Thanks,

Cal.

Thanks very much – nice to know I have some readers

I just wanted to say I really enjoy your reviews of GoT, The Walking Dead and Doctor Who, oh, and not to mention, Being Human. You introduced me to In the Flesh (I think that’s the name of it).

As a life-long Who fan, it was great to find your stuff.

I think I arrived here looking for some reviews of Misfits (which I’ve also enjoyed).

So thanks!

Nevertheless, while it was obviously the most important bit in terms of the show’s themes, it only took up a few minutes of an otherwise enjoyable but none too deep episode. I suspect the whole sequence may have been Matthew Weiner’s contribution to Janet Leahy’s script, though I certainly can’t fault her characterisation and dialogue.

Don sees dead people. He has hallucinated his bother Adam, his ex-sort-of-wife Anna, PFC Dinkins… And his hallucinations have occasionally been prescient. When Anna died, he saw her before he got the call (although her death wasn’t altogether unexpected).

This week, Don hallucinated Dinkins and a pregnant Megan. So my question: was Don, however briefly, dead and in the afterlife, and not just having hashish hallucinations? And if so, when Megan says ‘she lives there…?’

On Uproxx I read this, “The wording during that sequence is very careful. During the hallucination, in addition to finding out that Megan is pregnant, Don asks, “How did you find me?” Megan responds, “But I live here.” The “here” is not California; it can’t be the party. She’s clearly not actually there, but she could be in the afterlife. A few seconds later, Draper sees a dead Private Dinkins, who says, “I heard you were here.” Again, “here” is in the afterlife. “Dying doesn’t make you whole,” he tells Don, which is when Don realizes that death won’t fulfill him, it won’t bring him the answers he seeks. He has to get out, back to the living because “everyone is looking for you,” as Megan suggests. That’s when he is pulled from the pool and returned to life, away from Megan, Private Dinkins, and that place where the doorman was briefly after he died. It’s a perfect bookend to the opening scene of the season.”

Mind blown yet?

Fair point – not one of my better choices of adjectives

This episode is set in 1968. The Civil Rights movement was past “burgeoning”.

To me, Don is a mixture of Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchannan.

I wonder. Is Weiner trying to tell us that all prostitutes have no problem with molesting teenagers against their wills?

But I hadn’t drawn the parallel with Sylvia, which is very revealing and shows yet more layers in Don’s psyche as to how he views women and why he finds losing this particular one so devastating. Don’s head must be a very mixed up place when it comes to women, blurring the distinction between mothers and lovers, and between love and sex. No wonder he’s so confused he spends half the time staring blankly into the middle distance!