**SPOILERS ALERT**
Having read through this post last night, and the comments, it came to me that there is something missed about the show that might appeal to a broader base.
My wife started me watching the show, and while I certainly liked the whole look and feel of it, and felt it well written for a nigh-time drama, part of it bugged me. It seemed to be just another element of men/America bashing, albeit with a very gentle and deft touch. Cue roll of eyes.
Watching it develop, however, there is something more about the show, about Don Draper, about the era and America that speaks well.
Draper IS a cad when it comes to women and there are certainly elements to character that are less than laudable.
BUT, here is also a guy with also a lot of integrity and character at his core.
* He supports Peggy in her initial forays into becoming a copy writer. This is true of most of the firm, which despite ‘sexism’ of the era, recognizes talent, ability and worth in spite of gender.
* He doesn’t try to bed her, although it is obvious he could have in a second.
* When Peggy disappears after giving birth, Draper; tracks her down; tells her she needs to get off her ass and survive no matter what; makes sure her job is waiting for her even though she’s been gone for months.
* When Don finds out a co-worker is homosexual, he makes a POINT of not making a point of it. To Don, how you do your JOB matters; not what you do outside of it.
* “Don”, really Dick, came from the most miserable and low of backgrounds, bastard son to a prostitute and step-son to bastard of afather, mean and abusive. As my wife said to me last night, his appeal to women is that he is damaged. She did not elaborate on that, but the important part is he IS damaged. He pathological behavior comes in part from his completely ******-up childhood, but he has striven to overcome it entirely. Indeed, part of the tension of the show is whether his past can and will catch up with him.
One scene from last season really struck me, and made me start to think differently about the show, and what its attitude about America is.
Don runs off with the 20 something sexpot from Europe who is on vacation with an apparently wealthy caravan of other Europeans. Better said, he is running from his former life which looks like it might collapse, and in any event, has gotten “complicated”, what with wife and kids.
Seems a great life at first; boffing the young hottie and hanging out with the folks who have cash enough to not have to work.
Then, Don gets a closer glimpse at their life, and revulsion seems to set in.
* The father of the daughter seems a little too, er, relaxed or familiar about her sexually.
*The family are a bunch of snobs about working people in general, but seem like Euro–trash themselves.
*He sees two children, not unlike his own, whose father is not around for them, and the look in their faces. There is not “endless” holiday for them.
The last scene among those people, Don is holding a glass. The young hottie is swimming topless in the pool, but he is transfixed by the glass, and when we get a good look at it, it is a cheap, ugly thing which makes one less eager to sip whatever is in it.
I THINK what the show may also be about, is that America, for all its flaws, has a great many attributes to its culture and society. One of the best is, when it comes down to it, we believe you should be judged on WHO you are, and not where you came from or what sex or your sexual orientation.
Yes, we not always lived up to that, but like Don Draper, it is in our core.
