Ending S6 with the whorehouse confessional and beginning S7 with no mention of it and the Freddy ventriloquist act seems par for the course to me. The show is rife with these moments of near-epiphany for Don, but it's always one step forward, two steps back. Besides which, if it did continue with that thread, we'd have him at a psychiatrist's office going through regression therapy, eventually coming to terms with the fact that his narcissistic tendencies, lack of impulse control, and attachment disorder are rooted in a traumatic childhood which he must let go of, and maybe by the end of the season we'd see a sober and stable, non-womanizing Don doing a competent job at SCDP, which would probably not be the most dramatically compelling way to end the show.

I was imagining a guy like him irl, about whom I knew everything he'd done, and I was thinking "lol B+" I assume you were comparing him to real people? To be clear, I think dispensing grades to people's characters, fictional or not, is a pretty fatuous exercise.

I'm just pretty puzzled by someone thinking he's done all this awful stuff. He cheated on his wife and threw money at Peggy. He's hardly a monster.

You were also puzzled by people thinking Richie Incognito is a bad person. Is it possible you're just not great at identifying awful stuff?

I was loling at people thinking they know anything about Incognito from 30 second sportscenter blurbs.

But yeah if you think that calling someone's sister a squirter or cheating on your wife automatically makes you a monster, then whatever

Where is this "monster" thing coming from? Who's called Don a monster itt? I don't think he's a monster, I think he's a psychologically fascinating character who has done a ton of reprehensible stuff, but "monster" no. I do think we're supposed to have profound moral issues with Don's behavior--that seems like the point of the show to me, in a way, creating this seductive, charismatic protagonist who's also deeply flawed and conflicted and kind of a POS, is meant to create cognitive tension in a viewer. I think we're supposed to have a sort of love/hate relationship with him; if you don't think he's at least partly a bad guy, or have any problem with the stuff he does, I don't really get why you'd watch the show. Set design?

The set design is pretty ****ing good.

CQ, I think the main difference is that from reading your posts it seems like you hate Don more than you love him, while with most other people ITT it's the other way around. This could be because of different moral standards (not saying one is better than the other), but you seem to classify some of the things he does (like cheating on his wife) worse than others do. It doesn't mean that we're all cheaters, but we just think it doesn't make him a terrible human being. Of course there's the argument about the sum of all parts, when you add his sabotage of the business, the fact that he doesn't love his kids, befriending Arnie to **** his wife, etc. Again, having different weights for how terrible that makes him makes us come to different conclusions about the love/hate relationship with Don.

Comparing Don to middle class faithful husband from the heartland isn't fair.

Grading him on a curve in a class that includes the guys he works with and that are in his social strata makes B+ seem reasonable.

I mean, when the show goes out of its way to paint Betty as a neurotic heartless bitch, do you think they're casting total blame for abandoning her at Don's feet?

Caveat: IIRC she was much less cold at the beginning of the show and I do think her cognizance of Don's caddiness affected her psyche.

I just don't think he does a ton of reprehensible stuff. Cheating on his wife isn't reprehensible, impulsively assuming a dead man's identity isn't reprehensible. He threw money at Peggy which is pretty ****ty. But it's not like he raped the au pair or stole money from the firm or anything. Like he's not St. Coach from FNL but he's a lot closer to that than he is to Tony Soprano.

Oh look, it's why I stopped participating in TV Club threads. I think this discussion has reached its endpoint, what with SenorKeeed arguing exactly what he was arguing in the beginning.

This is obviously true, but there's a difference between someone's reaction falling somewhere different on the spectrum than where mine falls, and not having a reaction at all. Don is clearly supposed to be, at the very least, a complicated and very flawed person, who over the course of the show does many ****ed up things (no, he never murders or rapes anyone, to SK's repeated and extremely obtuse point). And I would argue by S6 he's become a pretty small, petty and unlikeable character, largely as a result of choices he's made over the first 5 seasons.

I'm not telling anyone how exactly to feel about him, and there are also, of course, a lot of things to like, otherwise we wouldn't watch the show. But thinking he's mostly a swell guy, a B+ guy, etc., really misses the point in my book, like misses Weiner's point. Of course, this is the same crew that thought Walter White was a good guy, so I don't really know why I'm bothering here.

And you're the guy who thinks that if someone cheats on his wife and is a prick at work he's reprehensible...

Yes, I guess among a bunch of other monumental ass holes, a B+ is reasonable (actually by this standard he's an A, as he at least has a sense of flair and an inkling of the depth of his own rot). Do you guys think this show is about nice guys? Hint: what is the name of the show, and how might it relate to the show's narrative perspective on its own characters?

CQ, if Don's not likeable, who on MM is? The entire show is populated by narcissistic egomaniacs. The show has made a big point of Peggy's collapsing character as she's risen up the ranks.

ETA: I just read your previous post. I have serious doubts Weiner would craft the DD character the way he has if he didn't admire him. You don't generally give self-awareness to a character you abhor.

A guy who is a self-serving prick at work and a serial cheater is the normal gold-standard definition of "reprehensible" everywhere but here in crazytown

To add to this, those attributes seemed to be motivators of the Alpha Don Draper who talked his way into business deals after 4 drinks and without preparing. Don is cool as hell because he seems to do whatever he wants and is still rich and successful. The irony of Don Draper seems to be that he always thought his downfall would be his true identity being known, but now everyone in his life knows, and while it was the catalyst for a divorce that seemed to be inevitable anyway, it's really been everything else that's the problem with Don.

Don can be a prick at work but he has a ton of good qualities too. And you seriously judge people who have affairs like that? Like if one of your acquaintances cheated on his wife you'd judge him as reprehensible? I think the more natural and common reaction is, well, marriage is complicated, not my place to judge.

Interesting, at least for me, is that I found Walter White a pretty despicable character whom I was rooting against for most of the run of that show. However, I find Don Draper a pretty likable character despite of his flaws, and more often than not I find myself rooting for him and wishing that redemption and not suicide is what expects him in the end.

And no one thought Walter White was like a good guy. I rooted for him because it's TV and it was fun but of course he did a ton of despicable stuff. But I really don't get the mah goodness that Donald Draper is an adulterer, someone fetch me mah smellin salts attitude that some seem to have.

Ray, I'm not saying there aren't also things to admire about him. At the very least, he's handsome, charismatic, smart, and a great salesman. He also has moments of real humanity, and is self-aware, which goes a long way. But he's also supposed to be a narcissistic ****ing prick at the same time. This is the entire edge on which the show is premised imo.

To answer your first question, in the land of blind men the one-eyed man is king. Don is surrounded by either people even more morally vacant than himself (Roger, Pete), or Harry Crane middle management drones, etc. Don's character is promoted, in moral terms, bc he at least seems aware sometimes that what he's doing is ****ed up (which also makes it worse in a way), and has an existential sense of how rotten and compromised everything is.

Yeah, comparing the gravity of Walt's harms to Don's is bad.

That said, both of their characters' identities were forged out of extreme circumstances and are characterized by surreptitiousness. Both come from previous worlds where they were nobodies and have a overwhelming desire to matter. And both sacrifice their families to their work--Walt from obviously more noble intentions but with far worse results.

I don't think it's fair to judge someone's character when they're in this kind of environment. To your point about the title of the show: MAD MEN also refers to Madison Avenue Men, and the environment of the show has a major influence on the characters' behavior. I think Weiner's critique is far less of the people in the room than the room itself and the way it insidiously takes otherwise good guys and makes them mad men. Remember Ken's writing--sure some of it was hackneyed and ridiculous, but it revealed a gentleness of soul. Now he's a ranting raving pirate. Such is the life of a man in the world of business. Madison Avenue swallows up souls and regurgitates them into packaged happiness...is the point I think we're meant to get moreso than THESE MONSTERS.

No, I wouldn't judge an acquaintance for having an affair.

However, if one of my acquaintances had like dozens of affairs, among them with his daughter's schoolteacher, with prostitutes, with his ex-wife's 18 year-old niece whom he's known since she was little, with several secretaries, and with the woman downstairs whose husband he deliberately befriended, yes, I would probably feel comfortable saying his behavior is reprehensible. You wouldn't?

Furthermore, if this acquaintance was a fictional character who I knew had been written this way to create interesting moral situations for me the viewer to think about, I really wouldn't have a hard time judging his behavior in a variety of ways that would add to my complex enjoyment of the show!!