There is an awful lot of foreshadowing of the Tractor Tragedy. Here are the ones I can think of:
A Basketcase rather brilliantly noted that Lois’s prank call included her disfigurement and need to live near a hospital; of course it is Lois who disfigures and sends Guy to the hospital.
Lois also caught her scarf in the copier last week. Lois can’t handle machinery.
Roger tells an involved story about his father losing an arm.
Joan gets two tickets for the PPL representatives to see Oliver! Only two, although there are three men visiting. Realizing this was actually what prompted me to post.
Saint John Powell responds to the news of Oliver! tickets by saying “A tragedy with a happy ending, my favorite kind.”
Feel free to add your own in comments.
70 Responses to “Foreshadowing”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
In Angelo's barbershop, Roger says something like "I can feel it [the manicure] in my toes".
A fashion question or five: all the men's ties, including the English, had stripes running from right shoulder down – English regimental ties run from left shoulder down, but it was Brooks Brothers that introduced the right down pattern in the 1900's. Would all the English ad men have had Brooks Brothers-US-style neckwear? Keep an eye on Lane's neckties – he's an old fogey. Guy's suit was very of-the-moment, and his tie had a silver plaid pattern. Italian?
blogward beat me to the punch about Roger talking about getting a pedicure.
Also, one uses a mower to have a “well manicured†lawn.
Not sure if this qualifies as foreshadowing, but there is the ongoing imagery of feet this season: Don's barefeet in Episode 1, the teacher barefoot dancing around the Maypole in Episode 2, Betty walking down the hospital corridor in the dream sequence in Episode 5 in her bare feet, and now Guy MacKendrick is "de-footed" (as opposed to "de-feeted").
It is interesting too about Joan getting just two tickets for "Oliver" when there were three men visting. I assumed that was because Guy was going to be busy preparing for the next day's presentations, but as I reflect on what Sally said above, I think it could well be the case that Guy was a surprise. Nobody at SC seemed to have any idea who he was. St. John took great pains to recite Guy's resume and Don sort of gave Guy the "who the hell are you" look. Even Pete, in his inimitable way, suggested that Guy was a complete stranger. When Guy paid Pete a compliment, Pete said "I wish I could return the compliment," which I don't think he meant as a rude comment — simply that he did not know Guy at all and was unable to return the compliment.
OK, maybe not a foreshadowing, but perhaps Don and Betty have spawned Damien.
After all…MR. ETON MAN GETS EASY PEDICURE…anagrams to…
MY NAME IS EUGENE SCOTT DRAPER
Sorry, couldn't resist.
I assumed the two tickets were for Guy and St. John, the two visitors. There was no need for Joan to get tickets for Pryce because he and his wife were local.
How about the Late Grandpa Gene promising our little Sally that soon, "all hell's gonna break loose"?
It's a stretch, but still.
BTW, all, did you know that there is now a law that might have allowed PPL to sue, had what happened to Guy happened in the present day? It's called the (I kid you not) Corporate Manslaughter Act:
http://www.justice.gov.uk/news/newsrelease040408a…
Thanks to my brilliant coworker Carla for finding this!
Actually, Roger says "I'm thinking about my toes" – as in getting a pedicure. It was a come-on line to the manicurist.
Perhaps more thematic than for-shadowing but I feel that the idea of Greg not having ‘brains in his fingers’ can be seen echoed throughout the episode:
Don first impresses Conrad Hilton by his dexterity in drink-mixing before they bond over their impoverished childhoods (‘I fixed you a drink’). He has brains in his fingers. So does Joan.
This foreshadows the fact that Guy’s career is ruined by the apparently trivial fact that he can no longer play golf. Just as a career can be helped by an expediently mixed drink it can be broken by not being able to play a sport or by messing up on the operating table.
And of course there are the first references to Vietnam- and the line ‘is he the one who shoots the persons’ , a casual aside but telling seeing how soon are such physical skills to be relevant. If the tractor incident is seen as for-shadowing Vietnam than the inability of the employees at SC (excluding Joan) to deal with random chaos is worrying.
This emphasis on physical competence comes down to the question of identity. We are what we do- ‘a surgeon’- being the most obvious example. Career is identity, and we see Joan and Don, despite their overall competence and skill, both un-nerved and shaken by the thought of the loss of it.
Back to Conrad Hilton and Don’s Drink mixing skills. I wonder if he learnt to mix drinks like that, and vault over a bar, in his former life? Isn’t it ironic that Don thinks he off-handedly confided Dick’s car-pissing past to a stranger not realising that the man he is a) far from an unknown stranger b) going to become a perhaps important part of Don Draper’s present.
His duel identity is always unsettling for him, like Sally’s night terrors about the ghost of Gene he fears evidence of the reincarnation of Dick Whitman into Don Draper. And again Don has benefited from an accident- first in the Korean War and now not having to deal with the professional threat of Guy. What are physical tragedies for other people seem to help him. (The real Drapers death is another tragedy with a happy ending). So no wonder that he feels as though the course of his life is disconnected from physical reality, as though he is a kind of ghost himself.
Yet Anna Draper says to him that he is ‘part of the world. Air, water, every living thing is connected to you’. This is a different Don we are seeing in season 3. I think he is still affected, certainly understands, the kind of fear his daughter has; of the past becoming a real physical entity. But it’s significant that we see Don for the first time on screen pick up and physically hold his baby son, acknowledging that his identity is at the moment nothing more than his physical fact. He admits, to himself perhaps as well as Sally, that there are no such things as ghosts.
Apologies if that little essay is tangential or off topic. I’m new here!
Icapturethecastle…lovely post.
It made me think of another sort of foreshadowing from The Arrangement. Gene is trying to give Bobby a dead man's hat and of course Don is disturbed by this due to his past. It must be much more disturbing for Baby Gene to have a dead man's name, just like his daddy.
#3
I agree about Joan, she either got them 2 tickets each or she knows that one of them is not going to be attending the show, I assumed Guy would be busy prepping for the next days meeting. She would definitely not make a mistake like that, especially with Moneypenny standing there.
Dale doesn't seem to be as bothered as the other three, perhaps this has happened to him before. Plus he took Lois away from the room while the other three were still grossed out/shocked.
http://thecomedystore.tumblr.com/post/194278654/b…
Aran, the thing about his father losing an arm was already in the post.
brenda, there was a 3rd visitor: Harold Ford. 4 Brits in total — Powell, Ford, Guy McKendrick, and Lane Pryce.
Anne, love the law.
How about this? The Brits forget that it is Independence Day. So now, all of a sudden, Sterling Cooper is freed from the new "Guy." Lane Pryce is likely going to shift allegiance from the British, who just tried to screw him, to Don, the American.
I don't know. Maybe that's a stretch.
@KBH – Love it!
The last scene where Don is motioning Sally to come to him while he's holding little Gene in his arms reminds me of little Don in Marriage of Figaro being asked if he was going to lay there or get up and then go and see his little brother (named Adam). They both looked equally reluctant. Although Don handled it better with Sally and she was more receptive as a result.
Great observations as usual.
Sidebar: I had no idea that his name is "Saint John", I just assumed it was Sinjin. There used to be a pro volleyball player named Sinjin Smith. Maybe that's just a more casual version of the more traditional name.
G8, you may know I am a James Bond freak. There's an extended bit in A View to a Kill that is supposed to be funny, but isn't, of Bond undercover as Saint John Smythe, which everyone pronounces "saint john smeyeth" and he corrects them "sinjin smith" over and over. So I knew right away.
Through the wonders of the Interwebs, I've heard that the song Paul greeted his Brit Overlords with was "Jerusalem." It's a hymn (based on a William Blake poem) that evolved into a great British patriotic anthem. The poem is known by its first line:
"And did those feet in ancient times…"
(A quick look at Wikipedia shows the poem/hymn worthy of further, detailed discussion.)
KBH–No it's not. See my post about Lane in the episode general thread.
The funny thing about tickets to "Oliver!" is that not only is it an English play, these gents would have almost certainly seen it already if they had even the slightest interest in theater. It had been running for three years in the West End, and would continue for a total of more than 2500 performances there. Its Broadway run was a landmark of the British Invasion, a full year before the pop stars started to come across.
St. John is pronounced "Sinjin" just as Ralph is pronounced "Rafe." There was a St. John in Jane Eyre, whose heroine was a young woman who works for a living.
Whether or not Joan got enough tickets, La Grenouille was at the height of its fame. NYC's fine dining scene was dominated by French restos – Lutece, as we know, La Cote Basque, and La Grenouille, which was near St. Patrick's Cathedral It was gorgeous, with beautiful floral arrangements. I ate there during a Restaurant Week before it closed and had a lovely classic French meal and a French waiter, who brought me a raspberry tarte that was not on the RW menu after I spoke to him in French.
Are there any thoughts on all of the lights being turned on and off? Sally being afraid of the dark, Joan having to turn the lights off after Greg gives her his bad news… were there more?
The light going out for the projector light to be turned on. Don staring up at the light fixture. It's definitely a thing.
“Joan gets two tickets for the PPL representatives to see Oliver! Only two, although there are three men visiting. Realizing this was actually what prompted me to post. ”
I could be wrong, but I thought the appearance of Guy was a complete surprise to everyone. Joan would, perhaps, not have known there was a third person in the group.
But yes, the absence of his ticket does foreshadow ~
Nothing like a little maiming to make things work out alright, lol. That tractor scene really shocked the heck outa me. I bet Weiner is a Tarantino fan.
When Joan said she got two tickets for Oliver, I assume she meant she got two tickets for each individual. One for them, one for a date. Seems like an odd oversight for someone like Joan to make.
But I definitely agree, it all seems like foreshadowing. I don’t really know what for, but given it’s placement, I assume it means things are going to start getting worse for Sterling Cooper. Like the changes we’ve been seeing foreshadowed all season are actually going to happen, or at least take shape in a real way.
I also wonder if this means things will get worse for Don. Since they made such a big deal about Guy being a fan of Don’s work, but yet Lane always seems annoyed with Don’s diva behavior, it seems like it should also screw up Don’s position at Sterling Cooper. Though landing the Hilton account might screw that up.
Just a little one:
In ‘The Fog’ I think Paul says regarding Lois ‘perhaps when Joan goes I can finally get rid of her’ (I’m paraphrasing).
Lois is almost certainly going to lose her job as a result of Joan’s goodbye party shenanigans (‘I can’t believe I’m going to miss this’ is said by Joan a few cuts before the fatal moment). Result Kinsey!
BTW, did everyone notice how much better a “doctor” Joan has turned out to be than Greg when she treats Guy?
MM, yes, it was amazing.
Thanks for the info, brenda. The volleyball player I referenced actually spelled his name "Sinjin", but maybe he just spelled it that way for an easier pronunciation.
Didn’t Roger mention his father’s loss of a hand in the car crash that killed him? Said they didn’t reattach it for the viewing?
In the beginning when Bobby comes into Betty's room, I noticed his shirt had dirt splattered on it. The blood splatters on the Mad Men's shirts at the end were a similar pattern. If that was deliberate foreshadowing, it's CREEPY.
This was an interesting take on foreshadowing…
“Mad Men†has always been about the moment before — before all the accumulating tensions sent people’s world into a tailspin. But last night, I suspect, was the moment the show signaled that the characters have passed the point of no return, though they don’t know it."
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/mad_m…
The "tragedy with a happy ending" line bothered me. I supposed it was how it was delivered, so flip like St John does not believe in the tragedy only the happy ending.
I had been thinking about tragedies with "happy endings" (and comedies that do not have them). For some reason the ones I generally think of are operas like Jenufa and Simon Bocanerga. They do not make light of what came before. That there is anything that has the semblence of a happy ending is near miraculous in the plot, and more importantly the kind of miracle that you can believe in.
As far as Mad Men maybe it just fits the tone. It is deffinately a shift towards the "heavier" parts of the 1960s (riots, asasinations, the stupidity of much of Cold War philosphy countered by the backlash against Vietnam involvement).
Odd that as much as SC is "the old guard" reluctant to deal with anything non-WASPy they got put down by the new bosses. It almost puts them with the "never trust anyone over thirty crowd"/"resist all authority."
icapturethecastle:
"Agent orange"=infamous exfoliant of Vietnam War
John Deere tractor=also gets rid of unwanted growth
Okay, it's a stretch.
#7 – Matt – so true!
The event itself is foreshadowing other things… the Civil Rights Act changed the way the American workplace (or began the change) functioned. It was the precursor to other Acts – Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, Pregnancy Act 1978, Americans with Disabilities Act 1990, FMLA 1993 – not to mention Sexual Harassment (which was not a law per se) … so the idea of drinking, partying and acting crazy at work is coming to an end …
foreshadowing of a new workplace, foreshadowing of "technologically advanced and complicated machinary" not being properly and responsibly used, etc.
As was said on the open thread – the blood on Joan's dress foreshadow's Jackie Kennedy.
It's foreshadowing inside foreshadowing!
#15: "If the tractor incident is seen as for-shadowing Vietnam than the inability of the employees at SC (excluding Joan) to deal with random chaos is worrying."
Total speculation: Could it be that Joan will actually be affected by Vietnam more than most employees at SC? Now that Greg's "just" a doctor contemplating moving to some far-flung place like Alabama to practice surgery, might he be one of the first we see heading to the warzone to (a) be a surgeon and (b) prove what a man he is?
Is there an urban/rural thing here as well? It's no accident that Ken is from Vermont and understood that equipment, respected it (as he says later) – and the city people did not…
Also – in the "new age" parlance where every illness represents a spiritual imbalance – anything to do with FEET (a theme this season) represents "fear of moving forward".
Just a quick note to clarify that La Grenouille endures and is basically the last of the old French classics from the 60s. My wife and I were there a few weeks ago. It's right out of the show. We thought the dinner with the Pryces may have been set there.
http://www.la-grenouille.com/
Nice observations y’all. I very much like that MM uses foreshadowing in language and image – and I believe it is very intentional.
Anne B: not a stretch at all. We had all hell breaking loose this week at SC and will soon in Vietnam. Gene’s comment is a great example of MM’s foreshadowing.
Likewise Helen Bishop and icapture, the many references to feet, toes, fingers may not literally foreshadow, but they keep with the motifs that link the season together and help us make sense of things. They will likely pop up again as the rest of S3 rolls out.
Don's fingers touching the May Day grass links to Mr. Maul’s observation catch about all the greens this season. Even indoors we have lawn mowers, talk of golf and of course a really spectacular dress for Joan. By the way did you notice at lunch that Guy says in essence that the cutting is over at SC – but entirely over. . .
The milk and eggs of S3 didn’t show up quite so much this week but we had a lot of cleavage from Joan and some nice moments with Betty being a good Mom to baby Gene. We also see “baby Roger†covet Bert’s pudding. Poor Roger appears to be regressing in his career (as with his personal life) to the extent that his is disappearing entirely!
Totally agree with Deborah on the lights – but that light bulb has sure not gone off over my head – I have no clue. What do you all think the lights are about? Remember the fly in the light fixture in S1?
I love this show because it truly appreciates the tools of literature. Why even Mr. Pryce is appreciating that Tom Sawyer might have a lesson or two for him.
What about Don's accident with the jai alai– unfamiliarity with a new product, crashing glass, destroyed ecosystems– as foreshadowing of the tractor tragedy. Joan restores order as she cleans up the ant farm and immediately steps in with Guy's injury.
samantha, I like that one.
Beautiful anagram, Sir Hillary!
There were those two lovely shots of Don under the ministrations of the long, sharp razor and the motorized massagers.
Absolutely right samantha. Don and Joan are rocks in the chaos. They keep cool heads and hold things together. Joan also cleans things up. It is interesting that this is about as big a mess as we have seen at SC and while Joan does the initial work, she is not going to be there to clean everything up this time.
What's gonna happen to Joan? I can't imagine how her story will be followed if she's away from the office.
My only guess is that the TV department will explode (only department to get bigger) and they'll ask her to come back and help. Which I doubt.
I can't believe how that character (Joan) used to annoy me and how she charmed me in just one little accordion ditty.
portiaslegacy – the delivery of that line jumped out at me, too. Maybe it was just an excess of "stiff upper lip," but it seemed like St. John was laughing at both the idea of tragedy AND of a happy ending, as if both ends of the emotional spectrum were equally silly and embarrassing.
Great catches! I had noticed the foreshadowings with Lois and Roger’s father, but I hadn’t thought about the Oliver! reference. It makes me think how much Joan reminds me of Oliver’s heroine, Nancy – a woman who is the life and soul, loved by everyone, but who is oppressed by an abusive husband. Joan could have sang “As long as he needs me” last night after Greg had gone to bed and it would have been perfectly in character. There was no happy ending for Nancy.
I guess the main person who got a happy ending out of the lawnmower tragedy was Lane. But it was surprising how much laughter surrounded this terrible accident. Roger got laughs out of the boys even as they were sitting in Paul’s blood spattered office. My favourite moment was Don and Joan sharing a laugh over the incident, then having to quickly put on grim faces as the Brits arrived at the hospital.
I’m fascinated by the JFK reading of the lawnmower tragedy posted by pandagon. Joan will the blood stained dress was very striking. Red and Green are Joan’s colours. That’s why she got married at Christmas. Now it’s blood on a green dress. If we are to believe the foreshadowings in MM then this feels like a very dark omen for Joan.
Using the JFK analogy I’m also wondering if it omnious that Lois crashed the lawnmower into Pete’s office. He was the shows symbolic Kennedy in S1 and his position at Sterling Cooper is looking increasingly at risk.
Crap, falafel, Joan's wedding colors. That's brilliant!
The last song was Bob Dylan’s Song to Woody, which he actually sang to Woody Guthrie on his death bed.
“Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
’Bout a funny ol’ world that’s a-comin’ along.
Seems sick an’ it’s hungry, it’s tired an’ it’s torn,
It looks like it’s a-dyin’ an’ it’s hardly been born.”
The melody itself is based on a Wooddy Guthrie song called the 1913 Massacre which is about miners and their families being killed at a Christmas Party.
How about the SS Sterling Cooper steaming into the tumult of the 60's as represented by the ocean liner on Joan's cake? I wonder if the management of SC will make any course adjustments or collide with the iceberg.
I guess Pryce's need to take his glasses off for his superiors' visit might be a hint that PPL won't tolerate any sign of imperfection or weakness in their executives – hence Guy's post-injury career dive.
Small point: Ken says that Lois got her scarf caught in the paper tray of the copier. The paper tray? How in the name of God does THAT happen?
@ 38 Stella- I hadn't thought of Dr. Harris going to Vietnam, but the timing would work out pretty well. I'm not sure what doctors serving in Vietnam made, but it might not be enough for Joan to live on. Sterling-Cooper (especially Roger, because he respects serving your country) would give her something. It might not be her old job back, but possibly something in media, as others have suggested.
Dr. Harris does feel he has something to prove, and I could see him volunteering. It's also possible he may have seen it as a way to advance his career. I don't know what kind of status doctors had coming out of a war, but I'd imagine the experience was probably valued by hospitals, especially emergency rooms.
This may be a minor foreshadowing, but did you notice that Hooker's normally slicked hair was mussed into bangs during the lawnmower scene? A foreshadowing of the Beatle cut to come on many British young men and eventually American ones. This was the first time we saw Hooker laid back enough to allow his hair to be 'messy' in public (no doubt he was taking Ken's lead in being a chair to a secretary), but it's a subtle foreshadow of the style of the mod youth movement to come.
*****
"Are You a Mod or a Rocker?
Ringo: "No, I'm a Mocker." (From A Hard Day's Night)
Being an Army officer's wife would certainly give Joan the perfect cover forgoing back to work without losing face. Everyone would just assume that with Greg away she had too much time and an empty, lonely house on her hands, and not that she really needed the money.