I think that's one of Weiner's points as well, but you have to be capable of making moral evaluations of the guys caught in this system and their actions to be able to say anything interesting about the system and its effects on people. Otherwise it's just morally relativistic gamesmanship and who cares? Again, the MONSTER thing is just a strawman you and SK are throwing around.

ETA: Honestly Ray, your points about Ken and Peggy being compromised over the course of the show are spot on, but incompatible with your argument about Don

I don't think they did?

Yeah, you're right, she turned him down

Over years and years? No, I definitely wouldn't. And the prostitutes and secretaries were when he was divorced. And he married one of them! I think we've seen about one affair per season. Not sure where you're getting dozens from.

Charles Manson= F

Don Draper= D-

Yeah that makes plenty of sense. Definitely can't think of anybody who ever lived that doesn't quite make the Manson grade while still being a worse person than Don Draper.

Also,

What did Walter White ever do that's so wrong? All he ever wanted to do was provide a chemically pure consumer product at fair market markup in a landscape filled with dangerously inferior alternatives. All just to provide security to his family after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Is it his fault that a bunch of rivals, dangerous partners, enforcement agents, imprisoned potential snitches, and the occasional child constantly tried to get in the way of that basic decent American pursuit and had to be executed in thrilling ways? Of course not.

Plus if Gretchen and Elliott weren't dirty conniving ****ers toward him in the first place none of this would have been necessary and the public wouldn't have such a distorted perception of Walter's moral compass. Especially Carol. Dropping those groceries like that was just rude and insulting. They were neighbors for decades and he was always perfectly decent to her. Plus she didn't even know about the time he sent her into his house filled with hitmen.

Walter White= B+

I don't think that paraphrasing "Don Draper has done tons of reprehensible things and is a really ****ty person" to "Don Draper is a monster" is that big of a leap. I didn't mean anything other than "a ****ty dude who does reprehensible stuff on the reg" by saying "monster".

All the "E"s in this world are feeling very ignored at this moment.

Shocker. Great show, AIDS thread.

Like have you guys never done anything ****ty? Once I fooled around with my friend's girlfriend, which was a pretty ****ty thing do do. I also had sex with a girl and didn't call her, also pretty ****ty. This is the sort of bad stuff Don Draper does. Most people do stuff like this. We just feel bad and try to move on and not be such a piece of **** in the future. But maybe you are all A+++ people and have never done anything like that and you should go move to Dillion Texas with Coach and Mrs. Coach.

C- for the effort.

Keeed:

I'm sorry that whatever your misdeeds are you see fit to think that people attacking Don Draper for being a bad guy are also attacking you, but you are AIDSing up this thread pretty hard.

What in the world are you talking about?

I find Don and "screwed-up narcissistic egomaniacs" like him a lot more likable than many types of "good people" (e.g., people who argue against bigotry on the interwebs).

CQ does that sometimes but he's mean and snarky a lot so he gets a pass.

This is pretty much my worldview, or a lot of it anyway.

Agreed. And I would add that talented people, like Peggy and Joan (as well as Don) are way more awesome as they gain power. But that also sometimes makes them mean. I'll take that trade-off.

I feel sorry for Don more than I hate him or find him reprehensible. I'm not going to argue he's not a bad guy but I think Weiner intended for him to be at least somewhat sympathetic and has done an amazing job of showing why he is the way he is.

Don a D+ human is the silliest thing I've read all week. Not to fan this turdfire of a debate, but jeez. He is a deeply flawed human and all that entails. Conversely, if one of my friends just casually cheated on his wife that would be very weird to me and I would certainly re evaluate our standing. Not saying he is terrible person, but it's not a causal thing IMO like señor is making it sound

Well but I said acquaintance and not friend very specifically. You might not want to be friends with someone who chronically cheats on his wife but is he a despicable person? I don't think so. He doesn't share my values but I'm not going to judge him because I don't know his situation or what his marriage is like.

Who among us is qualified to be giving ****ing grades to our fellow human beings anyway.

You are a C-. GTFO, you may ask me for permission to discuss Don Draper's character after a 6 month probationary period. That is all.

Yes we all make mistakes, but there is a difference between making mistakes and systemically abusing institutional/societal/sexual power to exploit those with less power. Don is likable because if he wasn't people would recognize or standup to his assholish behaviour. Which is more or less what has happened in the last couple seasons of the show. This doesn't mean I hate Don or don't respect his humanity, but his actions are those of of a world class prick.

Whoa hold on buddy the only sexual relationship that we've seen Don pursue where Don can be said to abuse the power he has over a woman is with Allison. And while I'm not trying to minimize how ****ty his behavior towards Allison was, he immediately recognizes that what he did was awful and doesn't continue the relationship.

Every other sexual relationship is with someone who has some power over him. A colleague at work, one of his clients, his client's wife, his daughter's schoolteacher, etc. He doesn't have anything over these women. And they could ruin him in an instant.

So Don's relationships aren't about dominating women but quite the opposite. They're about Don putting his life at their mercy and saying "go ahead. If I didn't **** you good enough blow up my life".

Draper is a gigantic *******, people don't wanna see it or admit it because they see a lot of things about them they wish they could do or be: rich, talented, supremely confident, gets all the hot chicks he wants, etc.

It's hard to reconcile wanting to be like someone and that person also being an awful human being, so people talk themselves into thinking he's someone at least decent.

Whether Draper is decent or not is next to irrelevant. He's a smashing success by most of the metrics that western males are and have been judged by for countless generations. The very things that haters find reprehensible itt largely empower and facilitate his ability to have reached those benchmarks. Furthermore those qualities are mostly the norm in such people then or now, or before.

The whole point is that Draper represents a meta commentary about the idea of an exceptional self made man in western civilization. What it takes to become one, what comes with the territory, whether it's worth it at all or completely misguided. To completely condemn the Draper character is to more or less condemn the society that created you, which is fine if that's what you want to do, but even then it's foolish not to recognize the ways in which he's exceptional even compared to most other exceptional people that you must apparently despise.

He knows exactly what to say to every woman at every moment. He pioneers and perfects the most influential tool of propaganda to the capitalist machine. He was the cutting edge of everything for his generation which set the stage for where we are today. To completely downplay the quality and significance of his character based on aspects that go with it that you find naughty is completely childish. He's not meant to meet your little Mother Theresa checklist. He's meant to be a mythical being that orchestrated a good chunk of the world you live in and you get to watch how he did it.

If all that adds up to a D- for you then it's time to start looking into moving to the most remote cabin you can find.

It's not 'next to irrelevant'. Don Draper is a fictional character. If you're not judging your fictional characters on any sort of moral basis, I guess you are just watching TV to see what a badass these TV writers can come up with.

Also I suspect you missed this week's episode where Don's wife evaded sex with him only to finally give in, he watched a lot of television, he intentionally turned down sex with a woman who wanted to bang him, and he drank alone in his apartment watching Nixon speeches writing ad copy that he couldn't even put his name to. At one time, Don Draper had things figured out, or thought he did, but if you're watching this show to see Don Draper be a hotdick, I think you should probably just stick to old episodes. Actually, you should just stick to old episodes to see what this show is about, because you've missed a lot of it.