Every night, Don walks in and pours himself a drink. It’s not the “I need a drink” of a bad day, it’s a routine. It’s easy not to notice, because drinking is so ubiquitous on Mad Men, and so much more a part of these people’s daily lives than we’re used to. Drinking in the office? Ho ho!
But when Don was sleeping in baby Gene’s room (was that The Grown-Ups or at the beginning of Shut the Door. Have a Seat?) we see there’s a bottle on the nightstand next to Don’s bed. That struck me as a different level of commitment to drinking; that seemed somehow hardcore, and that’s when I noticed how much more Don drank routinely. That’s when I started seeing (when rewatching) that routine drink. So now I wonder, was the drinking so routine, so automatic, so minute-I-get-in-the-door in Seasons 1 & 2? I’ll have to look.
But we learned something else in Shut the Door. Have a Seat: Don started young. Dick Whitman was drinking whiskey at age ten.
Definitely hardcore.
A person can go his whole life drinking the way Don does and not spill into an alcoholic crisis. He can gradually get softer and meaner and more of a drunk without landing in the gutter or becoming Freddy Rumsen or going to A.A. Or there can be a crisis. We don’t know. But I am convinced that this is serious drinking, and I wonder what we’re going to see in Season 4 about it.
65 Responses to “Don's drinking”
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Maybe they’ll turn Don on.
Don was was smoking pot before Peggy tried it.
I would just make the case that it's not even the volume of alcohol Don consumes that's the issue, it's his overall behavior. We saw him leave Anna Draper's last year determined to make the best of his marriage, and finally getting Betty to take him back. The first episode of the season, he's trying to sleep with a stewardess he just met. He knows his daughter has a "crush" on her teacher, and he sleeps with her. His urge for gratification overtakes his better judgement.
I've argued elsewhere that alcoholics deal with an ongoing struggle between pathos and logos. When you're feeling down and overwhelmed, or if it seems like the stress of life is getting the best of you, your emotional needs (pathos) are telling you to take a drink or feed whatever your addiction is. However, your sense of logic (logos) tells you, "You know better." It's when logos is able to keep pathos in check that you know you're winning the battle. If pathos ever wins, you've lost.
re: Dark Peggy #9:
Of course Don exercised. Wasn't it in S1 when they showed him using that arm flex thingy in his office with a cig hanging out of his mouth at the same time? LOL!!
actually IIRC they've had six Bobbys. So I don't find it surprising that they haven't given any of them much to do.
# 53 – "Don was was smoking pot before Peggy tried it."
I think I remember him watching, as the Beats in Midge's Greenwich Village apartment smoked it, but I thought he passed, when the pot was offered to him.
[I'll need to re-watch my Season One DVDs]
I agree it is serious drinking but I'm of the opinion it's fairly representative of that go-go upper- middle metropolitan business milieu. The blue collar workers needed all their energy and clear-headed work ethic to move on up the ladder while it appeared they could. They couldn't afford the unending buzz. The white collar tribe was told to live the good life and they could so they did. And Don's pressing flesh with the group business barons that definitely could afford to and felt entitled to the eternal mixer.
It's a part of the job, a tool of the trade for him. I'm not sure it has to turn out prematurely disasterous for him. I've worked in the hospitality industry for some time and there are many grades of functioning alcoholics at all levels of the corporate structure. Most of them will make it to their sixties like everyone else before things start to uncinematically come loose and stall out.
Don appears to handle all that alcohol pretty well and he doesn't seem to need a taste to quiet the shakes or such. The brews on the Saturday to build Sally's playhouse? hey Sheryl Crow likes a good in the morning and look how well she's done. He does seem to binge when he's depressed or stressed, but self-medication alone isn't necessarily a bad thing. Maybe the finality of the divorce and the new work setting will free him up emotionally and let him get back to padding those five pages of the uncompleted novel I know the poor bastard has hidden in some other drawer in some other place in that house.
He needs to take Suzanne to Pamplona, drink some wine and watch the bulls run; Papa Draper is scratching to get out.
And nothing against the rest of you fine folks but I think if I was stuck in an airport lounge waiting for a connection and those NorthWest pilots from a few years back were spoiling for a challenge, I'd hope Dark Peggy, gypsy and Fatphil were flying stand-by. We might stand a shot (or two, ha!) against those seasoned pro's
I couldn't think of a better way to spend a lay over than as the foursome you quoted. Well done, lom
Cheers lom! Sounds like a good time.
And a virtual Slainte to all of you, too!
There is much jolly camaraderie and good will in this fading thread! Huzzah! And Happy Christmas! (typed without Lane's deservedly ironic subtext)
And slainte! back at ya good women and men of BoK.
Here's one from Eire I always try to work into any festive gathering. Lately I began to imagine Bunk and Jimmy hoisting some Jamey in agreement, most probably with Roger and Paul if I may intermingle the fictional merrymakers:
" Let's toast your casket, which will be lovingly crafted from the wood of a hundred year-old oak, the seed for which we shall plant tomorrow."
Paul would be frustrated that he didn't write this down first no doubt.
I stumbled upon this site while snooping around for more — http://inspire.luquette.org/irish_blessings.htm
That's beautiful, LOM.
(demurely rolls eyes, looks to the floor and blushes.)
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