Don and his father(s)

We already discussed Don’s relationship with Connie Hilton being that of a son and father. And certainly the father/son issues of Wee Small Hours have escaped exactly no one’s perception.

I love how, on the “Inside Mad Men” video on AMC’s site, Matt Weiner says that Don really means it when he thanks Connie. As if we couldn’t tell. Dude, the guy teared up. Jon Hamm was amazing in that scene, and there could be no doubt in the audience that Draper was moved to his core, moved in a way he perhaps had never been before.

And Hamm was equally brilliant when being rejected by Connie. “What do you want, love?” “YES!” Don’s floundering, his longing to have pleased, is so adolescent, so innocent, that it breaks the heart. He performed for Connie in a way he never could for Archie. I imagine he tried, in many, similar ways, for Archie (well, without the art department’s help) when he was a kid. I imagine his continuing need to please an unavailable father fueled his drive to succeed, his creativity, even his charm. But Archie, as we saw in Seven Twenty Three, would never be pleased by Don, and somewhere Don believed he’d given up. Until Connie.

But what I want to talk about is what happened in between the two important interactions in this episode between the son and his surrogate father.

Don fired Sal.

A Basketcase pointed out in comments that Don would not have fired Sal before having signed a contract. Good insight, but it got me thinking. I’m sure that Don takes the contract seriously (people who don’t take them seriously don’t refuse to sign them), but is that really the motivation for what he did? He had the MSG option”MSG wanted Paul off the account; Don told them Paul was off, kept him on and told him to keep a low profile. He could have done the same for Sal: Lee Garner wasn’t exactly going to be checking the Sterling Cooper payroll.

Here’s what I see: Don is told that he’s an “angel,” and that what Connie values is “goodness.” Mind you, Connie said the campaign should have goodness, but he also wants Don reading the Bible; surely “angel” is another religious reference.

I believe that Don fired Sal to please Connie. Don fired Sal to be “good.” Don, like most people in 1963 (and many people today), probably like Sal, believes homosexuality is sinful and wrong. He is willing to look the other way, he is willing to allow that people, that he, that Sal, that Roger, that all of them, do bad things, until suddenly he has a loving father telling him that goodness matters.

Roberta and I were discussing the religion of the characters. I have never forgotten that Don gave the “Jesus” speech to Belle Jolie. Don may not be religious, but he speaks the language of belief, and I’d bet you anything that if he filled out a form asking for his religion, he wouldn’t say “none.” He has a casual, uninvolved religion, but it’s rooted in his childhood, and it’s the young Dick Whitman that Connie touches, it’s the young Dick Whitman who wants to please this new father, and be good for him.

So it’s the young Dick Whitman who drives out the sinner.