OMG - Mad Men!!

[joyceinva]

I think we were talking about her sleeping with Duck and lying (well not really lying but evading the truth) with her boyfriend of this season. Now these are all things "the boys" do with impunity on this show and we more or less cheer them on.

I honestly think our problem was that we wanted Peggy to be better than them. Not to take them on at their own game, but to refuse to play their game and do better than them. I think we were all kind of shocked when one of us pointed out that we were holding Peggy to the same kind of double standard that women were held to in the 60's. We didn't care that Don Draper was a two-timing son-of-a-b*tch, he was still a fabulous character. But we hated to see Peggy use the men around her the same way Don used the women around him.

Not sure how I feel about a Don/Peggy romance. I'm not sure that Don is ready for a woman as smart as Peggy. His problem seems to be that he can only love a woman who doesn't really know him. Once Betty found out who he was, once Faye found out who he was, he couldn't get away from them fast enough. It reminds me of the old Groucho Marx quote "I wouldn't be in a club that would have me." Don can't love a woman who knows who he really is.

And Peggy knows the real him. Not the fact that he's Dick, but that he's a driven, completely unscrupulous bastard, but she's perfectly OK with that!

[numbat]

Mmmmmmm, now this might just be because i'm a sucker for a handsome face, but i don't actually see Don as a completely unscrupulous bastard.

I think what he does comes from the fact that he is still trying to come to terms with his history and in fact discover who he really is. Obviously he already knows the full story, but he's been living the lie of Don Draper for so long now, that the line between reality and fiction is almost too blurred to be successfully separated. He IS Dick Whitman and he IS Don Draper but what he needs to find out is who he really is NOW.

The issues with Betty run far deeper i think that just his affairs. I think that for as much as he loved Betty, theirs was a deeply unsatisfactory relationship from her side as well as his. Even before she knew what was going on, she wasn't happy with her role as wife and mother. She was looking for fulfilment that he and the children just couldn't give her. Similarly, he was clearly looking for something that he wasn't getting from Betty in his affairs (actual love perhaps???), a woman who was confident in her own skin, who didn't cling to him and expect him to provide her with happiness the way that Betty did. No excuse for having the affairs, but the reason. His search for himself and his search for real love.

He was cheating on Betty and slowly pushing her away long before she knew his history, and the reason i think that he ended up pushing Faye away was that she was too much like Betty (just with a career!). She was controlling and manipulative - in her job as well as her life - and in the end Don/Dick is looking for someone softer and less controlled and kinder, which i think is what he feels that he's found in Megan.

But what Megan lacks is the real intelligence of Peggy. And completely opposite to your take on it i know joyce, but the fact that Peggy does know the real him, is exactly why they will end up together. He is searching for himself and she knows him like no one else does. Not his history, but the "real" him, his essence as a man.

As i see it, Don married Betty and now Dick is marrying Megan, but the "real" him needs to be with Peggy, the woman who truly understands him

What an intruiging show that inspires so many different points of view!! I absolutely love it.

[joyceinva]

I see Don marrying Megan as a repeat of his relationship with Betty. Two beautiful college girls who went on to stereotypical careers (Betty the model, Megan the secretary) who more or less married the "boss." I believe it is hinted or outright said that Don met Betty through the agency.

Interesting take on the Betty/Don dynamic. They could both be seen as victims of their times. Betty slowly going crazy out there in suburbia (to bad nobody ever gave her a copy of the Feminine Mystique !). As for Don, he hated the person Betty had become, but he was reluctant to let her change, have a job, because that would reflect badly on him.

I agree that the relationship between Peggy and Don is the strongest in the whole series. They not only get each other, but they are the only ones who completely trust each other. Peggy may not know about Dick, but she knows the other demons in Don's soul.

And I don't think Don's a total bastard. Just mostly. But in a good way.