I was watching Long Weekend tonight, and taking extensive notes. I’ll have more to say later on. But for now, I was noticing this. That Don is not a womanizer.
People all over the Internet are angry at Don for cheating on Betty. And yeah, Don’s a cheater. An adulterer. These are bad things and we can be mad at Don. But he’s not a skirt-chaser. He’s not, to put it plainly, Roger Sterling. (And I have some thoughts about Roger I’ll also be fleshing out—no pun intended—in the near future.)
In Long Weekend, Roger says he wants to use Don “as bait.” He knows the way to go is to pick up two young women and end up with one. This isn’t new; he’s after the same thing in Red In the Face, and only wrangles an invitation to dinner when his plan fails.
Roger is a womanizer. He wants warm, lovely flesh. He wants a young woman to remind him of youth. He wants beauty and soft skin and lips like strawberries in milk. Don wants something different.
When Don says he wants to go home he means it. He doesn’t want to be with Roger, with twenty year-olds on their laps. He’s a bad husband, but he believes in the salvation of being a husband and having a family. And it’s when that salvation doesn’t pan out that he goes for Midge, and then for Rachel. He tells Rachel in Smoke Gets in Your Eyes that he doesn’t believe in love, but he’s deeply romantic; he believes each of these women might save him.
I’ll tell you something else: Don Draper married Betty, but Dick Whitman went for Midge and for Rachel. Dick Whitman is the one attracted to Midge’s taste of Bohemia, and to Rachel’s aloneness and motherlessness. Betty is truly and deeply being cheated, because she’s the only one who gets not even a taste of the authentic Dick Whitman within Don.
Which is…not where I thought this essay was going. Funny how these things turn out. What I started out thinking was how much we need our television heroes to eschew the getting laid side of relationships. I’m reminded of Mal Reynolds being all uncomfortable with “Saffron” (our own Christina Hendricks). He’s as horny as the next fellow, but you don’t just screw a woman because she happens to be naked in your bed! I don’t know if real men really go ahem-ahem-ahem and back away when sex is available, but I know on television you can count on it. We can sympathize even with anti-heroes if they have that quality.
Don has that quality. With the twins in Long Weekend it’s quite obvious, but it’s there in the first episode with Peggy, and in Marriage of Figaro he’s practically the only one not to hit on Helen Bishop.
Don, as I said, is a romantic. And (despite what Bert Cooper thinks), kind of a humanist. He wants to be with a female person, not a female body. He wants to be touched and moved and he wants to connect. He longs to connect. Whereas Roger has no such longing. He just wants a respite.
March 31, 2008 at 11:37 am
My comments may get me in trouble but…I enjoyed Don Draper as a sexy, adulterous bastard! And I hope the trend continues next season because he’d be boring as hell as a faithful husband.
I concur that Sterling’s more of the “traditional” male-slut, chasing anything that swings a caboose.
Leave it to Jon and John to give both adulterers such depth!
March 31, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I wonder if it isn’t the hybrid Dick/Don that loves Rachel, if that perhaps is what is part of the draw.
Barely thought out, so I don’t know how to elaborate on it. But that’s what I thought in reading this.
And very interesting point about tv heroes (and yes, even villains) in general. No way in real life to guys, really good guys, say No quite so often. Please. Xander turned Buffy down when she was under a love spell’s influence. Please!
March 31, 2008 at 2:44 pm
I think that’s an important distinction, Deborah. Although I think the characterization of Don as a “romantic” might be a bit much.
I don’t think we should discount the fact that it also is about sex for ole’ DD. He could take the Midge’s and Rachel’s of the world our for drinks and dancing if he wanted to get to know them and find his soulmate.
He may be many times slicker than Roger Sterling, but we shouldn’t forget that it’s still about chasing tail. In Don’s case, just presented in a neater package.
March 31, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Oh, Deb never implied that it wasn’t about sex. I’m sorry, but when you find your soulmate, or whatever it is you find, drinks and dancing do not suffice. The longing runs all the way up and down your system.
And when you’re married and you happen to meet another ‘other’, you have choices. You either walk away or you don’t. If you’re married and you’re having drinks and dances with someone you’re in love with, how much less of a cheat is that?
(ahem.)
the end by rkl.
March 31, 2008 at 2:49 pm
And PS let’s not forget that if Don were a chaser, he’d probably have added Joan to his list.
Just saying.
March 31, 2008 at 2:50 pm
(ha ha. so much for “the end by rkl”. I always forget that I’m like never done.)
March 31, 2008 at 2:55 pm
The comment that hybrid Don/Dick is in love with Rachel is really spot-on. This is different from the “outsider” theme. But Rachel possesses a very earthy quality that Dick may have had to let go of when he stepped into the wing-tips of Don Draper. Yet, Don, with all his financial success, also enjoys Rachel’s status as a hard-working, successful businesswoman. So Rachel was a good hybrid of Midge and Betty, but had her own twist of (and I know this the wrong term) “exoticism” by being Jewish.
When Don and Rachel first had drinks, he seemed totally shocked that a woman who was so “beautiful, educated” would actually put her education to use and be part of the business world. She didn’t attend college just to get her “MRS” degree. She wanted a career in her father’s department store business.
Perhaps Don compartmentalized ladies as either “beautiful” and predatory, wanting only to be some rich man’s wife. Or “educated,” de-sexed, and not that stylish, like Dr. Guttman (sp?), the Sterling Cooper researcher.
I’ll stop now before I ramble and become a complete bore….:-P
March 31, 2008 at 3:00 pm
I forgot to say that Don strikes me as a man whose always gotta have a woman on the side. He may not be as promiscuous as Sterling, but Don’s still a manwhore….
March 31, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Right, but all this “romantic” and “humanist” stuff obfuscates the much larger truth – whatever you want to call him, “manwhore,” “skirtchaser,” whatever …
I don’t deny that there’s more to Don, and that in his case still waters run deep. But only so deep.
March 31, 2008 at 4:48 pm
Just because Don isn’t indiscriminate doesn’t mean that he’s not a sleeze.
I believe he had taste enough to realize the whole twin scenario was just tawdry. I believe that he likes women with some spice and didn’t want to be with little girls.
Roger is chasing youth and Don is not. Barely legals aren’t his thing.
March 31, 2008 at 6:03 pm
I don’t think Don is a sleaze, sorry. He’s a bastard, but to say he’s a romantic bastard is not an oxymoron. And to believe another human being can make you whole is the essence of Romanticism.
Don is getting as much sex as he wants from Betty. Sure, everyone wants a little strange flesh now and then, but that’s not Don’s goal in forming these relationships. He’s certainly capable of getting laid without strings if what he wants is something more exotic than he can get at home. What he wants is the kind of woman he can ask to run away with him (which he’s done with both Midge and Rachel, and been turned down both times).
March 31, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Agree he’s no sleaze … I just think, Deborah, that your original post went a little far in the direction of justifying Don’s actions, which can be a slippery slope, as they say.
I mean, there’s a reason Don’s not being played by Steve Buscemi, right? It’s the juxtaposition of the dashing Cary Grant-type that is doing these deceitful, dishonest things that makes Don such a great anti-hero.
March 31, 2008 at 9:01 pm
There’s a difference between justification and sympathy. I have enormous sympathy for Don.
March 31, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Don is such an interesting bird. He definitely needs women in his life, but he’s very selective about those he allows in. I wonder if he has any male friends. I know he’s fond of Roger, but that’s not really an equal relationship because Roger’s his boss, as well as his friend. He doesn’t have anything other than a boss relationship with his underlings, and he doesn’t seem to get on too well with his neighbors. Does he have a Thursday night poker game or Sunday afternoon golf with his boys? Who are they? Is his only outlet work and his women?
I agree that Don is not a “womanizer” in the traditional sense, but he definitely needs (and allows) more women in his life than he does men. What does that mean? Are they just his sexual playthings, or is it something else?
March 31, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Yes, sleaze was an exaggeration.
Don is charming and impossible not to like, but I suppose my sympathies are more with Betty. Not that I wouldn’t be tempted were I a woman in his office or Rachel.
I feel sorry for most everybody on the show, including Don, but I just hate that he cheats. Well, I don’t hate it on the level of drama, but, you know!
April 1, 2008 at 11:42 am
Hullabaloo (love that nickname!)….
You have a point about Don not having any men friends. During my initial viewing of the “Smoke…” pilot episode, I thought it was odd that he immediately dismissed attending Pete’s bachelor party. (Of course, most of the men I know would also rather spend a Friday having drinks with a pretty client than some loud, drunk dudes. I digress….) He’s mostly a loner with a “standoff-ish” relationship to his male neighbors like that schmuck Carlton. I guess it’s a further indication of just how alone Don feels….
April 1, 2008 at 12:18 pm
One thing about Don that I keep pondering is what he meant when he told Roger if he left Sterling Cooper, it wouldn’t be for more advertising. It would be to get back to living life, or something like that. What does he mean? I get the sense he really enjoys his job, and his only extra-curricular activities seem to be women (selective women, at that) and whiskey. So what’s living to Don? Is it knocking back a couple of beers and building a playhouse? Smoking pot with his beatnik chick? Romancing department store heiresses? What? I don’t see him chasing down random women, although women are his outlet. He needs them, but I’m not sure what they mean to him.
April 1, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Don can’t have any real friends, male or female. Remember, Rachel is the first person he has ever revealed himself to.
I love when he says to his son, Ask me anything. He craves the intimacy, and doesn’t always know where to go for it. I wonder if his saying that to Bobby was his attempt at being pushed into outing himself. An itty bitty attempt, for sure.
April 1, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Don wanted to go to Paris with Midge. He went to the beatnik club with her. He would explore. And as the invisible man he is, he’d blend in.
April 1, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Yes, he’d explore, but not by himself. He needs women. If he really wanted to go to Paris, he would have gone–with or without Midge. Likewise, if he really wanted to drop it all and run away to Los Angeles, Mexico, wherever, he’d have done it–with or without Rachel. It’s like he said, “people do it every day.” Men leave all the time. They did it in the 60s, they do it today. For a man like Don who’s always reinventing himself, getting the h*ll out of Dodge–by himself–shouldn’t be too difficult. But it is. He can’t or won’t do it alone, even though he is a loner. For all his spiel about being born alone and dying alone, he does not function well when he’s alone.
April 1, 2008 at 2:17 pm
I agree, Hullaballoo. Btw, one of the things that confounded me about Don asking Midge to go to Paris with him is, how did he think that he’d be able to get there and back without Betty finding out? Bc even nowadays when flights to Europe take approx. 7 hours, that’s 14 hours there and back–hardly the kind of thing that one can swing on a weekend, even a long weekend. And I didn’t get the idea that he was leaving Betty. Can someone explain this to me other than that running away is always in the back of Don’s mind?
April 1, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I’m guessing Don likes or needs that validation of women other than his wife (and preferably brunette) because of his utter loneliness. I’m wondering if that has to do with either the only mother figure in his life was brown-haired and he’s constantly craving that sort of acceptance she couldn’t give her husband’s “whore-child.” And/or it was that brunette on the bus, when he went to bury (fake) Dick Whitman, who told him to “forget about the boy in the box.”
I’m probably over-thinking this show….
April 1, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Hull, you’re right, he needs a companion. I wonder who there was before Betty. No one satisfying I guess.
He’s proving something. He’s proving that he can succeed, and what he was saying to Roger was something like, someday I’ll have proven it and then I can go back to the Hobo life.
Eme, I don’t know if he thought he was leaving Betty or not. I think he didn’t think. I think he got as far as “Look, money! Paris!”
But I also don’t think he ever even considers the notion that Betty might leave him. Like in Marriage of Figaro, he never seriously considered any consequences to not coming back with the cake. Never crossed his mind.
Women were much less likely to leave philandering husbands in those days, when it would destroy them financially and socially (as Helen Bishop is there to remind us). As well, does Don even consider that a woman would leave a husband for cheating? He was raised by the woman who was cheated on by his father! That’s a pretty strong role model for “women don’t leave.”
I’m not saying Betty would never leave, I’m saying Don doesn’t imagine she will.
April 1, 2008 at 3:19 pm
He was raised by the woman who was cheated on by his father!
I had to spin that around a few times. I keep having to spin around who ‘those two sorry people’ were that raised him. I keep forgetting that that bastard in the Hobo Code was not his father.
April 1, 2008 at 6:07 pm
How old was he in Hobo Code? He said his father died when he was 10. The kid who played young Dick was 10 at the time; might well have been his father.
April 1, 2008 at 6:28 pm
I thought the bastard in the Hobo Code was his father. Archie, right? He looked enough like Don. I think the two sorry people who then raised him were Abigail and Uncle Mack, who stepped in after Archie got kicked in the head.
April 1, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Archie is Dick’s father, the “dishonest man” that the hobo leaves the symbol for–part of why Don heads home to wake up his son to tell him that he will never lie to him. Don/Dick is afraid he has become the dishonest man.
April 2, 2008 at 2:12 am
Loving the discussion…Don (I mean Dick) is acting out the conflicts of his childhood. He doesn’t want to become his father (who ‘died’ for him at 10), so the Don identity has the added benefit of giving him a sandbox to live the ideal American life in. Of course, he is doing exactly what Archie did by cheating on his wife, but for his own reasons – Dick’s reasons, not Don’s. Dick wants a mother figure, a powerful, free woman. Don doesn’t know what he wants – he’s making it up as he goes along.
April 2, 2008 at 5:51 am
Max, I am confused. I think when I first saw Hobo Code I thought it was his father (well cast, to that end) but after his confession to Rachel I thought maybe this guy was her second husband.
But I’m still a little confused. Adam has the same father, so new guy steps in like moments after Archie dies? (Was Uncle Mack the second husband? Wouldn’t Adam have just called him Daddy, despite that technically not being the case?)
I’m usually so like, good at this show. There’s a blog and all.
blogward, hi! Thanks for the comments.
April 2, 2008 at 12:37 pm
“But I’m still a little confused. Adam has the same father, so new guy steps in like moments after Archie dies?”
Yes, that’s exactly what happened. Remember Don said “she buried him and took up with some other man,” implying she hooked up with Uncle Mack almost immediately after Archie died. That’s probably one of the reasons Don disliked her so. His father was no saint, but she could have at least allowed a proper mourning period before remarrying.
Of course, in my mind, I go one step further. I suspect that Adam is actually Uncle Mack’s kid, and not Archie’s. Look at his coloring, look at his face. Abigail and Archie were both dark with angular features. Uncle Mack is sandy with more rounded features–like Adam. I bet Abigail was pregnant with Adam while Archie was still alive, or became pregnant soon after Archie died. To save face or avoid the stigma of being labeled a loose woman, they maintained that the kid was Archie’s. A woman who’s widowed while she’s pregnant is a far cry from a newly widowed woman who becomes pregnant. The irony there is that Don was labeled “whore child,” while Adam was “the first man,” although technically they’re both children of women who would be considered promiscuous by society’s standards. If Don was somehow aware of this situation, I imagine he’d hate Abigail and the circumstances of his upbringing even more, while at the same time, it might also explain his obsession with dark-haired women, as Kay suggested upthread.
April 2, 2008 at 1:37 pm
it might also explain his obsession with dark-haired women
(but his vision of a blonde as the perfect wife and mother.)
April 2, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Blondes must be the perfect mommies, because brunettes are just about the sex? Is that what you’re saying?
April 2, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Wow. Nice catch on the “blondes vs. brunettes”!
April 2, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Mm, interesting bc Don definitely has a whore/madonna complex.
April 2, 2008 at 4:05 pm
It’s an ethnic thing. Blondes. Straight hair. Barbie dolls. The American (oh! and German) dream.
Bible. I get the impression that Eve was a blonde. Now, Lilith, the first wife? She was a brunette.
Kate Jackson was the smart one.
Brunettes are smarter and not so prissy and they put out.
Ones with curls are even known to swallow…
April 2, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Eve was so not a blonde. Eve was Jewish. Garden of Eden is in Israel.
April 2, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Fine. To me she is the blonde of that story.
April 2, 2008 at 5:01 pm
“Brunettes are smarter and not so prissy and they put out.
Ones with curls are even known to swallow…”
And yet, my Friday nights are still pretty boring…
April 2, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Gevalt!
presses hand to chest
April 2, 2008 at 5:58 pm
So why are there so many blonde jokes where they’re good time girls? Huh? Huh?!
April 2, 2008 at 6:08 pm
Same reason not so many lesbian jokes.
You don’t want to piss off us dark curly-headed Jewesses.