This looks like what Don’s next incarnation will be, a series from here till whenever of short stories, on the road. He gave up his car and will now ride a carousel, around and around the roads of America. I’m guessing that like his affairs, he will travel on from one to another to another adventure or life experience. That way he’ll never be pinned down again.
What we saw here with Don was a short story. It was basically independent of everything else Mad Men. The Don character now seems independent, free, of Mad Men. You could edit out everything in this episode except Don and you have a clear three act self-contained short play.
A collection of short stories, for example Hemingway’s Nick Adams character, is what I think is going to be where Don goes. He is going to be a living collection of short stories as his life. His next future, his next re-invention is going to be travelling in carousel fashion on into one separate experience to another. It harkens back to the running hobo/gypsy thing. His life is going to no longer be a progressing novel where he is tied to the first chapter and forced toward the end chapter and stuck in between; but instead will now lead a life of short lived vignettes, one after another. That way there truly is no beginning and no end because it’s a collection, not a novel. That frees him. He has bailed from the novel before it ends and is too late (unlike Betty) and has landed in another book, a collection of short stories his own life finally will now control and write.
A novel is a singular, in depth and engrossing unit. It is anchored by a beginning and end and characters must progress on a predetermined path. A book of short stories is different. There is no anchoring. A collection is just that; different stories independent of one another not tied to each other. They have their own three acts within their own self, but they’re not tied and bound and chained to each other progressively and without choice like chapters in a novel are.
Don’s life is now not the novel of the tale of Don/Dick starting from childhood to Korea as act one, his plot point of meeting Roger and the Sterling Cooper to SCDP and everything in between timeline being act two, and sensing (perhaps the final straw of this sensing being him looking out seeing the Empire State building reaching tall and independent while the worker bees in his hive were all in unison buzzing) that the absorbing into McCann was act three beginning.
Betty has had three acts to her life and readily accepts act three of her novel. Don is in act three except he bails, he jumps, he runs. Betty’s act three will end in death. Don, for how much death has stalked him even within his own self, has now broken the bonds of a novel and chosen to escape death (again) and will live by virtue of breaking free of the predetermined jail that is his novel before it is too late and lands in the freedom of instead leading a life of short stories. Don wants nothing linear because that’s safe. A novel is linear and binding and predetermined upon it’s own self where a simple collection of experiences, short stories, are not binding to each other. Not being bound is what freedom is. Don is free. Beat up, but free.
I think he got beat up as paying the penance he never did pay for his military version crime of identity theft.
As much as he hid it in the early stages of Mad Men, he gradually grew to admitting it, out loud. It was always something that had to be the stimulus be it fear or confiding pillow talk that cracked the safe. And I think that’s why he didn’t really fight back here.
I think he found an acceptance in taking his beating as it gnawed in him more and more as time went on. He could have easily excused himself but he sat with those guys knowing trouble was ahead. We the viewer saw this was a bad, dark (the photography of the hall was great as it wasn’t bright, celebratory but kinda stark and almost creepy) situation and he willingly immersed himself in it; especially telling the other Korea guy to sit. It’s like he wanted his beating so sitting there with those guys was like turning yourself in. If you ever read Crime and Punishment, it’s somewhat the same thing as the Raskolnikov character.
Pete and Don mirror each other in the idea of rebirth, as we see the opposite with Betty to counterbalance that.
Don is a scammer. The other guys are scammers.
Along this line also , Don is being parallel treated in the same way his NY life treated his clients. Don is now a wined and dined, of sorts, client. It’s parallel in that the separate lines that never touch are the middle of nowhere and NYC, yet however head for the same destination, the closing of a business deal. Same direction and destination but never touch, like railroad tracks.
Then Don travelling to the past in both being in a town stuck in the past and then the typewriter fix, hardly the newfangled electric typewriter that a decade before Joan introduced to Peggy telling her not to be overwhelmed; and Pete travelling to the past both with going to Trudy and trying to get her to do business with her in the wife role from when he first started.
Randomness: Pet twice closing doors on people, what was that about? And I assume with the mention of Belgium and winter, the vet was talking the Battle of the Bulge. Pete talking with his brother, his brother saying, “It feels good, then it doesn’t”. That reminded me of Bobbie Barrett, “I like being bad then going home and being good”.
With the impending death of Betty, every woman he had any type of Dick Wittman tie to be it experience of confession is now gone. Every woman on the carousel wheel he spun and landed on is now gone.
Was one of the books Don was reading The Godfather? I had always thought the character was purposely named Don as in the mafia/Godfather. He is “Don” Draper, king of the boardroom and the bedroom etc. Especially with MW’s Sopranos roots. Just a thought I always had. (off-topic: supposedly when MW got the writing job on the Sopranos it was bc he submitted the script of the Mad Men pilot, got the Sopranos job, and Mad Men sat in a desk drawer for years till the Sopranos ended. Interesting and a cool lil story if true. Reminds me of when Don says everyone in this office has the first three chapters of a novel in their desk drawer)
3 comments:
The art of the short story.
This looks like what Don’s next incarnation will be, a series from here till whenever of short stories, on the road. He gave up his car and will now ride a carousel, around and around the roads of America. I’m guessing that like his affairs, he will travel on from one to another to another adventure or life experience. That way he’ll never be pinned down again.
What we saw here with Don was a short story. It was basically independent of everything else Mad Men. The Don character now seems independent, free, of Mad Men. You could edit out everything in this episode except Don and you have a clear three act self-contained short play.
A collection of short stories, for example Hemingway’s Nick Adams character, is what I think is going to be where Don goes. He is going to be a living collection of short stories as his life. His next future, his next re-invention is going to be travelling in carousel fashion on into one separate experience to another. It harkens back to the running hobo/gypsy thing. His life is going to no longer be a progressing novel where he is tied to the first chapter and forced toward the end chapter and stuck in between; but instead will now lead a life of short lived vignettes, one after another. That way there truly is no beginning and no end because it’s a collection, not a novel. That frees him. He has bailed from the novel before it ends and is too late (unlike Betty) and has landed in another book, a collection of short stories his own life finally will now control and write.
A novel is a singular, in depth and engrossing unit. It is anchored by a beginning and end and characters must progress on a predetermined path. A book of short stories is different. There is no anchoring. A collection is just that; different stories independent of one another not tied to each other. They have their own three acts within their own self, but they’re not tied and bound and chained to each other progressively and without choice like chapters in a novel are.
Don’s life is now not the novel of the tale of Don/Dick starting from childhood to Korea as act one, his plot point of meeting Roger and the Sterling Cooper to SCDP and everything in between timeline being act two, and sensing (perhaps the final straw of this sensing being him looking out seeing the Empire State building reaching tall and independent while the worker bees in his hive were all in unison buzzing) that the absorbing into McCann was act three beginning.
Betty has had three acts to her life and readily accepts act three of her novel. Don is in act three except he bails, he jumps, he runs. Betty’s act three will end in death. Don, for how much death has stalked him even within his own self, has now broken the bonds of a novel and chosen to escape death (again) and will live by virtue of breaking free of the predetermined jail that is his novel before it is too late and lands in the freedom of instead leading a life of short stories. Don wants nothing linear because that’s safe. A novel is linear and binding and predetermined upon it’s own self where a simple collection of experiences, short stories, are not binding to each other. Not being bound is what freedom is. Don is free. Beat up, but free.
I think he got beat up as paying the penance he never did pay for his military version crime of identity theft.
As much as he hid it in the early stages of Mad Men, he gradually grew to admitting it, out loud. It was always something that had to be the stimulus be it fear or confiding pillow talk that cracked the safe. And I think that’s why he didn’t really fight back here.
I think he found an acceptance in taking his beating as it gnawed in him more and more as time went on. He could have easily excused himself but he sat with those guys knowing trouble was ahead. We the viewer saw this was a bad, dark (the photography of the hall was great as it wasn’t bright, celebratory but kinda stark and almost creepy) situation and he willingly immersed himself in it; especially telling the other Korea guy to sit. It’s like he wanted his beating so sitting there with those guys was like turning yourself in. If you ever read Crime and Punishment, it’s somewhat the same thing as the Raskolnikov character.
The Mad Men mirroring.
Pete and Don mirror each other in the idea of rebirth, as we see the opposite with Betty to counterbalance that.
Don is a scammer. The other guys are scammers.
Along this line also , Don is being parallel treated in the same way his NY life treated his clients. Don is now a wined and dined, of sorts, client. It’s parallel in that the separate lines that never touch are the middle of nowhere and NYC, yet however head for the same destination, the closing of a business deal. Same direction and destination but never touch, like railroad tracks.
Then Don travelling to the past in both being in a town stuck in the past and then the typewriter fix, hardly the newfangled electric typewriter that a decade before Joan introduced to Peggy telling her not to be overwhelmed; and Pete travelling to the past both with going to Trudy and trying to get her to do business with her in the wife role from when he first started.
Randomness: Pet twice closing doors on people, what was that about? And I assume with the mention of Belgium and winter, the vet was talking the Battle of the Bulge. Pete talking with his brother, his brother saying, “It feels good, then it doesn’t”. That reminded me of Bobbie Barrett, “I like being bad then going home and being good”.
With the impending death of Betty, every woman he had any type of Dick Wittman tie to be it experience of confession is now gone. Every woman on the carousel wheel he spun and landed on is now gone.
Was one of the books Don was reading The Godfather? I had always thought the character was purposely named Don as in the mafia/Godfather. He is “Don” Draper, king of the boardroom and the bedroom etc. Especially with MW’s Sopranos roots. Just a thought I always had. (off-topic: supposedly when MW got the writing job on the Sopranos it was bc he submitted the script of the Mad Men pilot, got the Sopranos job, and Mad Men sat in a desk drawer for years till the Sopranos ended. Interesting and a cool lil story if true. Reminds me of when Don says everyone in this office has the first three chapters of a novel in their desk drawer)
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