Saturday, April 20, 2013

 MAD MEN
Season 6
 Episode 3

1 comment:

Greg said...

Selfishness and consequences

I think that was the greater theme of this episode, specifically exploring the idea of whoring and it's different sorts of consequences. Seeing how it affects other around what basically is a selfish act was the ultimate point.

I thought Pete's story was the strongest. You have two individuals who have reeked havoc upon their own selves and have no one to blame. Pete affected his life greatly in he got beat up by Trudy and apparently ruined his marriage and now assumedly his forseeable future. His woman got literally beat up and again assumedly ruined her forseeable future.

What happened to them, was it worth it? Look what they've done to themselves and Pete to Trudy. Some affects have been worse than others. Look at the apparent way young Don was affected by being around an entire environment of whoring. Look at Herb engaging in whoring, and how it came back to get him. Yet contrast that with Joan where her whoring was her own choice and affected herself and apparently was able to better herself for it. Is she scummy or smart? At least in her situation is basically contained within her own self.

The Dr's wife is an element of whoring. The result from that hasn't come around yet I think simply because we don't know enough about the Dr. to say if he's innocent of such things himself after the ambiguity of his little ski sojourn in the middle of the night. Regardless, she's a mess about it herself brought on by her own self, and she's somewhat self contained as Joan but we don't know if Megan is being affected by it through her husband distant and she just hasn't felt that affect yet.

I think this is where the idea of her miscarriage comes in because that came out of basically nowhere. I think it was more about than just making Don look even scummier.

One thing common between all the whores in this episode is that the consequences have been brought on themselves. Not including the brothel because I think those characters are irrelevant, these are all seemingly some people of some sort of means however you want to define that. And they all bring about their own consequence through their own doing, which goes back to ancient Greek ideas of tragedy we've brought up seasons before which I think this show is big on.

That's where I think Megan's miscarriage comes in; an exposition of the difference between literary tragedy which is caused by one's own self and misfortune which is what happened to Megan.

I think this episode was all about exploring again those types of themes and ideas through theses characters and their world.