Don's "Welcome"
Exactly why did Don Draper sign the contract at the end of Seven Twenty Three? Ostensibly, it was because of Bert Cooper’s threat to reveal his true identity. But I think Don’s encounter with the grifters has as much to do with the decision as does Cooper’s efforts at extortion.
The morning after getting rolled by Doug and Sandy, the hitchhikers Don picks up, he finds a handwritten note from them. It reads (bold added):
“Thanks for the help. We left you your car. Your Welcome“
“You’re Welcome” is misspelled as “Your Welcome” in the note. At first, it struck me as a reference to the fact that the couple eschewed formal education. However, there may be more going on here (this is Mad Men afterall). The note could also reflect the rocky “welcome” Don has received upon his first foray into the new social paradigm introduced in S3.
At the end of Love Among the Ruins, Don is fixated by Miss Farrell’s dance around a Maypole at his children’s school. The green lawn, trees, and plants all seem to symbolize a new perspective that presents Don with an alternative to his current worldview. Certainly, when compared to faults of the old empire (sexism, racism, homophobia, greed, etc.) and, what is for the restless Don, its confining institutions (job, marriage, and children), one can understand the spell this casts upon him. However, Don and Miss Farrell have an unusual exchange in Seven Twenty Three that hints at a potentially darker side to her nature.
Feeling trapped when Betty questions Don over his reluctance to sign a three year contract with Sterling Cooper, he bolts. Don spots the couple on the road and offers them a ride. In retrospect, the forced politeness Doug and Sandy exhibit early on is eerie. Doug uses charged language such as “spooks” for CIA agents and nicknames Don “Cadillac” to mock his “establishment” ties. They are clearly rebeling against the world with which Don associates himself. In spite of (or perhaps because of) this, Don, fleeing from his own “prison,” is attracted to the couple. He creepily accompanies them to a motel room. After getting drugged, beaten and robbed, Don finds the note.
Doug and Sandy could have taken Don’s car. But, I’d argue, because the blue Cadillac represents everything they’re revolting against, it’s left behind.
The new realities taking hold in S3 will be certainly be epitomized by such things as the peace movement and John Lennon. Yet, at the other end of the “anti-establishment” continuum will arise less noble figures like The Hell’s Angels and Charles Manson.
Don picks himself up and heads back to Betty and three years with Sterling Cooper. Of course, he’ll venture into Suzanne’s world again in subsequent episodes. But at that moment, Don chooses to stay with the “devil” he knows.
Basket of Kisses: The unofficial blog of AMC's Mad Men. Where all the cool kids meet & greet to talk about Don Draper, Janie Bryant, Christina Hendricks, Jon Hamm, Matthew Weiner, & subtexty things.
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December 2nd, 2009 at 9:57 am
This post makes me re-think the comment, "Don't know where you'll be in three years?"
Of course Betty said this to assert herself, and we applauded her for subtly-yet-assertively calling Don on his tendency to run, but now we realize —
No, he honestly doesn't. And neither does she. No one ended up where they thought they would.
December 2nd, 2009 at 3:48 pm
And yet, let's appreciate the penmanship. That's a relic of an earlier age, when students were taught to hold a pen and write in cursive before they learned anything worth writing about.
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:01 pm
No one ended up where they thought they would.
Right you are, Sarah. This was the most modern aspect of season 3. If you think about it, no one on the show ended up where they thought they would. Nor does anyone in real life. I didn't, my mother didn't, my father didn't … and that's true for almost everyone I know, of both sexes.
The only person I know who did get the life she expected is barely hanging on to it. I mean, by her fingernails: and in defiance of everything, including the turning world. I'm not sure I'd want to live that way. In general, we don't end up where we thought we would — not just because the world changes, but because we decide to go with it. To do otherwise is, after a certain point, insane.
In some ways, living the unexpected life does have that after-a-car-wreck feeling … like, how did I get here, and what is that building doing lying on its side?
But anything would feel that way if you skipped the middle bits. Say, if you missed the fight, the midnight drive, or the smack upside the head in the motel room.
Those might have been good things to miss, in Don's case. But they offered context: to him and to us. All that stuff — where we've been, what we did, what we wish we could leave behind, but can't, for whatever reason — is the stuff that builds our stories. Gives us not just the things we tell others, but the things we finally know we are.
God bless it: that's character.
Thanks, Matt! GREAT POST.
December 2nd, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Ah, I'm of the generation that learned Cursive, however my grandfather had been taught the much more elegant Copperplate, which he could still employ up until his death in the 1970s.
Scroll down to explanation of the handwriting style: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copperplate
Example: http://www.lib.unc.edu/instruct/manuscripts/image...
December 2nd, 2009 at 7:01 pm
And here I always thought penmanship was a nun thing. (That's who drummed it into us. And yes, I mean 'drummed' more or less literally.)
Wrong again! Love that!
December 5th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
What is exactly is the generation that learned cursive? Myself, and my friends in their twenties learned cursive, used it for a few years on select assignments, and by fifth or sixth grade most assignments were typed, not classwork but certainly essays.
December 18th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Doug and Sandy probably left Don the Caddy because he would definitely report the theft of his car to the police. I'm sure it's not the first time they pulled their "elopement" scam on anyone and knew the men they picked to rob would be too embarrassed by it to report it, even to their own families. I mean, especially in the world of 1963, how would a man tell his wife he picked up a young guy and girl, went to a cheap motel with them, drank too much, then was drugged, beaten and robbed….that would put a husband in the doghouse (if not worse) NOW!