5G, Babylon, Shoot, and Indian Summer.

But enough about that.

Deb–YES. I asked the same question; can the show handle this? And then is that a show I want to be watching? And I agree with Dan, it was Weiner's way of establishing the show as not the Sopranos.

Your remarks about Don having a secret under lock and key… funny, because I was just remembering how in Nixon Vs. Kennedy, Trudy calls out Pete on his box, and talks about how her father had a box she wishes she'd never seen. (porn, or some such, I figured.)

In the Wheel, Don very clearly threatens Pete, by telling him (not in exact terms) that if someone has a secret that they would go to extremes to maintain, the level of those extremes could extend to violence. Don may not be someone who would commit murder, but that showed me that he recognizes how an 'everyman' can turn into a murderer. Again, how Hitchcockian.

I remember watching it the first time and PRAYING he wasn't going to pull out a gun simply because of the Soprano's pedigree of the show. And personally I think Mr. Weiner was letting us go there briefly only so he could distinguish himself by saying in effect "Yes, these issues are life and death, but we won't be using guns here."

And it's worth mentioning the use of firearms in the series is handled wonderfully … Pete's gun fetish to prove his manhood, Betty in 'Shoot', and a few others I'm sure I'm missing …

BTW – 5G starts, for me, the best 4-episode stretch in the season, including Babylon, Red in the Face and Hobo Code … each instant all-time television classics.