Weekend Stuff
Oct. 4th, 2010 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxSupernatural: Eh. But, I was never a great fan just a casual one so I'm really not an authority on the show.
Alabama V. Florida: The stadium was pretty electric for the game. Unfortunately, the traffic was HELL! Seriously, the game was over at 10pm. We didn't make it out of the parking deck until midnight. And it took until 2am to make it home! I was actually fine yesterday, but it's caught up with me today. 5pm this afternoon and I was suddenly, completely exhausted.
Mad Men: Good episode but not as good as the previous two episodes (but then the previous two episodes were pretty awesome). Anyway,
I thought there was a great deal of meta commentary on Don in this week's episode. There was a moment where I was struck by the thought of how so many of the primary characters are aspects of Don. Peggy has taken on a lot of the Don quailities in creative. She now sees what people want and has the creative spark as illustrated when she came up with the romantic campaign for Playtex.
Last week I was struck by how similar Lane and Don are. He's the abused child trying to break free, who broke away from his family but would like contact with his kids, etc.
And this week Roger was very much a Don stand-in in a lot of very unflattering ways.
Both Roger and Don were running scared and returning to old patterns. Roger is back to wanting Joan to take care of and to baby him. Don returned to his old pattern as well-- right down to the hair-color-coding. His wife and semi-official girlfriends have all been blonde. The piece on the side is a brunet. When the blonde didn't offer simple (and simplified) comfort with a pat on the head like he wanted, he sought comfort in the more amenable, younger, 'care-taker' (or at least that's the way she's presented herself) dark-haired woman.
Like Roger with Joan, Don wanted someone to make him feel better. So say "Poor Don" and cuddle his pain. He wanted it to be about him. It was almost like a big neon sign that said if you thought that Don's straying issue was about Betty, you're wrong. It's about Don. The less Betty was about him, the more it was also about her, the more he sought out someone who would be just about him and not demand anything of him but some fake fantasies and sex.
When Faye tries for a bit of relationship parity, he can't handle it. And when he's in stress, he seeks comfort in the least demanding of places. Don't think he wants a grown-up answer to his problems. He doesn't. He wants someone to give him a breast to cradle his head, and not much more.
I don't think it was at all an accident that Megan was in a soft, feminine, flowery blouse, or that she's been catering to please him for a while now (and she may have more than just an "I want his magical dick" motivation). She was prominently being shown as a care-taker the other week (when it made Faye feel inadequate). And it wasn't a writing accident that she noted that Don knew very little about her. As he said last week, he's tired. He doesn't want to deal with his issues. He wants to forget them, to gloss them over, like simplify the world into a glossy, pretty, comforting ad that doesn't come with messy real-life stuff that he doesn't want to deal with. Don wants someone who caters to him and his needs... just as Roger sought out Joan to pat his boo-boos and make him feel better. It was an old pattern for Roger just as this is a very old pattern for Don.
This isn't new for Don (in fact it's become the Don Draper cliche -- look at him go to the closest thing with a skirt and look how he avoids, avoids, avoids). I think the old hat of it, the very repetition of it, was very much the point. He was going back to his old pattern. The drinking, the sex, the blaming others. Hope no one thought that once free of Betty he'd actually change, because he hasn't.
It isn't about the women in his life or the specific woman involved. He's reverted to the old pattern, seeking comfort where there is no commitment, lying to the person who thinks she's in the 'real' relationship to him, who has expectations of honesty and real intimacy. Don is running away, just as Roger was running away all weekend, denying responsibility for his own mistakes, playing pretend to make things seem better than they were, and seeking comfort from someone else without any thought about the position he's putting her in (now Joan knows that Roger could have spoken sooner and that he's completely full of shit. This on top of the way that he failed her last week, is just straight-up inexcusable).
Roger was very much the cowardly reflection of Don's issues. They were both scared and stressed and... Don and Roger started seeking people to pat them on the head and tell them it wasn't their fault, it'll be okay, don't feel bad. You're wonderful.
And I didn't buy for a moment that Don would actually have compromised himself for Faye had she been in a similar position. In case we thought that was true, we had the example of Pete, who just last week threw himself on his sword to protect Don only to have Don yell at him this week. Because, for Don, it's always first and foremost about Don (and I don't think Don's later 'defense' of Pete to Roger was a way of making amends to Pete. It was because Pete was a convenient hammer to bludgeon Roger with).
In business as well as in personal relationships, Don is going to protect Don first (and I think a lot of this was foreshadowed with the glow-coat/Clio issues earlier in the season with Peggy, where he quite possibly took all the credit for what was at least in part -- and may have for the most part been -- Peggy's idea).
Don's affairs aren't about the women, not who he cheats on or who he cheats with, they're about him. And these issues aren't just in his sexual antics, they are there with the way he treats his co-workers. This is him. And all it took was cranking up the stress and he's returned to the same old lying pattern all over again... just as Roger tried to do with Joan.
Oh, and I've liked Abe from the first and think he and Peggy work as an interesting duo.
And I'm so glad Trudy was okay. After she'd been in labor two and a half days I was getting quite nervous that something horrible was going to happen. And apparently they cut the scene where Pete finally went to see Trudy and the baby:
http://blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/mad-men-season-4-episode-photos/episode-11-pete.php
Alabama V. Florida: The stadium was pretty electric for the game. Unfortunately, the traffic was HELL! Seriously, the game was over at 10pm. We didn't make it out of the parking deck until midnight. And it took until 2am to make it home! I was actually fine yesterday, but it's caught up with me today. 5pm this afternoon and I was suddenly, completely exhausted.
Mad Men: Good episode but not as good as the previous two episodes (but then the previous two episodes were pretty awesome). Anyway,
I thought there was a great deal of meta commentary on Don in this week's episode. There was a moment where I was struck by the thought of how so many of the primary characters are aspects of Don. Peggy has taken on a lot of the Don quailities in creative. She now sees what people want and has the creative spark as illustrated when she came up with the romantic campaign for Playtex.
Last week I was struck by how similar Lane and Don are. He's the abused child trying to break free, who broke away from his family but would like contact with his kids, etc.
And this week Roger was very much a Don stand-in in a lot of very unflattering ways.
Both Roger and Don were running scared and returning to old patterns. Roger is back to wanting Joan to take care of and to baby him. Don returned to his old pattern as well-- right down to the hair-color-coding. His wife and semi-official girlfriends have all been blonde. The piece on the side is a brunet. When the blonde didn't offer simple (and simplified) comfort with a pat on the head like he wanted, he sought comfort in the more amenable, younger, 'care-taker' (or at least that's the way she's presented herself) dark-haired woman.
Like Roger with Joan, Don wanted someone to make him feel better. So say "Poor Don" and cuddle his pain. He wanted it to be about him. It was almost like a big neon sign that said if you thought that Don's straying issue was about Betty, you're wrong. It's about Don. The less Betty was about him, the more it was also about her, the more he sought out someone who would be just about him and not demand anything of him but some fake fantasies and sex.
When Faye tries for a bit of relationship parity, he can't handle it. And when he's in stress, he seeks comfort in the least demanding of places. Don't think he wants a grown-up answer to his problems. He doesn't. He wants someone to give him a breast to cradle his head, and not much more.
I don't think it was at all an accident that Megan was in a soft, feminine, flowery blouse, or that she's been catering to please him for a while now (and she may have more than just an "I want his magical dick" motivation). She was prominently being shown as a care-taker the other week (when it made Faye feel inadequate). And it wasn't a writing accident that she noted that Don knew very little about her. As he said last week, he's tired. He doesn't want to deal with his issues. He wants to forget them, to gloss them over, like simplify the world into a glossy, pretty, comforting ad that doesn't come with messy real-life stuff that he doesn't want to deal with. Don wants someone who caters to him and his needs... just as Roger sought out Joan to pat his boo-boos and make him feel better. It was an old pattern for Roger just as this is a very old pattern for Don.
This isn't new for Don (in fact it's become the Don Draper cliche -- look at him go to the closest thing with a skirt and look how he avoids, avoids, avoids). I think the old hat of it, the very repetition of it, was very much the point. He was going back to his old pattern. The drinking, the sex, the blaming others. Hope no one thought that once free of Betty he'd actually change, because he hasn't.
It isn't about the women in his life or the specific woman involved. He's reverted to the old pattern, seeking comfort where there is no commitment, lying to the person who thinks she's in the 'real' relationship to him, who has expectations of honesty and real intimacy. Don is running away, just as Roger was running away all weekend, denying responsibility for his own mistakes, playing pretend to make things seem better than they were, and seeking comfort from someone else without any thought about the position he's putting her in (now Joan knows that Roger could have spoken sooner and that he's completely full of shit. This on top of the way that he failed her last week, is just straight-up inexcusable).
Roger was very much the cowardly reflection of Don's issues. They were both scared and stressed and... Don and Roger started seeking people to pat them on the head and tell them it wasn't their fault, it'll be okay, don't feel bad. You're wonderful.
And I didn't buy for a moment that Don would actually have compromised himself for Faye had she been in a similar position. In case we thought that was true, we had the example of Pete, who just last week threw himself on his sword to protect Don only to have Don yell at him this week. Because, for Don, it's always first and foremost about Don (and I don't think Don's later 'defense' of Pete to Roger was a way of making amends to Pete. It was because Pete was a convenient hammer to bludgeon Roger with).
In business as well as in personal relationships, Don is going to protect Don first (and I think a lot of this was foreshadowed with the glow-coat/Clio issues earlier in the season with Peggy, where he quite possibly took all the credit for what was at least in part -- and may have for the most part been -- Peggy's idea).
Don's affairs aren't about the women, not who he cheats on or who he cheats with, they're about him. And these issues aren't just in his sexual antics, they are there with the way he treats his co-workers. This is him. And all it took was cranking up the stress and he's returned to the same old lying pattern all over again... just as Roger tried to do with Joan.
Oh, and I've liked Abe from the first and think he and Peggy work as an interesting duo.
And I'm so glad Trudy was okay. After she'd been in labor two and a half days I was getting quite nervous that something horrible was going to happen. And apparently they cut the scene where Pete finally went to see Trudy and the baby:
http://blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/mad-men-season-4-episode-photos/episode-11-pete.php
