Thursday, September 2, 2010

Manly Mad Men thought

As long as we're discusisng old-fashioned manly virtues, let me admit that I really want Don Draper to succeed.

As I've said many times before, not perfect but good is my goal and don Draper, for all his faults, has shown himself to be morally superior to everyone else on the show, with the possible exceptions of Joan and Roger.

I want to see him pull it out and triumph this year. I worry that Matt Weiner won't let that happen but I can see how it could happen.

5 comments:

  1. I don't know how you define moral superiority, but from Roger's flashbacks it looks as though Don faked his own hiring at S-C, or plied Roger with enough booze until he did agree to hire him but couldn't remember it afterwards. If you recall, in the flashback, when Don shows up for work Roger has no recollection of hiring him. As you note in your earlier post about parallel lives, this comes back to bite Don in the ass when Jane Siegel's cousin shows up. However, the difference there is that the cousin doesn't use subterfuge to get hired, Don--to use an expression--steps in it himself and thanks to Peggy's integrity has to "fix it." I applaud the cousin for holding out for a real job instead of a payoff or contract work. He didn't even know why Draper was suddenly interested in him, but he negotiated with him on his terms, honestly, and up front when both were stone cold sober. Don hired him because he had no choice. There have been comments on the other sites to the effect that the cousin is a "nebbish." Why, because he's not tall and good-looking like Don Draper? What better qualifications did Draper have when he finagled his hiring at S-C--selling cars and then furs? I don't think it was an accident that Weiner cast someone short and "nerdy" looking for the role. He says all he has is his relationship to Jane and his good ideas. I know what its like to be in that position, except I had no relationship to any Jane. If Don were truly morally superior he would take this kid under his wing and mentor him, as I see it that will be the true test and maybe he will do that eventually.

    Weiner has a reputation for creating characters that people love to hate, i.e. The Sopranos. Draper is becoming increasingly dark and less likable, and less able to get what he wants simply by talking smooth and flashing his Pepsodent smile. I think what we're seeing is the disintegration of Don Draper as evidenced by that, the heavy drinking, and the fact that he introduced himself to Doris the waitress as Dick. However, disintegration precedes integration, and while you want to see Don Draper--which is a created persona--succeed, I would like to see Dick Whitman succeed. But I don't think its going to happen before the end of this season, we're almost half-way through at this point, and I think that will take much longer to accomplish. I think Weiner will leave us with a cliff-hanger ending to the season.

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  2. And no, I'm not short and "nerdy" looking, i'm 6'1" tall! My point about that was you can't get hired without experience, but you can't get experience unless you get hired, so you're in a Catch-22--unless you have an "in" like Jane, or resort to trickery and deception like Draper did with Roger. I've known people who had the former, but I've never known anyone who did the latter and got away with it, unless I'm still naive.

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  3. I think the thing to remember though with fictional characters is that someone made them that way. Don's fails when the screenwriters decide they want him to fail and he succeeds when they want him to succeed.

    In real life, whether you do well or not depends (mostly) on whether you have the virtues it takes to succeed. On TV or in a novel, it could be just a whim of the writer's.

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  4. Absolutely, these are not real people and of course the writers are telling a story. And I think we have to assume that this is a story worth telling, not some adolescent girl romance novel or fantasy. But we treat all fictional characters as though they are real, if we didn't they would hold no interest for us because they would not be BELIEVABLE. And I think the story Weiner and his writers are telling is about Dick Whitman, not Don Draper, another clever slight-of-hand. In the real world the "virtue" Dick Whitman would need to succeed is self-acceptance and not feeling he has to hide behind the persona of Don Draper. That in itself would be the measure of his success whether he stayed in advertising or decided to fix cars like the guys he met on one of his earlier trips to CA to see Anna. If Weiner does anything less--and I don't think he will because he's too smart and wouldn't lower himself--Mad Men will be nothing but a glorified soap opera.

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  5. "But we treat all fictional characters as though they are real, if we didn't they would hold no interest for us because they would not be BELIEVABLE."

    That didn't come out right. What I meant to say was that when we don't treat fictional characters as though they are real its usually because the writer failed to make them believable. The most compelling fictional characters that grab us are the ones that are the most real or the most believable.

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