It’s January 1969 and Mad Men has gone full tilt bi-coastal. Don has become Megan’s sidekick instead of being a rock star. We saw this immediately after she picked him up at the airport and insisted on driving. Don Fucking Draper riding shotgun instead of behind the wheel? It’s a new world.
On to my customary random and discursive comments:
A good wrapup. I agree Don will get back on top, and the way they revealed he was Freddie Rumsen’s puppet master was great.
Bracken’s World was a drama about a Hollywood movie studio — the executives and the young stars trying to make it. Megan must’ve been trying out for the role that went to Linda Harrison (a lookalike who was also in the Planet of the Apes movies)… so the idea of Megan trying to make it in Hollywood by trying out for a part about a girl trying to make it in Hollywood is all very Mad Men.
Canter’s Deli is good, but, yes, the bagels aren’t great. It does have good sandwiches… I liked the parallelism between the deli sandwiches in sunny L.A. and the deli sandwiches in dreary New York.
I wondered if that was Canter’s…maybe next episode they’ll film in the Kibitz Room. Best. Bar. in. LA.
Margaret’s “love” babble to Daddy (Roger) at brunch: It’s not “New Age.” Not at all. This is ramping-up the viewers acquaintanceship with “The Summer of Love” that’s gonna hit. This season, we’ll be seeing Margaret turning into a “hippie” and migrating to San Francisco in time for its peak at the Haight. Meanwhile, the Hippie Revolution’s got an ironic parallel running in that her daddy’s stumbled on the “Free Love” movement with its group sex and shared beds — but Roger’s not nobly adapting to and embracing a social movement, but taking advantage of its hallmark offering: tons and tons and TONS of sex.
Hippies and Free Love are brands of a sort of anarchy birthed by the the uptight complacency of Ward and June Cleaver Post-WWII and its sensibilities.
And now I must go eat a sandwich.
@Sonster: Thanks for commenting. The Summer of Love was 1967. !969 is Woodstock and the year people started freaking out about hippies because of the Tate-LaBianca murders.